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May 25, 2021Liked by Abigail Shrier

Abigail,

Yesterday, on The Hill/Rising, Krystal Ball gave an passionate defense of Emily Wilder’s free speech rights while also decrying the cancellation of Senator Tom Cotton’s op ed in the NY Times last summer. Her point was that free speech must remain free for all viewpoints, or it’s not free. She also defended Wilder on the grounds that she was still young when she wrote her offending remarks, and furthermore she would not be reporting on Middle East affairs in her new job. All this sounded fair to me. As a free speech absolutist and a Jew with mixed feelings about Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue, I was inclined to agree with Ball.

However, Ball neglected to share the actual content of Wilder’s speech. If she had, her case would have been considerably diminished. First, Wilder makes that short, familiar trip from criticizing the Israeli government’s policies, to hate-filled, ad hominem attacks. Okay, that’s still protected speech. Ben Shapiro can handle it, he’s a big boy. But then she proceeds to lie about actual events and to defend the violent threats of others against Jews. And so, as a journalist, she crossed a line. Then she adds insult to injury by painting herself as a victim. Before, she was in college, but now she’s got a grown-up’s aspirations and needs to refresh herself regarding the role of actual journalism in a free society.

Abigail, I share your ambivalence about Wilder’s cancellation on First Amendment grounds, and the indignation of people I respect, e.g., Thomas Chatterton Williams, is not lost on me. But I agree with you that AS A JOURNALIST, Wilder betrays her profession. Her current lack of contrition makes it clear that she would say the same things today that she said a few minutes ago, when she was still in college. That’s the problem.

Unfortunately, If her ultimate goal is to become a political shill, she can easily do that now, because absent Glenn Greenwald, yourself, and a few others, spewing ideology has largely replaced objective journalism on all sides.

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I particularly liked your characterization of adolescence as a period of “beta testing”. As I look back at some of my writings in high school and college, I cringe...not because they contain offensive ideas, but because there was a certainty, and a pomposity to my tone which I would never presume these days. Great essay.

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Cancel culture is disgusting communism. But unilateral disarmament is worse. Only by cancelling the Left with the same vigor they bring to destroying random, obscure Americans on the center and right, can we hope to get elites from Left and Right (i.e., Dem and GOP politicians and CEOs) to demand a truce. If Biden and Schumer and and Pelosi and McConnell and McCarthy and Murdoch and Brian Roberts (Comcast-MSDNC) demanded an end to cancel culture and promised adverse consequences to people on their side who practiced it, it would end tomorrow. But Dems will never stop until they too feel the pain.

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There is a problem with the distinction being drawn here and it’s this: in many workplaces, woke ideas are so widely embraced that disagreeing with them in fact does render you unable to do your job (and hence vulnerable to being fired). It does this by making you some combination of hated, ineffective (because no one will work with you) or the subject of complaints to HR (e.g. for the “literal violence” of denying your white fragility or disagreeing with unisex bathrooms). So the public statement that others merely wish to silence is often precisely what makes you also unable to do your job. Being fired and being canceled become one and the same a lot of the time.

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I thought your characterization of the teenage age years as "adaptive idiocy" was quite apt. I was less inclined to such behavior than most in my cohort, but still did & said a lot of stupid stuff.

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"The judiciary has long understood this point. A judge who has tweeted #BelieveAllWomen, for example, is not going to be permitted to preside over a sexual assault case, even if she tweeted it before hearing the case. She’s also likely to be reprimanded for making those types of pronouncements, which are inconsistent with her role as a neutral arbiter and trier of law. If she does slip through and judge that case, it will form the basis of an appeal. That’s not cancel culture; it is a necessary protection for the rule of law and public confidence in the legal system."

Why were Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kegan allowed to hear Obergefell when each of them had officiated at a gay "wedding"?

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Thank you for writing these Abigail I find your writings very insightful!

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Abigail,

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