«
»
 

The New Inquisition

From Handle’s Haus

Haus in December of 2013 was collecting a list of person harassed, fired, bullied or badgered for expressing opinions and making jokes. He is trying to keep the list neutral and evenhanded, but anyone can see where the vast, vast majority of cases are. There is one group that, as a matter of core dogma, is willing to tolerate differences of opinion in others, and live and let live, and there is another that, as a matter of core dogma, is not.

He is too cautious to call it an Inquisition, but he knows and cannot quite say it. An Inquisition, by the way, as a mechanism for expelling members who do not conform to Church dogma is something I regard as a necessity, even noble, if your denomination is not to end up in the flaccid and misty situation of the Unitarians or the Anglicans. (What made the Spanish Inquisition evil was not the Inquisition but the Spanish, that is, the Spanish king, the secular power, enforced a matter of Church discipline. One the other hand Spain was never taken over by Protestants, whose Inquisitions has as many victims or more, but without the benefit of formal and legal checks on abuses of the power.) If you recall your history, the Inquisition had no authority over non-Christians.

In this case, the Progressives are trying to enforce as much as their Inquisition as they can over non-Progressives, and they are inching ever closer to achieving the secular power to make policing your thoughts a matter of law.

Mark my words, call it a law of sociology: any institution without an Inquisition to maintain the purity of its beliefs and principles, eventually becomes Progressive, and institutes an Inquisition to maintain the purity and Progressive beliefs and principles, regardless of any damage to the integrity or existence of the original institution.

As a public service, hoping it does not offend net etiquette, I reprint his whole list to day here, with links:

This is a placeholder website for the chronicling of … an inchoate abstraction that will, eventually, adequately describe the agglomeration.  ‘Inquisition’ isn’t too far off.

It is a list of prominent (mostly) leftist/progressive intimidation incidents, or profiles in preemptive cowardice in anticipation thereof, or firings because of ludicrous and exaggerated PC claims of ‘offensiveness’ (usually concerning mere jokes) that I wish had been deterred or handled differently.  Also taboo-witch-hunts (is there a good word for a person who is a ‘taboo-truth-witch’ that is better than ‘heretic’, ‘apostate’, or ‘blasphemer’?)

We are all Galileo now.  Bleg from all of you to help me expand it via crowd-sourcing.  The dates are not consistent, sometimes it is from the ‘offending event’, other times it is from the purging or just the publication dates of the news stories.  To keep the list short, I won’t include descriptions, so follow the links and google it if you want to learn more about these sad sagas.

(UPDATE: It looks like some comment thread over at Reason is referring a bunch of people over here.)

(UPDATE2: Welcome visitors from Chateau Heartiste , Vox‘s, Steve Sailer’s., and don’t forget Derbyshire’s analysis (since then I’ve added over 50 more).  As of 19-JAN-2014, this post has now been read by over 11,000 people.)

