The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

"u could also say her email was about chocolate cake"

Careful now

the pinterest was not just about avoiding racist costumes fyi it also includes advice to avoid katniss costumes, costumes of some mom who got sun tanned, bane from batman costumes, costume of shirtless guy wearing a ball pit, costumes of food items?, costumes that don't give the wearer enough air to breath, etc. ie very nannyish.

costumes of the recently dead - steve jobs, amy winehouse, also honey boo, iphone 5, game of thrones costumes

that's solid advice, though. You don't want to offend eunuchs.

i, defiantly, wore the same filthy (literally, i store it with my spare tire in the trunk of my car) banana costume that has been my go-to for the last several years of halloweens chiefly due to apathy.

take that, yale.

the pinterest was not just about avoiding racist costumes fyi it also includes advice to avoid katniss costumes, costumes of some mom who got sun tanned, bane from batman costumes, costume of shirtless guy wearing a ball pit, costumes of food items?, costumes that don't give the wearer enough air to breath, etc. ie very nannyish.

― Mordy, Monday, November 9, 2015 3:32 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they werent just mixing in jokes?

the original email didn't really seem very NANNYISH to me

3 of the 8 links in the collage are about appropriating religious/ethnic/racial outfits for costumes, the other 5 seem to be about other transgressions of taste, safety, or personal aesthetics.

so this is all over a pinterest page ? cool

as long as we're airing out all the atlantic stuff we might as well do this:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-tyranny-of-social-justice-warriors/

1. Thank you. My journey away from the radical Left actually began almost 3 years ago, when I found myself 30 years old living in a tent in a friend’s back yard. I’ve realized that it’s around that age where true Leftists have only two options available: They become full time criminals or they become college professors. (I suppose “journalist” is also an option but I roll that in under number two.) Neither appealed to me, so I began withdrawing myself from my former comrades.

she's serious: she capitalized "left"

fuckin' bullshit, not all of us can find full-time work in crime

does that have benefits???

I hear it doesn't pay.

exposure tho!!!

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/imgs/090417//public-enemies_l.jpg

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/

http://www.mediaite.com/online/university-of-missouri-protesters-clash-with-reporters-declare-no-media-safe-space/

i kinda feel like the most [only?] interesting part of the halloween story is that it's taking place at yale which i always assumed was sorta old-money insulated by this kind of activism thing but that's probably just rooted in stereotypes about the kind of student who goes to yale (and the kind of background their families have)

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/sotoalf/Untitled_zpspi8mpwwf.jpg

SMH x10,000 re. this whole "public space safe from media" thing

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/11/07/its-my-job-to-take-college-students-seriously/

As I’ve said before, there’s a confusing and frustrating divide on these issues for me. One part of my life, the part that engages with the broader political conversation, is filled with well-meaning liberal and left people who say “oh, there’s no illiberal attitudes among college students — that’s all a conspiracy by the conservative media.” These people, generally, are not on campus. Meanwhile, my extensive connections in the academy, and my continuing friendships with many people who are involved in the world of campus organizing, report that this tendency is true — and often justify it, arguing that this illiberalism is in fact a necessary aspect of achieving social justice. It’s disorienting and frustrating to get arguments of denial in one part of my life and arguments of justification in another.

seasoned journalists on my timeline shaking their heads at this, all saying "yeah, i've covered protestors for years and they've always asked media to occasionally keep cameras out of people's faces and typically it hasn't been a problem and as a journalist its basically your job to work around this and figure out a way to interact that makes people not hate you, otherwise you won't get a good story."

like https://twitter.com/soledadobrien/status/663924143738462208

that's not the issue and (i hope) you know it.

i don't know what issue we're talking about.

the issue i was talking about was the protestors blocking off the area with the tents (where i presume people are camping) from the media.

bear in mind that if yr in a tent camping out then that's just like where you are living, and they were asking the media to not stick their cameras into the middle of people's tents where they were sleeping and living the past week while they were camped out protesting.

if you were camped out in the middle of some lawn protesting for a week maybe you would want some space like say the tent where you slept, where people weren't going to be going up and taking constant photos of you, idk?

in my experience this is actually a really typical thing with people camped out in protests, and the tweets i mentioned sort of validate that.

it seems like a non-story that people are latching onto because they don't know how to cover the story of "the students actually got their demand" because that never happens.

