So Breitbart has taken a leftist scalp.
They discovered tweets by Dr. Jamie R. Riley, University of Alabama’s assistant vice president and dean of students, that show [shocked face::gasp] that a leftwing university educrat holds doctrinaire woke leftwing beliefs.
In my opinion, people holding that kind of philosophy should not be allowed within a thousand or so miles of any educational institution because his callous, privileged bigotry is going to be evident any time he has to deal with a white student or a conflict between a black student and a student of any other race or when he has to interact with campus police, particularly when either the cop or the student is white and the other isn’t. That said, there is nothing terribly exotic about his point of view in progressive circles. The New York Times has hired opinion writers with much worse on their Twitter timeline .
But, for whatever reason, Breitbart hit the sweet spot here and within 24-hours an embedded educrat was able to devote more time to fine tuning his bigotry
Jackson Fuentes, press secretary for the UA Student Government Association, confirmed at 4:15 p.m. that Riley is no longer working at the University.
“For us right now, basically all I can tell you is that the University and Dr. Riley have mutually agreed to part ways,” Fuentes said. “So yeah, that’s true, and we do wish him the best.”
In an email at 5:03 p.m., assistant director of the Division of Strategic Communications Chris Bryant released an official statement on behalf of the University confirming Riley’s resignation.
“Dr. Jamie Riley has resigned his position at The University of Alabama by mutual agreement,” Bryant said in the email. “Neither party will have any further comments.”
Robbie Soave at Reason takes it from there:
Many pundits on the right constantly inveigh against cancel culture: the drive to shame, punish, and ultimately destroy people for having said something trivially offensive at some point. Comedian Dave Chapelle torched cancel culture in his recent Netflix special, and conservatives applauded. The clip of Chapelle scornfully imitating cancellers has been all over right-leaning media for the last two weeks.
I very much agree that cancel culture is bad. (In fact, it’s one of the main themes of my book.) But as long as the right is perfectly willing to enforce its own version of political correctness, it is difficult to to believe that they really agree in principle that you shouldn’t do this kind of thing. If you only defend the cancelled when you agree with them, then you’re not actually against cancelling. You’re just protecting your tribe.
Conservatives, please condemn Breitbart for this hit job and demand the immediate reinstatement of James Riley.
Ummm, no. Not just no thanks, but no f***ing thanks at all.
In this case, you can even–without having a “first class mind”–easily hold, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, these two opposing thoughts.
On the one hand, we should all deplore the “cancel culture.” It is corrosive of civil society and it forces you to limit social contacts to people who are pretty like-minded because you have to be attuned to the fact that there is no such thing as a progressive who will not burn you down if you say an unguarded word. On a personal level, I’ve slowly removed from my social circle anyone whose politics I distrust because the risk of being around them is simply too great.
I know many of “the canceled.” They’ve lost jobs. Been rendered unemployable because google never forgets. They’ve dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts. Many times the court of public opinion handed out a verdict before they even had a chance to defend themselves.
— Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) September 6, 2019
Or even worse—you justify why these people “deserve it” in which case you’re part of the problem.
— Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) September 6, 2019
Saying cancel culture isn’t a thing because people rich & famous enough to weather the storm can survive it ignore the real life people who can’t.
— Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) September 6, 2019
Then we need only to look at the saga of Leif Olson where a major center-left outlet fabricated stuff to get a guy they didn’t like fired to understand the utter righteousness of Breitbart’s action.
Soave presents us with a false dichotomy. We can either actively work against a outlet that is (mostly) an ally to try to get a rabid, frothing leftist bigot reinstated. Or we’re hypocrites. That’s simply bullsh**.
The real issue is more analogous to the standoff between the US (that would be us) and the USSR (that would be their fellow travelers who masquerade as Americans today). The US was beset throughout the Cold War with people who claimed we should engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament because that would show the we really had no ill intent. I mean, if we didn’t intend to use nukes on the USSR then we really didn’t need several thousand of them, did we?
Take no prisoners!
Yo get a sense of humor
This is funny
Obama proved that theory wrong when he pulled our missile defenses out of Poland and Czechoslovakia, didn’t he? The left has proven themselves of being incapable of conceiving ideas that benefit the United States. Here they want sole proprietorship of the ability to point out someone’s aggression for the benefit of those that have to work with them. No, we aren’t talking about a political view, we are talking about corrosive racism and that needs to be purged from society, especially from education.
Indeed, when the left wants to return to civility and polite society, just let us know by admitting the path YOU took us all down and that YOU will discontinue your vile tactics and denounce any and all on your side that refuse to comply. We will do the same.
@kitt: Yeah, I am always amused by the left proclaiming someone that stands in front of a liberal audience and trashes Trump or America as “bold and brave”. That is the most cowardly thing imaginable. Stand there and oppose the general liberal mindset; THAT’S bravery.