What you're describing about the Libertarian Party sounds like a total abandonment of core principles. "Anti-immigration libertarian" is like "anti-free-speech liberal." The minute you side with statist restrictions on freedom of movement or employment you cease to be libertarian.
The most important political battle of our time is not left-right but authoritarian-libertarian, since authoritarianism is at the root of the worst impulses of both sides. For the LP to side in any way with the most blatantly authoritarian president in at least a lifetime is pretty depressing.
I'm a middle-aged man who respects the hell out of the ass-kicking women in my life, so that being said, that twitter joke was a throw away that didn't really move my humor needle, but I didn't find it offensive either b/c I kept it in context. If Dave Weigel was a known male power biblical flunky with super retrograde (i.e. MAGA) views, then I guess it would be offensive and you could tell him to piss off. But that's not who Mr. Weigel is, so what really is the harm at all? Though as a journalist, I wouldn't be trafficking in the stuff anyway, but that's just me. It's the same kind of overreaction that robbed us all of the power of Al Franken in the Senate. My wife and I were in the audience at Nate Bargatze's comedy show last night and were crying with laughter as he went on about how his wife is the "husband" in the house - she get's things fixed, organized, and he tries not to get in the way because she is so completely more competent than he is. Funny because it makes fun of stereotypes, self-deprecating, laugh at ourselves, etc etc. Consider the source and let's please not burn everyone at the stake for unintended or minor offenses. We all do minor-league dumbass things from time to time. Focus on actual bad people and let Dave do the good work he dose. Please.
Interesting observation: from what I could see of the oversized retweet referenced in the screenshot, it seemed like a harmless and amusing play on words. Then when I actually clicked on the link and saw the whole tweet, I felt worse about it - particularly upon noticing the round, bearded, cowboy-hat wearing face of the re-tweeter. Suddenly the joke seemed to conjure images of beer-swilling men making waitresses uncomfortable in a saloon. Meaning that it speaks to some of my biases, and I suspect the same applies to other people who responded negatively to the tweet.
It seems to me that much of what we consider "offensive" these days seems to be based far more on the general air of psychological associations that it elicits than any sensible understanding of what was being expressed. Nobody can help how something makes them feel, but what we can help is how we respond to it. We seem to have lost the once common-sense approach to communication which dictated that when one had a negative visceral reaction to someone's statement, one would question whether or not they had misunderstood or if there was a more charitable interpretation before responding.
I agree with Cathy that the Left's use of terms like "harm" and "hurt" feel overwrought and melodramatic to me. I can't help but feel that people are no more "harmed" by such things than I am by being constantly subjected to derisive characterizations of white, straight males in progressive media. I understand the arguments about privileged positions of power, and I generally do recoil at gross misogyny when I see it (particularly with the way women are disproportionately judged on their appearance). But look at that exchange and tell me that the white, straight male is the one with the power in that scenario. We long ago arrived at a point in progressive culture where deferring to women and other minorities became such a prime directive that claims of distorted "power dynamics" feel more theoretical than reflective of reality. And yet I don't feel the need to try to get someone in trouble with their boss (were that even possible) when I experience the "micro-agression" of being reminded how terrible I am for existing. (Now I'm being melodramatic ... see what I'm talking about?)
Also, am I the only one who finds it borderline absurd that journalists now treat Twitter like it's company email? As if an external Internet forum must provide the same experience as the comforting womb of HR-monitored office sterility? I guess I'm just old-fashioned with my silly work/life boundaries.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone provide some of the best satire on basically everything. I didn’t think the joke was particularly funny, but it made think of Jimmy’s comedy in the South Park Post Covid special and that made me smile.
The fact that the "woke" war is a social media phenomenon fought almost exclusively on Twitter (the intellectual equivalent of graffiti on toilet stall walls) suggests to me that it is a conflict between obnoxious clods and professional virtue signalers.
In another way it is just Political Correctness 2.0 for a new generation.