I think the issue is lol

What is the issue, amateurist?

Dod they tell them not to dress up as journalists?

Around 5:45 p.m., as attendees began to leave the conference, students chanted the phrase “Genocide is not a joke” and held up written signs of the same words. Taking Howard’s reminder into account, protesters formed a clear path through which attendants could leave.

A large group of students eventually gathered outside of the building on High Street, where several attendees were spat on, according to Buckley fellows who were present during the conference. One Buckley Fellow added that he was spat on and called a racist. Another, who identifies as a minority himself, said he has been labeled a “traitor” by several.

It's a person's right to refuse to speak to the media; the media have an obligation to get the story in a respectful manner. It's possible to hold both positions.

I feel like there's something missing from this story...? It took cutting the revenue stream to fire the president, but from what I've read he'd lost the confidence of his governing board months ago.

It's laughable that people shaking their heads at the students expect the students to have hired media consultants over the weekend or something

The attempts by conservative blogs to expose and shame the yale student in the video have been disgusting. I really dislike the rhetoric she used, but she is a college student and she didn't think she was speaking to a national audience. Fuck defining people by their worst moments.

In general at this political moment there is too much slippage between 1.) disagreeing with someone and 2.) thinking someone is a garbage human/metaphor for everything wrong with everything

More context: http://chronicle.com/article/Thrust-Into-a-National-Debate/234131?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elq=0fd415c0de1d4c8690bc7d7ef0af5ccd&elqCampaignId=1797&elqaid=6828&elqat=1&elqTrackId=a2c66509e54f4a98a8f670bb1c084c8e

Ew. Better.

bear in mind that if yr in a tent camping out then that's just like where you are living, and they were asking the media to not stick their cameras into the middle of people's tents where they were sleeping and living the past week while they were camped out protesting.

"sterling," did you watch the video? the photographer is merely on the quad--a public space--not hovering over their tents. there's also the matter of a media-studies professor calling for the reporter to be forcibly ejected from that public space and the various iterations of "you can't be here"/"you don't have a right to be here" from the students.

in any event, #thereisnoperfectjournalist

Treeship's last two posts OTM

Also worth mentioning that it was a student photographer, not someone from an outside media organization.

1) I really hope it becomes a regular thing for conscientious college sports players to exercise their implicit but rarely exercised power.

2) Not entirely sure what the chancellor did that justified removal, but just looking at the dude (on the right) I can tell he's trouble:
https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/img/photos/biz/photo_73970_landscape_650x433.jpg

from the Chronicle story:

Concerns about Mr. Loftin’s leadership expanded beyond his handling of race-related issues. Citing changes in federal health-care laws, the Columbia campus announced in August that it would cut health-care subsidies for graduate students. Amid protest, that move was delayed. Throughout the chancellor’s tenure, he was criticized as slow to act and for insufficiently consulting students and faculty members.

"There were definitely some complaints that the administration sometimes shot from the hip, and therefore they occasionally had to backtrack," said Ben Trachtenberg, chairman of the Missouri Faculty Council on University Policy.

Even as students turned their attention to Mr. Wolfe, who had become the designated lightning rod for racial unrest, administrators on the Columbia campus were working to have Mr. Loftin removed. On Monday the campus’s nine sitting deans wrote to the system’s Board of Curators, the governing board, calling for the "immediate dismissal" of the chancellor.

They cited "failed leadership" regarding graduate student health insurance, along with the "dismissal" of the dean of the medical school, whose resignation was announced in September after less than a year on the job. The deans accused Mr. Loftin of "creating a toxic environment through threat, fear, and intimidation."

xpost

yeah, I don't understand people in the media who lament that it took the involvement of the football team to make things happen at Mizzou. It should be obvious that there's a huge amount of inherent racism when schools profit to the tune of millions off the free labor of mostly black athletes. I think their involvement makes total sense.

