No Mistake Too Uncancelable
Katherine Rosman and Jacob Bernstein write at The New York Times about the undoing of Jeffrey Toobin -- and undoing that I don't think should have been done:
While working on a podcast about the presidential election for WNYC and The New Yorker with some of the magazine's other well-known journalists, including Jane Mayer and Masha Gessen, he was seen lowering and raising his computer camera, exposing and touching his penis, and motioning an air kiss to someone other than his colleagues, Mx. Gessen said. The magazine suspended Mr. Toobin that day and executives began an investigation.
This suggests to me he was doing what a lot of us accidentally do -- while being on two streaming services at once we forget we have one of them up. Or we forget we're video-sharing at all, like I did when I sat down at my computer with nothing on but a few droplets of water.
I think the fact that he is male and highly successful had everything to do with his downfall and people having it in for him. Had it been a woman who did this, I strongly suspect she'd still be employed.
But the NYT writers contend:
But masturbation at a remotely conducted work meeting was a new order of business.Besides inviting mockery of a magazine whose dignity and restraint has been part of its brand since the William Shawn years, it presented an urgent, if very 2020 human resources issue. "I want to assure everyone that we take workplace matters seriously," Stan Duncan, the chief people officer of Condé Nast, wrote in a Nov. 11 email sent to the staff of the magazine, announcing that Mr. Toobin would no longer be associated with it. "We are committed to fostering an environment where everyone feels respected and upholds our standards of conduct."
Translation: "We are committed to fostering an environment in which we look woke/#metoo appropriate."
People make mistakes. Sometimes mistakes in which they expose their schlong. Did anyone's eyes fall out from that sight? Are they emotionally scarred for life and unable to get out of bed? Do they think about it ever -- at all -- except maybe to gloat?
More from the piece:
Several of Mr. Toobin's longtime associates feel he was unfairly punished. "You are a fine person and a terrific journalist and did nothing here to hurt anyone outside of yourself and your family," Jonathan Alter, a friend of Mr. Toobin's for 40 years, tweeted after Mr. Toobin announced his exit from The New Yorker."I don't like Twitter mobs, and I don't like bullies from the left or the right taking part in cancel culture," Mr. Alter said later by phone. "I have trouble with the conflation of offenses. I don't put Al Franken in the same category as Harvey Weinstein."
Ms. Brown, who worked with Mr. Weinstein for years after she left The New Yorker, agreed. "I think 27 years of superb reporting and commitment to The New Yorker should have been weighed against an incident that horribly embarrassed the magazine but mostly embarrassed himself," she said.
Malcolm Gladwell, one of the magazine's best known contributors, said in an interview: "I read the Condé Nast news release, and I was puzzled because I couldn't find any intellectual justification for what they were doing. They just assumed he had done something terrible, but never told us what the terrible thing was. And my only feeling -- the only way I could explain it -- was that Condé Nast had taken an unexpected turn toward traditional Catholic teaching." (Mr. Gladwell then took out his Bible and read to a reporter an allegory from Genesis 38 in which God strikes down a man for succumbing to the sin of self-gratification.)
Even Mx. Gessen, who initially found the incident "traumatic," said they now feel sympathy for Mr. Toobin. "I think it's tragic that a guy would get fired for really just doing something really stupid," they said. "It is the Zoom equivalent of taking an inappropriately long lunch break, having sex during it and getting stumbled upon."
There was a time to speak up -- to, as they say, grow a pair -- and it's long passed.
A commenter at the NYT had the right idea:
Doug Tarnopol
Cranston, RI
The guy didn't purposely expose himself to his coworkers. It's an embarrassing mistake. It's not genocide.Should he be destroyed for this? No. The mere knowledge that everyone saw him do this all-too-human thing, that, again, he didn't intend for anyone to see, is punishment enough.
Honestly, if I'd been one of his coworkers, I would have gone out of my way to let him know that it's OK, not a big deal, and to help him through the international embarrassment, pile-on, and generally sadistic reaction that was inevitable.
People kill themselves over stuff like this, you know. Think of how you would feel. He made a technical mistake (with the tech, I mean), and a mistake in judgment, period. No, you don't do that while working -- or just after working or whatever it was. It was not, as far as I have read/heard, intentional (If so, that's another story.)
But for the love of God, if I were on the receiving end, as it were, of that Zoom, I'd've known instantly that whatever embarrassment I was feeling--and turn it off instantly, no?--was zero compared to what was coming his way. As a colleague, I'd be worried for his actual life. Not my momentary embarrassment.
I have had a somewhat similar thing happen to me. The camera came on for some reason and the camera was pointing at some bookshelves that had some inappropriate for the work environment stuff on it (e.g.a Hajime Sorayama book cover). I caught it right off and with the angle it was probably OK for that brief instance. Nobody said anything. We have discovered that this piece of software will at times turn on your camera just because. My camera is now covered.
The Former Banker at December 15, 2020 10:53 PM
Yes, they do, but masturbating while you're on a Zoom call is not exactly a simple "mistake."
A Hajime Sorayama book cover or a BB gun is one thing, but showing your coworkers your own schlong is quite another.
