The firing of Kevin Williamson at the Atlantic

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Let me preface this by saying the Atlantic could not have handled this in a worse way. Whoever was in charge of vetting the hire should have found this stuff.

For the uninitiated, a few weeks ago, Kevin Williamson, former managing editor at the National Review, was hired away by the Atlantic. This isn’t so abnormal, as the Atlantic has a fair ideological mix in their editorial department, with several conservative writers on their masthead. I read the NRO, and Williamson is a good writer, but has a bit of a reputation as a bombthrower on a number of topics. Some on the left howled, but oh well. 

Then someone found this tweet, and it all hit the fan.

”I have hanging more in mind.”

This is not OK. Whatever your views on abortion, even if you favor criminal prosecution, invoking the imagery of hanging millions of women, two Stalins worth of people, is a frightening prospect.

Goldberg at the Atlantic, initially defended the hire by dismissing the view as a flight of trolling fancy, but evidence surfaced that this was not a one off. Williamson subsequently defended it in later writings and podcasts.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mad-dogs-and-englishmen/id824981345?mt=2

So the decision was made to let him go. 

David French, his friend and erstwhile colleague at NRO, is not taking the firing of his buddy very well. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kevin-williamson-firing-by-the-atlantic-cowardly/

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But in this America, the one we live in now, Kevin is one of our most interesting and talented voices. Like every single interesting and talented person I know, he can provoke. But so what? Aren’t we adults? Can’t we handle disagreement? Apparently not.

But I can’t help but view this as a glaring example of hypocrisy, given they would never feature a liberal on their masthead and their firing of John Derbyshire when his racism became too much for them to handle.

Part of what bothers me about this is that it feeds the conservative sense of victimhood, but, for the life of me, I have a hard time seeing why anyone would have a problem with his firing.

So, what say you, PS crew? Is Williamson being treated unfairly here?

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Apparently, he doesn't see the inherent paradox in his stance.

It's nuanced, but I can understand how seriously advocating such a 'solution' violates the Atlantic's tradition of intellectual debate.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Apparently, he doesn't see the inherent paradox in his stance.

 

 

Which is odd, because he has dithered about regarding the death penalty in the past. 

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Now for the whataboutisms:

http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/05/ta-nehisi-coates-jessica-valenti-provethe-atlantics-hypocrisy-kevin-williamson/

Is Coates callous and violent? He has written that he can see no difference between a police officer who shot a Howard University student and the first responders to the 9/11 terror attacks: “They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”

Incendiary, yes, but a very deceptive quote mine. A modicum of research into the quote would reveal that he was describing how he felt at the time and that he'd moved beyond that. 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bs-ae-coates-author-20150718-story.html

The following passage in the book gave me pause, and I'm wondering if you wished you'd softened it. You were living in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and you write:

"I could see no difference between the officer who killed Prince Jones and the police who died, or the firefighters who died. They were not human to me. Black, white or whatever; they were the menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could, with no justification, shatter my body."

No, I wouldn't soften it. That was a state of my raw emotion at that time. Later, I came to grips with the fact that each of the folks who died were individual humans with likes, dislikes, hates, loves, etc., and I was able to grieve for them.

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4 hours ago, homersapien said:

It's nuanced, but I can understand how seriously advocating such a 'solution' violates the Atlantic's tradition of intellectual debate.

It just strikes me as a strange hill to choose to die on for our conservative intellectuals. Been reading a lot of their reaction pieces.

Had a liberal writer said something like "hang everyone that doesn't believe in climate change," my reaction wouldn't be much different. Some things are beyond the pale.

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A couple of others perspectives:

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If we are going to start refusing to hire writers for holding or having stated harsh opinions in the past, this is going to cost us plenty. Of course we’re not going to do that across the board. It’s only going to apply to writers who offend against left-liberal politics. Mind you — and this has to be repeated — most pro-lifers would find Williamson’s remark beyond the pale. But you do not see pro-lifers, or any other conservatives, coalescing to fire writers.

Recently, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus came out in favor of eugenic abortion regarding Down Syndrome babies. It shocked the conscience of a lot of conservatives, who said so. But did a mob form to demand that the Post fire Ruth Marcus? Of course not — and had there been, there’s no way I would have joined it.

Look, Ta-Nehisi Coates has written some appalling things, in my judgment, such as his saying that 9/11 firefighters weren’t human to him. (Warren Henry at The Federalist found an example of Coates speculating about embracing French Revolution-style terror as a means of social progress — something at least as offensive as Williamson’s abortion view.) Coates has also written beautiful, insightful essays, pieces that have challenged my thinking and stoked my empathy. He is a star writer at The Atlantic, and he deserves to be, even when I find his work infuriating. I think exactly the same thing about Andrew Sullivan and his work. I have been hugely offended by some of the things he has said, but been hugely inspired by many more things he has said.

This is life. You want writers who never offend? Then you’ll probably get writers who never take risks or challenge the status quo. If H.L. Mencken flew in today, they’d send him a pink slip anyway.

Anyway, this is not really about Kevin Williamson and his views on abortion. Here’s what it’s about:

By bullying Jeffrey Goldberg into firing Williamson, the Left took an important scalp. Important, because it reveals that you can be a conservative writer with loads of talent, and you can even be #NeverTrump, and harshly critical of the alt-right … but none of it will do you any good if the leftist mob scours your work and finds even a single thing that offends it. And nobody in authority will have your back.