  1. 10-OCT-1959: Revilo Oliver purged from National Review.  A complex personality – the sixth generation in his family to bear the burden of a purposefully palindromic name.  Archive at Unz.org
  2. 20-APR-1968: Enoch Powell purged from British Conservative Party.
  3. 1969-1973: The ‘original’ race and intelligence ‘controversy’ hysteria over Jensen, Herrnstein, Draper, Wilson, and Shockley, et al. (see also Sociobiology)
  4. 19-OCT-1974: Sir Keith Joseph deemed ineligible for Chancellor of the Exchequer for this notorious speech.
  5. JAN-1984: Ray Honeyford forced into early retirement as headmaster of Drummond Middle School.
  6. 17-MAR-1984: Geoffrey Blainey silenced by University of Melbourne.
  7. 12-MAR-1985: Murray Dolfman suspended from lecturing at the University of Pennsylvania for talking to black students about the 13th Amendment.
  8. 06-APR-1987: Al Campanis ‘ignites controversy’ over remarks about black baseball team managers.
  9. 19-JAN-1988: Jimmy ‘The Greek’ Snyder purged from CBS.
  10. 1989-1991 (and continuing): Related to the above, Linda Gottfredson’s torturous path.
  11. NOV-1990: John Strugnell purged from the Dead Sea Scrolls project.
  12. 22-APR-1991: William F. Buckley devotes an entire issue of National Review to “In Search of Anti-Semitism: What Christians Provoke What Jews? Why? By Doing What? — And Vice Versa.” focused greatly on Pat Buchanan (and timed to coincide with his big for Presidential candidacy).  Later, collected with responses, into a book.
  13. 1993 – Jospeh Sobran purged from National Review.
  14. 13-JAN-1993: Eden Jacobowitz charged by University of Pennsylvania with violating racial harassment policy by shouting ‘Water Buffalo’ at some large, rowdy black women.  (He should have just said ‘Behemoth‘ like he was thinking in Hebrew).  There was even a Doonesbury comic on it.
  15. 27-JUN-1995: Sam Francis purged from the Washington Times.
  16. 23-APR-1995: Frank Urban “Fuzzy” Zoeller loses his sponsors after Tiger Woods joke.
  17. 1997: Peter Brimelow and John O’Sullivan (and many others) purged from National Review.
  18. 09-AUG-1997: Chris Brand purged from Edinburgh University purportedly for discussing sexuality amongst minors, but mostly for his IQ heresy.
  19. 15-JAN-1999: David Howard purged for his vocabulary.
  20. 01-FEB-1999: Glenn Hoddle purged as England’s soccer coach
  21. 20-APR-1999: Marge Schott finally gives up being “Baseball’s Big Red Headache“
  22. 27-DEC-1999: John Rocker forced into Psychiatric testing after expressing some opinions, but judging by his later behavior, he somehow didn’t get the message.
  23. 17-SEP-2001: Bill Maher purged from ABC (well, ok, just reassigned to HBO, he’s doing great)
  24. 02-OCT-2001: Ann Coulter purged from National Review (NR’s version here).
  25. 2001: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together goes unpublished in the U.S.
  26. 21-FEB-2002: Bjorn Lomborg investigated and found ‘guilty’ by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty for complaints related to the publication of his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
  27. 09-MAR-2002: Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot convicted of intolerance by Canada’s Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal.
  28. 27-APR-2002: Scott Phelps suspended from teaching at Muir High.  (note: none of the links to the news stories seem to work anymore).
  29. MAY-2002: Geoffrey Sampson purged by the UK Conservatives.
  30. 06-MAY-2002: Pim Fortuyn assassinated by multicultural leftist Volkert van der Graaf for opposing mass immigration into Holland.  His murdered has been released from prison less than 12 years after the fact.
  31. 17-JUN-2002: Rev. Stephen Boissoin persecuted by Canadian Human Rights Commission.
  32. NOV-2002: Oriana Fallaci becomes the subject of arrest warrants in Switzerland related to her excellently passionate book The Rage and The Pride.  (See also her trial in Italy on 12-JUN-2006 for The Force of Reason.)
  33. 05-DEC-2002: Senator Trent Lott resigns his Senate leadership by having to gall to flatter Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday.
  34. 2003: J. Michael Bailey two-minutes-hated and investigated for ethics after publishing ‘The Man Who Would Be Queen‘.