It really is just a 21st century form of shunning and public shaming that has been part and parcel of human societies since forever.
BUT shunning and shaming is always an action by the powerful as a method of reeducation or punishment. It takes power to enforce sanctions and bans.
The woke phenomenon is disturbing to many because it is an inversion of power, at least in the sphere of social media, where the traditionally powerless find a sort of collective agency. Spill over effects into the real world are probably exaggerated by both proponents and detractors of the woke culture.
Two things seem apparent to me. First, most of the people whinging and worrying about the evils of woke are white men of a certain age and the women who love them. Second, this is a war carried on by and among political, media and academic elites and professionals and insignificant to the lives of ordinary people who are not addicted to their own opinions.
Republicans have made the word virtually meaningless in the same way their use and abuse of the word "socialism" has evacuated it of any real meaning in political discourse.
There are two controversies at the Washington Post right now: Dave Weigel retweeting a bad joke, and Taylor Lorenz committing serious journalistic malpractice.
I am of the opinion is that to conduct yourself with integrity and kindness online --which I believe is desirable when your actual name is next to your words; you never punch down.
A lot of humor is decidedly not kind. A lot of humor is aggression shrouded in the context of "it's just a joke." Trump, et al pulled this one out many a time during his administration.
Some humor is also thoughtless--by thoughtless I mean re-telling a joke that wasn't REALLY a joke to the person that told it (see above) because the person re-telling it found it funny and didn't think too hard about how other people would view it.
A good chunk of (public) humor also tends to be (for lack of a better word) crude in that it often has something to do with sex, gender, or going to the bathroom. Maybe my view of what constitutes general humor is somewhat skewed by the fact that I teach high school--but my military and work experience says that that type of humor persists and is prevalent because many people do not really mature beyond the HS stage.
Usually an eye roll and a REALLY? from me in response to a sexist or cruel joke on the part of my students is enough to quash that (at least around me). Going nuclear over it is usually unproductive and ineffective in the larger context.
I have always been more into satire or parody... but people have problems with that these days because many have apparently lost the ability to discern them.
I am not an academic, so I don't know what is being taught now, but when I went to college we LEARNED about satire and parody in literature classes that EVERY student was required to take.
It is taught in high school (and even, to a degree, in middle school) but there is a difference between a technical understanding of things and actually recognizing them when they are employed--particularly when they are employed in text and there isn't all the additional information that you get from body language, facial expression, tone and volume.
Hence the development of people using /s to indicate that they are being satirical.
People LEARN about a lot of things--then they pass the test or quiz and forget... or they cannot apply what they learned to actual life.
It is also more difficult these days because people now say and actually mean/intend things that we once though would remain solely in the realm of satire or parody.
One more thought from me: I don't care about jokes, even if they are about me or women in general ...I care about actual sexism and misogyny...and some of them are funny evenso...if you don't like it, that is fine, you can say so or ignore it...but, telling other people what they are allowed to say is just beyond my understanding...this is my biggest issue with thought police of which there are many on the more extreme side of both parties...
Kinda like how metoo went too far and has the effect of diminishing actual sexual assault...
Ok Charlie !! Three weeks now and it's still Morning Shots by Charlie Sykes! Give Cathy her due and change this to Sunday Shots with Cathy Young !!She deserves the props !!!
Yeah. Cathy is a real “get” for The Bulwark. Shes smart, fair, insightful and a kick ass writer w/ the research abilities of an awesome journalist. Does she piss me off sometimes? Yeah. But I also learn. And I want the dress she wore on the zoom last week.
In my opinion libertarianism, in the European sense of a positive counterpart to anti-authoritarianism, has much to offer society. The Libertarian Party USA I would describe as clowns, except that clowns aren't usually as selfish and incurious.
I grow disinterested in the Culture War and Bad Tweets Newsletter.
