I Was a Heretic at the New York Times

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tom-cotton-new-york-times/677546/

by nsoonhui • 2 years ago

57 67 2 years ago

I don't believe the clicking thing but then I guess various subcultures have their own idiosyncrasies, and I haven't been in the U.S for a long time - maybe they have some new habits.

thinkingemote• 2 years ago

It's weird but "People started snapping their fingers in acclamation." is a real thing as clapping with hands may harm people through for example making loud noises . It was given in the article as an early example of the idiosyncratic state that the author was working in.

It's not a subculture, it's regular corporate Human Resources behaviour in a few places. In my opinion it's often a symptom of something wrong rather than a mindful remedy.

On it's own clicking fingers can be good especially if some in the audience really do have trouble - for example a group meeting of certain sufferers. Most people would encounter it as part of a range of other idiosyncratic symbols and activities. It has become something that is done by default than something done specially.

Going further, it's different from a subculture. It becomes more than something that might be harmless but a kind of religious activity - something that both protects against evil people who are against them and something that promotes group unity within by participating.

ajkjk3• 2 years ago

I don't think it's got anything to do with loud noises. I think it's (roughly) a hippie culture thing? Or maybe just a sort of hippie-infused west-coast liberal culture. I'm not really sure but that's triangulating: the first people I knew who did it were either from California or in backpacking / outdoorsy communities (or more woo stuff: ecstatic dance and astrology types). It was surprising at the time but has gotten a lot more common since then.

UberFly• 2 years ago

Believe it. It's a super cringy clapping replacement. It feels like a cult revival when it happens around you.

defrost• 2 years ago

FWiW:

    “Snapping is not new, but it is newly resurgent,” said Daniel Gallant, the executive director of Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side. The practice, he said, dates to the heyday of the beatnik poets, who would gather in coffeehouses and at hootenannies to perform poems laced with cultural rebellion and political activism. (It has also long been popular in bastions of counter-counterculture: sorority houses. Some historians say snapping was used in the days of the Roman Empire as well.)

~ Why Snapping Is the New Clapping (2015)

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/fashion/snapping-new-clap...

Culture section of the ... New York Times ( YMMV )

bryanrasmussen4• 2 years ago

ok, so it came along after I left. Although I was familiar with the snapping from beatniks and I think I saw it in some comedy show which I figured was just some cringey stuff.

archagon4• 2 years ago

We did it when I lived in student co-ops back in 2009.

verticalscaler5• 2 years ago

You're essentially calling this person a liar for sharing an anecdote.

Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it?

With a modicum of effort you can indeed corroborate that this happened - I hope you do so - but I'm more curios about the knee jerk reaction.

You clearly don't want it to be real and simultanously you left open the possibility that it is a thing you aren't familiar with. But first and foremost you called him a liar. This is worthy of further rumination.

kergonath4• 2 years ago

Why are you so aggressive? They did not call the author a liar, just said that a specific point was unbelievable. Which it is for some people; this behaviour is completely alien to me for example.

Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it?

Nobody mentioned any kind of discomfort, merely bewilderment. You are tearing down a strawman you built based on a very uncharitable reading of a 1-sentence comment. That sentence even mentioned the author being a cultural outsider.

but I'm more curios about the knee jerk reaction.

I am more curious about why you chose to escalate so quickly instead of taking this as an opportunity to discuss different viewpoints and experiences. Also, why you are so quick to attribute malice on such a flimsy basis.

This is worthy of further rumination.

You present yourself as a model of cultural understanding (because clearly your attitude is better and one we should emulate), but you do sound a bit like a member of a cult. This is also worthy of some rumination.

bryanrasmussen4• 2 years ago

since I lived in the U.S a long time and never experienced this snapping thing I felt what, no way, this is crazy. I mean sure if I went to a meeting of American Moonies and they started snapping I'd think wow that is what this subculture does, but I expected that the behavior of the NYT was still in the range of what I remembered as being normal.

This is actually a common thing when you have lived in a place for a good amount of time and then leave, but keep awareness of the general cultural and political exports, you feel you know that society and what is it like but you perhaps do not know as well as you think you do.

Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it?

People often make statements about what societies are like in order to paint them in a particular way for rhetorical or propaganda purposes. I have a lot of experience seeing that about cultures I am familiar with, so when I see something that seems quite so absurd as this did to me about something that I feel I should know, it inspires me not to believe it.