  35. 10-MAR-2003: The Dixie Chicks intensely criticized and forced into apology for opposing Iraq War while overseas.
  36. 01-OCT-2003: Rush Limbaugh pressured to resign from ESPN after comments related to Donovan McNabb.
  37. 17-OCT-2003: Greg Easterbrook purged from ESPN (and his content memory-holed)
    1. 15-MAR-2004: Ted Rall purged from New York Times. (it’s a thing with him, see below)
  39. 30-JUN-2004: Rachel Ehrenfeld found liable by default judgment by British Court after successful libel-tourism suit brought by the Bin Mahfouz family (it’s kind of a patten with them).  The case is important for illustrating not just the legal controversy, but the willingness of certain nations to extent to private parties the ability to commandeer the judicial apparatus on mere pretext for speech-suppressive ends.
  40. 12-AUG-2004: Tatu Vanhanen investigated by Finnish NBI at the behest of the Ombudsman for Minorities.
  41. SEP-2004: Thomas Klocek suspended from teaching at DePaul.
  42. JAN-2005: Kevin Lamb purged from Human Events.
  43. 19-JAN-2005: Lawrence Summers purged from Harvard
  44. 25-JULY-2005: Michael Graham purged from WMAL.
  45. 26-OCT-2005: Fisher DeBerry probably purged from U.S. Air Force Academy (left a year after controversy over his comments)
  46. 15-NOV-2005: Alain Finkielkraut two minutes hated for making comments about the 2005 French Riots and is forced to apologize.  Interestingly, Le Nouvel Observateur writes about him in an article called, “The Neo-Reactionaries“.
  47. JAN-2006: Fr. Alphonse de Valk persecuted by Canadian Human Rights Commission.
  48. 11-FEB-2006: Ezra Levant investigated after publishing Mohammad photos in Western Standard.
  49. 25-FEB-2006: Michael Regan pressured into resignation from Allegany County, Maryland DA’s office.
  50. 23-MAR-2006: Frank Ellis forced into early retirement from Leeds University for views on race and intelligence.  He has earlier decried British ‘racial hysteria’ and notably gave a talk on Liberal Totalitarianism.
  51. 16-JUN-2006: Dr. Bruce Lahn pressured out of IQ / brain-size / recent human evolution genetic research. (10Q from GNXP) – Take note of answer #3.
  52. 14-JUL-2006: Jeneane Garofalo purged from The Majority Report for comments on the relative status of statements about Scientology and Judaism. I think.
  53. 09-AUG-2006: Dr. Rod Lea two minutes hated for statements related to Maoris and the monoamine oxidase-A gene.
  54. 20-OCT-2006: Mark Steyn investigated after writing about islam in MacLean’s..
  55. 20-NOV-2006: Michael Richards (“Kramer”) purged from the biz.
  56. 04-APR-2007: Don Imus purged from CBS and NBC.
  57. 04-MAY-2007: Larry Auster purged from FrontPage Magazine.
  58. 22-MAY-2007: Comedian Guy Earle fined for mocking a lesbian heckler.
  59. 07-JUN-2007: Isaiah Washington purged from Grey’s Anatomy and ABC.
  60. 11-JUN-2007: Norman Finkelstein denied tenure at DePaul.
  61. 11-SEP-2007: Doug Christie fined by the Law Society of British Columbia for advocating a little too vigorously for the wrong kind of people.
  62. 16-OCT-2007: James Watson investigated and purged.
  63. NOV-2007: Keith John Sampson found guilty of racial harassment by Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Affirmative Action Officers for reading Todd Tucker’s book, Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klanin, er, impolite company.  The chancellor eventually apologized.
  64. 22-MAR-2008: Randi Rhodes purged from Air America.
  65. 15-APR-2008: Brigitte Bardot goes on trial for Muslim comments (and hardly for the first time)
  66. 31-OCT-2008: Everybody goes berserk on the Mormons because of proposition-8 support. (google for more).
  67. 20-APR-2009: Carrie Prejean two minutes hated for expressing views on gay marriage at Miss USA contest.
  68. 24-APR-2009: Ted Rall purged from United Media.  (see below, again)
  69. 06-MAY-2009: Michael Savage banned from Britain.
  70. 15-JUL-2009: Dr. Kathy Albain  two minutes hated for accusations of ethnicity-based medical profiling.
  71. 13-OCT-2009: Thilo Sarrazin purged from Bundesbank
  72. 16-NOV-2009: Lou Dobbs purged by CNN over immigration reporting.
