She has enough money that if she wants to be heard she can literally print her opinion and pay people to stuff it in everyones postbox. If she as much as posts a long form article on her blog millions will read it. Her voice is not supressed in any way. If she wants to publish a book, she rings up a publishing house and they will publish it for her. This is what people mean when they say that she “cannot be canceled”.
> The amount of front page sardonic vitriol about her by ostensibly 'respectable' publications is very directly translated into hesitancy on every popular front
That is one reading. The other reading is that she used her considerable reach to clearly, and articulately express reprehensible thoughts. People have seen and read these thoughts and decided that they don’t want to be associated with her. As it is their right.
How do you know that your reading is right and mine is wrong?
I agree with you about the potency of his credentials; lesser academics have been driven out for much smaller roles in the Epstein saga.
Epstein was an awful person who did awful things and should have spent the rest of his life in prison. But that doesn't mean that every specific attempt to put him in prison was legally sound, and it doesn't mean that anyone whose actions contributed to that specific attempt's failure is somehow complicit in Epstein's evils.
It seems to me that it's a positively good thing that when someone is accused of something awful, they can still get vigorous legal representation, and that the people providing that vigorous legal representation can solicit opinions from experts that they hope will back them up. Because 1. sometimes people who are accused of awful things turn out not to have done them, and 2. when they did do them we want the legal proceedings establishing that they did to be as watertight as possible.
In this particular case, the issue wasn't "did Epstein do X or not?" but "are the things Epstein did covered by this specific law or not?". It seems that they weren't. Again, I think it's a positively good thing that when someone is accused of something awful we only get to use a law against them if that law really covers what they did. Because if there isn't a general principle that you only get punished for things that are actually against the actual law then what we have isn't laws, it's excuses for the powerful to punish whoever they feel like punishing.
To be clear, it looks as fishy as all hell to me that Epstein didn't get a much harsher sentence in the 2006-2008 case. It looks, in fact, like some sort of corruption or cover-up. But in that case, I don't see how Pinker's letter had anything much to do with it. And, again, so far as I can tell what Pinker wrote was simply correct, and when he wrote it he didn't know it was for Epstein's case.
"Appeared in Epstein's flight logs" = "went on his plane to a TED meeting in 2002", and "has been photographed socializing with him" = "was at a few parties where Epstein 'socialized' with everyone famous he could find", so far as I can tell. From Pinker's account -- which obviously might be self-serving -- they disliked one another. What do you think Pinker did that he could reasonably have been expected not to do, given the information available to him at the time?
Celebrities of various kinds interact with each other, that's how that works.
If you were invited to a conference and the CEO invited you on his plane because you had something interesting to say, and 10 years later we find he was a rapist, do we cancel you?
If you're going to tell me that Pinker was 'on rape island sleeping with teens girls' - then obviously that's another matter, cancel away, but as far as I know that's not the case.
This is exactly the kind of petty, toxic, vindictive posturing exemplary of bad cancel culture.
You're making my case for me.
Pinker is absolutely, unconditionally a very reasonable and thoughtful person, who in absolutely no way shape or form should be contemplated for cancellation or even marginalisation.
He's a polite, thoughtful, conscientious guy with barely objectionable opinions, not only that, he's pretty smart and actually contributes to discussions.
He's maybe the last person on earth we want to cancel - but they have attempted to cancel him anyhow.
Pinker is the ultimate case of 'Cancel Culture is Insane'.
Epstein is perhaps the most obvious case of 'Legit Cancel Culture' - but we didn't need the modern form of Cancel Culture to cancel him. Child Rapists tend to be excluded from society without needing to argue about it.
That 'someone was photographed with Epstein' just isn't hugely material. People socialise, and take photos with one another. That's how that works.
This is a bit flawed, essentially 'straw man' argument in the grand scheme.
While there might be good reason to critique the NYT article, the response I think missed the bigger point.
Nobody is really making the argument that speech isn't going to have consequences.
The 'Cancel Culture Does not Exist' or 'This Is Not A 1st Amendment Issue' arguments are already tired, empty canards.
The awful failure of the authors argument are clearly evident in his dismissal of the Harper's Magazine moment - he argues 'nobody bothers to define cancel culture' etc. which is bullshit.
Stephen Pinker, one of the Harper's signatories, faced concerted and vicious attempt at 'cancellation' of some of his positions and credentials when he dared to voice the heretic idea along the lines that policing in America is largely much more heavy handed than eslewehere, and that this is the fundamental issues, less so race. God forbid (!).
Thankfully, Stephen Pinker has enough credentials to hold off the cancellers.
JK Rowling is another good pop culture example. People lament that 'she's a billionaire and can't be cancelled' again which is not true. The amount of front page sardonic vitriol about her by ostensibly 'respectable' publications is very directly translated into hesitancy on every popular front: movie deals, book deals, actors fear of 'being in the out club' if they appear in a film based upon her book etc. Her 'cancellation' can be literally be measured in dollars.
It's pernicious specifically because the vast majority of participants actually are probably not bothered entirely by Rowling or Pinker comments - but that the 'fear of association' created by the 'Cancel Screamers' creates a chilling effect on speech and participation.
Ergo the 'consequence' of speech is not legitimate: people are not 'running from Rowling' because of what they think of her positions, they are running from her because of what others might think of them.
I'll step back my argument an inch and admit that there are actually nutbars (of all stripes) who probably believe they can 'say whatever, whenever' - 1 minute on Twitter will remind us of that, however there's a gigantic grey are of obvious areas of public cancellation.