This reminds me of Trans Lifeline and how the founders embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to build a Waco-style compound in the desert before getting quietly axed. I asked a bunch of trans media personalities to cover it and no one was interested. One of them actually plugged TLL on her Twitter feed a few days after I messaged her. What happened to "silence is violence"?
I'm really afraid of somewhere like Breitbart finding out about this and running with it.
The more you write about this topic, the more it becomes clear that the current awokening (to use crit theory language) centers the voices of white people who want to be (or stay) on top and feel guilty about it, and (to use crit theory language semi-facetiously again) believe that black bodies and voices are junior varsity bodies and voices.
Hey Freddie, I know you get disappointed when your media criticism and your criticism of social justice politics draws huge clicks, likes, and comments whereas your other kind of writing doesn't, and I understand your frustration.
But damn it, I can't help it. This lunatic social media fueled woke movement is so extreme and so alienating and so wrapped up in a style that feels like right-wing evangelical bullies of yore that I can't help but be fascinated by it. My damn brain lights up whenever you write about this stuff. As a long time left-of-center person, I feel like I've been going crazy the past 5 years. So I really need this. A lot of us do.
(looks like the tweet still says $10.6 billion to me)
Only somewhat related but I work at a decent sized tech company that has hired a series of DE&I leaders and consultants over the past several years, the leadership is always eager to post solemnly in company channels about the latest disturbing events in our country, and DE&I is one of the company's "highest priorities" that is discussed at almost every company wide meeting.
But funnily enough, their transgender healthcare coverage was almost non existent when I joined and their parental leave and adoption and some other policies weren't very inclusive of gay couples. After years of myself and others getting quite confrontational with HR to improve things it's a little better, but there are still a lot of things that should be improved at a company that is quite literally a money factory.
I bring that up not to pose a rivalry between BLM and LGBT progress, but it's been a good learning experience for me about how appealing it is for our CEO to metaphorically do the Nancy Pelosi in the Kente Cloth thing and bend the knee as we all solemnly nod our heads. It's not quite as appealing to quietly spend more money on healthcare and give gay fathers parental leave to spend with their kids like straight couples would get. Healthcare and time off costs money, we gotta make sure the money factory is churning at full speed.
I can think of two counter-examples - criticism of Shaun King and the coverage of Samaria Rice's criticism of activists. I suspect, though I'd want to check to be sure, that both of those were much more covered by Black writers.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of the problem is the way the political system is just completely closed off, and there's not enough money for media covering actual things any more. So it turns out to be discourse about discourse. It's a problem with both old media titans and people like Greenwald and Taibbi- there's so much focus on media talking about each other's takes, or just media-on-media stuff that serves mostly as a bunch of fire for nothing.
As you might notice, the media on media stuff ends up being more engaging for a lot of people, hitting on those other people you hate rather than firing up numbers or long, boring anecdotes. A sick dunk for a sclerotic liberal order on Kendi or DiAngelo, who himself doesn't really challenge much, but it reads harsh enough to feel real is a lot more appealing than some numbers on average rents in an area.
I don't think movements can really rely on media any more, anyway. There's little to be won there, one way or the other.
"There’s this absolutely bizarre incuriosity about this world, about whether it’s working, about whether there is internal dissent about what is best to do and why, about who should lead, about how critics of these movements should be treated…. Why? Aren’t these basic and essential questions?"
Yeah, these are basic and essential questions - if you're curious. Mainstream journalism selects against curiosity, the ability to think critically... really, against the ability to do anything but regurgitate whatever the last person with a microphone said.
Still relevant to this day, Chomsky to Andrew Marr in 1996 (full transcript available, just Google for it, fascinating read):
Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..”
Chomsky: “I’m not saying you're self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
Many of us learned this in the 1960s, there are always posers who are in it for the fame and money. We learned, too, that the Vietnam war was bullshit and so did most of the boys who were drafted and sent to fight, as well as many who volunteered. Yet Iraq 2 comes around and none of the lessons were remembered (not even the important one, guerrilla warfare from hidden locations tends to triumph over massive war machine sitting in open and marching across the fields in their red coats (oops, revolutionary war). New generations continually suffer from historical amnesia, in part because they think they were the first people to discover sex but mostly because of psychological myopia, and in this instance, the fact that history is racist so why read it.
This sort of media-criticism seems, at least to me, to suggest that you think this system can be shamed into improving, but it seems like it plays an intended role perfectly well.
