Remember Neville Longbottom.
Jul. 29th, 2018 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tigeranneThere are times when we need to stand up against people we like and admire.
This is a rare semi-political post by TigerAnne, and I will leave it public because I'm willing to stand by every letter of what I'm about to say. Since I'm very fond of writing long essays about things that get me passionate, I'll try to reign myself in and just keep to the basics.
There's apparently a "smear campaign" (quotation marks to signal that this is a quote, not to passive aggressively dismiss it) going on against liberal entertainters, staged by the "alt-right." They've been digging through people's Twitter feeds, and have unearthed a lot of jokes that push the line of what's acceptable to say in public. There's been no attempt (that I know of) to deny that those tweets were made, and claiming them as photo-shopping.
Surprisingly, a lot of notable, blue-checkmarked personalities have come out in support of the jokesters, claiming that they were only kidding, for goodness sake! Well, yeah. I don't believe that they're actual child molesters. If they were, I do think they'd be a whole lot more secretive about it. But that's not the point. They're guilty of making fun of something that's much too serious to be joked about. It's not "making ONE mistake, lots of years ago," when you continue making one quip after the other about the same "edgy" topic.
I know I don't need to say this, but I will, just so it's absolutely clear that I'm aware of it. A lot of the fans who read those tweets will be people who have been sexually abused as children. They probably don't think it's all that funny. We can't know what's been going though all of their minds, as they unsuspectingly have opened twitter, just to discover that one of those Verified people has made another one of those jokes. They can unfollow, but the day has already been dampened.
There have been articles written, dismissing the whole thing as apparently being an "alt-right" campaign, designed to turn attention away from all the alleged crimes of the right-wing. Okay, maybe it is. And maybe we should still recognise that someone on "our" side has crossed the line, no matter who brought it to our attention, or why.
"But, but but... Condemning them will strenghten the alt-right!" Will it? "Yes, because that would mean their campaign has worked, duh!"
Okay, so maybe this was a campaign, and it worked. What does that even mean? That if we think those Twitter wize-cracks were above the limit, we have now somehow adopted an ideological stance that's slightly closer to that of the alt-right? That the alt-right (whoever thay actually are) have proven to us that they can occasionally be trustworthy, since they did display screenshots proving those jokes were actually made? I think the key word is "occasionally." Even when someone has ideas and opinions you find absolutely morally revolting, that doesn't automatically mean that they won't ever be right. When they are, you can acknowledge it, and still be within your full right to recognise that in many other ways they're a despicable excuse for a human.
To repeat myself, if this was a successful ploy by far-righters, or even Neo-Nazis, what have they achieved? Not really anything more than showing the world that "good guys" can also say and do things they shouldn't. Is it really like we didn't already know that? People aren't 100% pure, what else is new? Being a generally likable person doesn't make you less guilty of your actions. THat's not how justice is supposed to work. If a person who's never said a mean word to anyone, and a person who spends all their time posting racist stuff on Reddit, each shoplift a pair of sneakers, they're equally guilty of stealing a pair of sneakers.
What do we risk by acknowledging that someone we like has done something we don't like? At the very worst, giving the enemy faction a brief feeling of smug satisfaction. They may feel encouraged to try something similar again, which they can only do if the leverage exists. The impact this has had, probably has a lot to do with the fact that the evidence was so readibly available.
What do we risk by brushing it off as nothing, and coming out in support of the accused in droves? It's hard to predict exactly, but I would say that the chance of coming off as insensitive towards CSA survivours is definitely there. Could that drive them away from Liberals, and towards the (alt-)right? Potentially, yes. If they feel that the right take child abuse more seriously, then that's not unthinkable.
No matter what side of the political or social spectrum we're on, we need to do our best to keep our side clean. Keeping us in check isn't the opposing camp's job, it's our own, but they will jump at the chance to do it if we neglect our duty. To (mis)quote a certain wise, old man: "Standing up to your friends may take as much courage as standing up to your enemies," and "Do what's right, not what's easy."
And with that, I step down from the soap-crate.
This is a rare semi-political post by TigerAnne, and I will leave it public because I'm willing to stand by every letter of what I'm about to say. Since I'm very fond of writing long essays about things that get me passionate, I'll try to reign myself in and just keep to the basics.
There's apparently a "smear campaign" (quotation marks to signal that this is a quote, not to passive aggressively dismiss it) going on against liberal entertainters, staged by the "alt-right." They've been digging through people's Twitter feeds, and have unearthed a lot of jokes that push the line of what's acceptable to say in public. There's been no attempt (that I know of) to deny that those tweets were made, and claiming them as photo-shopping.
Surprisingly, a lot of notable, blue-checkmarked personalities have come out in support of the jokesters, claiming that they were only kidding, for goodness sake! Well, yeah. I don't believe that they're actual child molesters. If they were, I do think they'd be a whole lot more secretive about it. But that's not the point. They're guilty of making fun of something that's much too serious to be joked about. It's not "making ONE mistake, lots of years ago," when you continue making one quip after the other about the same "edgy" topic.
