Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

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> this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press.

Put his head on a pike? They? Come on now.

It will be interesting to see what will happens with this. Ever since the Scott Alexander NYT story, there's been a parade of old media criticism articles getting dredged up and making it to the front page, as well as a lot of broad-brush "I'm done with journalism, those fuckers" sentiment. It frankly sounds a lot like conservatives who are mad that the media wrote so many negative stories about Trump, and think it should have focused instead on positively covering stuff like the Trump administration's self-authored list of great accomplishments. Some people don't want journalism, they just want myside PR.

I mean, the media's not perfect; but it's pretty unreasonable to get mad when your favorite band new album gets a bad review or a newspaper writes articles that fail to abide by the commenting norms of your favorite online message board.

Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?"

Is there any accusation -- outside of actual crimes -- more likely to cause a person to lose opportunities, social connections, or standing in their community?

I can't speak to this reporter's motivations, but if a reporter wanted to metaphorically put someone's head on a pike, I can't think of any more effective way to do it than to insinuate that they are a racist, and somehow get it to stick.

> Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?"

The actual article did not in fact label him as racist, and I don't think you could read it that way without being sloppy.

If you read my comment carefully, I didn't actually say that the article labeled him, I merely asked some questions and posed a hypothetical. And yet you drew an inference about my meaning beyond what my literal words were.

You could call this sloppy reading, but I think the truth is that a writer can clearly communicate their intended conclusion without stating it directly. Which is just what Metz did.

It certainly tried to imply it with things like mentioning that he's cited Charles Murray, and then mentioning Murray's completely unrelated writing on race.

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