…I am also, apparently, a terrible racist.
Lessons in reading comprehension 101 notwithstanding.
(P.S. in case any of this is lost in translation I am neither anti-woman or racist.)
Erik Kain
Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.
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on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app(We discussed the San Bernardino thing here, for the record.) on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental appReporters are going through the NOLA truck driver's home. EXCLUSIVE TOUR of the NOLA terrorists home… on A Man on the InsideOh, one thing I thought multiple times as I watched the show: That's a $6,000/month kinda place, rig… on A Suburban New Year’s Tragedy, or What’s the Use?On January 1st, 1913, the Riverside Tower went up in flames.
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024The devil is in the details.
on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental appI understand how the Quarter works. My shock isn't that the terrorist was able to get his vehicle on…
on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental appMost of the time those are still streets with cars on them - what with people living and working the…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024I believe I said earlier than the gentrification discourse in this country is broken and counterprod…
on A Man on the InsideOld guy here. Ed Sullivan probably would've said, "A really good shoe!" And I say, "We loved this sh… on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024LA's Karen Bass talked about how building low-income housing in single-family neighborhoods would cr…
A Suburban New Year’s Tragedy, or What’s the Use?
January 2, 2025
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on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024
on A Man on the Inside on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Joe Biden Agrees that Some People *DO* Deserve the Death Penalty on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Joe Biden Agrees that Some People *DO* Deserve the Death Penalty on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on The Immigration Thing
Maybe if you just mansplained yourself better?Report
I would avoid talking about “International Bankers” for a day or so.Report
Well, trouble comes in threes so I dont think now is a good time for that ‘Jews and Global Warming’ post you were going to write.Report
OK, the caption to that photo is really, really… unfortunate. Just saying.Report
The caption at Yahoo is the title of my Forbes piece. At Forbes I captioned it with the description from Daylife. My post is about the lack of crime and the reasons behind it.Report
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply you gave it that title, just that the title was unfortunate. Without that title to that photo, this would not be an issue.Report
… some of the comments over at kos seem to be pointing at yahoo. Few of them appear to be pointing towards you, and you’d be well within your rights to get a response posted (either as your own diary, or within tool’s).
… writing on kos tends more towards anarchy than anything, and someone was looking for something newsworthy to post about Irene.Report
First off, ED, I don’t think you are a racist. Nor do I think you intended to imply what that writer made from the situation.
However, keeping in mind that exactly that type of shit happened after Katrina (black individual wading through water with goods described as a looter while a white individual wading through water with goods described as foraging), the arrangement of the article was very unfortunate. It took me a few minutes perusing the pictures myself to understand what was going on. I don’t know who was responsible for the arrangement of the photos, the headline, and the article link, but they probably could have done a better job. The guy who wrote the article obviously wasn’t the only one who walked away with that distinction, given the comments he highlights (which I do not think you are in ANY way responsible for). Obviously, the writer eventually found the article, at which point he should have had a better understanding of what was going on. The Yahoo! presentation was very poor. But that is not on your head.Report
Finally, the voice of reason.Report
I did not format or even know about the Yahoo version of this post.Report
Oh, yea, I assumed as much. My hunch is the Yahoo! thing was some sort of aggregator or whatever-the-hell-it’s-called. If that was a human error, I’d fire the guy. While I doubt the intent was malicious, it still just shows bad judgment and a general inability to think beyond what is directly in front of him.
Seeing just the headline/caption and the photo, it’s troubling. Reading a few lines into the article, it becomes apparent that what that guy read into it has absolutely nothing to do with what you wrote. You shouldn’t be responsible for how others slice and dice and present your work, though I do wonder if you have any recourse against them (if only to stop them from doing that). And the commenters… eash. Unfortunate. Hopefully search engines don’t link that garbage with your name/work.Report
Wow, that does really suck. I’m going to agree that the Yahoo version with that picture captioned as “Crime in the Wake of Hurricane Irene” is way, waaaaay different from the Forbes post with the caption saying “Here’s a guy walking through flood waters”. I’ve often wondered how often it happens that writers get flak for this sort of thing. What I see most often is a writer composes a thoughtful article and then the title is stupid and sensational- that’s got to be the work of an overzealous copy editor.Report
Yeah but one would think an honest person would go to the source.Report
Indeed. And I MIGHT excuse him if he couldn’t locate it. And, to be honest, it wasn’t clear to me that the link in the Yahoo article was actually related to the headline and the photo. But then he went ahead and actually linked to your article. Which makes it inexcusable.Report
It’s all grist for the [lefty?] mill, EDK. You were not named: you’re collateral damage at worst. I do doubt that your personal reputation has suffered in the least.
Your jumpoff point for the Forbes OP was crime. The photo was puzzling and uncommunicative: it could be taken that the dude in the photo was stalking a bike left in the rain that somehow stood upright against flood waters—and if so, probably only because it was chain-locked to the post; it could be taken that he was of some race that ain’t white. It could be he was some American going to check on his bike.
What made the Daily Kos writer link crime and race? It was his racial bigotry that was on display here, not yours. You didn’t mention race.
