Judd Legum is a standard-issue, loyal Democrat who writes on Substack under the auspices of something approximating journalism; he previously ran the now-defunct partisan propaganda operation ThinkProgress. As a faithful Party operative, Legum is evidently shielded from the raving anti-Substack hysteria that frequently gets directed at those who use the platform to do things other than pay daily homage to generic liberal pieties. (He has been quite successful on Substack, but curiously this hasn’t resulted in his being
The whole “I don’t remember X” tweet is designed to disinform young people. It’s not innocent.
I see it all the time: “I don’t remember X being controversial,” in reference to some incredibly controversial thing, or “I don’t remember Glenn Greenwald complaining about X when George W. Bush did it,” when Greenwald actually wrote a bestselling book in 2004 called “I Condemn Bush for Doing Thing X.”
Most members of Gens Y/Z were either not alive at the time or were too young or oblivious to notice:
1) that there was massive popular opposition to the Iraq war;
2) that the media did a total blackout on this anti-war sentiment, either ridiculing, ignoring, or occasionally vilifying people who expressed sane, humane opinions; and
3) that people who resisted the jingoism of the moment were “cancelled,” but as a consolation prize became beloved by certain liberals.
There were so few media figures challenging the neocons that mediocrities like “Kos,” Michael Moore, and Jon Stewart became heroes for timidly dissenting.
The Dixie Chicks were discussed ad nauseam for a year and had to find a completely new fan base, trading mainstream country fans for the NPR tote-bag crowd. The people who denigrated them never forgave them, even though everyone can see now that the Iraq War was an unforgivable crime.
(Milquetoast liberals are also waging a sustained campaign to blot out our collective memory of how much abuse Asians and LGB people received until very recently. The recasting of society’s lowest-status people as “privileged” is another one of the treats of 2020-21 progressive discourse.)
The current liberal twitter progressive woke SJW zeitgeist is the absolute worst. How the ACLU of all outfits can cast its lot in with this movement is unforgivable and reprehensible. One of the massive failures of American schooling has been the production of 'citizens' who can't think on their own, and use Judd to form opinions for them. Online snark and idiodic "Republican / Orange Man Bad" are taken as edgy opinions by left leaning clods.
At this point I'm wondering how long it can all last. With Globalist $$ behind it, we've got a few more years of this stuff. They're obviously not beholden to having to sell product.
Honestly I wasn't excited about reading an attack on a guy I've never once in my lifetime heard of, but once I started, I found it very amusing. I remember those days quite well. I would say it's surprising that Legum would make such a silly comment -- except it's par for the course in these days of say-anything-truth-and-logic-be-damned.
I got a kick out of Krugman's comparison. Instead of the obvious comparison to the burning of Beatles records after John Lennon's remarks comparing the Beatles' popularity to that of Christ, Krugman went straight to the Nazis.
Leftist “journos” contextualizing the past in an effort to justify their flip-flop on the 1st Amendment never gets old. Thank you for calling it out, Michael.
Comparing the Dixie Chicks getting cancelled to what the Legums of today do for sport is a false equivalency. Conservatives lost it over Maines' comment because that was one of their own speaking out against one of their own. It was a case of not knowing *their own* audience, biting the hands that fed them (though apparently they continued to prosper). Country music then was overwhelmingly conservative, both on the performing and the consuming sides. It's not like conservatives sought to cancel everyone that challenged their politics. They haven't had that kind of power in my life time. They sought to kick a heretic out of their club. That's a very different kind of "cancelling" than what the left does now. Today's cancel culture isn't limited to maintaining purity in your own clique, being pissed off that someone you give money to, someone you thought was in your tribe, is criticizing your politics and your king. It's about silencing dissent anywhere. The Dixie Chicks example itself is a decoy. Cite me an example where conservatives torpedoed the career of a Cardi B, or got a Legum kicked off Twitter, then we're talking.
The whole “I don’t remember X” tweet is designed to disinform young people. It’s not innocent.
I see it all the time: “I don’t remember X being controversial,” in reference to some incredibly controversial thing, or “I don’t remember Glenn Greenwald complaining about X when George W. Bush did it,” when Greenwald actually wrote a bestselling book in 2004 called “I Condemn Bush for Doing Thing X.”
Most members of Gens Y/Z were either not alive at the time or were too young or oblivious to notice:
1) that there was massive popular opposition to the Iraq war;
2) that the media did a total blackout on this anti-war sentiment, either ridiculing, ignoring, or occasionally vilifying people who expressed sane, humane opinions; and
3) that people who resisted the jingoism of the moment were “cancelled,” but as a consolation prize became beloved by certain liberals.
There were so few media figures challenging the neocons that mediocrities like “Kos,” Michael Moore, and Jon Stewart became heroes for timidly dissenting.
The Dixie Chicks were discussed ad nauseam for a year and had to find a completely new fan base, trading mainstream country fans for the NPR tote-bag crowd. The people who denigrated them never forgave them, even though everyone can see now that the Iraq War was an unforgivable crime.
(Milquetoast liberals are also waging a sustained campaign to blot out our collective memory of how much abuse Asians and LGB people received until very recently. The recasting of society’s lowest-status people as “privileged” is another one of the treats of 2020-21 progressive discourse.)
The current liberal twitter progressive woke SJW zeitgeist is the absolute worst. How the ACLU of all outfits can cast its lot in with this movement is unforgivable and reprehensible. One of the massive failures of American schooling has been the production of 'citizens' who can't think on their own, and use Judd to form opinions for them. Online snark and idiodic "Republican / Orange Man Bad" are taken as edgy opinions by left leaning clods.
At this point I'm wondering how long it can all last. With Globalist $$ behind it, we've got a few more years of this stuff. They're obviously not beholden to having to sell product.
Honestly I wasn't excited about reading an attack on a guy I've never once in my lifetime heard of, but once I started, I found it very amusing. I remember those days quite well. I would say it's surprising that Legum would make such a silly comment -- except it's par for the course in these days of say-anything-truth-and-logic-be-damned.
I got a kick out of Krugman's comparison. Instead of the obvious comparison to the burning of Beatles records after John Lennon's remarks comparing the Beatles' popularity to that of Christ, Krugman went straight to the Nazis.
Leftist “journos” contextualizing the past in an effort to justify their flip-flop on the 1st Amendment never gets old. Thank you for calling it out, Michael.
Comparing the Dixie Chicks getting cancelled to what the Legums of today do for sport is a false equivalency. Conservatives lost it over Maines' comment because that was one of their own speaking out against one of their own. It was a case of not knowing *their own* audience, biting the hands that fed them (though apparently they continued to prosper). Country music then was overwhelmingly conservative, both on the performing and the consuming sides. It's not like conservatives sought to cancel everyone that challenged their politics. They haven't had that kind of power in my life time. They sought to kick a heretic out of their club. That's a very different kind of "cancelling" than what the left does now. Today's cancel culture isn't limited to maintaining purity in your own clique, being pissed off that someone you give money to, someone you thought was in your tribe, is criticizing your politics and your king. It's about silencing dissent anywhere. The Dixie Chicks example itself is a decoy. Cite me an example where conservatives torpedoed the career of a Cardi B, or got a Legum kicked off Twitter, then we're talking.