Friday Ephemera
Fresh Air

Hustlers Gonna Hustle

“You’re a mean, mad, white man.”

In the video below, Jordan Peterson, Stephen Fry, Michelle Goldberg and Michael Dyson debate political correctness and “white privilege.”

Note that when asked to estimate the degree to which Peterson has benefitted from his alleged “white privilege,” and to suggest specific measures of correction, Ms Goldberg carefully ignores the question, and Dr Dyson, a professor of sociology, proudly makes the six-word assertion quoted above, and which he later repeats as a supposedly triumphal mic-drop. After some rhetorical meandering, Dr Dyson also informs the audience that “white privilege doesn’t act according to quantifiable segments,” and that to ask for specifics, actual points that might be discussed and tested, is itself a sign of “white privilege,” especially when such questions are asked with “lethal intensity.”

Apparently, one must simply defer, indefinitely, without quite knowing the reason why.

A longer, two-hour video of the discussion can be found here, along with an audience poll on whether political correctness is indeed the measure of progress.

Update:

In the comments, Joan shares this short but telling clip illustrating the lofty standard of debate offered by Ms Goldberg, one of the New York Times’ finest. Readers are invited to watch the clip and then join me in devising possible excuses. For instance,

“I, a professional journalist with a degree in journalism from Berkeley, didn’t actually bother to watch the interview that I referred to repeatedly during a public debate and which I cited with great enthusiasm, and in which both the interviewer and interviewee make clear, pointedly and repeatedly – at least three times – that Peterson didn’t say what I, a professional journalist and self-styled upholder of good manners, claimed that he said.”

Of course the acid test of Ms Goldberg’s integrity, such as it may be, is how she responds to the dozens of people who’ve tweeted her with proof of this, shall we say, error. Will there be a retraction, an admission of ineptness, an apology to Peterson?

Four days in and nothing so far.

Comments