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Comment by hojjat12000 | Hacker News Reader

hojjat12000

I do not know who this guy is.

I don't read the NYT.

I have a hard time reading long texts. I get distracted or bored real quick and switch to a different tab.

But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting. I'm sorry that this happened. This is a nightmare of mine. Someone gets a hold of some stupid thing that I said or did (as a joke back in college) or in this case as an honest attempt to explain stuff to teenagers, and now you have to go over every single word and explain yourself. and as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.)

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There are a few situations I am extremely wary of — how I'm perceived when I'm interacting with children, being accused of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace, or being accused of being racist or otherwise bigotted.

These moments help me empathise with people who live their entire lives with that fear. On the whole I have it good. I can walk down the street without people assuming I'm looking for cars to break into. Or fly on a plane without people wondering if I am going to blow it up.

But at the same time I get the feeling that some people see those behaviours as punishment for my percieved privilege, and might even enjoy seeing me squirm. Which doesn't sit right with me. I think the answer to bigotry is to be aware of it, counter it, and fix it so we can lift everyone up. Rather than wield it as a weapon to cut down those you perceive as being unfairly advantaged by history.

The catch for me is that so much of what people consider privilege is effectively just skin color or other outward attributes. Yes, those are attributes that are discriminated on so we should be hyper aware of those attributes, but those aren't the only attributes that constitute privilege.

You absolutely cannot make the determination of someone's privilege just by skin color or hair or whatever else. It's impossible. You can make a generalized, probabilistic guess, but you don't know if a white person grew up in a leaky trailer with abusive parents, or if a black person grew up in an upper middle class family. You don't know if someone sleeps in their car, or if the bank won't give them a loan, or if they're chronically depressed or in pain. There are so many vectors to privilege beyond race. There's so much more to a person's position in society, whether cultural or economic, than can be determined just by looking at them.

And it seems to me that so much of "punishment" you speak about is directed towards people specifically based on outward attributes.

The old phrase "never judge a book by its cover" really does apply here.

> But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting.

Wow, I was barely able to get through the first part and honestly the whole time I was thinking "I can't believe this guy has been a professional writer for decades. He desperately needs help from an editor."

I find the content interesting, but the writing seems to wander unnecessarily and I wish he'd focus more on getting to the point than needlessly interject his, at least to me, obnoxious attempts to defend his character rather than let the audience decide for themselves. Yes, I realize the entire point of this article is to defend himself, but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy."

To each his own.

Not commenting on this guy in particular but sometimes when people use long-winded stories to explain themselves, it's usually to hide something. Like hiding the truth in between embellishments. I don't know anything about this guy though so he maybe innocent of whatever thing he did? I skimmed over the article but still don't know what happened.

I also suspect that being an older journalist, he's accustomed to writing long-form content. There's a level of fluff and narrative crafting that is not at all appreciated in today's information saturated landscape.

"I don't trust his writing style" is a fallacy of mammoth proportions.

Being a writer, he probably comes from a culture where people write lots of words and has many friends who respect people who write verbosely.

Someone's level of articulateness provides no information whatsoever of how truthful their writing is. There are countless extremely articulate lies told by people with mastery over their medium.

I think this is true when someone is speaking--liars often try to hide behind details which they think makes their stories believable and explains the discrepancies that they see in their own fabricated story. But I have the opposite perception of this narrative, I think it was written with the intention of being precise, and either his background as a journalist or the public nature of the issue are reasons enough to explain why he wrote with the detail that he did. I often try to write with precision and detail too, and it certainly doesn't mean I'm lying when I do.

You don't know what happened because you skimmed over it. Brilliant.

> but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy."

Especially when he illustrates that with examples of him being the bad guy.

In what instance is he being _bad_?

I see instances where he makes perceptive mistakes and possibly cavalier. Bad? No.

If he’s _bad_ then if we look at the world at large, then over 50% of people are _bad_.

He’s more of a victim of a purity crusade by people who also are the same “bad” but either don’t see it, don’t admit to it, or are following a popular trend.

It reminds me of the cultural revolution where in order to save themselves neighbors, friends and family would denounce each other for doing “bad” (baselessly accused of being counterrevolutionaries) just to get ahead of being accused of doing “bad” things. In the end there was great injustice, but Mao got what he wanted out of it.

> In what instance is he being _bad_?

In his own words, he is an asshole some of the time

>> Am I really an asshole? I don’t think so. Not most of the time.

Many of us have worked with men like this and they're awful.

I mean, this example was pretty poor because it combines him being an asshole and his interpretation of the word "drug", Dictionaries disagree with him.

>> Now, there is an exception: if you’re an editor and you write an error into my copy, I can definitely be an asshole.

[...]

>> To give an example: an editor once went through a story of mine and changed all the references to vaccines to “drugs.”

>> I went over and said, “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Vaccines and drugs are different. A vaccine is something you take to prevent illness. A drug is something you take when you’re already ill.”