Efficacy and Honesty in media would sound a lot more like your last post on the profit motive, but I don't think anyone would sincerely try to pressure media to be honest in that way because that would be deeply misunderstanding the purpose of the media and also misunderstand the motive of the media, profit, only incidentally things like efficacy and honesty.
What I don't really get is why you would think the examples you cite here are a really different. You've got the honesty, sure, but the very nature of media criticism seems to by necessity ignore efficacy, at least in a profit-driven setting
I'm an academic and I see this tendency among my white colleagues (I'm white, fyi). A few months ago a group of black colleagues floated a very costly and very flawed proposal for diversity hires. I was the only white person to point out its flaws. When I expressed frustration in a union committee meeting, I was told by white faculty (there were no black faculty present) that my criticism was valid and valued but that our black colleagues were too traumatized and tired to face public scrutiny of their proposal. To be fair, I have witnessed black students play on white faculty guilt to argue for (undeserved) better grades and wildly extended deadlines for submitting assignments. Many faculty capitulate. Some know they're being played; others are patronizing and condescending to the point that they believe the play. It's painful to witness. But then again, so much about academe is painful right now.
A. A significant amount of that 10b was or will be squandered
B. The 'we're on side BLM' media doesn't want to investigate because the resulting story would look bad for BLM
C. This also would put a target on the back of whoever is doing it
But...BLM is still more of a brand than a movement with concrete end goals, which means there's not some clearly correct way to spend the 10b to achieve those end goals. OTOH the brand can be tarnished. Until the goals turn into something concrete and the movement gets real structure to it, it seems reasonable that anyone who 'supports BLM' would want to play protect the queen with the brand.
The other reason there has been no mainstream criticism of BLM is because BLM is altogether ineffective. Were it as prominent and powerful as the civil rights leadership under MLK, you bet white liberal media would take notice and be critical of it.
I think it's partly "BLM the concept" and "BLM the official nonprofit" getting conflated (probably intentionally?) There's obviously not going to be much debate in liberal circles about "black people are subjected to a racist criminal justice system", which then bleeds into not thinking about the organization. Like how many people are even aware that BLM the nonprofit is essentially a group of social climbers that usurped the organization after the original Ferguson activists were assassinated? And that these people were highly critical of the Derays of the world that were parachuting in?
couldn't agree with you more! great article
I see this more and more.
This is great. The Ben Smith photo comment pushed me over the top to become a paid subscriber.
This reminds me of Trans Lifeline and how the founders embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to build a Waco-style compound in the desert before getting quietly axed. I asked a bunch of trans media personalities to cover it and no one was interested. One of them actually plugged TLL on her Twitter feed a few days after I messaged her. What happened to "silence is violence"?
I'm really afraid of somewhere like Breitbart finding out about this and running with it.
The more you write about this topic, the more it becomes clear that the current awokening (to use crit theory language) centers the voices of white people who want to be (or stay) on top and feel guilty about it, and (to use crit theory language semi-facetiously again) believe that black bodies and voices are junior varsity bodies and voices.
Hey Freddie, I know you get disappointed when your media criticism and your criticism of social justice politics draws huge clicks, likes, and comments whereas your other kind of writing doesn't, and I understand your frustration.
But damn it, I can't help it. This lunatic social media fueled woke movement is so extreme and so alienating and so wrapped up in a style that feels like right-wing evangelical bullies of yore that I can't help but be fascinated by it. My damn brain lights up whenever you write about this stuff. As a long time left-of-center person, I feel like I've been going crazy the past 5 years. So I really need this. A lot of us do.
(looks like the tweet still says $10.6 billion to me)
Only somewhat related but I work at a decent sized tech company that has hired a series of DE&I leaders and consultants over the past several years, the leadership is always eager to post solemnly in company channels about the latest disturbing events in our country, and DE&I is one of the company's "highest priorities" that is discussed at almost every company wide meeting.
But funnily enough, their transgender healthcare coverage was almost non existent when I joined and their parental leave and adoption and some other policies weren't very inclusive of gay couples. After years of myself and others getting quite confrontational with HR to improve things it's a little better, but there are still a lot of things that should be improved at a company that is quite literally a money factory.
I bring that up not to pose a rivalry between BLM and LGBT progress, but it's been a good learning experience for me about how appealing it is for our CEO to metaphorically do the Nancy Pelosi in the Kente Cloth thing and bend the knee as we all solemnly nod our heads. It's not quite as appealing to quietly spend more money on healthcare and give gay fathers parental leave to spend with their kids like straight couples would get. Healthcare and time off costs money, we gotta make sure the money factory is churning at full speed.
