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Comment by unsatchmo | Hacker News Reader

Cry me a river. All of the offenses she lists have one thing in common: they are fundamentally someone with power using that power to subjugate ( to varying degrees ) someone who they have power over. Learn to treat others with dignity and respect. That’s what this is about. It’s not hard at all. People are just upset because it was previously acceptable, but these actions were always pretty gross.

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Shriver's thesis is not that Spacey et al. are victims. She lays it out in the section that starts, "Which brings us to the party that really pays for the new puritanism:...".

Did the fans of House of Cards use their power to subjugate?

Did Louis C.K.'s co-stars use their power to subjugate?

Did Ian Buruma's editor?

Once you cast off whatever simplistic lens you might have, e.g. "it's all about power", it turns out the world is pretty interesting and complicated. Embrace the complexity.

I’ve seen this “separate the artist from the art” line of reasoning. I personally feel icky knowing that my money is going towards someone who has a pattern of bad action. Art is about culture and culture is about shared stories. The fact is that call-outs work because they change the story. This is what silent spring and the jungle did during the muck-raking era and it had the objectively positive effect of punishing companies for externalising costs at the expense of public health. Me too is just muck-raking for our modern era, focusing on interpersonal externalities.

Yup, it's your prerogative to feel icky. Personally, I'd feel icky artificially withholding money from these people's colleagues because they were unlucky enough to work on a movie set with someone who subsequently came under suspicion.

If the platforms didn't infantilize us, we'd be allowed to make up our own minds as to what's icky, because it turns out that not everyone has the same feelings.

Also: did anything in my comment follow the “separate the artist from the art” line of reasoning that you speak of? I'm pretty sure my comment wasn't about the naughty artists. I'm pretty sure it was about the actual victims.

The author is not a he.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Shriver

My apologies, I appreciate the correction.

Is social isolation the right response? Does it produce a good outcome?

Does it result in anyone deeply learning the lessons of history behind it all? Or do they just learn to keep their mouth shut?

If someone is expressing bad ideas, then you can use their comments a an opportunity to teach a deeper lesson. If they just shut up, the conversation never happens and no learning takes place.

I suspect that a lot of well-meaning people do not really understand much about racism. How could they? It's such a dangerous topic that you can't even ask basic questions without putting yourself at risk.

Maybe that's fine in the sense that fewer people are offended. But I am not convinced that such a shallow lesson will last more than a couple generations, and the "shut up" lesson creates a lot of collateral damage to the overall culture.

Most of the offenses given (exposing yourself to subordinates for example) are not in the category of things you’re talking about. Well meaning people are racist and say racist things and when they are called out, they apologize and try to make it right. Someone who has a pattern of abusing their superior position to force people to be a part of things against their will is anathema to a free society.

Isn't that the problem the author is talking about? That Rosanne is thrown into the same bucket as Cosby?

> Well meaning people are racist and say racist things and when they are called out, they apologize and try to make it right.

I'm not sure if this is a tangent or not, but I suspect there's a lot of social pressure to apologize for racist statements even when the speaker continues to hold racist beliefs.

On numerous occasions, I've tried to have reasoned debate about topics such as race, religion, etc. I've been disappointed by how frequently those discussions go off the rails when I'm arguing for the possible validity of less-than-popular positions.

Based on those experiences, I can easily see how a person would fear the consequences of not recanting certain statements about race, religion, politics, etc., irrespective of his/her actual beliefs.

> they are fundamentally someone with power using that power to subjugate ( to varying degrees ) someone who they have power over.

That doesn't explain the Roseanne Barr / Valerie Jarrett situation.

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