Chambers:

> 1. Any substance used in the composition of medicine to cure, diagnose or prevent disease

Mirriam Webster:

> b: a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication c according to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1) : a substance recognized in an official pharmacopoeia or formulary (2) : a substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease (3) : a substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the body (4) : a substance intended for use as a component of a medicine but not a device or a component, part, or accessory of a device

Jobs, if tales are true, would be an ass/arsehole. Does that make him bad? I don’t think so. Toxic, yes, that’s potentially toxic (we don’t know what the editors were like).

I think your and my definition of bad differ. Bad to me means being directly significantly detrimental to others who were not doing bad to you.

Oh good, you read the first part!

Let him (or her) who is not sometimes an asshole cast the first stone...

If you've never been an asshole sometimes, congratulations, you're an elite member of 0.0001% of the population of the world.

The idea that "is sometimes an asshole" means "is a bad person" is flat-out wrong, and is a big part of what is wrong with the internet: you get a short, context-free soundbite of something that may or may not have actually happened, and that's it for someone's career and life's work.

I read all four parts of his story, and found it riveting. Life is in the details. But those details are too boring and don't generate clicks and ad impressions, so the vast majority of the people who hear about this will only know "a NY Times reporter was fired for saying the n-word to kids in Peru, supporting colonialism, claiming white privilege doesn't exist, and getting his photo taken with naked underage girls", and will immediately assume the guy is a racist, perverted piece of garbage, and never know that they're being lied to.

> He desperately needs help from an editor.

Well, he did just get fired and lose al the editors he worked with for decades.

Goes to show how important editors are and writers really benefit from editors.

Perhaps this guy really is doomed, because his defense depends on people being willing to read a long argument and understand nuance, when knee-jerk denunciations are usually so pithy.

The guy's problem is he's a terrible writer, which is pretty unforgivable considering his career. If he could articulate himself better I'd be interested to learn more about his story. Brevity is the way to go. This guy isn't Faulkner.

I'll regularly go hours into holes reading fascinating articles about obscure topics. I even wanted to learn more about this, but I just could not stomach his awful writing. He thinks he's more important than he is and he clearly does not know his audience, which is what got him into trouble in the first place.

He is legitimately a bad writer. He's not even mediocre. And the majority of comments here on HN seem to agree, and this is hardly the "knee-jerk" reaction forum of the internet.

There's a difference between writers and reporters. I think this guy is known as an amazing _reporter_. I think there are some people who are both but they are less common than you might think.

So yes, he does need help in the writing department but, as someone mentioned before, he just lost that.

Okay, fair. I guess what I should have said is "he needs to learn how to tell his story in a way that people want to listen." Finding an editor is likely an easier solution than relearning how to write.

I suspect that he was also writing in large part for his colleagues at the NYT, who might be quite a bit more interested in the office/corporate/union politics angles that he spends a lot of time talking about. Obviously that's less interesting for those of us on the outside.

Taste really is subjective. I couldn't stop reading, and enjoyed his writing style (a pity I've been introduced to it by such an awful tale).

If you think these articles qualify as 'terrible writing', you haven't read much.

Nah, Fox News will pull the juicy parts out into tweets and punched up articles soon enough.

It's pretty remarkable. Every time the writer says something like "let me back up and explain more" I understand less and less who the writer is and what happened to them (apparently they said or were accused of saying certain things in multiple unrelated situations?).

This article comes across as very "inside baseball" i.e. the crowd who are intimately familiar with the ongoing melodrama in journalism, the history of the NY Times, etc. See his reference to his "until now anonymous comments in an internal Times report", for example

Aye, same.

The gist is that he doesn't vibe with... someone?... and finds that his colleagues have wildly different expectations about... something?

It was due to this:

A student asked me: “Do you think one of my classmates should have been suspended for using the N-word in a video from two years ago?”

I said: “Well, wait — what exactly happened on this video? Did she actually call someone “nigger”? Or was she just using it in passing, like quoting the title of a book?”

Because when he asked for context around how the person said “nigger”, he didn’t self-censor when making reference to the word.

That’s it.

That’s how bad this juvenile cancel culture mob has become. They let some 15 year old activist wannabe complain to the paper and get him fired.

It not only ended the man's career, it tarnished his legacy. He worked 50 years, and this is what he'll be remembered for. It's really screwed up. The Times really mishandled this one. I hope those involved one day come to regret what they've done. Sometimes... Regret is the best form of karma we can get.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McNeil_Jr.#Dismissal_fr...

Imagine next: the trolls start petitioning Medium to remove his articles and terminate his account for violating their policies and or Amazon for hosting Medium which hosts content published by "racists". Soon the only thing left for this life-long journalist will be mopping floors.

This may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better eventually.

If you're referring to that other guy whose social media accounts were terminated, it was because he incited his followers to storm an important government building, which left five people dead. So it's quite a stretch to suggest that may happen to anyone...

Is anyone actually calling for that, though? Because if not we're just conjuring up things to worry about.

> I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.

Fwiw, I've always found such statements insanely baffling - in an amused befuddled sort of way. Why would anybody want to spend their life with somebody to whom they couldn't explain themselves and or find common ground?

Because life shouldn't be spent afraid to apologize, or in constant debate about whether an apology is "required."

If you hurt someone, whether intentional or not, apologizing is the least you can do.