  73. 28-APR-2010: Gillian Duffy publicly declared ‘that bigoted woman’ by Gordon Brown.
  74. 30-APR-2010: Stephanie Grace and the case of her infamous Harvard email.
  75. 01-MAY-2010: Peter Duesberg investigated by UC Berkeley.  (later dropped, though I think his clinging to his AIDS stuff over all the years of contrary evidence is pure derp, but still if shouldn’t have had the effect on Charlton below.)
  76. 11-MAY-2010: Bruce Charlton purged from Medical Hypothesis.
  77. 19-MAY-2010: Physics Professor Jonathan Katz purged from BP-Oil-Spill Brain Trust.
  78. 04-JUN-2010: Steve Blair purged by KYCA radio.
  79. 10-AUG-2010: Dr. Laura Schlessinger eased off the air for discussing whether the use of the word ‘nigger’ could ever be appropriate.  Here’s some Chris Rock, “The correct answer is, ‘Not really’.”
  80. 01-OCT-2010: Rick Sanchez purged from CNN.
  81. 08-OCT-2010: Juan Williams purged from NPR.
  82. 02-FEB-2011: John Casteel purged from Arkansas Republican Party.
  83. 07-MAR-2011: Cathy and Fred ‘Gopher’ Grandy purged from WMAL.
  84. 11-MAR-2011: Alexandra Wallace purged from UCLA for her ‘ching-chong ling-long’ ‘Asians in the Library‘ viral youtube clip.
  85. 30-MAR-2011: Andrew Bolt sued (and later found guilty) for some crimethink blog posts he made in April 2009, including ‘It’s so hip to be black.”
  86. 27-APR-2011: Simon Ledger arrested for singing ‘Kung-Fu Fighting’.
  87. 16-MAY-2011: Satoshi Kanazawa purged from Psychology Today.
  88. 03-JUN-2011: Tracy Morgan forced to apologize by NBC after gay comments.
  89. JUL-2011: Jared Taylor removed from State Department translation referral website at the behest of the $PLC.
  90. 01-AUG-2011:  Principal Frank Borzellieri purged from Archdiocese of NY Schools.
  91. 03-NOV-2011: Brett Ratner purged from Oscars.
  92. 18-NOV-2011: Sepp Blater pressured within FIFA.
  93. 29-NOV-2011: Emma West arrested for snakes on a plane racism on a train.
  94. 09-JAN-2012: Principal Ted Horrell two minutes hated for talking honesty about test scores.
  95. 17-FEB-2012: Patrick Buchanan purged from MSNBC.
  96. 19-FEB-2012: Anthony Federico purged from ESPN for ‘Linsane’ ‘Chink in the Armor’ headline.
  97. 01-MAR-2012: Rush Limbaugh advertisers pressured to bail after Fluke slut comment.
  98. 05-APR-2012: John Derbyshire purged from National Review.
  99. 10-APR-2012: Robert Weissberg purged from National Review.
  100. 30-APR-2012: Naomi Riley purged from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  101. 16-MAY-2012: Manny Pacquiao ‘on defensive’ on same-sex marriage
  102. 22-MAY-2012: Andy Gipson threatened for quoting Bible on gays.
  103. 22-MAY-2012: Mark Traina purged from New Orleans Public Schools.
  104. 02-JUL-2012: Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A pressured.
  105. 15-JUL-2012: Mark Steyn published column that got him sued by Michael Mann. (ongoing!)
  106. 25-JUL-2012: Paraskevi “Voula” Papachristou purged from 2012 Olympics for making light of matters involving sacred objects.
  107. 08-AUG-2012: Bret Easton Ellis two minutes hated for thoughts on proper casting.
  108. 27-SEP-2012: Nakoula Basseley Nakoula arrested for violating parole by producing that ‘Innocence of Muslims’ movie, or something.  A strange case all around, I’ll admit.
  109. 02-OCT-2012: Lewiston, Maine Mayor Robert MacDonald scolded for comments related to Somali immigrants.
  110. 17-MAR-2013: ‘Dongle-Gate’, dongle-joker-geeks purged.
  111. 20-MAR-2013: Steven Landsburg gets two-minutes-hated for a thought experiment.
  112. 17-APR-2013: Rick Ross dumped by Reebok for some dope lyrics (HT: Taki), which are totally shocking, because, as we all well know, rappers never talk about drugs.
  113. 03-APR-2013: Terri Proud purged from Arizona Veterans Administration
  114. 10-MAY-2013: Jason Richwine purged from Heritage
  115. 17-MAY-2013: Paula Deen purged.
  116. 22-MAY-2013, Julia (a 13-year-old, name withheld) forced to apologize for taunting the shattered, fragile ego of allegedly full grown man athlete, Adam Goodes.
  117. 30-MAY-2013: Gordon Gee purged from Ohio State University (he’s going to West Virginia now)
  118. 04-JUN-2013: Geoffrey Miller two-minutes-hated for ‘fat shaming’.
  119. 05-JUN-2013: Nissim Yeshaya purged from Israel Court.
