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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17899 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Many will now claim that trollish insults and ridiculing memes are responsible for this, rather than the truth about his lies stated plainly and reasonably, even though the latter was by far the more devastating. Presuming he killed himself, it was likely because his sins were so egregious that even his own tribe could not overlook or excuse them. Nasty and vicious jeers from the outgroup are merely badges of honor, but the disappointed glances from the ingroup hit like a freight train. People like Arday don't kill themselves when they are exposed to the outgroup; they kill themselves when they are exposed to the ingroup. He lost status hard and fast. The only injustice here is that many of his colleagues should also be brought down a few pegs.

He should never have resigned.

You know it's over when you're a black autistic sociology professor who writes about intersectional issues, and not even the Guardian will go to bat for you.

Presuming he killed himself, it was likely because his sins were so egregious that even his own tribe could not overlook or excuse them. Nasty and vicious jeers from the outgroup are merely badges of honor, but the disappointed glances from the ingroup hit like a freight train

Yes, I think this is a good point. I'm speculating a bit, but my guess is that his university had one or two high level people who served as his "advisors" or "mentors" or whatever you want to call them. Any time he had a problem, he just had to call them up and they would use their considerable power to help fix the problem. (Kind of like the parent of a spoiled child.) I would guess that his mentors told him they couldn't help him and it would be best if he resigned.

I agree that he probably had been relying on fixers all during his career, and this time the heat was too much so they advised him to step back and lie low until it blew over. But his vanity and ego couldn't take it that for once, the magic get-out-of-jail-free card didn't work.

If it was suicide, I am leaning towards "not really intentional", he would have hoped to be found in time and then recover in hospital so then the story would have been "brave black academic hounded towards suicide by racists" and he could have spun that into getting the accusations softened or dropped. Unhappily for him, it worked.

I'm skeptical he wasn't going to be able to land on his feet within a year or two, anyways. Sooner or later the prevailing narrative would become 'this young black man was cancelled by racist conservatives' regardless of what he did to achieve that. His book was likely going to do incredible sales for that kind of ridiculous hagiography, and it's not like he doesn't get paid for the sales.

Failing that, he could also have written a tell-all book about how he lied his way to the top. People love that sort of thing. He could have been a modern-day Frank Abagnale.

And then he could go on Fox News every other week and talk about he made himself the caricature of liberal fantasies for money and they all fell for it.

It would have been a very easy pivot to do the podcast circuit with a 'Here's why I felt I needed to do it. Once I started I felt trapped and had to continue' angle.

Reminder that even Hunter Biden is currently laundering his reputation in a 'redemption arc' right now.

Hunter Biden is funny and personable and well spoken. Arday was none of the three. Hunter did crack in the white house while hooking up with Obama's daughter. Arday copy-pasted papers no one read into papers no one would read, and then claimed credit for it. One of those is a better tabloid story than the other.

Hunter did crack in the white house while hooking up with Obama's daughter.

Excuse me?!

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