A lot going on in these matters on Thursday… Will Wilkinson got canned by his think tank employer for an obviously sarcastic tweet. The former StarSlateCodex wrote a long but nuanced essay about feeling compelled to shut down his blog by the New York Times. And Australia and Google are threatening each other.

And now Amy's given us this to read....

From the SSC piece:

[A] recent poll found that 62% of people feel afraid to express their political beliefs. [...] And the kicker is that these numbers are up almost ten percentage points from the last poll three years ago.

This is a topic which seems to be flowering my the hours, and Biden stumbles into his own Presidential scandals (ambassador to Iran, and no face masks after inauguration).

The kicker is that Sasha (Jessica Mulroney's accuser) will not face consequences. Even now that she's been exposed as a liar.

Her popularity soared as a result of this accusation, and will not diminish even the slightest now that she's been found out.

The reason for this is that black women are now the victims du jour, and none would dare attack one, even those guilty of false accusations.

I don’t understand why any intelligent , decent person would be on Twitter?!!?

Jay, we're always responsible for the ideas we make space for in our own brains. Similarly to friendships themselves, when you twitter-follow the right people — and when *they* twitter-follow the right people — it's a game-changing source of clarity and amusement, and not just for breaking events. Twitter is a refinement, or a particularly pungent extract, of precisely the serendipity which brought you to Amy's blog to share that comment.

Additionally, for about the first three years I was on there ('11-14ish), the were more genuine belly laughs from Twitter than from every film, TV show and magazine I'd ever seen put together.

After wasting a couple of decades with it youth, I'd don't understand why people would park in front of a television for more than two minutes, regardless of the content… But for about three generations of America, it was the (much-less-elegant) model for the word 'network.'

(Well, also, I made a career at it. If you pay my rate, I *will* watch television… Call the office, they'll email you the price sheet.)

(Formula One is worth watching on the desktop. Also this weekend's old-guy championship for the NFC.)

Oh my God, the grovelling. This is exactly like the Smith Facebook Alum groups. The grovelling. The nothing being good enough.

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!!!!!

I watched so, so many white and Asian women do this.

The lesson I've learned is don't grovel under these sorts of attacks.

NicoleK:

Oh my God, the grovelling. This is exactly like the Smith Facebook Alum groups. The grovelling. The nothing being good enough.

I've often said that you should never apologize to the left. Once you do that, the left will forever demand you do penance and perpetually hold your sins -- real or otherwise -- over your head. They don't believe in forgiveness. Why should they, when you can become their compliant slave giving your time and money in service of their causes.

@Patrick:
The kicker isn’t that the BLM bully, Exeter, won’t face consequences - that’s to be expected.
The kicker is that Mulroney’s “best friend” - at whose wedding in Westminster Cathedral Mulroney had a front row seat, while Mulroney’s twins carried the train of the bride’s dress down the aisle, didn’t come to her defense when Mulroney was accused of racism by Exeter, a person who Mulroney had never met. I guess when you’re the Duchess of Sussex you don’t have to concern yourself about people who were your friends when you were just some starting to age actress. But, there won’t be consequences there, either. But, then again, maybe if you can claim to be Besties with the Duchess of Sussex some obscure journalist will decide it’s worth the effort to clear your name and reputation, so maybe the relationship had some benefit.

I've often said that you should never apologize to the left. ~ Patrick at January 22, 2021 9:35 AM

As PG Wodehouse put it in The Man Upstairs: "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."

You are absolutely right, Patrick.

I mean if you really see what you did wrong and are sorry, sure, but not in a grovelly sort of way.

I swear if I see any more "Thank you so much for teaching me" or "I feel humbled and awed by the wonderfulness of you for pointing this out" etc. etc, I will puke.

""As PG Wodehouse put it in The Man Upstairs: "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.""