That’s probably how I would have addressed this attack. The lefties are the racists, or at least this one is. In standing up with an idiot knee-jerk decoupling of race and crime, it was he/she/it who sourced the question.Report
TVD-
Since we are discussing the unfortunate results of jumping to conclusions, how do you know the writer in question is a lefty/leftist? Why does your criticism get generalized beyond the individual in question (who certainly is deserving of criticism)?Report
… that only matters if the problem is what you wrote. It’s apparent that it wasn’t. (tool notes in comments that he hadn’t realized that Forbes had titled it differently than Yahoo).Report
I’m not sure I’d fire the guy (unless it was willful). It’s hard enough to find a job as it is.Report
I did not format or even know about the Yahoo version of this post.
Since that’s the case, it’s time for a sharply worded e-mail to everyone at Yahoo!, Forbes, and anywhere else that might be involved, objecting clearly to the photo and caption, and demanding that if it doesn’t go, your column does.Report
I’m working with the Forbes people on this.Report
If by “exactly that type of shit” you mean racial activists jumping to conclusions, then yeah, that did happen.Report
Look at the bright side. Instead of your #1 click post being about green tea stands, it will be about crime and looting and lack thereof in the aftermath of a natural disaster…Report
No my tea post has gotten 180,000 page views…Report
I should have added a qualifier about “if this continues to get attention.” Of course, even then, 180k is a lot. And with the picture taken down, it’ll probably pass.Report
Trouble with a capital-T and that rhymes with E and that stands for … E.D.?
Somehow it doesn’t work as well as the original.Report
Let’s take a different approach. Let’s suppose there’s an article about how alcoholism has dropped in some neighborhood. The accompanying photo shows an Irish bar.
Would you think it outrageous if the author of the story was accused of anti-Irish sentiment? He probably didn’t even think about it, because he’s never had to deal with that stereotype.
So why use a black man in story about looting at all? It was not predominantly black neighborhoods that were hit (unlike Katrina, where racism ran rampant). Check “white privilege” and seriously ask yourself, “did I think about how I would feel in this situation”?
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Without going into the merits of Doyle and “The Game of Thrones”, I wonder if there’s a bit of similar privilege going on. Would anyone mock a feminist blogger for criticizing the works of John Norman or Johnny Ringo? GoT may not be in the same category, but just from reading posts here, it sure seems like there’s a heck of a lot of rape going on — more than might be needed to make a social commentary.
Put yourself in the place of a young woman who’s heard how wonderful these books are, then gets slammed by rape after rape. There is a chance I’m missing something. If, for example, 10 rapes occur over 10 books, that would be a different case than, say, 20 rapes in one book.
Am I just blowing smoke?
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Looking at DailyKos for reaction to a conservative piece is cherry-picking. Of course, they’re going to be offended — that’s their stock in trade. (Doesn’t mean that they are, by definition, wrong, though.)Report
Looking at DailyKos for reaction to a conservative piece is cherry-picking.
It wasn’t a conservative piece.Report
First of all – why should a picture of a black man bother anyone when the piece in question is about the lack of crime going on and the reasons behind people looting often having to do with searching for basic necessities and/or poverty and the perception of police abuse? Why would that be in any way racist?
Second of all what the hell makes you think this was a conservative piece? If you haven’t read the piece, maybe you should do that before commenting. There’s enough people at Kos bitching about a piece they haven’t read already.Report
… black people must be poor. white people can’t be looting. it’s waving a flag (and it looks like the yahoo article attracted some nogoodniks).
Your article, i have no doubt, is actually interesting and well thought out.
They ain’t bitching about your article, just about some stupid algorithm that screwed shit up.Report
Jeff, if she had written “there’s too much rape” that would be one thing, but Doyle actively turns Tyrion into a willing party for sexual assault committed against him. And that is really dirty behavior. Whether or not she makes good points elsewhere in the article, people are right to point it out.
Men get sexually assaulted more often than they’re willing to admit, and shaming some imaginary person who already feels completely horrible and blames himself for other people’s actions, is really kinda vile.Report
I posted a comment which was totally tame that was erased. I’m not particularly down with censorship designed to create an echo chamber.Report
If my posts come through without a problem, I suspect there was something else going on in yours. Too many links, or a word that shouldn’t be there are my most likely guesses.Report
I don’t see a comment by a “Jeff” on that particular post. Do you mean that you’ve been able to comment at Daily Kos generally, or specifically on Tool’s blog? I would assume that the different sub-blogs there are more or less independently moderated.Report
… moderation is done by readers, and it takes a few to hide posts.Report
Ugh, really? That didn’t work out well at Digg.Report
in all fairness, any trusted user can continue to read comments, and uprate them if there’s groupthink involved. And mods do read every single diary (and comment on some of them).
Mr. Kain got a rather poor blogger’s response (tool notes himself in the comments that he hadn’t realize the forbes piece was not the yahoo representation), that got uprated because other people were bored (stircrazy about Irene, you might say).
Many reclisters do a better job, and are more used to being on the reclist (grannydoc’s a champ.Report
I love how seriously we’re talking about a guy named “Tool”.Report
It appears to work at Less Wrong.Report
I thought Christopher was talking about a post not showing up here.
I don’t waste my time with DK — I have very few internet hours available, so I bless you all with some of them.
Slacktivist, TelevisionWithoutPity and BalloonJuice, in that order take as much time as I have and them some.Report
… kos doesn’t erase comments. they hide some, but that’s different.Report