I can think of two counter-examples - criticism of Shaun King and the coverage of Samaria Rice's criticism of activists. I suspect, though I'd want to check to be sure, that both of those were much more covered by Black writers.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of the problem is the way the political system is just completely closed off, and there's not enough money for media covering actual things any more. So it turns out to be discourse about discourse. It's a problem with both old media titans and people like Greenwald and Taibbi- there's so much focus on media talking about each other's takes, or just media-on-media stuff that serves mostly as a bunch of fire for nothing.
As you might notice, the media on media stuff ends up being more engaging for a lot of people, hitting on those other people you hate rather than firing up numbers or long, boring anecdotes. A sick dunk for a sclerotic liberal order on Kendi or DiAngelo, who himself doesn't really challenge much, but it reads harsh enough to feel real is a lot more appealing than some numbers on average rents in an area.
I don't think movements can really rely on media any more, anyway. There's little to be won there, one way or the other.
"There’s this absolutely bizarre incuriosity about this world, about whether it’s working, about whether there is internal dissent about what is best to do and why, about who should lead, about how critics of these movements should be treated…. Why? Aren’t these basic and essential questions?"
Yeah, these are basic and essential questions - if you're curious. Mainstream journalism selects against curiosity, the ability to think critically... really, against the ability to do anything but regurgitate whatever the last person with a microphone said.
Still relevant to this day, Chomsky to Andrew Marr in 1996 (full transcript available, just Google for it, fascinating read):
Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..”
Chomsky: “I’m not saying you're self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
Many of us learned this in the 1960s, there are always posers who are in it for the fame and money. We learned, too, that the Vietnam war was bullshit and so did most of the boys who were drafted and sent to fight, as well as many who volunteered. Yet Iraq 2 comes around and none of the lessons were remembered (not even the important one, guerrilla warfare from hidden locations tends to triumph over massive war machine sitting in open and marching across the fields in their red coats (oops, revolutionary war). New generations continually suffer from historical amnesia, in part because they think they were the first people to discover sex but mostly because of psychological myopia, and in this instance, the fact that history is racist so why read it.
This sort of media-criticism seems, at least to me, to suggest that you think this system can be shamed into improving, but it seems like it plays an intended role perfectly well.
Efficacy and Honesty in media would sound a lot more like your last post on the profit motive, but I don't think anyone would sincerely try to pressure media to be honest in that way because that would be deeply misunderstanding the purpose of the media and also misunderstand the motive of the media, profit, only incidentally things like efficacy and honesty.
What I don't really get is why you would think the examples you cite here are a really different. You've got the honesty, sure, but the very nature of media criticism seems to by necessity ignore efficacy, at least in a profit-driven setting
I'm an academic and I see this tendency among my white colleagues (I'm white, fyi). A few months ago a group of black colleagues floated a very costly and very flawed proposal for diversity hires. I was the only white person to point out its flaws. When I expressed frustration in a union committee meeting, I was told by white faculty (there were no black faculty present) that my criticism was valid and valued but that our black colleagues were too traumatized and tired to face public scrutiny of their proposal. To be fair, I have witnessed black students play on white faculty guilt to argue for (undeserved) better grades and wildly extended deadlines for submitting assignments. Many faculty capitulate. Some know they're being played; others are patronizing and condescending to the point that they believe the play. It's painful to witness. But then again, so much about academe is painful right now.
I think it's safe to assume that:
A. A significant amount of that 10b was or will be squandered
B. The 'we're on side BLM' media doesn't want to investigate because the resulting story would look bad for BLM
C. This also would put a target on the back of whoever is doing it
But...BLM is still more of a brand than a movement with concrete end goals, which means there's not some clearly correct way to spend the 10b to achieve those end goals. OTOH the brand can be tarnished. Until the goals turn into something concrete and the movement gets real structure to it, it seems reasonable that anyone who 'supports BLM' would want to play protect the queen with the brand.
The other reason there has been no mainstream criticism of BLM is because BLM is altogether ineffective. Were it as prominent and powerful as the civil rights leadership under MLK, you bet white liberal media would take notice and be critical of it.
I think it's partly "BLM the concept" and "BLM the official nonprofit" getting conflated (probably intentionally?) There's obviously not going to be much debate in liberal circles about "black people are subjected to a racist criminal justice system", which then bleeds into not thinking about the organization. Like how many people are even aware that BLM the nonprofit is essentially a group of social climbers that usurped the organization after the original Ferguson activists were assassinated? And that these people were highly critical of the Derays of the world that were parachuting in?