PG Wodehouse was an elitist patriarchal neocolonialist white white male, he must be cancelled, his books burned, his bones dug up, put on trial and burned and scattered, no properly WOKE person would ever hold him up as an example to follow.

PG Wodehouse was an elitist patriarchal neocolonialist white white male, he must be cancelled, his books burned, his bones dug up, put on trial and burned and scattered, no properly WOKE person would ever hold him up as an example to follow. ~ Nigella Fumersone-Naysmyth at January 22, 2021 10:45 AM

I've have myself cancelled immediately.

"White white" is a handsome flourish.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that one day we will send all QAnon/Stormfront crazies on the right and all extreme Woke/BLM/antifa crazies on the left to Adak Island, where they will either learn to live together or else slaughter each other in a frenzy of partisan hatred.

I have a dream that my last dream comes true very soon.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

And if you had a smidgen of historical awareness, you would know that these are all the same people. In fact, slave, and slave owner, can never be neatly divided by color at all. Never could be.

JFW, based on your response, you seem to suffer from a severe case of historical deficit disorder.

Here's a great piece from Barbara Kay about chess.

As PG Wodehouse put it in The Man Upstairs: "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."
___________________________________

I haven't read that particular Wodehouse work, but some of that sounds suspiciously vague.

That is, the "right sort of people" often don't want apologies half as much as they want the other party to make AMENDS - and rightly so. Even children are often good at fake apologies when they know they won't have to do more than that. (The only people who SHOULDN'T have to make amends are toddlers - and anyway, for them, the humiliation of saying "I'm sorry" is often punishment enough.)

Besides which, we all know that Wodehouse was an Edwardian humorist, so it sounds to me as though he was writing from the point of view of a cad or a criminal. Since when would it have been considered civilized, in British society, NOT to apologize for bad behavior?

Lenona,

Everything you say above is deeply insightful and gets to the heart of what an apology is really about.

No one is really interested in empty words if associated action or commitment fails to follow.

Interestingly, this philosophy that an apology is in some sense a sign of weakness or defeat is a core tenant of a now defunct and controversial political figure:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/roy-cohn-trump-art-deal-always-hit-back/

"Roy Cohn taught young Donald Trump two simple precepts: Always hit back. Never apologize. That’s exactly what we’ve seen Trump doing throughout the campaign, and especially the last several weeks. So if a Venezuelan beauty queen says you treated her cruelly, you say she made a sex tape. If the father of a dead soldier criticizes you on TV, you say he didn’t allow his wife to speak. And if the most powerful Republican in Washington says he won’t defend you any more, you spend days calling him “weak and ineffective.” Because you always hit back. And you never apologize. That’s what Trump learned from the man who became his mentor."

As you very astutely observe... this type of mentality is frequently employed by cads and criminals.

Lenona,

The quote comes from the shorty story, "The Man Upstairs," in the eponymous collection.

In the story, Annette Brougham, a composer and music teacher meets her upstairs neighbor, an aspiring artist named Alan Beverly. Another artist in the building, Reginald Sellers, taunts Beverly because Beverly has not sold any paintings.

At some point, after a session with a difficult student, Brougham is abrupt and rude to Sellers. Speaking with Beverly, she decides to go and apologize to Sellers. The author muses on apologies - hence the quote.

Annette's apology to Sellers goes as predicted, "he forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from now on he would be more insufferable than ever."

I won't spoil the rest of the story, in case you decide to read it. There's a decent recap on Wikipedia if you decide not to.

In that case, it sounds as though the problematic word is "never."

Perhaps. Even so, you can see where the quote fit Patrick’s contention that there are some people to whom one should be wary of apologizing.

It is also salient to recognize that this is a fictional story and not really intended to be a source of serious advice got how to live a good life.

Let's not forget that PG Wodehouse also said the following:

“I always advise people never to give advice.”

The man was an author who loved a good turn of phrase or thought provoking addition to a story.

Not everything an author of fiction writes is to be taken too seriously.