Unsurprising considering Mills is a radio pro, but this is a very auspicious start to Katie’s Singal parenthood of the podcast. Excellent episode, and one that’s likely to net some new subscribers.
People who are curious and question orthodoxies are Good, Actually, regardless of what those orthodoxies are! We need more journalists like Andy Mills.
Also: WNYC are boring weenies, I’ve said it. And there’s a lot of jealousy out there turning people into petty whiners, which is unsurprising in a field like
journalism where the prestigious and well-paying positions are in ever-shorter supply.
So apparently Andy's co-workers and "friends" weren't comfortable with some of his behavior and... decided the best way to handle it was through goddamn HR? What utterly spineless buffoons.
I get it, I'm conflict-adverse, but HR are every employee's enemy! You call them as a last resort!
It is exciting. I've moved a million times so I'm used to that, but I've never lived anywhere near a city bigger than 100k. I'm currently in a small town. My tribe doesn't exist around here and I gotta meet more people. A Texas city, almost certainly a Dallas suburb. or Boise.
What’s obnoxious is the pile-on. Obviously the drink throwing crossed a line, but the dredging up of every real and imagined grievance to make it look like a pattern is kinda pathetic.
I agree in general, but there was a point in his narrative where I could imagine being that woman. I've had that kind of thing happen, the dude is touching you, you're just CRINGING and wishing he'd stop, there's a bunch of other people there and if say "hey, get your hands off me", you're going to look like a bitch. It's awkward AF.
Absolutely! As a woman who has been in that position many times, I completely agree. At that point in the story I was like, hmmm, don’t know if I’m going to be able to hang. But then, I thought he really took responsibility for his actions and was extremely thoughtful about it all. As a teacher in a school with lots of boarding students, I have so often seen these misunderstandings arising from cultural differences (which can be regional within the US, or international), and often people truly don’t know how they are being perceived. The fact that he realized that, owned it, and made amends is admirable…and ultimately, isn’t that the goal of any liberal society? For people to communicate, evolve, and change? I don’t understand this mindset that people have to be perfect from day 1 and just “know” how to behave in any milieu. That’s a privilege afforded to a select few in any society.
P.S. I also believe that people can do things that are wrong and then change. As a teacher I see it all the time. It’s just so depressing and cynical to be like, this person messed up one time at age thirty something…and no matter what they do, or learn, or how they try to grow or change, now they should be cast out of their job and all they love. Makes no sense.
Yeah I think the rest of the accusations were BS but a back rub in a meeting does seem pretty unprofessional and would warrant an HR response in any large company. Drink on the head though is just dumb, though, I can’t believe that woman went to HR about it. Some people just really hold a grudge I guess.
There are A LOT of reasons to hate HR. But I will always remember one job I had they absolutely ruined.
We had a department where we worked nights but the work came in very sporadically/seasonally. But when it did come they wanted it done ASAP, like hours at most. So many nights you literally are just sitting there doing nothing all night waiting for work (if it wasn’t the busy season with big overtime).
But the department itself was highly profitable. So they basically let us do whatever. So people browsed websites, played catch in the parking lot, had little parties (no drinking), and stuff like that. But if work came in we were all on station (it was high security so they didn’t let us remote work).
Anyway the company is going through an unprofitable stretch, and so they send HR out to improve the functioning of all the departments.
Now ours wasn’t losing money or gambling it away on stupid house market financial manipulations, nope just chugging along making great money.
But still HR suggested they turn off our internet access. Then we had to stay at our desks. Ok super annoying, people are real mad and productivity goes down a lot, but there is a couple months of people reading tons of books during downtime.
Well then they decide that isn’t ok, so people start doing audiobooks and podcasts and music. Nope that isn’t ok either.
So we literally most nights on the night shift were expected to just sit at our desks silently, with no internet access (this is pre-smartphone) and no nothing and stare at our monitors, sometimes for HOURS.
All because HR was mad about some shit that didn’t have anything to do with our department or night work.
Pretty much destroyed that department and most everyone good quit including their star employee me about a week after they said we couldn’t even listen to music.
If you got rid of half the lawyers and HR people in the world it would be a vastly better place.
In this instance it sounds like HR approached his colleagues after the drink pouring incident. That seems reasonable to me. Pouring the drink really ought to have gotten him fired. That was unacceptable. Even he acknowledges it.
As a bearded guy from a small town that follows the One True and Correct PNW Logging Culture everything about the weird, cold, degenerate customs of big city people in this episode spoke strongly to me. When I went to college I genuinely felt like people in cities had no actual friends, that they were all very Machiavellian and unfeeling, and that they had all gone crazy from being stacked on top of each other like cord wood.
I no longer quite feel this way, but whenever someone expresses a feeling to me that sounds totally crazy, I have to remind myself of how totally and completely different cultures can be. I’m probably one of the weirder people here in this comments section, but I’m actually one of the sanest and most boring people from where I come from.
It's also so striking how oblivious the NYC people are about "othering" people that they look down on. The same people obsessed witch micro aggressions treated Mill's religious background so disrespectfully. They dismiss regional language differences yet consider themselves the arbiters of which language is allowed.
I think that at the heart of these dust-ups are one or two psychopaths who are professionally jealous and strategically (and gleefully!) tear people down. They are aided by gutless managers, feckless virtue signalers, fearful bystanders.
Spot on. Relatedly, I can guarantee you that the same people telling Mills to keep quiet about his misgivings over the term "people of color" had never heard it themselves 5-10 years before they decided it was the correct term to use. These language games are fashions among overeducated people, and Mills was offering them a valuable insight into how the show might alienate its normie listeners. Too bad no one had the ears to hear what he was saying.
Right!? And maybe I’m wrong and shit has changed but I’d bet money that if she had thrown her drink in his face, if there was any comment other than laughter, it would’ve been, “what did you do to her?”
I have to agree. In my “gen x” time, if someone got a drink of water/beer thrown on them in a bar, they would get about two weeks of mileage out of the story, telling everyone in their circle of friends about it. Getting doused was almost a point of pride, or at least just a good story to tell.
Most people would laugh when hearing the story, with a “what the fucked happened?” between giggles.
After two weeks, people would ask “are you still telling that story? Jeeze. Move on.”
This reminds me of when at 19 I was arguing with my girlfriend very vociferously (who had cheated on me with my best friend (they went to the same college in a different town than me) and who I did forgive later in this same argument), and got super mad and flicked about a ounce or two of water at her out of a plastic water bottle. Not a whole bottle, just a splash. Well her college friends all took at as a sign that I was bound to beat the shit out of her and kill her some day. Literally one super nonviolent expression of anger during a heated argument. Specifically chosen because it couldn’t possibly hurt her. “Guaranteed future abuser”. Literally the most “violent” thing I have done in a relationship in 42 years.
It is pathetic to let an old, minor, ultimately meaningless grievance gain the status of a trauma and continue to have so much control over your life years after the fact. You need to move on with your life, or else you need therapy. Instead, social media offers hugboxes and people never have to move on. Jealousy and scrambling for a shrinking pool of career slots explains so much of this.