Libertarians (with a capital L) have always struck me as legends in their own minds. Many were never able to develop past their adolescence defined by the novels of Ayn Rand.
Speaking as a psychologist, the tweet by Cam Harless is not a joke. It appears to be the ranting of an ignorant misogynist looking for 5 minutes of fame. A joke is meant to be amusing but I found his statement to be devoid of humor. Instead, it plays into a gender stereotype of the “unbalanced woman”. Unbalanced mentally and sexually. In this context, “bi” is meant to be derogatory and degrading.
Bipolar disorder is a very serious and often difficult to treat mental illness. It impacts the person’s ability to function on a daily basis and affects their ability to interact with others in a meaningful way. The fact that anyone would consider using this illness as the basis of a joke speaks either to their ignorance of the illness, their inhumanity, or both. There is nothing funny about bipolar disorder.
Actually this "new" trend is a pretty consistent development. Libertarians opposed laws that created protected classes. In their minds everyone should be free to discriminate against anyone they choose so long as the free market is allowed to deliver consequences for those choices. They never take into account that there never was or never can be a market that isn't skewed structurally to benefit some and not others.
I'll take a real controversial position and praise the joke.
As Cathy points out, it requires a linguistic agility either to laugh at or to be offended by it. In either case, the reader's mind is being challenged and rewarded for its acumen and reactivity. It's a win-win situation.
If you laugh, you win because, although you're somewhat ancient and oblivious to the civilities of the present moment, you can still catch a pun and find meaning in a prefix that is being used slyly. If you fume, you win because, although you're young and overly reactive to verbal aggression, your anger shows your level of cognitive awareness to denigrating, disempowering intentions and your willingness to fight against them.
See? It's all good. A joke on Twitter works the brain harder than most of the political drivel that is posted.
What you're describing about the Libertarian Party sounds like a total abandonment of core principles. "Anti-immigration libertarian" is like "anti-free-speech liberal." The minute you side with statist restrictions on freedom of movement or employment you cease to be libertarian.
The most important political battle of our time is not left-right but authoritarian-libertarian, since authoritarianism is at the root of the worst impulses of both sides. For the LP to side in any way with the most blatantly authoritarian president in at least a lifetime is pretty depressing.
Indeed!
The joke shouldn't have been retweeted because it wasn't funny.
I'm a middle-aged man who respects the hell out of the ass-kicking women in my life, so that being said, that twitter joke was a throw away that didn't really move my humor needle, but I didn't find it offensive either b/c I kept it in context. If Dave Weigel was a known male power biblical flunky with super retrograde (i.e. MAGA) views, then I guess it would be offensive and you could tell him to piss off. But that's not who Mr. Weigel is, so what really is the harm at all? Though as a journalist, I wouldn't be trafficking in the stuff anyway, but that's just me. It's the same kind of overreaction that robbed us all of the power of Al Franken in the Senate. My wife and I were in the audience at Nate Bargatze's comedy show last night and were crying with laughter as he went on about how his wife is the "husband" in the house - she get's things fixed, organized, and he tries not to get in the way because she is so completely more competent than he is. Funny because it makes fun of stereotypes, self-deprecating, laugh at ourselves, etc etc. Consider the source and let's please not burn everyone at the stake for unintended or minor offenses. We all do minor-league dumbass things from time to time. Focus on actual bad people and let Dave do the good work he dose. Please.
Interesting observation: from what I could see of the oversized retweet referenced in the screenshot, it seemed like a harmless and amusing play on words. Then when I actually clicked on the link and saw the whole tweet, I felt worse about it - particularly upon noticing the round, bearded, cowboy-hat wearing face of the re-tweeter. Suddenly the joke seemed to conjure images of beer-swilling men making waitresses uncomfortable in a saloon. Meaning that it speaks to some of my biases, and I suspect the same applies to other people who responded negatively to the tweet.