If you don't believe an apology is warranted, apologize, and sort though where the disconnect is later.

No. By apologizing, you admit what you did was wrong/a mistake. If you don't actually think your apology is warranted, it's nothing but a lie.

I’m sorry, that’s nonsense.

First, you can injure someone, physically or emotionally, without making a mistake or being wrong.

So, it’s possible to feel guilt over an injury even if ultimately, you did the “right thing.”

The point of an apology isn’t solely to say “I was wrong”. They can be an acknowledgment of the injury you caused.

If your actions cause an injury, and you feel no need to apologize, because you “didn’t do anything wrong”, you’re just an asshole.

> Because life shouldn't be spent afraid to apologize

Unless by apologising you start a new process of (often absurd) penalties that you cannot control.

Exactly why lawyers instruct people to never apologise or admit fault in even the smallest fender benders.

Never mind offending the woke.

Apologies are frequently taken as admission and only fan the flames.

I meant in my personal life. I make a joke, she gets offended. I can spend the next hour explaining the joke and how it wasn't supposed to be offensive. Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward.

I don't think that makes you a coward, it just means that you value other things over being 'right'. Some people are obsessed with always 'winning', and don't pay attention to how their fighting can hurt people and relationships.

I obviously don't know you or the specifics of your disagreements, but I think you should be forgiving of yourself.

> Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward.

You can apologize AND simultaneously it can be true that such other person is also a jerk who purposefully gets offended by stupid things and takes everyone out of context for their own benefit who leads a march to cancel you.

Maybe your jokes aren't that good.

There's nothing cowardly about apologizing when you hurt someone's feelings.

If your jokes are frequently poorly received by her then I would consider telling them to other people. Some jokes can be told to anyone but many have a limited audience.

Wow, there's something incredibly heartbreaking about summing things up that way.

Its game over once you apologize. Never seen anyone recover from an apology. Never apologize to anyone who is unwilling to forgive you.

It seems analogous to not asking a dog to do a trick you know it can’t perform.

This sounds like advice from the GOP playbook. "Can't be shamed if you have none".

A sincere apology implies that one truly feels bad about their behavior in some way. If someone truly feels bad about something that has public visibility, they should apologize for that for their own benefit, regardless if the other party accepts it.

> they should apologize for that for their own benefit

Whats the benefit though?

Their image in the eyes of decent people who think like them, who also realize they made a mistake.

I'm talking in the abstract, not about this man.

Apologize publicly where 'decent people' can see and adjust their 'image' of you accordingly. I missed the public apology part, i think it was implied in your statment.

A lot of these people, including McNeil, have written submissive apologies.

https://twitter.com/marcatracy/status/1357806202277797889/ph...

> I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.

I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise. I would expect that insincere / dishonest communication would put a limit on intimacy, but maybe that's preferable to frequent arguments?

if you genuinely haven't done something wrong, chances are she's upset about something else you did.

> I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise.

Not in the naive "always apologize" sense. That has the risk of creating a dynamic where the apology can't be trusted to be sincere and problems don't actually get addressed.

Sure, if you actually did something wrong, by all means apologize. But if it's somewhat of a gray matter, a healthier dynamic would be to establish a baseline, something that is only built over the long term, that whatever happened it wasn't either person's intention to create conflict or upset the other person. That might mean apologizing for triggering something.

With a bit of space, ideally both people could talk about what they were thinking or perceiving, understand why the other person behaved the way they did, and come up with ideas for how to prevent the same problem from happening next time.

Obviously that only works if both people are well-intended, able to deescalate conflicts, and willing to put in the work. No amount of this would fix fundamental differences or relationship red flags.

Its the nature of struggle sessions. No matter what, unless you admit to doing harm, no matter if you did, no one will let you rest until you admit it.

I'd like to think the only winning move is to not play, but I dont think modern social media allows that

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

Never do this. They’re playing petty fascist power games and it should not be tolerated.

To be fair, it should be said that not everyone can afford to stand up to this.

> I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise.

Probably depends on the relationship.

I've found that during a conflict, I'm never 100% articulate or appropriate, so I will apologize for the mistakes I made during the discussion. If after the discussion, both of us agree that I was originally in the wrong, then of course, I'll apologize. But why apologize if you've done nothing wrong? That sets a really bizarre precedent: I'd rather placate someone who disagrees with me than to be able to express myself to a life partner. Why? If this is the person you're in a loving relationship with, why do they need so much protection from your viewpoints?

That said, I'm not immune to the equation:

    (die_on_this_hill_factor / (perceived_anger_of_partner * estimated_kwh_of_ongoing_conflict)) *
        (personal_energy * previous_perceived_slights_against_me * stress * recent_affirmations_about_topic)

If that value is below some threshold, drop it and move on, and depending on the outcome, sure, apologize. But apologizing every single time sounds like someone who wants to live their life wrapped around someone else's pinky.

> as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner)

Yes. When it's about minor things, you don't care to be right when the relationship with your partner is at stake.

But the angry mobs fuelled by hypocrisy and bad journalism are not your partner. They are the problem. They need to be told loud and clear that they're not just dead wrong, they're also dangerous and bigoted.

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