If someone I knew poured water on me I don’t know how I’d ever recover from that, personally. I think she’s brave to face her trauma head on like this. Even just stepping into a shower is essentially a daily nightmare. Water is frightening.
What evidence do you have that the victim of the drink-pouring "let an old, minor, ultimately meaningless grievance gain the status of a trauma and continue to have so much control over [her] life years after the fact"? I would think the opposite, given that she basically did nothing with the story for years and only brought it up when Mills became a news item for unrelated reasons. That's totally consistent with something being buried deep in your long-term memory before being brought back to mind by current events.
Most of her twitter feed appears to be about radio broadcasting, spiders and lesbians. None of it even remotely suggests that this incident is "controlling" her life.
In college, a friend of mine (male) threw a glass of water in my face (female) because of some comment I had made. General consensus is that I was the asshole, and he is now one of my oldest friends. That's the late 90's for you!
Lol Huh? No, he poured a drink on her. The point being if you reverse the scenario no one would care except to wonder what he’d done to deserve the dousing.
You don’t know that. Also, it didn’t happen so I don’t see why we’re inventing that scenario to be mad at. It is not what happened. There is no “huh” here.
I will say that policing language seems to be sorta universal to some extent. Where I was raised people told me not to say the "lords name in vain". I also got in trouble arguing for vegetarianism saying there wasn't a difference in killing a dog vs a cow. Now where I live I have to use "correct" pronouns among a laundry list of other things. It's all so tiresome.
It's like we're biologically beholden to needing forbidden language. Who fucking knows why. Tribal signaling, I guess. So tiresome, indeed. I hate when people tell other people how to talk.
It’s an industry thing too. People in Hollywood for the most part look down at most people outside of Hollywood. Especially parts of the country they’ve never been. Phrased differently there’s a suspicion of the audiences they’re making TV for.
Fellow Texan agrees but let's be honest...it's a pretty cool mixture of things in our state that you don't get everywhere else! Outsiders really are just hating!
All powerful cultures force other cultures to conform to their preferences but I have always had a hard eye-roll around how the coastal culture wraps that up in “Everyone needs to respect everyone else’s culture, and it just so happens to be the case that everyone else’s culture is my culture.”
As someone who moved to NYC in 1980 and lived there until 1997, it's also amazing how many "New Yorkers" are from other places in America as well as other countries. There was a lot of jealousy and uber competitiveness in places where I worked. Very easy to get sucked into at least some of the elitism. But I also find that down south where I live now, there's just another form of elitism at work. Like Andy I, too, have made it a priority to understand human nature.
I’ve begun to think a huge part of all problems of these last 10 years are as you point out, psychopaths and those who should know better in the organizations being too cowardly to do anything.
When that happens, the entire institution effectively begins to act psychopathically.
"As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do." (Pamela Paul).
Wow. Sea-change? Reader responses running 10 to 1 in favor of reality. (Wonder if we're going to get another staff revolt on this: "These words are causing GENOCIDE!. Putting staff in DANGER!," etc., etc. I think we may be past that point. We'll see...)
Thank God for audience capture in this case. The NY Times readers are liberals who do not like identity politics and you see this when you sort comments by Reader Picks. The readers actually saved them from their staffers and Pamela Paul is management's big middle finger to those staffers.
Yep. Actually, reader response is running more like 20 to 1 in favor of reality. I seen this brewing for the last 6 months, but today's responses are pretty amazing...
This could be a massive assumption on my part, but I’m guessing that the staffers who drove the cultural change at the Times were largely childless, and they had a massive blind spot regarding how strongly parents will go to the mat to protect their children, and how viscerally they will react to the thought of people bypassing them on decisions about their children’s health. The suggestion that you as a parent are not an expert on your own child is deeply, deeply disturbing, and I think that even if people can “get” that without having children of their own, it escalates to a whole other level once that idea of a child is living and breathing in front of you. This is your flesh and blood, and they are going through a mental health crisis that you want nothing more than to resolve - and people tell you that surgery and hormones are the only way or else you’re a bigot? Normal people don’t find that logical or acceptable at all and that’s not surprising!
It’s one of those things where you can either get the credit or have the impact but you probably can’t get both, you need to let people think they came up with it themselves for them to really buy in.
That was a good article. Not sure what Jessie wants to write his book for. Seems this summarized everything.
It was a little frustrating reading the constant jabs at how evil those bad republicans are for trying to prevent gender "care" for minors. I'm not really sure why I'm supposed to believe that's a bad thing given what this article is saying. All the commenters are saying how they don't support transitioning kids but then will decry the transphobic right wing for trying to prevent that? I don't get it. Maybe their motivations are bad but the result is still the same. Shouldn't we be able to support policies regardless of their motivations?
You're "not sure why you're supposed to believe" that "this treatment isn't right for everyone" is distinguishable from "this treatment should be banned by the government for anyone"?
Is government responding though because medical organizations are not self correcting in light of all the evidence? Like they did in many European countries.
Like you cannot possibly be so naive as to think that Republican Party politicians-- who give precisely zero point zero fucks about any other form of consumer protection, medical or otherwise-- just so happen to sincerely believe that this kind of treatment, which just so happens to conflict with their rigid religious ideology about gender roles, is genuinely so harmful as to justify taking it out of the hands of doctors and patients. That is about three coincidences to the wind of plausible.
Ya I hear that and I def don’t agree with them on most issues. I just wish this one would stop being so political and viewed through the culture war lens. Unfortunately democrats have been naive in believing activists over evidence. I just want our institutions and ppl to do their jobs better. So much (unnecessary) dysfunction.
You say "Unfortunately democrats have been naive in believing activists over evidence." Okay. What-- very specifically, now-- should "democrats" have done differently? They don't run medical boards-- doctors do. It's not good enough to hand-wave at a situation and say "somebody oughtta do something."
In general, the US has a very strongly self-regulatory culture when it comes to medical practice-- the government does not get involved in regulating the availability of procedures except in the most extraordinary circumstances. This is not necessarily parallel to European countries, particularly ones with true single-payer healthcare systems where the government is the one BUYING the procedures.
The solution, it seems to me, is to make arguments about medical efficacy and ethics to the self-regulatory licensing boards that are actually charged with hearing and adjudicating those arguments. The Democratic Party is no better suited than the Republican to evaluate claims that are totally outside of its field of expertise.
(Also, I can't help noting that if it were to get involved, there are many, many cosmetic procedures of dubious ethics and efficacy which logically would warrant regulation before any trans-related procedure, like brazilian butt-lifts and liposuction. The whole cosmetic-surgery industry is rife with scams and abusive practices.)
How would "good" (truly) Progressive, compassionate, rational legislative action (or law) look compared to the evil transphobic Right wing version? How would it differ, how would it be the same? What do WE want to see happen??
To prevent gatekeeping doctors need to be informed about proper treatment protocols and the care be inexpensive.
So make medical treatment contingent on extensive evaluation, therapeutic approaches, and longer-term observation, in most cases. Such treatment and evaluation should be free and easily accessible to those suffering from gender dysphoria.