Evidently you have never had a similar experience.

on edit: grammar fix, 2nd edit, changed as "well as you do" to "as well as you think you do"

Turing_Machine4• 2 years ago

You're essentially calling this person a liar for sharing an anecdote.

Nonsense. If I share something I read in the newspaper, and you find out that it's not true, that doesn't make me a "liar". Gullible, perhaps, but not a liar.

jl62• 2 years ago

I assumed it was a well-intentioned alternative to loud clapping to help avoid distressing neurodivergent people, or, if there are no neurodivergent people in the room, to show solidarity with them, or, if solidarity was never in question, to help promote the general concept of allyship, and, helpfully, if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out.

oefrha• 2 years ago

if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out.

Lovely, clapping is now “fascist”. As ridiculous as it sounds, I can’t even tell if this is satire because I’ve met people who seem to genuinely believe that making an okay sign means I’m KKK or something. I’d rather starve on the street than work with a group of people who can blurt out the parent comment with a straight face.

Turing_Machine4• 2 years ago

It's not "well-intentioned" at all.

The objective is to make you obey. That's it. That's the whole reason.

The folderol about "neuro-divergent people" is just a thin gloss of claimed virtue intended to disguise the actual goal.

Do they have any actual evidence that "neuro-divergent people" suffer a greater degree of trauma from clapping than finger-snapping? No, they don't. Sure, there might be a "neuro-divergent" person, or even more than one, who finds clapping disturbing, but that says nothing at all about the general case.

if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out.

Or witches, perhaps. The terminology changes over the years, but the tactics remain the same. The people who get out the torches and pitchforks because someone clapped his hands are exactly the same type of people who used to lynch blacks, burn harmless old ladies as witches, and throw Jews down wells. Exactly.

They do it because they enjoy hurting people, and have found a cover story that allows them to do it under an illusion of virtue. You complain because we burned Mrs. Johnson? Well, then you must be pro-Satan!

jbullock35• 2 years ago

The Washington Post's media critic found corroboration from other sources. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39579136#39579664.

ibotty• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240302082002/https://www.theat...

bloopernova• 2 years ago

"On January 6, 2021, few people at The New York Times remarked on the fact that liberals were cheering on the deployment of National Guardsmen to stop rioting at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the very thing Tom Cotton had advocated."

People burning police cars and a police station in Portland after a man is killed by police, at a time when opinion of police is very low.

Vs.

People invading the US Capitol building during the ratification of the presidential election, at the behest of the losing candidate, while a gallows was erected outside.

Those 2 situations are very different. It's disingenuous or dishonest to say otherwise.

This piece talks a lot about how biased the author's coworkers were, but says nothing of his own biases. The USA isn't going to heal until conservatives reject christian nationalism and instead embrace compromise.

kergonath4• 2 years ago

Exactly. The thing is, most people don’t have any problem with the existence of the police, which is why the “defund” message does not work well in practice. Most people understand that mechanisms to limit crime are useful. The problem is when the role of the police is not to do that, but instead enforce prejudice, harm and harass specific categories of people.

newsclues2• 2 years ago

My understanding is that the goal of defunding the police is to force out the current police and allow for a takeover.

orwin• 2 years ago

The issue with police in all western countries is the same. They do a lot of different stuff, often badly. And a management issue in France. We have specialized, anti-riot police that can defuse situations and protect demonstrations. And we have different anti-'crime' police who also get called during demonstration, envenimate the situation half the time and beat people up, break their hand and pierce their eyes. Weirdly, no one from the part of police formed to handle street protests is there.

Then come the politic/management part: the men who handle deployments and plans aren't formed either. They're sometimes ex-police (criminal or intervention, Swat-like), but often they're politicians and administrators, and never were on the street.

That's how bad elements destroy an institution (a few bad apple rot the whole basket is the English idiom?) : poor formation, poor oversight, poor management let them thrive.

kcplate7• 2 years ago

Two things that I believe would dramatically reform policing in the US.

- Eliminate qualified immunity so it’s not the default guiding principle to police interactions

- Find ways to identify and weed out the bully personality types that find themselves drawn into the vocation. Zero tolerance policies that immediately eliminate officers who engage in that type of behavior and tactics.

barry-cotter2• 2 years ago

Bravo, excellently done satire. The last line really took it over the top to laugh out loud territory.

