kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Mar 4, 2015 15:31:36 GMT -5
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 4, 2015 16:45:28 GMT -5
I was genuinely heart-broken to see how silly, intellectually cowardly, and immature is the level of discourse among current students as evidenced by this tempest in a teapot. I'll just paste my comment to the piece I posted last week:
For those feigning outrage over this non-event; shame on you for trying to bully others into silence in a free society. For those of you actually outraged over this completely non-offensive cartoon; you are colossally unprepared for life in the real world. The next few years are going to sting quite a bit when you realize what a juvenile and artificial cocoon you have been living in.
Let’s be clear about something. There is no right to not be offended, no matter how hysterically low your bar to offense is. Nor should there be in a free society. Ever. And the title of this piece needs correcting; there is no dialogue resulting from these manufactured rages against pretended offense by spoiled children who are attempting to cower their opponents with threats of being virtually tarred and feathered.
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quickplay
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Post by quickplay on Mar 4, 2015 18:15:33 GMT -5
I am very receptive to most aspects of critical theory and usually supportive of many aspects of identity politics. But manufacturing controversy, racism, and misogyny where there really is none does not prepare you for larger battles out in the real world.
Responsible satire is a scary phrase. Metaphor as reality is kind of the lifeblood of 'political' cartoons. While I understand the theory of the complaints, holy hell is this really reaching for something.
Would be really nice to see this kind of passion over the Trans Pacific Partnership, or student loan debt, or SOMETHING. This is the kind of nonsense that drags down identity politics as a general concept in the eyes of the public. It's so small, self-indulgent, and intentionally manufactured that the whole thing itself almost reads like satire.
In the book No Logo by Naomi Klein, she laments that globalization and corporate domination of culture happened while some of our sharpest and most dedicated minds were too focused inward on similar issues to see the world around them being sold right out from under their feet. This is what that must have felt like.
I think it's great to acknowledge privilege, fight power systems (whether 'the patriarchy' or others), and always seek to be more inclusive to different cultures and perspectives. But that requires a little more perspective than this.
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Post by strummer8526 on Mar 4, 2015 19:39:00 GMT -5
The fact that one of the Jesuits and a University administrator (Todd Olson) were out there going along with this garbage really makes me wonder about who's running the asylum these days.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Mar 6, 2015 23:31:13 GMT -5
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 7, 2015 15:58:52 GMT -5
You left out the best part. The rules around that a new inclusive space include a provision that if any student at all finds anything hanging in that space offensive for any reason or no reason it will be removed. Im not sure how it would be possible for American college students to get any softer.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Mar 8, 2015 17:03:01 GMT -5
You left out the best part. The rules around that a new inclusive space include a provision that if any student at all finds anything hanging in that space offensive for any reason or no reason it will be removed. Im not sure how it would be possible for American college students to get any softer. I don't think "soft" is the right adjective, especially since there's scant evidence (a single anonymous note, from the looks of it) that anyone actually complained about being offended by the American flag or any other accoutrement. Rather, in this case, the motivating factor appears to be a combination of a familiar anarcho-leftist disdain for institutions with the decidedly Millenial focus on shallow, symbolic totems. Anyway, not surprisingly, they've walked it back: www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/08/uc-irvine-students-just-banned-the-american-flag-on-campus-for-a-little-while-anyway/ |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 9, 2015 12:07:24 GMT -5
I think your description is more accurate. To call them soft for this would imply, as you say, that people are actually offended. When more likely due to the climate of constant offense, people are really just saying "hey, what about me? Its my turn to be fake outraged and scare someone into recanting/apologizing."
I think my favorite part about the Red Square protest over the cartoons was that it lasted all of 15 minutes. Oh boy. Such courageous doggedness in the face of fabricated outrage. I hope nobody needs Tommy John after that round of vigorous self-patting of backs.