That's a good start. But of course, it gets more complex. Just for starters - I've proposed (to myself) a minimum 1 year of therapy before... what? Puberty suppressants?Hormones? Surgery? At 13? 14? 15? And who was that therapist, anyway? And how often did they actually go to therapy? Are both parents in agreement? Does that matter? Why shouldn't it matter? That's just off the top of my head in 30seconds. And that's just scratching the surface on all the questions and conundrums. But just either a free-for-all, do whatever you want vs. blanket prohibitions can't be right either. What is right? We all spend a lot of time on this discussion board rightfully, correctly, pointing out all the wrong shit and extreme craziness. But what's the path forward? Are we talking about legislation here? (I think we are. Aren't we?) So what are we talking about? Or are we just talking...?
Somehow didn’t see the article till today, read it, jaw dropped to the floor, ran directly here to see what you all were saying about it!
This would NEVER have been published even a year ago, right? (Pamela Paul is a force of nature…did any of you listen to her interview on the Unspeakable podcast?).
The fact that I am familiar with every single source quoted in the piece, and I mean every single one, did make me chuckle a bit.
I really enjoyed listening to Andy and hearing about his grace in the face of so much bullshit, but my main takeaway from this was what a massive favour Elon Musk has done us all by sending Twitter down the toilet. It's an odious place that brings out the very worst in nearly all of us and I sincerely hope that it, and all its imitators, dies a resounding death
I think he was right that it’s probably hard to understand the pressures of this type of thing (especially cuz this was during the absolute peak of craziness), but yeah they should probably feel some shame over this. I really really would like to think I wouldn’t have done that if I was in their shoes
It's ironic that people who consider themselves left-wing and anti-capitalist are happy to use the precarious nature of at-will employment as a weapon against their ideological enemies.
Bosses are a lot more accommodating of cancel mobs than union drives because one affirms the power structure and the other threatens it. Cancelled employees could be seen as a kind of sacrifice to keep true worker discontent at bay.
I wasn't surprised Andy was gracious about it because they had all seen people attacked for *not* condemning the witch-of-they-day. Not piling on can get you in trouble under the "silence is violence" commandment.
Loved this conversation. The detail about the misunderstanding of the workplace shoulder rub struck me, as someone who—like Mills—went to a Christian college. I had not been from a very touchy-feely part of Christian culture, but one summer I worked as a camp counselor at a camp affiliated with my Christian college. It was a completely different subculture from what I was used to on campus during the academic year: lots of hugs, interpersonal warmth, and significantly more charismatic theology/beliefs than would have been characteristic of the students on the main campus. Tl;dr: The culture of Christian camps can be really demonstrative, and this is seen as a good thing within the culture.
I can totally understand how someone from a similar Christian-camp culture might rub someone's shoulder in support and have not the faintest idea how NYC media folks might take the gesture amiss.
I had this thought as well. Especially from charismatic denominations, physical touch is a big part of fellowship.
I was a closeted gay kid growing up in Christian culture, and a classmate of mine was so extremely touchy that I wondered if maybe he was secretly into me. He wasn't, he was just a Pentecostal.
I'm from a pretty touchy-feely culture in Texas, and right now I live near Mexico which is a very touch-feely culture. We hired a woman direct from Juarez a few months ago, doesn't speak any English, and I've gotten more really big, tight hugs this year than in any of my previous work history. If you just understand what the intentions are, it's nice. We are a social species.
I did not go to a Christian college but I ended up with a lot of evangelical friends at my secular college, and the friendly back rub was definitely THE go to move for the Christian guys when they liked a girl, so that part of Andy’s story struck me as the most Christian college guy thing ever 😂
I had a few female friends on campus who'd complain about how this guy or that was especially huggy, and I suspect that I did not have this problem with these guys because I was not similarly proportioned. ;-)
That said, girls handled it by declining hugs, not making a MeToo case out of it, which seems to me like the right response to a fairly minor problem.
Right. I remember moving to the midwest as a teen and the folks used church as a quick way to meet people and integrate, so I went a bunch of Protestant youth groups. I noticed everybody was pretty touchy feely and some of the girls commented that I wasn’t. It occurred to me at the time that it did kinda seem a “safe” way to feel each other up in a sexually repressive environment. (An observation I didn’t share at the time)
Which of course isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with it, just that it seems a distinctly different vibe.
The lesson here is not to drink with people from work, or live with people from work, or date people from work, or even talk to people from work. Even working with people from work is... oof, big yikes.
My boss told me in my review not to talk politics with people in the workplace, which is something I took to heart. I like talking politics, and I am in a strongly left-leaning industry, but I get it.
Then this week some absolute moron during an all-staff meeting asked if we're going to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. That got shut down fast, but damn.
Having a drink with coworkers can be really nice, get to know more about them, hear gossip - just don’t get drunk with coworkers, that’s always a disaster waiting to happen.
Pouring water on someone’s head when you’re drunk and they insult you is not psychotic, Jesus Christ. It’s a dumb thing you do because you were drunk. And then you apologize and everyone is supposed to move on with their lives.
Absolutely disagree that rubbing shoulders is something only weirdos do. Maybe where you're from, it is, but guess what? There are other places in the world!
I googled Mills and I grew up less than an hour from him. I’d be uncomfortable if someone rubbed my shoulders in a work meeting. It isn’t done here either. I’m not sure why people think small Midwestern towns are some alien planet. We have largely the same customs as the rest of the US.
He did mention that they weren't just coworkers though. She was dating his roommate. I assume that means they'd stayed up late drinking and chatting as a trio, seen each other in pajamas, etc. It's an assumption, yes, but it seems Andy really thought she was a friend of his. Also, if someone in a *professional* meeting is just gonna sit on the floor and that's completely cool, I'd be interpreting that as a signal that the place isn't super formal at all, and the boundaries shouldn't be either.
So to me it sounds like if your friend is sitting on the floor at work that it's really not that strange to do something like that. Nothing wrong with addressing the behavior but to say he was completely out of line doesn't seem right to me.
The drink throwing to me says he might be immature, or at least was when that happened. So I agree there.
My dad told me when I was a teenager starting my first job "You can be friendly with the people you work with, but the people you work with are NEVER your friends." Heeding that advice has only been a net benefit for me.
Wow - I think this might be one of the best episodes of BARpod ever. So good I stopped what I was doing to pull up a chair and listen as closely as I could. I hope this interview spreads far and wide. Truly one of the best, most clear-headed, and compassionate conversations I've listened to about the phenomenon of social shaming and cancel culture. Great work, Katie!
The most interesting part was him mentioning the Times investigating and finding it was only like 19 accounts and some of those were probably sockpuppets
There’s a Youtuber who’s been talking about the online post-2014 culture wars and he has a phrase: “12 psychos on Twitter”
Many cancellation campaigns were from absolute sociopaths coordinating with each other and using alt accounts to trick “normies” into thinking whatever they cooked up was what was popular at the time. As Katie said, people want to be liked.
The question I always scratch my head over though is why the hell did this all really start to explode in 2014?
Always that year, the year social cohesion in the West began to crumble.
Critical mass of these identity focused crazies finally in HR/PR departments and could badger their bosses into taking social media nonsense seriously.
