In some cases Quinn seems to be bantering with her gay friends. Quinn is queer herself.
In other cases she is calling out some 4chan person, for unknown reasons since they deleted their account. Norton is using the common lingo on that site. Especially at the time, on 4chan, everyone was a fag. Being a "fag" on 4chan or certain IRC channels was a complex identity. It was acknowledgement of being a high school social outcast who got called a "fag", and also part of a community that's turned that hate inwards, and is merciless towards outsiders and even each other.
And yes, it's also a slur against gay people and it causes many people pain to read it.
These aspects of internet culture are hideous and awful. It's also the culture that Norton fell into, and grew out of. I suspect many people here are the same.
Where she is right now? Was she a good pick for the NYTimes?
She's complicated. In her personal life she can be very, very difficult to deal with, and her associations are questionable. (Like probably all of your favorite writers from other eras!)
But there isn't anyone else writing with her compassion and understanding about what's happening with young men online in odd technical corners of the internet. And her prescription, that compassion and understanding are the way out – some may find it naive, but I see no other plausible response to the rise of fascism in developed countries today.
I encourage everyone to read her works.
I'd definitely call out it's use today, but I'm not sure I'd hunt someone down and try to ruin their career over them using language they shouldn't have five years ago.
It seems to me poor and distasteful use of language is a pretty reasonable reason to not want someone in that position.
There are plenty of outlets for idiot 4chan style insults in the world, I'm not sure we really need people from that community holding one of the top positions in tech journalism and opinion writing.
Not that it really pertains in this case, but personally, I'm pretty glad that there was no social media prior to my being an established adult professional in a role that made me very aware anything I wrote was out there for all to see and interpret.
Right. People with no skin in the game often want companies to do the right/heroic/etc. thing. Even leaving aside what the appropriate action in this particular case is, the reality is that when there's a mob or the likelihood of one that wants your head, your employer is probably going to think about it for about 10 seconds and then toss you off the deck. "It's just business" as Bill Belichick would put it. We can all think of plenty other examples over the past few years.
Reading the RT itself, I think it’s clear she is AGAINST racism.
And it was definitely sarcastic, in nature. If you remove the loaded language, it's a bit easier to parse, I think: "If a black man was meant to talk to our schoolchildren, God would've made one President. Oh, wait, he did."
Ergo, a black man was, indeed, meant to talk to our schoolchildren.