KevinMS• 2 years ago

while a gallows was erected outside

It wasn't real. It was a non-functional prop, midget size, with no hole in the platform, and the noose was a rope wrapped around a water bottle to make it look more real. Maybe you should examine the bias bubble you find yourself in.

silverquiet• 2 years ago

Why do you think they built it then?

lll-o-lll• 2 years ago

This is interesting, but hardly surprising. Many, many years ago, when Wikipedia was young, I remember commenting that the usefulness of Wikipedia was inversely proportional to the controversy of the content. With anything controversial in any way (the most venomous snake!), an article would go one of two ways. Complete bias towards one side or the other, with no mention of the opposing view, or ultimate beige - removal of anything that could be considered controversial by either side. Ultimately, the article would become useless, but the arguing in the discussion was often insightful.

Mainstream media has become like Wikipedia. Captured by ideology, beholden to power, but does not serve you or me.

kergonath4• 2 years ago

Ultimately, the article would become useless, but the arguing in the discussion was often insightful.

At least we can see the discussions between editors. This is a lot more transparency than what we have from newspapers.

Scoundreller• 2 years ago

And newspapers will publish and later edit their articles as they go without any revision history. I’ve seen 180s as rumours turn out to be incorrect.

And fun RTFA responses on early Reddit comments re: critical details that got added later.

Best you’ll get is a “last updated on ______”.

mwenge• 2 years ago

"Doesn’t all of this talk of ‘voter suppression’ on the left sound similar to charges of ‘voter fraud’ on the right?”

The exact moment you can stop taking him seriously.

kcplate7• 2 years ago

To me, that is exactly the kind of challenging question that a journalist or editorial writer should be asking and answering. You have two opposing sides essentially accusing the other of disenfranchising votes using different mechanisms.

atmavatar• 2 years ago

And in a vacuum, you'd be right.

However, despite all the crowing about voter fraud, there's yet to be produced any evidence of voter fraud rising to even within a few orders of magnitude required to change an election. While there's no such thing as perfect security, a single-digit number of fraudulent votes in districts (or even whole states) accounting for hundreds of thousands to millions of votes is about as good as you can hope for.

On the other hand, voter suppression is being done quite brazenly out in the open -- the most notorious of which includes reducing the number of and moving the locations of polling stations in districts where the "wrong" people vote, resulting in many of them having to to wait hours to vote and some even having to travel long distances to get there.

In that context, treating the two as equal, opposing concerns is nothing short of propaganda.

fmajid2• 2 years ago

Tom Cotton is a former military officer and attorney, he knew exactly what “no quarter” means, it is explicitly called out as a war crime in the Geneva Conventions. To accept that he misspoke or meant something else is the height of bad faith.

I’m surprised The Atlantic published this self-serving tripe that will be used to discredit future well-deserved criticism of the NYT’s policies as sour grapes

Turing_Machine4• 2 years ago

Tom Cotton is a former military officer and attorney, he knew exactly what “no quarter” means, it is explicitly called out as a war crime in the Geneva Conventions.

Rioters and looters have nothing to do with the Geneva Conventions. For one, that is not even a bona fide combat situation. For another, they don't meet the definition of "lawful combatants" because they don't typically wear "uniforms or other insignia recognizable at a distance". No uniform = no POW rights under the Geneva Conventions. Unlawful combatants can be executed on the spot with no trial or any other formalities.

Now, one could make a decent argument that the so-called "Black Bloc" groups qualify, because they do wear outfits that might be characterized as uniforms if you squint at them hard enough. They should at least get the benefit of the doubt, IMO.

But random rioters and looters? It is utterly disingenuous to suggest that the Geneva Conventions even apply in that situation. Swiping iPads and Air Jordans are not the actions of lawful combatants. In fact, looting itself is explicitly called out as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Someone here isn't familiar with the Geneva Conventions, but it's not Cotton.

leereeves2• 2 years ago

True, but irrelevant. It's disingenuous to suggest that Tom Cotton was suggesting mass murder of protestors. (And if he was, then it would certainly be illegal under US murder laws, not the Geneva Convention.)

Someone here and many people at the Times were clearly trying to put the worst possible spin on a figurative expression.