Academia has been breeding this dissension for decades, but I think too many people didn’t care what happened to those “x studies” graduates from Ivys in the 90s. Sure they have stupid ideas, but they won’t get any important jobs.
Well they got the last laugh because they took over the PMC from within.
This drunk guy was at a bar with his drunk coworkers, one drunk coworker called him a 'fucking hipster', and he dumped water/ beer on them. Fast forward ~6 years and he has to prostrate himself in front of coworkers at a completely different company over this incident.
I would lose my mind if management/ HR wanted me to apologize for something I did off the clock half a decade ago while working somewhere else. Is this normal for professions outside of media?
Yes! Like this type of thing happens & it’s unfortunate &, unless we were there, none of us knows about it, the fact that this incident looms large enough that people all over the country had an inkling of it & the NYT reputation somehow is bound up in it???? Craziness.
Andy's mentioning of This American Life took me back to the journey I made into slowly becoming aware of the Great Awokening a decade ago. I think you can take the subject matter of each episode and slowly trace the growing obsession with intersectional categories over time.
TAL: "What is it like to grow up in a small town in Kansas...."
Me: "Oh cool, this should be interesting."
TAL: "...when you are a female Muslim immigrant from Somalia?"
Katie is a great interviewer. Looking forward more of these!
Also: “my colleagues were wonderful during this experience” (during the reporter investigation into watergate). That’s great but also Jesus Christ. He dumped water on someone while drunk in a bar. He didn’t beat a homeless guy to death. This is such a crazy thing that there were investigations and trainings etc after this. A stupid thing to do but come on.
I thought the first response was basically on target. HR looked into it, and said "hey, here's some stuff you're doing that makes people uncomfortable sometimes," and Andy improved.
Andy Mills is an excellent reporter and an even better human. As I was listening I was congratulating myself for unsubscribing to the NYT, WAPO and stopping all donations to NPR because of the rot they’ve allowed to fester. Then, at the end, he says how much he respects the NYT and I know I am way too spiteful to ever get to such an enlightened place.
Good morning, everyone. Just started the show. Not sure if Andy’s cancellation was Rowling related, but this is a really good example of how people’s opinion of who deserves censure is often uninformed: https://youtu.be/zIPPpsJY39c?si=M8NFt3OuXRWN_bQB
ps, Any journalist who did roofing every summer implicitly has my trust.
Wow, that was such an impressive example of handling a controversial topic in a calm, civil, and sensible manner. I wish more of us were capable of this! Thanks for sharing the video!
In fairness, it likely remained civil because the student was intellectually honest. Hard to remain civil when the wrong person refuses to acknowledge valid points. Hard for me, at least.
I don't know whether this is an actual conversation or a scripted one. The guy is a filmmaker/videographer who I guess is teaching a class? Except that there's only one student there? I mean, I guess it's a good conversation, but it would be nice to know if it's one that actually happened.
Warren has explained that the student came to him during office hours wanting tips for doing a recorded interview -- something along those lines. So Warren said, sure, let's turn on the camera and record. They picked a topic more or less out of a hat. Later Warren posted it for no particular reason. The video went viral. I think I have some particulars of this story wrong, but this is the gist and spirit of it. You can find out by watching some of the interviews he's been on in the past month or so.
This is Warren Smith, a filmmaker on the faculty of Emerson College in Boston. The video went viral on Twitter and YouTube. He was interviewed in a bunch of places after this, including Piers Morgan. (That's the only name I remember.) He started doing more videos that explore critical thinking after this one got so much attention. He did a really good teardown of Contrapoints on J.K. Rowling. Then he did a video about all the hate he's getting all of a sudden. He's starting to get in hot water with the college. If he gets to keep his job, we'll know that peak woke is behind us. I like him.
Unsurprising considering Mills is a radio pro, but this is a very auspicious start to Katie’s Singal parenthood of the podcast. Excellent episode, and one that’s likely to net some new subscribers.
People who are curious and question orthodoxies are Good, Actually, regardless of what those orthodoxies are! We need more journalists like Andy Mills.
Also: WNYC are boring weenies, I’ve said it. And there’s a lot of jealousy out there turning people into petty whiners, which is unsurprising in a field like
journalism where the prestigious and well-paying positions are in ever-shorter supply.
Yes, I attribute the whining in academia to similar problems.
Definitely a crabs in the bucket mentality that I've seen in that industry and many others.
Radiolab since 2020 has been near unlistenable, I’m amazed it still runs (and with a staff of 20!)
I support calling this period in B&R history Katie's Singal Parenthood phase.
The only problem with this inaugural episode of the Vagina Herzogoglogues era of BARpod is that it's an interview not a guest hosting.
So apparently Andy's co-workers and "friends" weren't comfortable with some of his behavior and... decided the best way to handle it was through goddamn HR? What utterly spineless buffoons.
I get it, I'm conflict-adverse, but HR are every employee's enemy! You call them as a last resort!
Number one lesson to everyone just entering the world of work: HR is not your friend. Except if maybe you are HR.
Also: rethink “work friends.”
I'm moving to a city soon and I really don't want to, because of this. My work friends are genuinely my friends and we've done a lot for each other.
Sounds potentially exciting though? What’s the reason for the move? And what kind of city are we talking?
It is exciting. I've moved a million times so I'm used to that, but I've never lived anywhere near a city bigger than 100k. I'm currently in a small town. My tribe doesn't exist around here and I gotta meet more people. A Texas city, almost certainly a Dallas suburb. or Boise.
Don’t tell anyone I told you but Boise is fantastic.
Yeah- that sucks. Especially when it was something that happened in a bar, off work hours.
Wouldn’t the proper authority figure in this case be…the bouncer?
What’s obnoxious is the pile-on. Obviously the drink throwing crossed a line, but the dredging up of every real and imagined grievance to make it look like a pattern is kinda pathetic.
Yes! Like, jesus, Use Your Words.
If you don’t like how touchy-feely someone is, Tell Them.
‘Hey man, can you not do that? It’s a little too much and makes people feel weird.’
I agree in general, but there was a point in his narrative where I could imagine being that woman. I've had that kind of thing happen, the dude is touching you, you're just CRINGING and wishing he'd stop, there's a bunch of other people there and if say "hey, get your hands off me", you're going to look like a bitch. It's awkward AF.
Absolutely! As a woman who has been in that position many times, I completely agree. At that point in the story I was like, hmmm, don’t know if I’m going to be able to hang. But then, I thought he really took responsibility for his actions and was extremely thoughtful about it all. As a teacher in a school with lots of boarding students, I have so often seen these misunderstandings arising from cultural differences (which can be regional within the US, or international), and often people truly don’t know how they are being perceived. The fact that he realized that, owned it, and made amends is admirable…and ultimately, isn’t that the goal of any liberal society? For people to communicate, evolve, and change? I don’t understand this mindset that people have to be perfect from day 1 and just “know” how to behave in any milieu. That’s a privilege afforded to a select few in any society.
P.S. I also believe that people can do things that are wrong and then change. As a teacher I see it all the time. It’s just so depressing and cynical to be like, this person messed up one time at age thirty something…and no matter what they do, or learn, or how they try to grow or change, now they should be cast out of their job and all they love. Makes no sense.