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tashoya
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Post by tashoya on Mar 9, 2015 12:53:06 GMT -5
I think your description is more accurate. To call them soft for this would imply, as you say, that people are actually offended. When more likely due to the climate of constant offense, people are really just saying "hey, what about me? Its my turn to be fake outraged and scare someone into recanting/apologizing." I think my favorite part about the Red Square protest over the cartoons was that it lasted all of 15 minutes. Oh boy. Such courageous doggedness in the face of fabricated outrage. I hope nobody needs Tommy John after that round of vigorous self-patting of backs. Oftentimes, after the surgery, the patients come back stronger for even more effective back patting. |
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Post by strummer8526 on Mar 9, 2015 21:08:31 GMT -5
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AvantGuardHoya
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Post by AvantGuardHoya on Mar 10, 2015 1:18:48 GMT -5
C'mon, strummer, you know there's no racism in America anymore! Just ask.... |
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Mar 10, 2015 9:34:34 GMT -5
C'mon, strummer, you know there's no racism in America anymore! Just ask.... Who says that? |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 10, 2015 11:25:30 GMT -5
Are you guys comfortable with the fact that a drunk kid can ruin his entire life for saying a vile word these days? Does that seem reasonable? This kid was being a total Jacka$$ and sang a stupid and vile and rancid song....and now he really needs to fund his own witness protection program, seriously consider changing his name, be faced with the prospect he will now never be college educated, find a good job, losing friends and perhaps even some family support, and presumably will soon have death threats....for saying a word?
I'm not talking about the legality at play here as this is clearly not a free speech issue. Do we not think as a society we're going way overboard in certain circumstances because the cost of doing so is nothing and the risk of not doing so to our own reputations is modest to high depending on your proximity to the jerk in question? This feeds like mob justice with an underlying good cause but nevertheless mob justice with extremely excessive punishment for the social crime at issue. It does feel to me like this idiot is going to be paying in part for the crimes of white cops in Ferguson and S.I.
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AvantGuardHoya
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Post by AvantGuardHoya on Mar 10, 2015 12:05:25 GMT -5
C'mon, strummer, you know there's no racism in America anymore! Just ask.... Who says that? Uhhh.... Snow White's stepmomma?!  |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 10, 2015 12:25:53 GMT -5
Beyond the shadow of a doubt stuff like that, and worse, has happened hundreds of times over the last few decades on the Hilltop. The only thing is changing is that A. Everyone records everything and B. Social Media has changed the landscape of outrage and the attending social punishment. |
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Post by strummer8526 on Mar 10, 2015 12:42:40 GMT -5
Beyond the shadow of a doubt stuff like that, and worse, has happened hundreds of times over the last few decades on the Hilltop. The only thing is changing is that A. Everyone records everything and B. Social Media has changed the landscape of outrage and the attending social punishment. I was involved in my fair share of student groups on campus, and I was never once taught the group's rallying cry against African American membership, complete with lynching imagery. I have no doubt that kids at Georgetown have said and done stupid, racially insensitive things, or at the very least pushed the envelope in that direction. But an entire bus singing a song like the one in that video? I highly doubt it. And if that did come to light, I would say that whatever group it is needs to be disbanded and reformed entirely from scratch. As for your earlier post, I agree that the internet brings out a special kind of mob justice. I read an article recently about a girl who was flying to Africa and, before boarding the plane, she tweeted a racially-tinged joke about AIDs. By the time she landed, she was a pariah. That strikes me as wrong. I don't know what I would say about the kid featured so prominently in this video. I guess it sort of depends on who he is--i.e., was this in fact an example of getting caught up in an insanely stupid frat tradition, or is he an unrepetent racist? Either way, I think it's fine that he will face some consequences in the near term. How the rest of his life plays out should depend on who he is at a level deeper than anyone can glean from nine seconds of video. I don't have a problem with the next few years beind a little harder for him, though. He was clearly comfortable enough with those outlandish lyrics that I highly doubt this was a one-time mistake on his part. The bigger issue in the video is that you can hear an entire group getting in on the song. And that--not the one-off dumb college kid--does seem to warrant a strong reaction. Also, this article makes the whole frat sound more like a white supremacist organization than anything else: www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/us/university-of-oklahoma-sigma-alpha-epsilon-racist-fraternity-video.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 10, 2015 12:58:22 GMT -5
What is a strong reaction short of mob justice that has in substantial way totally ruined two of these kids lives so far? So we can agree everyone on the bus was to some extent guilty of despicable behavior? What happens if you were identified sort of humming along but without much enthusiasm? What if you were not singing at all but failed to try to shout the whole bus down in shame?
