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Notes -
So...WaPo just published the opinion piece: James Bennet was right on the firing of editor James Bennett for...posting an op-ed from a sitting US Senator advocating for the use of the Insurrection Act during the post-Floyd riots which permanently, publicly marked out the Times as a partisan org (as if it wasn't already) that was caught up in the moral craze.
TBH: nothing about this op-ed is novel. We already knew what happened: Cotton published an op-ed well within the bounds of discourse at the time, Times' employees lost their shit and started adding pressure and eventually an editor's note was added and Bennett was fired for letting the other side speak. Significant numbers of people were just absolutely cowards about this - including the author of the article who has apparently now come to his senses when the damage has already and Bennett who groveled when that is the worst thing you can do - publicly - been done. As always.
The only interesting bits for me was the implication that the rampant misuse of the term "danger" was apparently deliberately to appeal to workplace safety regs (laughably) so they could have a legal basis for slamming their newsroom and how exactly they manufactured an apologetic editor's note despite being unable to find much wrong with the op-ed itself:
To be honest: I don't know how I can trust these companies after this.
Whenever a seemingly egregious firing or cancelling happens there's always some apologist who comes out to tell us that either we're missing the holy Context and that X, Y and Z awful and "problematic" things happened behind the scenes or it's basically just made up, playing on conservative hysteria
But this is not the first time I've seen evidence of them basically working backwards, like any inquisition: person is accused of one thing and then they go over their entire career with a fine-toothed comb until they can find anything to make it stronger (this happened to the journalist accused by Felicia Somnez - who, ironically, used to work for WaPo. There was one accusation, probably not enough to do anything. Then suddenly Somnez - upon hearing the story - decided that a sexual encounter that would appear consensual to any reasonable outsider - was abuse and now it's not "an accusation" it's "multiple accusations").
For a leftist tactic it actually seems Trumpian: you cannot change the egregious act so simply muddy the waters until you run out the clock. The taboo has now been set, no matter what anyone (including the suddenly brave Wemple) thinks.
One of the really nutty things about the Cotton op-ed tantrum was where some of the internal pushback came from at the Times via Slack, Twitter, etc. The op-ed page weighing the concerns of the company’s tech workers was a big departure from the past.
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