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RyanLawing's avatar

I'll say it louder for those in the back. NOT PAYING SOMEONE FOR THEIR SPEECH IS NOT ANTI FREE SPEECH. Nobody is stopping you from starting a podcast and saying whatever you want except for the 350 million people in this country who would rather listen to microwave sounds than halfwits preaching moral superiority.

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Bryan J. B.'s avatar

Great point. He isn't bemoaning the fact his lecture was cancelled. He is bemoaning the fact he won't be paid for it

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Mike Eyre's avatar

Ditto. The idea that the public should be required to pay, against their desire or interest, to hear someone's opinion is a particularly galling mindset.

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Danno's avatar

Especially when it's such a stupid opinion.

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Conservative Contrarian's avatar

By taxpayers. If he and his product are so wonderful then let him sell it to his audience.

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Susan G's avatar

My argument exactly for defunding NPR and PBS.

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Conservative Contrarian's avatar

I agree, it applies to almost everything government touches

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Timothy G McKenna's avatar

Really. I've been listening to them for almost 50 years.

They've established their audiences, gained their market shares, and should be able to sustain themselves by now. "Free of advertising"? Puh-leeze...

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Susan G's avatar

Exactly. I have never listened to NPR. But it seems their listener base would support a paid service, or, horrors, they could sell ads. I have watched PBS since childhood, and likely would support a paid version. But why should any news or entertainment purveyor be granted taxpayer funding?

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Joe's avatar

From the NYT Stiglitz piece which is worth reading in full:

"Ultimately, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities stepped in to provide the necessary money and I will deliver my lecture on Wednesday. If the school hadnтАЩt had the resources, I would have gone anyway."

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BookWench's avatar

Chuckling at "necessary money."

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Chris Kanaracus's avatar

Me too. Oh my

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

Mr Stiglitz is stunningly and bravely willing to put your money where his mouth is.

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Kathy Hix's avatar

Seems to me this started a looong time ago, all the way back to the Piss Christ controversy of the 1980s. People objected to taxpayer funding for offensive art. Their opponents argued that not funding offensive art amounted to censorship. It seemed to me that throwing the artist in jail or preventing the display of the art would be censorship, but simply telling the artist to find other sources of funding was not.

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

Do you think the left would be as enthusiastic about government funding of "art" that involved micturating on a Koran?

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Alex K.'s avatar

Forcing us to pay for his speech is compelled speech and anti-freedom of speech

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William Norton's avatar

Trump's "thought police." LOL.

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Lawyers Guns & Money's avatar

When you started discussing doing a podcast, I first thought the 350 million number was your estimate of the number of podcasts currently up and going.

But hey, if Taylor Swift's boyfriend's brother's wife can have a podcast, it's open for those who wish to try.

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the long warred's avatar

Stiglitz: What a cunt.

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Karen Williams's avatar

Hey, I know you're just being funny, but Matt doesn't think that and neither do I. Stiglitz means well.

And the word is a problem for women everywhere. That's the word men who abuse women use to make the women they abuse feel small. Steer clear. Please.

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the long warred's avatar

I wasnтАЩt talking about a woman. Or to one.

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Pariah's avatar

But you were writing on a platform seen by women, about a woman's body part, and using it in a negative sense.

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Adrian Smith's avatar

words only have the power you give them

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Pariah's avatar

If only I were that powerful.

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Karen Williams's avatar

Words themselves are only signs of the real problem, which is the mindset of the person using them.

Learning that someone despises you, or despises a class of people to which you belong, is a legitimate source of unease. You don't know what that person will do to harm you.

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Shaun's avatar

Karen Williams:

Gone off the deep end much?

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Charles Main's avatar

"Learning" is not the same as assuming. An assumption must be proven in order to become learning..."Karen".

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Karen Williams's avatar

I don't understand your comment. I think you must be making what I wrote more complicated than it is.

If/when someone were to call me that word, with the level of anger and contempt that usually comes with it, I would "learn" that this person views me that way, and this would hurt me and make me uneasy.

IOW, by "learn" I meant "discover."

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Charles Main's avatar

Did the OP call you a cunt? Perhaps you have made his comment more complicated than it is. (Or essentially hijacked the thread.) What it appears you are saying here is that you would have the word banned from the language, no matter the context in which it is used.

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Karen Williams's avatar

Wow, determined to pick a fight, eh? Hope it makes you happy that you have depressed me. Why do so few people want to interact the way everyone used to, 30 years ago? Relaxed, not trying to hurt, happy to enjoy each other's company, willing to listen fairly to each other's views? Jane Jacobs was right, there is a Dark Age ahead.

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Adrian Smith's avatar

you're still insisting on inferring that mindset from the use of the word

you can believe anyone using it is seething with possibly-unacknowledged misogyny if you want, but it's hardly a cultural universal

no one thinks people who use "dick" as a slur all hate men

what gives c*** this power?

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Karen Williams's avatar

That word means "you are just a receptacle for my d*** and totally worthless otherwise."