One part of my life, the part that engages with the broader political conversation, is filled with well-meaning liberal and left people who say “oh, there’s no illiberal attitudes among college students — that’s all a conspiracy by the conservative media.” These people, generally, are not on campus. Meanwhile, my extensive connections in the academy, and my continuing friendships with many people who are involved in the world of campus organizing, report that this tendency is true

The thing is, I teach college students, I'm on campus most of every day, and I do see this whole "PC run amok" thing as wildly overstated. But I know empirically that there are people who have similar jobs to mine, in similar campuses to mine, who nod their heads vigorously and share these Atlantic articles every time they come out and truly see their students as more, I dunno, thin-skinned/uptight/eager to be offended than they should be. And I just can't see what they see. I mean, maybe if I hung out in "the world of campus organizing" -- but I don't, and most students don't, and most students are barely aware that world exists.

BTW it's a nice piece of rhetorical scale-thumbing by FDB there to describe the people who disagree with him as "saying", and more than that, "saying" something which starts with "oh" to indicate they're just now thinking about it for the first time, while the people who agree with him are "reporting."

yeah, I don't understand people in the media who lament that it took the involvement of the football team to make things happen at Mizzou. It should be obvious that there's a huge amount of inherent racism when schools profit to the tune of millions off the free labor of mostly black athletes. I think their involvement makes total sense.

people are lamenting the involvement of the football team because:

a) few if any of the people complaining want to believe college football teams are made up of anything besides mindless, hulking thugs who subsist on violence
b) most if not all of the people complaining want to see football programs abolished entirely so seeing players use their (outsized) power to affect political change frightens them

(x-post) I think people sometimes conflate the obnoxiousness of some types of student activist culture and rhetoric with its actual real world power. It's odd to me that people who support big dudes using badges, guns, and clubs to communicate that somebody isn't free to speak or act in a specific place act like a small number of students to do the same thing are an unstoppable threat to freedom.

Pierce:

A couple of things: first, Ms. Click demonstrates quite vividly the difference between an assistant professor of mass communication and an assistant professor of journalism. Yoicks; also, the First Amendment argument here is a bit murky. (There seem to be university regulations regarding free space on campus that are dispositive, however, and they seem to support Tai.) It has been rendered murky over a decade and a half through policies such as those that established "free speech zones" at political conventions. If anyone wants to argue this point, they're free to take it up with all those people busted in and around Zuccotti Park in Manhattan a couple of years ago. I don't recall many bold conservatarians standing up for them.

Tim Tai was doing a job of work. He should have been allowed to do so without interference. He also should have been allowed to do so without being turned into a cudgel to be used against the people whose protest he was trying to cover. Welcome to the world, Tim. Hang in there.

The attempts by conservative blogs to expose and shame the yale student in the video have been disgusting. I really dislike the rhetoric she used, but she is a college student and she didn't think she was speaking to a national audience. Fuck defining people by their worst moments.

― Treeship, Tuesday, November 10, 2015 6:39 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fredrik deboer has a good blog on this -- the way that the internet has raised the stakes of all this stuff in a way that's not good for students. something that in the past would be a kind of training or learning experience (among other things) will now follow you forever. i can't seem to find it at the moment, though....

and yeah i feel like the football players' actions in this mizzou stuff is the best thing to come out of college football in a long time.

i'm sure that college football players are like anyone else-- people capable of different things. some /are/ probably doofuses, a lot of them certainly are not. i've had football players in my classes and the only generalization i feel comfortable making is that they are exploited by a system that expects them to be students but puts enormous pressure on them to succeed at something that doesn't allow much time/energy for being a student. i mostly teach 'em when they're freshman and they typically are still so caught up in the excitement of being a campus star to recognize this exploitation. but i think a lot of them come around to realizing it, and it seems that at least some of the mizzou players are consciously using the particular (and peculiar, sure) authority they have for good.

sorry for typos and crappy grammar.

I blame the schools

It's odd to me that people who support big dudes using badges, guns, and clubs to communicate that somebody isn't free to speak or act in a specific place act like a small number of students to do the same thing are an unstoppable threat to freedom.

And lots of people support neither.