If I can borrow a Murphy Brown quote here, "I don't like to think about my coworkers having sex. It's nothing personal. It just makes my skin crawl."
Conan the Grammarian at December 16, 2020 7:31 AM
I don't know. Certainly, I don't think he should be "destroyed." But I am pretty sure that if I made the same mistake at my company, I would also be fired. (And I'm female.)
ahw at December 16, 2020 7:49 AM
I'm not terribly sympathetic to someone streaming sex talk or porn at the same time as their meeting, but that said... why the fuck is this on the news, who cares. Let them work it out at their company, the whole world doesn't need to know.
NicoleK at December 16, 2020 8:17 AM
"...a few droplets of water."
"See what you miss when you're not paying attention?" - Zaphod Beeblebrox
Radwaste at December 16, 2020 8:44 AM
guy didn't purposely expose himself to his coworkers
Sez who? also: say what?
Treat cameras like they're a firearm you haven't recently inspected: it's armed and ready for you do commit dumb shit.
The webcam I have at work has a privacy lid that pulls down. Unless I'm using it, it's in the down position so even if some hacker infiltrates my system, at most they'll get a black screen and maybe some audio.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 16, 2020 8:50 AM
Not Zoom, other meeting software, but found my camera was on, after an auto Microsoft update had restarted the machine.
Keep cameras and microphones covered when not in use.
Joe J at December 16, 2020 8:59 AM
I don't think going to bat for "Wanky the Clown" is all that.
https://twitter.com/VerumVulnero1/status/1339239924478980096
I R A Darth Aggie at December 16, 2020 10:46 AM
I'm afraid that while I agree with Advice Goddess in principle, I have a certain level of schadenfreude when the "woke" turn on themselves and eat their young.
ruralcounsel at December 16, 2020 12:00 PM
As an aside, in Genesis 38 Onan was struck down not for "spilling his seed on the ground", i.e, masturbating, but because he refused to do his duty to procreate with his brother's widow. His seed may have ended up on the ground because he pulled out in the nick of time, so to speak, rather than as a result of any manual dexterity.
Jay R at December 16, 2020 1:06 PM
The real problem here it seems to me is that in the absence of people having a faith-based morality, what is a "sin" becomes arbitrary and subject to a mere vote by the mob. For example, when Louis CK got in trouble, he had asked permission of the ladies. Isn't that the rule you are supposed to follow? Consent? But somehow the mob decided he was being creepy so boom, headshot. Al Franken was a little handsy with the ladies but it was the photo where he is pretending to grab the sleeping lady's boobs that got him booted. Pretending. The kid with the bb gun on zoom was suspended for "bringing a gun to school"--what kid could know his teachers were that crazy? In many cases once you have offended someone, it is not even helpful to point out that they were mistaken. The prof in Cali was talking about the chinese language and said a chinese filler word (our "um" or "uh") that sounds (if you are half-deaf and looking for a fight) like the N-word. The sky fell on the poor guy. Glad I don't teach college. Hell, "bigger" sounds like the n-word too as does "tigger" from winnie the pooh.
I'm not going to defend or prosecute toobin. My point is that the decision to go after him seems to me entirely arbitrary. When the mob turns on you watch out.
cc at December 16, 2020 2:30 PM
The most important thing about this story is that it is fuckin' funny…
Not just because it's such a needless exposure. We'll get to that in a minute. Mostly it suggests that whatever the people do on those work calls isn't interesting enough to constrain team members from the most mundane distraction of them all.
To my knowledge, I've never consumed any of Toobin's work; not his writings, if he has any, and none of his teevee appearances. So there's no room for personal identification with his suffering.
And Mickey Kaus had a couple of good tweets about it. "Everybody poops" is not the instructive fable for this one. You and I don't have to worry about this.
As Joe J says, capping the transducers on your PC is not a big deal. I live on laptops, all identically configured. There are three (3) separate software breaks on microphones for each; to cover the cameras, I like to use the little barcode stickers that you get on Red Delicious apples. The adhesive lasts for about half a year, no matter how many time you flip them out of the way for a teleconference. And if you like red delicious apples, they're readily replaced when too old.
On the 5th Column, Matt Welch described Toobin as a featurelessly annoying personage, with all the irritating interpersonal habits befitting a contemporary media prima donna.
A lot of times, when proud people are caught doing rude & reckless things, it's because they're sort of psychologically trying to prove thing to people. Remember that time the President of the United States got caught banging an intern less than half his age?
You and I, who already know that the New Yorker editorial board is full of shit, wouldn't bother… And would find a more direct mode of expression if we needed to.
Crid at December 16, 2020 2:49 PM
✔ Conan
✔ Darth
✔ Joe
✔ Darth
✔ Rural
Crid at December 16, 2020 2:53 PM
> My point is that the decision
> to go after him seems to me
> entirely arbitrary.
What means = "going after"?
Can you name someone in the same circumstance whose 'arbitration' went the other direction?… And, I mean, what would that direction entail?
Yeah, humiliations of this magnitude have a natural history, but it's not based on some consequential determination from a corruptible tribunal that should have known better. I don't see how faith has anything to do with it, or how it could interrupt his fate.
Crid at December 16, 2020 10:04 PM
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