Yeah I think the rest of the accusations were BS but a back rub in a meeting does seem pretty unprofessional and would warrant an HR response in any large company. Drink on the head though is just dumb, though, I can’t believe that woman went to HR about it. Some people just really hold a grudge I guess.
No one is going to think twice if you say “please don’t touch me” in a non-bitchy way. A lot of that is in your head.
100% agree, there's got to be a middle ground between letting someone make you uncomfortable and seeing to it that he never has a job again. :/
There are A LOT of reasons to hate HR. But I will always remember one job I had they absolutely ruined.
We had a department where we worked nights but the work came in very sporadically/seasonally. But when it did come they wanted it done ASAP, like hours at most. So many nights you literally are just sitting there doing nothing all night waiting for work (if it wasn’t the busy season with big overtime).
But the department itself was highly profitable. So they basically let us do whatever. So people browsed websites, played catch in the parking lot, had little parties (no drinking), and stuff like that. But if work came in we were all on station (it was high security so they didn’t let us remote work).
Anyway the company is going through an unprofitable stretch, and so they send HR out to improve the functioning of all the departments.
Now ours wasn’t losing money or gambling it away on stupid house market financial manipulations, nope just chugging along making great money.
But still HR suggested they turn off our internet access. Then we had to stay at our desks. Ok super annoying, people are real mad and productivity goes down a lot, but there is a couple months of people reading tons of books during downtime.
Well then they decide that isn’t ok, so people start doing audiobooks and podcasts and music. Nope that isn’t ok either.
So we literally most nights on the night shift were expected to just sit at our desks silently, with no internet access (this is pre-smartphone) and no nothing and stare at our monitors, sometimes for HOURS.
All because HR was mad about some shit that didn’t have anything to do with our department or night work.
Pretty much destroyed that department and most everyone good quit including their star employee me about a week after they said we couldn’t even listen to music.
If you got rid of half the lawyers and HR people in the world it would be a vastly better place.
In this instance it sounds like HR approached his colleagues after the drink pouring incident. That seems reasonable to me. Pouring the drink really ought to have gotten him fired. That was unacceptable. Even he acknowledges it.
But who told HR in the first place?
He threw water in a coworker’s face after calling her a diversity hire. I really doubt she considered him a friend at that point.
As a bearded guy from a small town that follows the One True and Correct PNW Logging Culture everything about the weird, cold, degenerate customs of big city people in this episode spoke strongly to me. When I went to college I genuinely felt like people in cities had no actual friends, that they were all very Machiavellian and unfeeling, and that they had all gone crazy from being stacked on top of each other like cord wood.
I no longer quite feel this way, but whenever someone expresses a feeling to me that sounds totally crazy, I have to remind myself of how totally and completely different cultures can be. I’m probably one of the weirder people here in this comments section, but I’m actually one of the sanest and most boring people from where I come from.
It's also so striking how oblivious the NYC people are about "othering" people that they look down on. The same people obsessed witch micro aggressions treated Mill's religious background so disrespectfully. They dismiss regional language differences yet consider themselves the arbiters of which language is allowed.
I think that at the heart of these dust-ups are one or two psychopaths who are professionally jealous and strategically (and gleefully!) tear people down. They are aided by gutless managers, feckless virtue signalers, fearful bystanders.
I loved this episode!
Spot on. Relatedly, I can guarantee you that the same people telling Mills to keep quiet about his misgivings over the term "people of color" had never heard it themselves 5-10 years before they decided it was the correct term to use. These language games are fashions among overeducated people, and Mills was offering them a valuable insight into how the show might alienate its normie listeners. Too bad no one had the ears to hear what he was saying.
The same siloed group-think that brought us "Latinx".
From the arbiters of people of color comes Latinx!
Over-schooled, under-educated.
It’s alarming how quickly people adapt to the rules that are hoisted on them from above. Beware these people.
Right!? And maybe I’m wrong and shit has changed but I’d bet money that if she had thrown her drink in his face, if there was any comment other than laughter, it would’ve been, “what did you do to her?”
Not to mention, it's a bit offsides to call a co-worker a "fucking hipster".
I dislike when someone excavates an old grievance like this. She sucks.
Some people fought in WWII. Others got hit with water in a hipster bar. Every generation has its struggles.
I have to agree. In my “gen x” time, if someone got a drink of water/beer thrown on them in a bar, they would get about two weeks of mileage out of the story, telling everyone in their circle of friends about it. Getting doused was almost a point of pride, or at least just a good story to tell.
Most people would laugh when hearing the story, with a “what the fucked happened?” between giggles.
After two weeks, people would ask “are you still telling that story? Jeeze. Move on.”
This reminds me of when at 19 I was arguing with my girlfriend very vociferously (who had cheated on me with my best friend (they went to the same college in a different town than me) and who I did forgive later in this same argument), and got super mad and flicked about a ounce or two of water at her out of a plastic water bottle. Not a whole bottle, just a splash. Well her college friends all took at as a sign that I was bound to beat the shit out of her and kill her some day. Literally one super nonviolent expression of anger during a heated argument. Specifically chosen because it couldn’t possibly hurt her. “Guaranteed future abuser”. Literally the most “violent” thing I have done in a relationship in 42 years.
What a shock that you water abusers all stick together. Sick.
It is pathetic to let an old, minor, ultimately meaningless grievance gain the status of a trauma and continue to have so much control over your life years after the fact. You need to move on with your life, or else you need therapy. Instead, social media offers hugboxes and people never have to move on. Jealousy and scrambling for a shrinking pool of career slots explains so much of this.
If someone I knew poured water on me I don’t know how I’d ever recover from that, personally. I think she’s brave to face her trauma head on like this. Even just stepping into a shower is essentially a daily nightmare. Water is frightening.
Greg unmasked as the Wicked Witch of the West?
What evidence do you have that the victim of the drink-pouring "let an old, minor, ultimately meaningless grievance gain the status of a trauma and continue to have so much control over [her] life years after the fact"? I would think the opposite, given that she basically did nothing with the story for years and only brought it up when Mills became a news item for unrelated reasons. That's totally consistent with something being buried deep in your long-term memory before being brought back to mind by current events.
Most of her twitter feed appears to be about radio broadcasting, spiders and lesbians. None of it even remotely suggests that this incident is "controlling" her life.
In college, a friend of mine (male) threw a glass of water in my face (female) because of some comment I had made. General consensus is that I was the asshole, and he is now one of my oldest friends. That's the late 90's for you!
The late 90s was a wild time.
So we’re just inventing scenarios to be mad at now? She didn’t pour a drink on him. That’s just straight up not what happened.
Lol Huh? No, he poured a drink on her. The point being if you reverse the scenario no one would care except to wonder what he’d done to deserve the dousing.
You don’t know that. Also, it didn’t happen so I don’t see why we’re inventing that scenario to be mad at. It is not what happened. There is no “huh” here.
I will say that policing language seems to be sorta universal to some extent. Where I was raised people told me not to say the "lords name in vain". I also got in trouble arguing for vegetarianism saying there wasn't a difference in killing a dog vs a cow. Now where I live I have to use "correct" pronouns among a laundry list of other things. It's all so tiresome.