It seems to me that much of what we consider "offensive" these days seems to be based far more on the general air of psychological associations that it elicits than any sensible understanding of what was being expressed. Nobody can help how something makes them feel, but what we can help is how we respond to it. We seem to have lost the once common-sense approach to communication which dictated that when one had a negative visceral reaction to someone's statement, one would question whether or not they had misunderstood or if there was a more charitable interpretation before responding.
I agree with Cathy that the Left's use of terms like "harm" and "hurt" feel overwrought and melodramatic to me. I can't help but feel that people are no more "harmed" by such things than I am by being constantly subjected to derisive characterizations of white, straight males in progressive media. I understand the arguments about privileged positions of power, and I generally do recoil at gross misogyny when I see it (particularly with the way women are disproportionately judged on their appearance). But look at that exchange and tell me that the white, straight male is the one with the power in that scenario. We long ago arrived at a point in progressive culture where deferring to women and other minorities became such a prime directive that claims of distorted "power dynamics" feel more theoretical than reflective of reality. And yet I don't feel the need to try to get someone in trouble with their boss (were that even possible) when I experience the "micro-agression" of being reminded how terrible I am for existing. (Now I'm being melodramatic ... see what I'm talking about?)
Also, am I the only one who finds it borderline absurd that journalists now treat Twitter like it's company email? As if an external Internet forum must provide the same experience as the comforting womb of HR-monitored office sterility? I guess I'm just old-fashioned with my silly work/life boundaries.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone provide some of the best satire on basically everything. I didn’t think the joke was particularly funny, but it made think of Jimmy’s comedy in the South Park Post Covid special and that made me smile.
The fact that the "woke" war is a social media phenomenon fought almost exclusively on Twitter (the intellectual equivalent of graffiti on toilet stall walls) suggests to me that it is a conflict between obnoxious clods and professional virtue signalers.
In another way it is just Political Correctness 2.0 for a new generation.
It really is just a 21st century form of shunning and public shaming that has been part and parcel of human societies since forever.
BUT shunning and shaming is always an action by the powerful as a method of reeducation or punishment. It takes power to enforce sanctions and bans.
The woke phenomenon is disturbing to many because it is an inversion of power, at least in the sphere of social media, where the traditionally powerless find a sort of collective agency. Spill over effects into the real world are probably exaggerated by both proponents and detractors of the woke culture.
Two things seem apparent to me. First, most of the people whinging and worrying about the evils of woke are white men of a certain age and the women who love them. Second, this is a war carried on by and among political, media and academic elites and professionals and insignificant to the lives of ordinary people who are not addicted to their own opinions.
Republicans have made the word virtually meaningless in the same way their use and abuse of the word "socialism" has evacuated it of any real meaning in political discourse.
There are two controversies at the Washington Post right now: Dave Weigel retweeting a bad joke, and Taylor Lorenz committing serious journalistic malpractice.
My money is on Weigel getting fired first.
And both controversies are trivial.
I am of the opinion is that to conduct yourself with integrity and kindness online --which I believe is desirable when your actual name is next to your words; you never punch down.
I can't attach the .jpg, but it reminds me of a cartoon from 30+ years ago: "This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humor section."
That women smile at all is a tribute to their tolerance.
A lot of humor is decidedly not kind. A lot of humor is aggression shrouded in the context of "it's just a joke." Trump, et al pulled this one out many a time during his administration.
Some humor is also thoughtless--by thoughtless I mean re-telling a joke that wasn't REALLY a joke to the person that told it (see above) because the person re-telling it found it funny and didn't think too hard about how other people would view it.
A good chunk of (public) humor also tends to be (for lack of a better word) crude in that it often has something to do with sex, gender, or going to the bathroom. Maybe my view of what constitutes general humor is somewhat skewed by the fact that I teach high school--but my military and work experience says that that type of humor persists and is prevalent because many people do not really mature beyond the HS stage.