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Adrian Smith's avatar

i strongly doubt that the op considers joseph stiglitz to be a receptacle for his d***

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Karen Williams's avatar

Well, I think it's possible that Matt is running low on patience for lots of reasons, and may have allowed that to affect his choice of words.

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Scott Mari's avatar

I really want the "You must do this because of feelings" era to die. Fast.

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Karen Williams's avatar

I just want the era BEFORE that one. The one when viciousness was not considered OK, much less cheered on. And people who spent more time policing other people's behavior than their own were called "busybodies" and it was not a compliment.

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Adrian Smith's avatar

but that's what you're doing

demanding a veto over others' use of language is always a power play

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Adam's avatar

So people should never use "cock" or "dickhead" on a platform seen by men, because it's a man's body part, used in a negative sense?

We should definitely never use "fuck" if it could be seen by people who are able to have sex, if we're using it in a negative sense.

Do you see the problem?

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Pariah's avatar

Yes. I really don't think we should be using those other words either, referring to men's bodies. As for the F word, I do try to avoid it, but as a verb, it really doesn't affect people as people, in my opinion.

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Karen Williams's avatar

Actually, it WOULD be nice if we didn't use any of those words...

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Danno's avatar

Stiglitz is still a cunt.

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Alixana's avatar

And yet, if he'd called Stiglitz a dick, none of you would have objected even a bit. Writing on a platform seen by men, about a man's body part, and using it in a negative sense is perfectly fine. But a woman's body part? In a negative sense? Cue the smelling salts!

Objections like this play into the illusion that women are fragile, delicate, emotional. That we must be sheltered from any hint of unpleasantness lest we faint dead away.

Yeah, no. Either we're equal or we're not. If it's okay to use "dick" as a casual slur against people you dislike, then "cunt" is okay, too. Hypocrisy sucks. Even when women do it.

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Running Burning Man's avatar

You seem like a Karen,

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TeeJae's avatar

She's not the first Karen I've seen being a "karen." Funny and fascinating.

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Running Burning Man's avatar

Well, I'm married to one who is not one ...

That is one word I tread carefully around. The rest of the words discussed here? Not so much. The N-word is the only one that I eliminate from my vocabulary. Have since I was an adolescent. Everything else is fair game.

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Adrian Smith's avatar

Neighbor please.

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the long warred's avatar

The Longhouse is smoldering is the final verdict on such words.

Burn the Longhouse is Official Puritan тДвя╕П approved policy since the Pequot War of 1637.

ЁЯФе The Longhouse so we can be Free ЁЯЗ║ЁЯЗ╕ЁЯжЕ.

Now I wasnтАЩt talking about a woman or to one, however thereтАЩs my answer ЁЯФе. At least bad language can be avoided.

Amen ЁЯЩПЁЯП╗

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PW1104's avatar

I think when Matt used that word in a response to a writer defaming him, he referred to the fact that in England, toughs and cops call each other that word as the ultimate insult.

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TeeJae's avatar

Seems like Karen and Pariah missed Matt's "Ode to Scum" article.

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Scott Mari's avatar

I have a whole list of words that I am forbidding everyone from using because of my feelings. Please wait; I'm assembling the list. (This era can't die fast enough)

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the long warred's avatar

Yes, and the Longhouse long has an American solution since the Pequot War; Puritan Executed and so Approved;

ЁЯФеThe Longhouse. тЫ║я╕ПЁЯФе

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Don Bell's avatar

Doesn't free speech mean you're doing it for free, not getting paid? Or is that the point?

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The Wright Stuff's avatar

Hey Matt, its Sunday, the kids are yelling, and IтАЩm feeling a little lazy so I dropped your article into AI: тАЬYour passage is written in a polemical style that exaggerates to make a cultural point. It contains several factual inaccuracies and oversimplifications:

тАв Yglesias left Vox voluntarily.

тАв Rowling didnтАЩt sign the HarperтАЩs Letter.

тАв Some of the тАЬcasualtiesтАЭ had complex or unrelated reasons for their dismissal.тАЭ

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

AI is trained on Reddit data, so there's that.

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Timothy G McKenna's avatar

cf. NPR, PBS, and CPB's screeching about losing taxpayer money...

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A.'s avatar

Here is another point about podcasts. They tend to brand someone as an "authority figure", Just as the articles by known journalists in MSM used to do.

Which is why those hustling Influencers out there use them.

As an example, we had Belgian professor of Psychology Mattias Desmet spring to life on our screens in various podcasts in 2021. Talking about bizarre ideas such as mass transformation. Which was not really bizarre at all if you knew the field. And that this concept was just one small part of a much larger psychological phenomenon. Or that it had been studied by many scholars for centuries. Not new.

But in the podcast versions....Prof. Desmet was some kind of prophetic genius, with all the answers to the crazy behaviour of COVID-mania, and he was going to give us the instructions about how to return it all to normal.

Only....he didn't. It was just a bit of podcast entertainment with one tiny piece of the puzzle. And that piece had been known already for eons. If a person cared to look.

We have to be very careful about fabricating New Media gods. Without understanding the wider context of the information they are offering.

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the long warred's avatar

It wasnтАЩt free to the taxpayer, Joey.

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