That's a really good point!
It’s generally adults telling children not to use naugh to language. Not other adults demanding fealty.
I think it’s human nature, to be honest. We try to control what people say because it’s the closest we can physically get to controlling thought.
It's like we're biologically beholden to needing forbidden language. Who fucking knows why. Tribal signaling, I guess. So tiresome, indeed. I hate when people tell other people how to talk.
It’s an industry thing too. People in Hollywood for the most part look down at most people outside of Hollywood. Especially parts of the country they’ve never been. Phrased differently there’s a suspicion of the audiences they’re making TV for.
As a Texan I can only admit that we're guilty of this as well.
Fellow Texan agrees but let's be honest...it's a pretty cool mixture of things in our state that you don't get everywhere else! Outsiders really are just hating!
All powerful cultures force other cultures to conform to their preferences but I have always had a hard eye-roll around how the coastal culture wraps that up in “Everyone needs to respect everyone else’s culture, and it just so happens to be the case that everyone else’s culture is my culture.”
To me it's just plain old bullying, a 1:1 of my experiences with the cool kids in school.
Or the cool kids who just went along with the SS. “Hey man, I’m just going with the flow!”
Leaders and followers…
As someone who moved to NYC in 1980 and lived there until 1997, it's also amazing how many "New Yorkers" are from other places in America as well as other countries. There was a lot of jealousy and uber competitiveness in places where I worked. Very easy to get sucked into at least some of the elitism. But I also find that down south where I live now, there's just another form of elitism at work. Like Andy I, too, have made it a priority to understand human nature.
I’ve begun to think a huge part of all problems of these last 10 years are as you point out, psychopaths and those who should know better in the organizations being too cowardly to do anything.
When that happens, the entire institution effectively begins to act psychopathically.
Yes! As a small town kid I felt like a total alien at my liberal arts college where 80 percent of kids were rich NYCers. Talk about culture shock.
It’s so damn weird. Everyone should be normal, like me.
In your crazy backwater place, is it considered normal and ok for a man to throw water in a woman’s face at a workplace event?
Oh way worse than that. It’s got drawbacks too.
Today's NYT's Opinion piece:
"As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do." (Pamela Paul).
Wow. Sea-change? Reader responses running 10 to 1 in favor of reality. (Wonder if we're going to get another staff revolt on this: "These words are causing GENOCIDE!. Putting staff in DANGER!," etc., etc. I think we may be past that point. We'll see...)
Thank God for audience capture in this case. The NY Times readers are liberals who do not like identity politics and you see this when you sort comments by Reader Picks. The readers actually saved them from their staffers and Pamela Paul is management's big middle finger to those staffers.
Yep. Actually, reader response is running more like 20 to 1 in favor of reality. I seen this brewing for the last 6 months, but today's responses are pretty amazing...
This could be a massive assumption on my part, but I’m guessing that the staffers who drove the cultural change at the Times were largely childless, and they had a massive blind spot regarding how strongly parents will go to the mat to protect their children, and how viscerally they will react to the thought of people bypassing them on decisions about their children’s health. The suggestion that you as a parent are not an expert on your own child is deeply, deeply disturbing, and I think that even if people can “get” that without having children of their own, it escalates to a whole other level once that idea of a child is living and breathing in front of you. This is your flesh and blood, and they are going through a mental health crisis that you want nothing more than to resolve - and people tell you that surgery and hormones are the only way or else you’re a bigot? Normal people don’t find that logical or acceptable at all and that’s not surprising!
Same with the comments about the feature of Coleman Hughes and his new book, which ran in today's print edition. NY Times readers love Coleman!
Too bad Jesse didn’t write this same article for the Atlantic 6 years ago!
Exactly. You’d think Paul could have at least mentioned him in passing. And Katie too for her article.
I think Paul had to be careful to not include things or people that would be even more of a lightning rod for the crazies.
Isn't that a bit cowardly though, for an intrepid reporter?
Exactly. If she had mentioned Jesse it would be an easy way for people to just claim that he is transphobic therefore the whole piece is transphobic.
It’s one of those things where you can either get the credit or have the impact but you probably can’t get both, you need to let people think they came up with it themselves for them to really buy in.
That was a good article. Not sure what Jessie wants to write his book for. Seems this summarized everything.
It was a little frustrating reading the constant jabs at how evil those bad republicans are for trying to prevent gender "care" for minors. I'm not really sure why I'm supposed to believe that's a bad thing given what this article is saying. All the commenters are saying how they don't support transitioning kids but then will decry the transphobic right wing for trying to prevent that? I don't get it. Maybe their motivations are bad but the result is still the same. Shouldn't we be able to support policies regardless of their motivations?
Trump / Floyd / Covid turned us all schizoid. These last 8 years have taught me to be always skeptical. Especially of my own beliefs.
You're "not sure why you're supposed to believe" that "this treatment isn't right for everyone" is distinguishable from "this treatment should be banned by the government for anyone"?
Is government responding though because medical organizations are not self correcting in light of all the evidence? Like they did in many European countries.
I mean... no?
Like you cannot possibly be so naive as to think that Republican Party politicians-- who give precisely zero point zero fucks about any other form of consumer protection, medical or otherwise-- just so happen to sincerely believe that this kind of treatment, which just so happens to conflict with their rigid religious ideology about gender roles, is genuinely so harmful as to justify taking it out of the hands of doctors and patients. That is about three coincidences to the wind of plausible.
Ya I hear that and I def don’t agree with them on most issues. I just wish this one would stop being so political and viewed through the culture war lens. Unfortunately democrats have been naive in believing activists over evidence. I just want our institutions and ppl to do their jobs better. So much (unnecessary) dysfunction.
You say "Unfortunately democrats have been naive in believing activists over evidence." Okay. What-- very specifically, now-- should "democrats" have done differently? They don't run medical boards-- doctors do. It's not good enough to hand-wave at a situation and say "somebody oughtta do something."
In general, the US has a very strongly self-regulatory culture when it comes to medical practice-- the government does not get involved in regulating the availability of procedures except in the most extraordinary circumstances. This is not necessarily parallel to European countries, particularly ones with true single-payer healthcare systems where the government is the one BUYING the procedures.
The solution, it seems to me, is to make arguments about medical efficacy and ethics to the self-regulatory licensing boards that are actually charged with hearing and adjudicating those arguments. The Democratic Party is no better suited than the Republican to evaluate claims that are totally outside of its field of expertise.
(Also, I can't help noting that if it were to get involved, there are many, many cosmetic procedures of dubious ethics and efficacy which logically would warrant regulation before any trans-related procedure, like brazilian butt-lifts and liposuction. The whole cosmetic-surgery industry is rife with scams and abusive practices.)
Interesting experiment / question on this:
How would "good" (truly) Progressive, compassionate, rational legislative action (or law) look compared to the evil transphobic Right wing version? How would it differ, how would it be the same? What do WE want to see happen??
To prevent gatekeeping doctors need to be informed about proper treatment protocols and the care be inexpensive.
So make medical treatment contingent on extensive evaluation, therapeutic approaches, and longer-term observation, in most cases. Such treatment and evaluation should be free and easily accessible to those suffering from gender dysphoria.