I know I don't need to say this, but I will, just so it's absolutely clear that I'm aware of it. A lot of the fans who read those tweets will be people who have been sexually abused as children. They probably don't think it's all that funny. We can't know what's been going though all of their minds, as they unsuspectingly have opened twitter, just to discover that one of those Verified people has made another one of those jokes. They can unfollow, but the day has already been dampened.
There have been articles written, dismissing the whole thing as apparently being an "alt-right" campaign, designed to turn attention away from all the alleged crimes of the right-wing. Okay, maybe it is. And maybe we should still recognise that someone on "our" side has crossed the line, no matter who brought it to our attention, or why.
"But, but but... Condemning them will strenghten the alt-right!" Will it? "Yes, because that would mean their campaign has worked, duh!"
Okay, so maybe this was a campaign, and it worked. What does that even mean? That if we think those Twitter wize-cracks were above the limit, we have now somehow adopted an ideological stance that's slightly closer to that of the alt-right? That the alt-right (whoever thay actually are) have proven to us that they can occasionally be trustworthy, since they did display screenshots proving those jokes were actually made? I think the key word is "occasionally." Even when someone has ideas and opinions you find absolutely morally revolting, that doesn't automatically mean that they won't ever be right. When they are, you can acknowledge it, and still be within your full right to recognise that in many other ways they're a despicable excuse for a human.
To repeat myself, if this was a successful ploy by far-righters, or even Neo-Nazis, what have they achieved? Not really anything more than showing the world that "good guys" can also say and do things they shouldn't. Is it really like we didn't already know that? People aren't 100% pure, what else is new? Being a generally likable person doesn't make you less guilty of your actions. THat's not how justice is supposed to work. If a person who's never said a mean word to anyone, and a person who spends all their time posting racist stuff on Reddit, each shoplift a pair of sneakers, they're equally guilty of stealing a pair of sneakers.
What do we risk by acknowledging that someone we like has done something we don't like? At the very worst, giving the enemy faction a brief feeling of smug satisfaction. They may feel encouraged to try something similar again, which they can only do if the leverage exists. The impact this has had, probably has a lot to do with the fact that the evidence was so readibly available.
What do we risk by brushing it off as nothing, and coming out in support of the accused in droves? It's hard to predict exactly, but I would say that the chance of coming off as insensitive towards CSA survivours is definitely there. Could that drive them away from Liberals, and towards the (alt-)right? Potentially, yes. If they feel that the right take child abuse more seriously, then that's not unthinkable.
No matter what side of the political or social spectrum we're on, we need to do our best to keep our side clean. Keeping us in check isn't the opposing camp's job, it's our own, but they will jump at the chance to do it if we neglect our duty. To (mis)quote a certain wise, old man: "Standing up to your friends may take as much courage as standing up to your enemies," and "Do what's right, not what's easy."
And with that, I step down from the soap-crate.
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no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 12:43 pm (UTC)I didn't apologize for him or anything like that. I did feel like, let's wait and see how this shakes out before passing judgment, because at the start it was one woman against Cosby, and women have indeed accused men of inappropriate conduct/assault to extort money from them. But when the evidence began piling up, as much as I didn't want to believe it was true, I didn't have a choice. The proof was there - they couldn't ALL be trying to extort money out of him.
And yes it made me very sad. How could you, Bill Cosby? You seemed so nice! How could you do this? You tainted your whole legacy.
So I can sympathize with "man, I wish that weren't true," but I also didn't say "well, I'm sure there were extenuating circumstances."
And that's what bugs me about the current tweet reveals - like you said, people are apologizing *on behalf of* those who made the tweets. Which were wrong to make in the first place and everyone knows it. "Trying to be edgy" doesn't fix it.
And it shows a real double standard. Alt-right is shown to have made those kinds of tweets? You know the liberals would scream how the alt-righter is EBIL EBIL EBIL and has always been evil and will never be not evil. But when it's one of their own? Oh no, it was just a joke, boys will be boys, he's changed, he's grown, he's better now. Forgive and forget.
It's really easy to "smear" someone when you've given your enemies lots of crap to find. And over and over again, it's just proving that the entertainment industry is full of sickos, and they're awful people, and they'll defend their own to the death but if ANYONE ELSE is guilty of ANYTHING...
It's very discouraging.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 01:32 pm (UTC)Another thing I've come to realise about "the liberals" (not the whole population, of course, but the ones who have gotten involved in this sad affair), is that they've expertly managed to do more damage to themselves than the alt-righters did. After writing that the "right" didn't achieve more than reminding people that nobody's perfect, I thought "But they sort of did, because they got all those other Notable People to expose themselves as having double standards." But no, that wasn't really the alt-right (or whoever) achieving it. The Better People did that to themselves. For the "trolls" it was just some free bonus points.