  120. 07-JUN-2013: April Sims purged from Dallas Police Dept.
  121. 20-JUN-2013: Mike Krahulik gets two-minutes-hated for ‘transphobia’.
  122. 25-JUN-2013: Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer banned from Britain.
  123. 03-JUL-2013: Aaryn Gries purged from Zephyr Talent.
  124. 12-JULY-2013: Orson Scott Card threatened with Ender’s Game boycott.  (See also his mothballed Superman project)
  125. 20-JULY-2013: Ron Unz purged from The American Conservative for this
  126. AUG-2013: Paul Gottfried purged from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute for having friends who had opinions about ethnic disparities like Charles Murray’s.
  127. 08-AUG-2013: Richard Dawkins gets a taste of the Zeitgeist.
  128. 14-AUG-2013: Vox Day purged from Science Fiction Writers of America.
  129. 27-AUG-2013: Tuffy Gessling purged from Rodeo Clowning.
  130. 04-SEP-2013: Yelena Isinbayeva almost purged as Russian Olympic Ambassador.
  131. 08-SEP-2013: Craig James purged from Fox Sports, because, “We just asked ourselves how Craig’s statements would play in our human resources department.”
  132. 10-SEP-2013: Pax Dickinson purged from Business Insider.
  133. 25-SEP-2013: Barilla CEO, Guido Barilla pressured on gay marriage.
  134. 25-SEP-2013: David Gilmour two-minutes-hated for literature judgment.
  135. 26-OCT-2013: Don Yelton purged from local GOP because of Daily Show.
  136. 14-NOV-2013: Helmuth Nyborg investigated for ‘scientific dishonesty’ (he was also purged in 2006)
  137. 26-NOV-2013: Alec Baldwin purged from MSNBC not for vulgarity, ha!, but for swearing in that impermissiable way.
  138. 28-NOV-2013: Ted Rall purged from Daily Kos.
  139. 03-DEC-2013: Bob Dylan threatened by French prosecutor.
  140. 09-DEC-2013: Tila Tequila gets erased by Facebook for trying her hand at being a classless provocateuse.  No word yet on Miley Cyrus’ account.
  141. 10-DEC-2013: Chip Wilson purged from Lululemon.
  142. 10-DEC-2013: Researchgruppen (an antifa organization), in collaboration with the newspaper Expressen cracks blog-commenting service Discus in order to expose their politically incorrect enemies to the Brown Scare, and enable Marxist bombers.  (See also, The Journal News publishes map of gun owners)
  143. 12-DEC-2013: Bob Newhart intimidated.
  144. 19-DEC-2013: Phil Robertson purged from A&E.
  145. 20-DEC-2013: Justine Sacco purged from IAC.
  146. 20-DEC-2013: Dawn Barnett found guilty and sent to diversity training over a Golliwogg comment (HT: Derb)
  147. 29-DEC-2013: Ani DiFranco concert cancelled in protest over venue choice.
  148. 02-JAN-2014: Heartiste threatened with blog memory-holing via WordPress malicious prosecution (Kevin Conboy)?  It wouldn’t be the first time a blog was suddenly disappeared.
  149. Senator Cory Bernardi two minutes hated by Australians in general for the content of his new book, The Conservative Revolution (note the ‘reviews’), with preference for traditional nuclear families seeming to be the key irritation.
  150. 07-JAN-2014: Prof. Mary Willingham threatened and her research disowned by UNC for exposing the ‘special talent’ program.
  151. 17-JAN-2014: Juan Pablo Galavis, Conquistador-American Hispanic, two minutes hated for preferring heterosexuals for roles on a dating show.  Groveling here.
  152. 18-JAN-2014: Maria Conchita Alonso purged from a Spanish-language version of “The Vagina Monologues” for appearing in a political ad for – gasp – a Republican!
  153. 20-JAN-2014: Bill Simmons forced to apologize for ‘Dr. V‘ story.
  154. 22-JAN-2014: (Note: Merely Cautionary, So Far), IRS goes after Friends of Abe Hollywood Conservatives, with particular interest in outing the membership list.
  155. 18-MAR-2014: Hempstead (IVO Houston, Texas) Middle School Principal Amy Lacey purged (other coverage links) for strongly encouraging students and teachers to speak English in the classroom.
