Reply All Is Having Its Own Reckoning Now
vulture.com
vulture.com
> just a complaint about “the culture”
> this is dumb ... is this really the place to grind the diversity and unionization axe
> race to the bottom for wokeness
It's a workplace dispute that has become public because the show they produce is critiquing another workplace that had a similar dispute. The hypocrisy involved there is the reason for this being reported so widely. Every workplace has a dispute at some point and sometimes these disputes result in people moving within or away from the company. The parties at Gimlet involved surely could see the parallels between the story and themselves, but didn't address this publicly in the first episode so it strikes me that they either hoped it wouldn't come up or didn't feel it was hypocritical, both of which feel naive and this result would have been avoided if they just addressed this obviously-forthcoming controversy head-on.
But sure, paint this up as "woke-millienials-coming-to-cancel-your-life-choices" if it makes you feel better. That's not what's happening, but it sounds like maybe you need it to be.
It was a dispute about unions and how POC felt in the workplace, according to the person who spoke up. You can't get more woke than that.
Not sure what your (or any) definition of 'woke' is, but I gathered it was a fairly new phenomenon that is often used as an excuse to belittle people who hold different views to your own (see also: 'political correctness') - I hadn't realised that my 60-something union-rep father was so woke! I'll call and let him know!
I see lots of shutting down discourse from both sides here.
In the context of this thread, it's being used to describe people who want to fight for the formation of a union and against racial discrimination in the workplace.
If someone is on the other side of that argument it must be for one of two reasons; either they are anti-union (which, as a personal belief it is their right to be, but they don't have the right to limit others from forming a union) or they are pro racial discrimination in the workplace.
If I met someone that was either of those things, I would lose some respect for that person. Apologies for the "cancellation".
To me, this is the entire problem with the current discourse situation in the US. Everyone keeps focusing on people instead of arguments. Everything is about labeling people and what they are, so they can dismiss or embrace them, and people are rarely that one-sided.
Even here, I don't see people arguing for or against unions, everyone is arguing about whether Vogt is a "good person" or not, and ultimately that doesn't matter. If he's against unions, I disagree, I like unions. That doesn't mean he's a terrible person, presumably he has other opinions that form his personality, and I can hopefully evaluate those on their merits.
But if Person A asks Person B for help fighting discrimination and Person B says ‘nah’ then my opinion of Person B will change. I don’t feel I’m wrong for that.
If Person B then goes and makes a podcast calling out Person C, D and E for doing the exact same thing then Person B can expect quite a few others to change their opinion of them also
Beyond a vague "we should condone X and condem Y because we want to encourage X-doers and discourage Y-doers", there's no reason for us to care what PJ Vogt does, and even this level of condemnation seems way overblown to me for someone that just decided not to help someone else out (not even hinder them, just not help them).
If people showed half the passion about holding their politicians accountable as they do for random people who did stuff in their lives, society would be in a much better place. I wonder if these pitchfork crowds are at least partially a reaction to people feeling powerless to effect actual change via the democratic process. Sort of the old joke about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlight because "this is where the light is".
Yes, although possibly tacitly.
Look I like the show and listen to it often, but there seems to be a lot to the allegations in the linked Twitter thread from the article [0]. Maybe read that before posting more memes about the left eating its own?
People in leadership actively trying to block formation of a union and badmouthing its leaders is pretty shitty looking, especially if they are then turning around and using their platform to call out others for doing the same thing.
[0] https://twitter.com/eeddings/status/1361789128006897668?ref_...
Edit: grammar
> contributing to a “toxic dynamic at Gimlet” that was “near identical” to the Bon Appétit culture depicted in the miniseries.
Sorry, Vulture, but I'm not going to listen to an entire podcast series to try to decipher what you're getting at here.
So I have to try to infer what's going on here, and to me the first thing that comes to my mind when you see these kinds of mass resignations and vague, overwrought apologies with language like "I don’t think anyone needs me taking up space right now" is the toxic crusade for ideological purity that's commonplace in the circles Reply All travel in.
1: "I’ve talked to PJ multiple times asking him to do more to contribute to diversity efforts at the company. Asking him to join the diversity group. To lend a voice when I spoke up at staff meetings. Anything to show the staff that he cared about the issue."
2: "They weren’t obligated to support me, diversity efforts at Gimlet, or the union. "
PJ might have handled this extremely poorly but reading between the lines here it sounds like Eric and POC at Gimlet saw RA as having this island-of-power within the company and basically said "hey, we want change at Gimlet and we expect you to use some of this power to help us achieve it."
That is maybe the extent to which I think this parallels the BA story AT ALL. What is the Gimlet analogue of the "BA took these recipes by PoC and gave them to white reporters who stripped them of any culture" angle?
These conversations are only OK if the person feeling the honestly and difficulty is either higher up to food chain or white (and preferably both).
To me, most of "cancel culture" is just asking people in positions of power to be held accountable, which isn't a bad thing and also doesn't always require the person to be banished from society.
"I should have reflected on what it meant to not be on the same side of a movement largely led by young producers of color"
That's basically it in a nutshell: the quality of a movement, of an argument, of an opinion is to be judged solely by the minority or oppressed attributes we can find in its supporters.
It doesn't matter if PJ was against the unionizing for his own reasons whatever they might have been -- how they might have affected his benefits, financial reasons etc. His stance against the unionizing is viewed as a personal attack on the attributes of the supporters -- young people of colour.
Put another way -- is there any objection that PJ could have raised to the unionizing efforts that would not have resulted in this same outcome? I doubt it.
Edit: I read your comment again and I also am not quite sure what you're objecting to. If there was a movement by wheelchair-bound folks to convince a company to build wheelchair ramps, I certainly hope we would value their arguments over able-bodied folk, because the entire point is they're speaking out about what their experience as a minority person is, and what needs to be done for them to get equal access to a company space. Are you saying their attributes as a wheelchair-bound person wouldn't be important to making that argument?
But that example seems much more clear cut and simple compared to a unionization effort. I can think of reasons why people might not want to join a union (e.g., dues) but only very superficial ones for not wanting to build a wheelchair ramp.
To be fair, this is a muddled example because Eric Eddings complaints against PJ are more complicated than just "he didn't support the unionization", granted.
If you do something, or say something, and when I hear about it I feel less respect for you then I had done previously - is that cancel culture? Am I cancelling you?
If you're a musician or film maker or author who I appreciate, but it's then revealed that privately you have expressed racist views, and now I feel less respect for you and decide not to listen to your music or watch your films or read your books - am I cancelling you? Am I morally obligated to keep supporting you financially?
Fear over being "cancelled", in my opinion, is simply fear of a boycott. It's nothing new or scary.
[Edit: typo]
This reads like a forced apology from someone who was bullied into submission by ideologues. I think language like "ally" and "taking up space" is toxic because it implies that non-minorities are forbidden from dissent and participation.
As for the language of the apology, you propose a very subjective reading of the text. "Taking up space" seems valid here as it concerns the man in the middle of this event. Instead of being "forbidden from dissent", it seems he already knew he was on the wrong side months ago and is simply attempting to focus the conversation towards more important things than himself.
I’ve heard almost every episode so... yeah.