Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Sullivan is on some kind of weird double secret probation and quite unhappy about it.

I do not understand the comment about his not having credibility to burn. Opinion columnists aren't jockeying to run for class president. They're supposed to take various opinions in order for ideas to be more fully fleshed out.

If the only purpose of the opinion section is to say things that reflect well on you or cover you in glory, we can pretty much skip the entire exercise and just lay-off all these people right now.

It's odd, and I don't direct this at you, but for some crazy reason people think that they should like all of the opinions that various press outlets run. I wonder if they have any idea the various opinions places like the NYTs have allowed folks to express, and quite rightly, too. When I have to like or agree with an opinion columnist, I'm missing something about where the value in the transaction is. I already know what I like and believe in. I don't need to read it over and over again.

He can say whatever he wants, of course, but should not be surprised when he takes comparatively more flak for venturing forth on issues involving race. New York Magazine is a business, and can make their own decisions about whether that flak is worth absorbing. Certainly, his ideas on these topics don't seem to be worth much on their own merits.

It's always amazing how you (and all others parroting this line) can freely switch back and forth between "he who has the gold makes the rules and that's okay" and "corporations need to support this cause I support", depending on exactly who is getting hurt in each situation.

Come on - you must realize that you don't actually believe your argument as a principle, you're just using it as an excuse because you want Sullivan silenced.

No, I believe the argument as a principle. The alternative, that certain people somehow have a right to employment at private companies, doesn't make any sense.

Labor has market power as well, if it chooses to employ it. Somehow, I don't think a guild of columnists is going to amass to protect Sullivan, though.

As an aside: do you think it has ever once been persuasive to write something like "you must realize you don't mean what you say, but rather this other thing I'm convinced you think"?

If you'll forgive me from going meta, and this is not related to Thomas's comment at all, I was interested in all of the controversial opinions that have appeared in op-eds over the years, so I did some online searching. I had remembered that the NYT gave space to Castro, to Putin, to Mao (I think), even to some asshole who wanted pederastry to be legal.

Good luck finding that. It's as if controversial opinion columns didn't exist before 2018. I couldn't even find an article with a list.

Our panopticon falters. Help me Landru! (Obligatory ST TOS reference, The Return Of The Archons)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com