AlexandrB3• 2 years ago

I found it interesting. Some of this stuff is crazy for a journalist to say:

Rachel Abrams, one of Lee’s co-authors on the article, had been a vocal internal critic of Cotton’s op-ed. “How can they be sending us emails telling us they’re keeping us safe and care about our physical and mental well-being and then publish this,” she had posted on Slack, later adding, “I think it’s good that a lot of us will put our names on a strong condemnation.”

This reads like the equivalent of a firefighter complaining that his employer is endangering him by sending him into burning buildings. Regardless of what the NYT publishes, this was an honestly held opinion of Tom Cotton's. Not publishing it doesn't change what Tom Cotton thinks nor what kind of response he would advocate for in congress.

tim333• 2 years ago

I think it's reasonable to assume he meant the dictionary definition.

Words don't have just one meaning - it depends on context and the like.

xracy3• 2 years ago

I don't know many people who read the dictionary definition of things. I think the wikipedia definition feels much more likely. See my other comment for why I don't think it's "reasonable to assume" what he meant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_quarter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)

xracy3• 2 years ago

Felt like a pretty clear dog-whistle to me. Especially since the rest of the behavior around it looks like a dog-whistle as well.

"How could you say it means this thing. I've never heard of that thing before! I meant it in this other way!"

But also the clarification gives away the game: "If you say that someone was given no quarter, you mean that they were not treated kindly by someone who had power or control over them." <- Even this could still refer to the war crime.

The original tweet was saying "No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters."

Who would be the person that had "power or control" over people who don't recognize your authority? He has to be viewing them as military combatants, in which case he clearly meant it as the war crime, but ran to the other definition in the hopes it would cover it up.

aredox• 2 years ago

Another dead cat to distract from much problematic problems - like how the NYT never reformed after the WMD fiasco of the Iraq war, or how they overcorrect towards conservatives.

And many here take the bait, spending time wondering about useless details like the finger snapping (haven't you heard the IETF votes by humming?).

Meanwhile, supreme courts begin adjudicating against reproductive rights, first against abortion, now against IVF, and the CPAC denies welcoming Nazis, trumpists openly speak about ending democracy and imposing a theocracy... But hey, this guy was screamed on for his tastes on sandwiches, and they all snapped fingers at him, so they're as bad, aren't they?

AlexandrB3• 2 years ago

Meanwhile, supreme courts begin adjudicating against reproductive rights, first against abortion, now against IVF

I think people need to demand better from their representatives, elected and otherwise. These moves are not a surprise. Republican institutions have been openly working for decades towards this goal - for example the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp has kids praying for "righteous judges" at their creepy summer camp. Instead of taking this threat seriously the Democrats had supreme court justices grandstanding so their replacement could be nominated by the first woman president[1]. Risking the welfare of those whose rights you claim to defend for what amounts to a PR stunt is pretty despicable and yet RBG continues to be revered by many.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/magazine/ginsburg-success...

h2odragon• 2 years ago

Another perspective: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/if-you-cant-see-that-adam...

I know this didn’t happen. How do I know? I just know. The problem was, Rubenstein had contemporaneously told a number of people about the sandwich event, including Levine and Bari Weiss, and they started coming forward to say so.

kcplate7• 2 years ago

I don’t know if that sandwich story was true, but judging from my own experiences in the weird politics of divisive chicken sandwiches it would not surprise me if it was true.

xracy3• 2 years ago

Damn, gets Michael Hobbes with the throw-away:

"Michael Hobbes, who makes a very good living as a professional debunker despite having an accuracy batting average about equal to what my batting average would be in an actual Major League Baseball game."

This is exactly the kind of statement I would love to see fact-checked by Michael Hobbes (or someone else).

Also, the article you shared is not another perspective, it's a deep dive into whether or not the sandwich anecdote at the beginning happened. It pretty much accepts the entire rest of the article, and then goes deep on the most throw-away piece of the entire piece.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

https://www.theatlantic.com/facebook-instant/article/677546/

Never noticed "Facebook Instant Article" URLs before, TBH. In the text-only browser I use, this "simpler HTML" reminds me of Google's AMP (which I rarely see anymore). Like AMP, it looks good in this no JS, no CSS, no auto-loading of resources, 1.2 MiB static binary web browser.

I Was a Heretic at the New York Times

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