That's a good start. But of course, it gets more complex. Just for starters - I've proposed (to myself) a minimum 1 year of therapy before... what? Puberty suppressants?Hormones? Surgery? At 13? 14? 15? And who was that therapist, anyway? And how often did they actually go to therapy? Are both parents in agreement? Does that matter? Why shouldn't it matter? That's just off the top of my head in 30seconds. And that's just scratching the surface on all the questions and conundrums. But just either a free-for-all, do whatever you want vs. blanket prohibitions can't be right either. What is right? We all spend a lot of time on this discussion board rightfully, correctly, pointing out all the wrong shit and extreme craziness. But what's the path forward? Are we talking about legislation here? (I think we are. Aren't we?) So what are we talking about? Or are we just talking...?
Jesse has said numerous times that he's not in favor of banning gender care, even surgery, for minors.
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/why-the-hard-age-caps-on-youth-gender
(He `punts' on the issue of surgery in that piece but has said on the podcast that he wouldn't favor bans of surgery either.)
Somehow didn’t see the article till today, read it, jaw dropped to the floor, ran directly here to see what you all were saying about it!
This would NEVER have been published even a year ago, right? (Pamela Paul is a force of nature…did any of you listen to her interview on the Unspeakable podcast?).
The fact that I am familiar with every single source quoted in the piece, and I mean every single one, did make me chuckle a bit.
you got a unpaywalled version of it to share?
I think this should work (it's a "Gift" link...) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/transgender-children-gender-dysphoria.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU0.do-c.Yna42D7uZ_z4&bgrp=t&smid=url-share
Use archive.ph. Plug in a URL, and it will find or create the unlocked article for you.
I really enjoyed listening to Andy and hearing about his grace in the face of so much bullshit, but my main takeaway from this was what a massive favour Elon Musk has done us all by sending Twitter down the toilet. It's an odious place that brings out the very worst in nearly all of us and I sincerely hope that it, and all its imitators, dies a resounding death
Elon Musk set $43 billion on fire to save us all.
Good lord, the end with the roommates.
Andy is very gracious, but it is very striking how seemingly everyone in this media landscape is just…a weak loser.
They really thought they’d lose a job for not signing an open letter? How caught up in Twitter bs do you need to be to actually believe that
I was pretty shocked at how casually they threw a friend to the wolves. That would be a hill to die on, for sure.
I think he was right that it’s probably hard to understand the pressures of this type of thing (especially cuz this was during the absolute peak of craziness), but yeah they should probably feel some shame over this. I really really would like to think I wouldn’t have done that if I was in their shoes
I think he has immersed himself in cowards with shitty beliefs to boot.
I have quit jobs several times though, never be afraid to tell your boss off if they deserve it.
Never underestimate the power of fear of losing your health insurance. Poverty is a great motivator.
It's ironic that people who consider themselves left-wing and anti-capitalist are happy to use the precarious nature of at-will employment as a weapon against their ideological enemies.
Bosses are a lot more accommodating of cancel mobs than union drives because one affirms the power structure and the other threatens it. Cancelled employees could be seen as a kind of sacrifice to keep true worker discontent at bay.
5 minutes of hate is cheaper than better working conditions.
Most people are cowards. Or more politely, very attuned to in-group norms.
I wasn't surprised Andy was gracious about it because they had all seen people attacked for *not* condemning the witch-of-they-day. Not piling on can get you in trouble under the "silence is violence" commandment.
I think the apparent grace is shoving down some well deserved feelings of anger.
Loved this conversation. The detail about the misunderstanding of the workplace shoulder rub struck me, as someone who—like Mills—went to a Christian college. I had not been from a very touchy-feely part of Christian culture, but one summer I worked as a camp counselor at a camp affiliated with my Christian college. It was a completely different subculture from what I was used to on campus during the academic year: lots of hugs, interpersonal warmth, and significantly more charismatic theology/beliefs than would have been characteristic of the students on the main campus. Tl;dr: The culture of Christian camps can be really demonstrative, and this is seen as a good thing within the culture.
I can totally understand how someone from a similar Christian-camp culture might rub someone's shoulder in support and have not the faintest idea how NYC media folks might take the gesture amiss.
I had this thought as well. Especially from charismatic denominations, physical touch is a big part of fellowship.
I was a closeted gay kid growing up in Christian culture, and a classmate of mine was so extremely touchy that I wondered if maybe he was secretly into me. He wasn't, he was just a Pentecostal.
I'm from a pretty touchy-feely culture in Texas, and right now I live near Mexico which is a very touch-feely culture. We hired a woman direct from Juarez a few months ago, doesn't speak any English, and I've gotten more really big, tight hugs this year than in any of my previous work history. If you just understand what the intentions are, it's nice. We are a social species.
I did not go to a Christian college but I ended up with a lot of evangelical friends at my secular college, and the friendly back rub was definitely THE go to move for the Christian guys when they liked a girl, so that part of Andy’s story struck me as the most Christian college guy thing ever 😂
I had a few female friends on campus who'd complain about how this guy or that was especially huggy, and I suspect that I did not have this problem with these guys because I was not similarly proportioned. ;-)
That said, girls handled it by declining hugs, not making a MeToo case out of it, which seems to me like the right response to a fairly minor problem.
Yea. He was trying to fuck.
Right. I remember moving to the midwest as a teen and the folks used church as a quick way to meet people and integrate, so I went a bunch of Protestant youth groups. I noticed everybody was pretty touchy feely and some of the girls commented that I wasn’t. It occurred to me at the time that it did kinda seem a “safe” way to feel each other up in a sexually repressive environment. (An observation I didn’t share at the time)
Which of course isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with it, just that it seems a distinctly different vibe.
The lesson here is not to drink with people from work, or live with people from work, or date people from work, or even talk to people from work. Even working with people from work is... oof, big yikes.
My boss told me in my review not to talk politics with people in the workplace, which is something I took to heart. I like talking politics, and I am in a strongly left-leaning industry, but I get it.
Then this week some absolute moron during an all-staff meeting asked if we're going to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. That got shut down fast, but damn.
Makes me glad to work from home.
NEVER work with people from work
I might be super cautious, but I avoid even working at work.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Having a drink with coworkers can be really nice, get to know more about them, hear gossip - just don’t get drunk with coworkers, that’s always a disaster waiting to happen.
You can make it seem like Andy's pre- NYT behavior is normal for an office but it's certainly not.
Rubbing shoulders is something only weirdos do and pouring a drink - any liquid - on someone is psychotic behavior
Pouring water on someone’s head when you’re drunk and they insult you is not psychotic, Jesus Christ. It’s a dumb thing you do because you were drunk. And then you apologize and everyone is supposed to move on with their lives.
Sounds like something a drink pourer would say
Absolutely disagree that rubbing shoulders is something only weirdos do. Maybe where you're from, it is, but guess what? There are other places in the world!
Well this happened in America and in America it's weird.
Are you joking? America is one of the most massive, diverse places on the planet.
Yep, and I've lived in many parts of it.
Haven't been to an area yet where it's considered ok to rub the shoulders of a colleague in an office setting.
