The letter, part II
Somehow you knew this was coming
WELL, THAT didn’t take long. Not even by 2020’s standards. More than 150 “notables” signed a letter last week decrying today’s cancel culture in which people are shouted down by the mob even before they’ve finished a sentence. These signatories, the headline writers say, are notable writers, artists and historians. (But aren’t we all notable, and made in His image?) Before the newspaper could get a story in edgewise, however, the cancel culture tried to cancel those bemoaning the cancel culture’s culture. Lordamighty.
Some of the names of the people who signed the letter you’d recognize. Others not so much. But the letter itself, published by Harper’s Magazine, was smart and timely and leftof-center with the obligatory shot at the president.
The nut graphs: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.
“We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.”
The whole thing, including signatures, can be found here: arkansasonline.com/710harpers/
Before the news cycle was complete, however, the letter itself was canceled.
Somebody named Richard Kim at the HuffPost wrote on social media: “Okay, I did not sign THE LETTER when I was asked 9 days ago because I could see in 90 seconds that it was fatuous, self-important drivel that would only troll the people it allegedly was trying to reach—and I said as much.”
But for a fatuous, self-important piece of drivel, it set a lot of folks on edge. Including some who signed the thing.
“I did not know who else had signed the letter,” said writer Jennifer Finney Boylan. “I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against Internet shaming. The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.”
It will come as no surprise that Ms. Boylan writes opinion for The New York Times.
A historian who signed the letter, Kerri Greenidge, said she wanted her name taken off, forthwith. Last we heard, Harper’s was doing so.
Now comes the backlash to the backlash, and some of us wish the second backlash all the luck. Richard Thompson Ford, a Stanford law professor, said he signed the letter, and he’s not backing down. Good for him. Great for him.
“I’ve witnessed too many cases of ferocious takedowns for defensible if ideologically unorthodox views or relatively minor breaches of political etiquette,” Professor Ford told the press. “This is more true of Trumpian conservatives than anyone, but it is also true of some progressives.” (First they came for the Trumpian conservatives, and I said nothing. Then they came for the Never Trump conservatives, and I said nothing. Then they came for me … .)
Perhaps Professor Ford read the letter before he signed it. Which is always a good idea.
WHETHER it’s a shadowy group running ads on Arkansas television, or a president retweeting a news story, or a senator from Arkansas appearing on The New York Times op-ed page, it is almost always better to have the debate than to stifle it. Bad information—like those TV ads—can be countered with better information. Good information—like Tom Cotton’s op-ed—can tell us what’s on the minds of the nation’s leaders.
It hardly ever helps to declare debate over and “cancel” people with whom you disagree. Or even with whom most Americans would disagree. That’s never been the American way.
As the letter writers say, the restriction of debate can be imposed by a repressive government—or an intolerant society. Either way, it’s not good for progress, or democracy.