  156. 24-MAR-2014: Brendan Eich experiences purging campaign to get him fired at CEO of Mozilla due to $1,000 donation in 2008 in support of California Proposition 8, which succeeded at the polls, if not in the courts.  OkCupid goes all in on full, guilt-by-association excommunication .  The flipside of campaign funding transparency is the the risk of being on the receiving end of the politics of personal destruction.  Talk about a chilling effect.  But, naturally, the same people would publicly lose their minds with maximum mouth foaming if they heard of a company firing someone because they contributed to the campaign to oppose proposition 8.  UPDATE: Sigh, purged.  Depressing and predictable.  Only missing the ‘to spend more time with his family’ line.
  157. 28-MAR-2014: Stephen Colbert feels the rage of #CancelColbert inquisitors who relish being purposefully obtuse and can’t take an obvious joke.
  158. 02-APR-2014: Michael Mann takes aim and demands that David Koch be purged from the board of Boston PBS station WGBH.
  159. 08-APR-2014: Ayaan Hirsi Ali spiked from Bradeis U. graduation ceremony / honorary degree.  Fox takes a look behind the scenes.
  160. 17-APR-2014: They’ll be asking for your expulsion too, soon enough, Julius Kairey of Cornell.  That’s the real ‘rape culture’.
  161. 21-APR-2014: Tom Preston-Werner purged from GitHub.  Some facts were conveniently withheld, not like they will do Tom any good, even though, “… the investigation found no evidence of illegal practices.” (HT: Sailer)
  162. 22-APR-2014: Charles Murray spiked from Azusa Pacific University. (HT: Sailer)
  163. 26-ARP-2014: Donald J. Sterling playing defense after ‘racist’ comments. (HT: Sailer) (UPDATE: fined, purged.)  Look, by all accounts, this guy was an awful sleezeball and deserved what he got.  Fine. Nevertheless, this was also obviously a baited setup (100 hours of secretly and illegally recorded conversations with the floozy?), and no one but Sailer’s been covering the real story behind the ouster instead of leveraging the media hysteria-catnip of the race-opera to cover it up.  No One.  That should trouble you.  And no one’s been making the obvious, prospective point, which is that today, Big Brother Is Everyone.  Hell is other people.  With smartphones, everybody’s carrying their own personal wire all the time.  If the adventuress isn’t convicted, then the signal to everyone else is that there is zero cost to extracting something juicy from the right person, and the deterrence effect is destroyed.  Imagine a future where everyone is their own Stasi, keeping an option-for-extortion retirement fund archive, and incentivized to get people to trust them and reveal their un-PC opinions in private.  People, it’s all going downhill.
  164. 26-APR-2014: Paul Weston arrested for Quoting Churchill. (HT: Steyn) and do check out the photos at Liberty GB.
  165. 01-MAY-2014: Eric Walsh purged from Pasadena Health Dept.
  166. 01-MAY-2014: Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson almost purged from the BBC over a very rude original version of a children’s rhyme.
  167. 01-MAY-2014: Josh Olin purged from Turtle Rock for tweeting the following about #161 to his 142K followers, “Here’s an unpopular opinion: Donald Sterling has the right as an American to be an old bigot in the security of his own home. He’s a victim.”  He’s not the only one now, Josh!  (HT: Ace) Pro-tip #1: If you start a tweet under your own name with, “Here’s an unpopular opinion,” and you rely even indirectly on popularity, then you’re doing it wrong in the #hashtag advocacy world.  Pro-tip #2: Never side with, or stand up for, losers, because that just makes you a loser too, and guilty by association, even if you signal condemnation, and even if you’re just arguing about ‘rights’.  You have to understand this most of all : error has no rights, and any defense of error is just more error.  So, watch your mouth.  Or else.
  168. 03-MAY-2014: Condoleeza Rice spiked from Rutgers Commencement following pressure from leftist student groups.  To his credit, Rutgers President Robert Barchi attempted to resist the pressure on principle, but for naught.  Rice can go back to filming more ‘Ban Bossy‘ PR-stunts for Facebook now, and maybe be President Sandberg’s Secretary of State or National Security Adviser one day.