What is the proper punishment for such (legal) vileness which nobody is even proclaiming was actually aimed at anybody and thus there was no victim? It is a disgusting "song" and it uses a word that I physically can't say....but it was speech. The OU president is already talking about trying to seek criminal prosecution of these two morons. How does that work? What we do know is that because one of them happened to be in front of the kid filming on his phone...his life is more or less completely ruined. Kicked out of school. Should change his name. May not get into another school or ever get a good job. Will certainly face death threats. Family all shamed.....for singing a disgusting song as a drunk 19 year old kid.
I know he's about the world's least popular cause at this point...but is that balanced? You OK with that? I know it is easy to say yes, he's a creep so screw him. But one should always be wary of over-reaching mobs. (Not saying you could do anything about most of it legally- just asking if the mob justice element of it isn't itself an ugly outcome of the larger far more disgusting incident.)
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 10, 2015 13:22:20 GMT -5
I'll add I don't really have any heart-felt sympathy for these idiots. They certainly should have known better than to be so vile in this day and age. I am also genuinely a bit shocked to see college students using that word in front of a large group of people in 2015. Would have thought if nothing else peer pressure would have prevented it.
There is just something so ugly about mob justice and this is certainly a form of it.
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SirSaxa
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Post by SirSaxa on Mar 10, 2015 15:15:13 GMT -5
I'll add I don't really have any heart-felt sympathy for these idiots. They certainly should have known better than to be so vile in this day and age. I am also genuinely a bit shocked to see college students using that word in front of a large group of people in 2015. Would have thought if nothing else peer pressure would have prevented it. There is just something so ugly about mob justice and this is certainly a form of it. Life ain't fair. And there is something far uglier about singing that song in the first place. In my personal view, I haven't the least bit of concern or sympathy for those singing the song. "No victim?" Really? How about everyone they meet in their lives. How about fellow students at OU who happen to be minorities and now know without a doubt how some of their classmates feel about them? How about perfectly innocent OU students who had nothing to do with it but now attend " That school"? Remember a few years back when Mel Gibson was stopped for speeding and drunk-driving in LA and went on an anti-semitic screed? He later claimed he was drunk and didn't really mean it. I've had a few too many on an occasion or two over the years, but it never caused me to suddenly proclaim things I never believed before. In vino veritas. I did not see the video. But if the kids were singing a song using the N word and talking about lynching? "Mob justice"? This isn't the ox bow incident folks like to refer to. If the video went viral on social media, folks will make their own individual judgements. Hardly "mob justice". To turn your earlier phrase about "no victim" around, there's no mob so how can there be "mob justice"? Given all the people impacted by this event - OU, its president and admin, faculty, student body in general, minority students in particular, and those who sang the song? The very last folks I am concerned about are the singers. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 10, 2015 15:51:20 GMT -5
Of course that's the risk-less course to take. And yet I can't help but think that your argument is emotional rather than rational. If we really think kids saying despicable awful things is fair game to have their lives essentially ruined we've lost all sense of proportion. But it makes us feel better about ourselves (at no cost) to unload on these idiots and there is no upside to ask the baying mob to calm down a bit and let the punishment fit the crime.....and boom! There's your mob SirSaxa.
How many MILLIONS of 19 year old kids have sung disgusting and violent songs, told such jokes, about minorities other than themselves, girls, homosexuals, etc? Certainly that number is well into the millions. And yet we're shocked, shocked to find out there are 19 year old kids acting like jerks. We need to stop giving special power to that terrible word to give license for everyone to lose their minds in fits of self-congratulatory hysterics, tossing any semblance of balance to the wind. I don't feel bad for these rednecks any more than you do, but I don't dismiss the ugliness of mob justice in an iphone and twitter world either. We will have to disagree about its existence then. To me it is plain as day. There is no cost to demonizing these kids. There is only risk in asking that maybe they don't have to pay with their futures for uttering a vile and stupid song passed onto them from the idiots they look up to. I think you're asking them to pay for a lot of other people's sins in a way.
I can dislike these stupid hillbillies as much as you do and still feel a bit queasy as I watch children paying a lifelong price for drunken college speech...vile speech? Yes? But speech. I don't think people have a right to speech without consequence, and yet these consequences feel rather excessive and it seems they are so only because it makes us feel good about ourselves to pound away at them on message boards. I find that more than a bit disturbing.
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