The 'culture of shut up' is sometimes just rude people who disagree
Last week, I made a shocking discovery: some leftwing activists have developed a sinister new superpower that enables them to control other people’s actions by brainwaves alone. Their first victim was Brendan Eich, appointed then un-appointed as head of Mozilla, after his financial support for the campaign against gay marriage (and in support of Pat Buchanan) came to light. To outsiders like me, it seemed as if a high-profile firm had made a decision about its leadership; that its employees and users had engaged in vigorous debate about that decision; and that the company had decided to reverse it.
But it turned out that opponents of Eich’s new role hadn’t just been voicing their opinions. Somehow, by means I’ve yet to understand, they’d forced him to resign. That was the phrase used again and again, including in a piece entitled The Culture of Shut Up, by the former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, with which the internet declared itself richly pleased. “We need to stop telling each other to shut up. We need to get comfortable with the reality that no one is going to shut up,” Lovett wrote, correctly. But he didn’t mean that Eich’s raucous critics should be tolerated. He meant that the Culture of Shut Up had silenced Eich, by forcing him to resign. And not just Eich. Lovett listed many more victims, including celebrity chef-and-alleged-racist Paula Deen and Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, who, I’m told, is a man on a television show who is cross about gays.
And all that happened before Brandeis University bunglingly offered then withdrew an honorary degree for Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Oh, man.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2014/apr/14/culture-shut-up-twitter-controversy-mozilla-brandeis?CMP=twt_gu
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