I’ve never had an account on Twitter, and only read a few tweets over the years, so I missed out on this little bit of political maneuvering:
And this week, rumors spread of the impending publication of an essay by Katie Roiphe in Harper’s magazine that might take a similarly skeptical tack. Some believed that Roiphe might even hold the instigator of the legendary Shitty Media Men list accountable, and that this person might thereby be subjected to online abuse. And so a Twitter campaign was launched, in a backlash-backlash, to preemptively stop the publication of an essay no one had actually read. One Twitter activist, Nicole Cliffe, went further: “If you have a piece in the hopper over at @Harpers, ask your editor if the Roiphe piece is happening. If it is, I will pay you cash for what you’d lose by yanking it.” This strikes me as a new development for the social-justice left: They now believe in suppressing free speech — even before they know its content! It also strikes me as ominous for journalism as a whole. When journalists themselves wage campaigns to suppress the writing of other journalists, and intend to destroy a magazine for not toeing their ideological line, you can see how free speech truly is on the line. Why not simplify this and publish a blacklist of writers whose work, based on previous ideological transgressions, cannot and should not be published?
Pretty quickly, others on Left Twitter offered money for other authors to pull their pieces from the issue — and a few writers said they had agreed to do so. Cliffe was admirably blunt about her intent: “If I have my druthers, the March issue of Harper’s will consist of a now-toothless 200-word piece on the list that doesn’t name anyone and a long meditation from the editor on raw water.” Then this Twitter threat: “If Katie Roiphe actually publishes that article she can consider her career over.” Meanwhile the very people who were up in arms about possible online harassment of the list organizers, went online to call Roiphe “pro-rape,” “human scum,” “a ghoul,” a “bitch,” “the definition of basura,” a “bag of garbage,” and “a misogynistic bottom-feeder.” That’s another thing with ideological fanatics: Irony tends to elude them.
And then the final twist Wednesday night: One Moira Donegan outed herself as the creator of the list, and wrote a long essay defending herself.
The essay is, to my mind, eloquent, beautifully written, even moving at times, but baffling. I read it waiting for the moment when she took responsibility for what she did, or apologized to the innocent people she concedes may have been slandered. But it never came. It’s worth recalling here exactly what she and others did. They created an online forum in which anonymous people could make accusations about men whose careers and reputations would potentially be destroyed as a consequence. There was absolutely no attempt to separate out what was true or untrue, what was substantiated and what was not. “Please never name an accuser” she advised upfront in the document. And then: “[P]lease don’t remove highlights or names.” No second thoughts allowed. The doc openly concedes its grave claims should be “taken with a grain of salt.” In her essay, Donegan actually cites this as exonerating evidence, as if reckless disregard for the truth were a positive virtue for a journalist, and not actually a definition of libel.
Just trying to write about it is like hugging a porcupine at this point, really, because if you write something that offends someone else, pop!, they plunk you on a list that requires no proof, just simple allegations, and your career is over – if only temporarily. Why temporarily? Right now we’re caught up in righteous ideological zeal, fed on justified outrage, but short on references to open society norms. But as that wave of zeal builds greater and greater, those who are holding it up will start to get gobbled up themselves, much like Leon Trotsky taking an ax in the head on the orders of a fellow Communist. Imagine yourself filled with excitement over this lovely list – until your husband, or your father, or your brother, or even a mother, sister, lover appears on the list.
A list to be taken with a grain of salt.
And you think it’s unjustified. Sure, brother John flirted, but why is he on the list?
So someday – hopefully soon – this list will fall into disrepute. Donegan will probably find a tough professional life ahead of her, but hopefully the rest will be more or less forgiven. Because that’s one of the things we do.
Andrew goes on to call it all McCarthyism, which is no doubt accurate, but makes me sad for all the folks with the surname McCarthy; we need a word, shorn of personal epithet, that conveys the horror of the error of trampling the norms and rules of an open society that have been developed through such toil, something perhaps a little short of the religious term blasphemy.
And it should denote someone who has temporarily forgotten the injustice that can spring from trampling those norms, even if you do so in the name of remedying an injustice. Because it’s not the hallmark of a stable system. No reference to truth, to reality? Sounds like superstition to me. Rancid, deadly superstition.