  169. 07-MAY-2014: David and Jason Benham’s show spiked from HGTV.  UPDATE: SunTrust Bank closes their bank account, then relents after uproar.  I’m beginning to think that these ‘capitulate, excommunicate, then rehabilitate’ actions are the way that corporations try to please everyone, and have their cake and eat it too.   That might be understandable, but it’s not a good result, so the only appropriate policy if you care about this issue is to close your SunTrust account right now and never look back.
  170. 07-MAY-2014: Dr. Caleb Rossiter purged from the Institute for Policy Studies for writing an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that poor Africa needs an exemption to climate change emissions control policies (HT: Powerline)
  171. 11-MAY-2014: Don Jones noted for being controversial.  Stay tuned for developments.  UPDATE: Fined and suspended.
  172. 12-MAY-2014: David Lowe fired from BBC Radio after playing a song from 1932.
  173. 13-MAY-2014: YEAR OF THE SPIKED SPEAKER.  Now comes Robert J. Birgeneau and Christine Lagarde.  “between 1987 and 2008, there were … 21 incidents of an invited guest not speaking. Since 2009 there … 39 cancellations…”  Rate of increase? 550%
  174. 14-MAY-2014: Lennart Bengtsson hounded out of his membership in the GWPF.
  175. 22-MAY-2014: Mark Cuban under fire for the following ‘comments about race’, “If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face – white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere – I’m walking back to the other side of the street.”
  176. 27-MAY-2014: Ru Paul gets in hot water for defending use of the word ‘Tranny’.
  177. 28-MAY-2014: Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO, has to apologize for some offensive youthful indiscretion, er, completely standard fraternity communication.  Then again, you can never tell what atrocities frat-culture will be held accountable for next week.
  178. 04-JUN-2014: And Dan Savage gets in the same hot water for using the ‘transphobic slur’.
  179. 09-JUL-2014: Anthony Cumia fired by Sirius XM for some tweets.
  180. 11-JUL-2014:  Ashutosh Jogalekar fired from Scientific American for failing to be sufficiently critical of Richard Feynman, and perhaps in addition to his heresies within his review of Nicholas Wade’s book. (HT: Sailer)  He responds here.
  181. 12-JUL-2014: Now that she’s going to be on The View, Rosie O’Donnell is still taking heat for a legal shark fishing expedition she went on two years ago.  Don Surber ‘defends’ the act here.
  182. 06-AUG-214: Steven G. Salaita had his academic job offer rescinded by the University of Illinois for tweeting some very uncivil things about Israel during the latest outbreak of hostilities.  NB:  I have received a few emails, thankfully civil in tone, but which have accused me of bias and favoritism in the composition of this list.  I plead innocent, and assert that [the] reality [of ideological pressure] has a liberal bias, and that instead of a one-sided list, I have tried to be fair, and that the severe asymmetry and disproportion in representation (and in the very selective cases of a broad class of similar injustices for which liberals collectively demand redress) is a social phenomenon and not an artifact of my construction.  As corroboration for my claim, I move for the admission into evidence of this particular item, of an individual’s purging for which I would be sympathetic were it not for my much stronger commitment to the higher principle of freedom of expression and robust, disciplined tolerance for diverse viewpoints.  That being said, I have to say, given the pattern of these incidents, I predict Mr. Salaita will land firmly on his feet.  Stay tuned.
  183. 18-AUG-2014: Gavin McInnes purged from Rooster (a company he co-founded along with VICE) (HT: The Advocate, and thanks guys for all the traffic to this list – actually, that should be thanks for Justine Tunney), for a “Transphobic Essay“, that you can’t even read yourself because ThoughtCatalog says it’s “been reported [by folks like the ones at Salon] as hateful or abusive content.”
  184. 07-SEP-2017: Bruce Levenson purged from owning the Atlanta Hawks (or is that ‘Sterlinged‘ (see Brendan’s comment), or ‘Derbyshired‘) for a single email expressing some hatefacts about sport event spectator demographic attendance dynamics.
About

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

October 29, 2014 @ 6:00 am
Only Posting a Link