Usually an eye roll and a REALLY? from me in response to a sexist or cruel joke on the part of my students is enough to quash that (at least around me). Going nuclear over it is usually unproductive and ineffective in the larger context.
I have always been more into satire or parody... but people have problems with that these days because many have apparently lost the ability to discern them.
I am not an academic, so I don't know what is being taught now, but when I went to college we LEARNED about satire and parody in literature classes that EVERY student was required to take.
It is taught in high school (and even, to a degree, in middle school) but there is a difference between a technical understanding of things and actually recognizing them when they are employed--particularly when they are employed in text and there isn't all the additional information that you get from body language, facial expression, tone and volume.
Hence the development of people using /s to indicate that they are being satirical.
People LEARN about a lot of things--then they pass the test or quiz and forget... or they cannot apply what they learned to actual life.
It is also more difficult these days because people now say and actually mean/intend things that we once though would remain solely in the realm of satire or parody.
I even learned it in HS!!
One more thought from me: I don't care about jokes, even if they are about me or women in general ...I care about actual sexism and misogyny...and some of them are funny evenso...if you don't like it, that is fine, you can say so or ignore it...but, telling other people what they are allowed to say is just beyond my understanding...this is my biggest issue with thought police of which there are many on the more extreme side of both parties...
Kinda like how metoo went too far and has the effect of diminishing actual sexual assault...
Ok Charlie !! Three weeks now and it's still Morning Shots by Charlie Sykes! Give Cathy her due and change this to Sunday Shots with Cathy Young !!She deserves the props !!!
Yeah. Cathy is a real “get” for The Bulwark. Shes smart, fair, insightful and a kick ass writer w/ the research abilities of an awesome journalist. Does she piss me off sometimes? Yeah. But I also learn. And I want the dress she wore on the zoom last week.
In my opinion libertarianism, in the European sense of a positive counterpart to anti-authoritarianism, has much to offer society. The Libertarian Party USA I would describe as clowns, except that clowns aren't usually as selfish and incurious.
I grow disinterested in the Culture War and Bad Tweets Newsletter.
Libertarians (with a capital L) have always struck me as legends in their own minds. Many were never able to develop past their adolescence defined by the novels of Ayn Rand.
👍🏼
Speaking as a psychologist, the tweet by Cam Harless is not a joke. It appears to be the ranting of an ignorant misogynist looking for 5 minutes of fame. A joke is meant to be amusing but I found his statement to be devoid of humor. Instead, it plays into a gender stereotype of the “unbalanced woman”. Unbalanced mentally and sexually. In this context, “bi” is meant to be derogatory and degrading.
Bipolar disorder is a very serious and often difficult to treat mental illness. It impacts the person’s ability to function on a daily basis and affects their ability to interact with others in a meaningful way. The fact that anyone would consider using this illness as the basis of a joke speaks either to their ignorance of the illness, their inhumanity, or both. There is nothing funny about bipolar disorder.
Libertarians = GOP stoners. Same as it ever was. This recent nonsense doesn’t surprise me even a little.
Actually this "new" trend is a pretty consistent development. Libertarians opposed laws that created protected classes. In their minds everyone should be free to discriminate against anyone they choose so long as the free market is allowed to deliver consequences for those choices. They never take into account that there never was or never can be a market that isn't skewed structurally to benefit some and not others.
I'll take a real controversial position and praise the joke.
As Cathy points out, it requires a linguistic agility either to laugh at or to be offended by it. In either case, the reader's mind is being challenged and rewarded for its acumen and reactivity. It's a win-win situation.
If you laugh, you win because, although you're somewhat ancient and oblivious to the civilities of the present moment, you can still catch a pun and find meaning in a prefix that is being used slyly. If you fume, you win because, although you're young and overly reactive to verbal aggression, your anger shows your level of cognitive awareness to denigrating, disempowering intentions and your willingness to fight against them.
See? It's all good. A joke on Twitter works the brain harder than most of the political drivel that is posted.