Tell Joe Biden.
Okay, well I promise they exist. There are a lot of those places and I've lived in a few of them.
I googled Mills and I grew up less than an hour from him. I’d be uncomfortable if someone rubbed my shoulders in a work meeting. It isn’t done here either. I’m not sure why people think small Midwestern towns are some alien planet. We have largely the same customs as the rest of the US.
So because it's not done where you're from, anyone who does it is a weirdo?
I'm from the transplant capital of America - NYC. In my hundreds of group meetings in various midtown offices I've only seen it happen twice.
You can rub the shoulders of most anyone in your life but rubbing your coworkers' shoulders is weird.
He did mention that they weren't just coworkers though. She was dating his roommate. I assume that means they'd stayed up late drinking and chatting as a trio, seen each other in pajamas, etc. It's an assumption, yes, but it seems Andy really thought she was a friend of his. Also, if someone in a *professional* meeting is just gonna sit on the floor and that's completely cool, I'd be interpreting that as a signal that the place isn't super formal at all, and the boundaries shouldn't be either.
So to me it sounds like if your friend is sitting on the floor at work that it's really not that strange to do something like that. Nothing wrong with addressing the behavior but to say he was completely out of line doesn't seem right to me.
The drink throwing to me says he might be immature, or at least was when that happened. So I agree there.
Definitely don’t move to Japan, where drinking with your coworkers and boss is pretty much required!
My dad told me when I was a teenager starting my first job "You can be friendly with the people you work with, but the people you work with are NEVER your friends." Heeding that advice has only been a net benefit for me.
Wow - I think this might be one of the best episodes of BARpod ever. So good I stopped what I was doing to pull up a chair and listen as closely as I could. I hope this interview spreads far and wide. Truly one of the best, most clear-headed, and compassionate conversations I've listened to about the phenomenon of social shaming and cancel culture. Great work, Katie!
The most interesting part was him mentioning the Times investigating and finding it was only like 19 accounts and some of those were probably sockpuppets
There’s a Youtuber who’s been talking about the online post-2014 culture wars and he has a phrase: “12 psychos on Twitter”
Many cancellation campaigns were from absolute sociopaths coordinating with each other and using alt accounts to trick “normies” into thinking whatever they cooked up was what was popular at the time. As Katie said, people want to be liked.
The question I always scratch my head over though is why the hell did this all really start to explode in 2014?
Always that year, the year social cohesion in the West began to crumble.
Critical mass of these identity focused crazies finally in HR/PR departments and could badger their bosses into taking social media nonsense seriously.
Academia has been breeding this dissension for decades, but I think too many people didn’t care what happened to those “x studies” graduates from Ivys in the 90s. Sure they have stupid ideas, but they won’t get any important jobs.
Well they got the last laugh because they took over the PMC from within.
This is basically the plot of The Ink Black Heart
This drunk guy was at a bar with his drunk coworkers, one drunk coworker called him a 'fucking hipster', and he dumped water/ beer on them. Fast forward ~6 years and he has to prostrate himself in front of coworkers at a completely different company over this incident.
I would lose my mind if management/ HR wanted me to apologize for something I did off the clock half a decade ago while working somewhere else. Is this normal for professions outside of media?
Yes! Like this type of thing happens & it’s unfortunate &, unless we were there, none of us knows about it, the fact that this incident looms large enough that people all over the country had an inkling of it & the NYT reputation somehow is bound up in it???? Craziness.
“I think your analysis is exactly correct I also think you’re more generous than I am these people are fucking assholes.” Pure gold Katie.
What a great interview.
Andy's mentioning of This American Life took me back to the journey I made into slowly becoming aware of the Great Awokening a decade ago. I think you can take the subject matter of each episode and slowly trace the growing obsession with intersectional categories over time.
TAL: "What is it like to grow up in a small town in Kansas...."
Me: "Oh cool, this should be interesting."
TAL: "...when you are a female Muslim immigrant from Somalia?"
Me. "Oh. Right."
Interviewer: “I have a fictional idea of what being from the Midwest is like! Now layer onto that what it’s like being a brown person in that place!”
So why do you hate female Muslim immigrants from Somalia who live in a small town in Kansas?
DO BETTER!
Katie is a great interviewer. Looking forward more of these!
Also: “my colleagues were wonderful during this experience” (during the reporter investigation into watergate). That’s great but also Jesus Christ. He dumped water on someone while drunk in a bar. He didn’t beat a homeless guy to death. This is such a crazy thing that there were investigations and trainings etc after this. A stupid thing to do but come on.
I thought the first response was basically on target. HR looked into it, and said "hey, here's some stuff you're doing that makes people uncomfortable sometimes," and Andy improved.
The rest is sort of Twitter pathology.
Correct.
I had that thought as well. It was stupid and rude. But let's put it in context. It wasn't even like he got in a bar fight and punched someone.
It was almost definitionally a nothing burger.
Great episode!
Andy Mills is an excellent reporter and an even better human. As I was listening I was congratulating myself for unsubscribing to the NYT, WAPO and stopping all donations to NPR because of the rot they’ve allowed to fester. Then, at the end, he says how much he respects the NYT and I know I am way too spiteful to ever get to such an enlightened place.
Ditto
To be fair, he worked in a narrow sector of the NYT. Maybe he meant “I respect the audio producers at the NYT.”
Maybe? It seemed like he was praising many of the people there though and I just can't.
Good morning, everyone. Just started the show. Not sure if Andy’s cancellation was Rowling related, but this is a really good example of how people’s opinion of who deserves censure is often uninformed: https://youtu.be/zIPPpsJY39c?si=M8NFt3OuXRWN_bQB
ps, Any journalist who did roofing every summer implicitly has my trust.
Wow, that was such an impressive example of handling a controversial topic in a calm, civil, and sensible manner. I wish more of us were capable of this! Thanks for sharing the video!
In fairness, it likely remained civil because the student was intellectually honest. Hard to remain civil when the wrong person refuses to acknowledge valid points. Hard for me, at least.
I don't know whether this is an actual conversation or a scripted one. The guy is a filmmaker/videographer who I guess is teaching a class? Except that there's only one student there? I mean, I guess it's a good conversation, but it would be nice to know if it's one that actually happened.
If it’s staged, they deserve Oscar nominations way more than anyone in Barbie
Warren has explained that the student came to him during office hours wanting tips for doing a recorded interview -- something along those lines. So Warren said, sure, let's turn on the camera and record. They picked a topic more or less out of a hat. Later Warren posted it for no particular reason. The video went viral. I think I have some particulars of this story wrong, but this is the gist and spirit of it. You can find out by watching some of the interviews he's been on in the past month or so.
This is Warren Smith, a filmmaker on the faculty of Emerson College in Boston. The video went viral on Twitter and YouTube. He was interviewed in a bunch of places after this, including Piers Morgan. (That's the only name I remember.) He started doing more videos that explore critical thinking after this one got so much attention. He did a really good teardown of Contrapoints on J.K. Rowling. Then he did a video about all the hate he's getting all of a sudden. He's starting to get in hot water with the college. If he gets to keep his job, we'll know that peak woke is behind us. I like him.