Posted on 02/11/2021 11:18:39 PM PST by knighthawk
The New York Times has killed a column by Bret Stephens that took issue with the paper's handling of the resignation a star health reporter over his use of the N-Word.
Pulitzer-winning Stephens wrote to colleagues Thursday about his piece focusing on the Donald McNeil Jr. saga. He said: 'If you're wondering why it wasn't in the paper, it's because AG Sulzberger spiked it.'
Sulzberger is the chairman of The New York Times Company and the publisher of The New York Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Spikey” Sulzberger...
Spectacular story.
As near as I can tell, on the trip in question, McNeil was talking “about” that word. So he wasn’t using it to describe anyone, he was talking in the abstract about the word itself and what using it connotes. So in the course of that discussion he used the word and the high school (?) children he was trying to have the conversation with freaked out on him.
That’s why the context matters. I think a lot of people hear that “he used THE word” and just assume that he called someone that with hostility. But that is not what happened.
Mighty niggardly of Sulzberger.
The Left destroys people because they can. It’s like giving a gun to a two-year-old. I have seen people fired because they were accused of saying something racial. One day the HR manager, who had read all of my novels and liked me, slunk into my cube at work and sat in my guest chair. He leaned forward and whispered that I had been accused by a black employee of “incorrect political thinking.” I laughed, but he assured me this was dead serious. He was referencing a conversation where neither of us raised our voices. The tech was describing his time in the Middle East and the circumscized women he “met.” I opined that when they come to the United States that should be a banned practice. Wide-eyed he said something like, But that’s their culture. You can’t stop that. I said then we can agree to disagree.
The HR manager suggested I never speak to the tech again. I think the implication was he could let this one complaint slide but not a second one. I discussed this with other engineers and some said that they already limited their exposure to employees they didn’t know because (the engineers) could be fired for virtually no reason. Between then and when I was eventually laid off, I never spoke to anyone I did not know. This prevented me from passing on useful knowledge which I had often done in the past. On the larger scale, imagine what damage allowing a two-year-old with a gun has done to companies across the spectrum.
The problem with this kind of power is; power is no fun if you don’t use it.
I’ve had to warn several people at work about using “banned” words. Programmers generally don’t keep up with HR stuff.
Yes, and as soon as you CAN use it to your advantage, the temptation will be irresistible (for some people). “You mean all I have to to get rid of this guy who I want gone (because I want his job, or I want to hire my friend for his job, or I just don’t like the color of his skin, whatever) is to use this power? Done!”
“Programmers generally don’t keep up with HR stuff.”
The problem is that even the Left can’t keep up with what is “offensive” as it constantly changes. The writer woman who Tweeted that she was in tears over Biden’s arrival in Washington, as an example. It seemed shameless virtue signaling to me, but she was fired for some imagined transgression against the Left. I am sure that she, and most Leftists were shocked. (Not that they’ll reevaluate what they do and why they do it.)
Older political commissars under the Stalinist regime warned the new commissars to say as little as possible. This was because something that was okay today, perhaps even policy, could get them executed tomorrow.
The original French revolutionists were all eventually executed for imagined transgressions. We have had a revolution and the communists are in charge. They will eventually fall upon one another. The problem I see is they will harm the rest of us in the process of destroying each other. Just moving “refugees” into our communities alone will provide disruption and danger for decades to come. And, keeping us in danger is their intent. That way we will turn to them to protect us from the problems they caused. Being on the losing side of any conflict is typically fatal in one way or another.
Bret Stephens is a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer who was hired by the New York Times as an “enlightened” conservative. Any person who starts out as a conservative should realize that you can never become enlightened enough without a lobotomy.
How about variable names.
Can be longer now, but used to be what, 6 or 8 characters like in Fortran?
I’ll bet there are a LOT of offensive abbreviations in that code.
As I recall, prior to Trump he wasn’t so bad. Thinking back about it, Trump really raised our expectations.
The worst I have done is throw the message “Job XXXXX made a stinkie” in WFL when a compile failed. My most common variable name is an integer called V_CT
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