Here’s another important thing: Kevin Williamson could have taken any far-right Ayn Randian position on economics that he wanted to, and he would have been fine at The Atlantic. Nobody on the Left wanted him fired because of his harsh views of the white working class. He could have advocated for any war, and he wouldn’t have faced this revolt. Had he violated liberal taboos on race, he would have been on thin ice, but he might have survived. Abortion is what got him fired. I suspect if he had similarly offended against LGBT politics, he would have been history.

It’s worth considering Williamson’s firing along with the liberal Lutheran seminary’s driving out of its new president, because of mainstream conservative views she held on homosexuality 20 years ago, but long ago recanted. It wasn’t enough that she no longer believed those things. What damned her was that she ever believed them at all.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/atlantic-cashiers-kevin-williamson-its-reputation/

 

 

Also, this long but insightful piece from a fellow writer at The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/a-dissent-concerning-kevin-williamson/484052/

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I thought David French's comments here were good too:

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I’ve spent my entire adult life in an academic and media environment that put a premium on shocking the conservative conscience. Advocate for the most barbaric abortion practices? Fine. Celebrate an artist who dips a crucifix in urine? Cool. Decry 9/11 first responders as “not human” because of white supremacy? Intriguing. But the marketplace of ideas isn’t for the faint of heart, and good conservatives learn to simultaneously defend the culture of free speech while also fighting hard to build a culture of virtue and respect.

Look, I know it’s easy for some to dismiss Kevin’s termination as mere inside-baseball media drama. But it’s more than that. It’s a declaration by one of America’s most powerful media entities that it can’t even coexist with a man like Kevin. If he wants to write, he should run along to his conservative home. His new colleagues simply couldn’t abide his presence.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kevin-williamson-firing-by-the-atlantic-cowardly/

 

 

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I can't say I'm a Williamson fan or anything.  I've read a column of his here and there.  I was aware he was fairly well-known in conservative circles but he's a bomb-thrower that normally just doesn't appeal to me.  I can see why The Atlantic wouldn't hire him in the first place, but I'm not sure his firing makes a lot of sense once they hired him.  Either you allow for provocative voices from across the political spectrum or you don't.  Either don't hire him in the first place, or let him do his thing like others get to.

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From the Friedersdorf column I linked above:

Robert P. George posed this question on Twitter: “Thought experiment: Imagine that The Atlantic hires Peter Singer, but critics demand that he be fired for saying it's not in principle morally wrong for parents to kill newborn infant children. Conservatives: Would you support his being fired? Liberals: Would you oppose it?”

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I know it's easy to dismiss some of this as "whataboutism" but I'm not sure the charge applies here.  For one, we rightly expect different things from a writer than we do a holder of public office.  Writers are supposed to challenge our thinking and push boundaries sometimes.  And in comparing Williamson to other provocateurs like Coates or Singer, they aren't dredging up someone who's been out of the game for 20+ years or who lost the election and isn't even in office anywhere.  They are pointing out his contemporaries, some of whom are even employed but the very magazine that just fired him.  I think it's reasonable to ask whether he's being held to the same standards.

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7 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

From the Friedersdorf column I linked above:

Robert P. George posed this question on Twitter: “Thought experiment: Imagine that The Atlantic hires Peter Singer, but critics demand that he be fired for saying it's not in principle morally wrong for parents to kill newborn infant children. Conservatives: Would you support his being fired? Liberals: Would you oppose it?”

This is very nuanced, but that's not exactly the same as making a declarative statement (that it's not morally wrong for parents to kill their infant chidren). 

Any proposition is game if one is talking "in principle".

Now having said that, I don't recall exactly what Williamson said.  Did he say that women should be executed for having an abortion (fireable IMO)?  Or did he say that executing women for having an abortion is, in principle, not wrong (provocative, but not exactly the same.)

The first form is a simple declaration of values that advocates.  The second form is a discussion of values that is open-ended.

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1 hour ago, homersapien said:

This is very nuanced, but that's not exactly the same as making a declarative statement (that it's not morally wrong for parents to kill their infant chidren). 

Any proposition is game if one is talking "in principle".

Now having said that, I don't recall exactly what Williamson said.  Did he say that women should be executed for having an abortion (fireable IMO)?  Or did he say that executing women for having an abortion is, in principle, not wrong (provocative, but not exactly the same.)

The first form is a simple declaration of values that advocates.  The second form is a discussion of values that is open-ended.

The short version is this:

Among the most controversial was an exchange on Twitter about abortion and the death penalty. Williamson declared that “the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.” Pushed to clarify, Williamson added, “I have hanging more in mind.” Later, he expounded, “I’m torn on capital punishment generally; but treating abortion as homicide means what it means.”

 

He expounded on this in an interview elsewhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1614&v=7UxYM4aIptc

 

Friedersdorf summarizes his view:

In Williamson’s initial formulation, his inclination to provoke evoked a monstrous dystopia. My own reaction is informed by an interview Williamson gave at Hillsdale College (linked above) where he was asked by a student if he really argued that all women who have abortions ought to be hanged.

He called that an “intellectually dishonest” accounting of his deliberately provocative viewpoint. “I am generally against capital punishment, I am generally against abortion, I am always against ex-post facto punishment and always against lynching,” he said.

Cathy Young, who is especially clear-eyed about the uncertainty around Williamson’s exact position, probes all the nuances for those so inclined, but as best I can tell, his position is this: if he were writing the laws, abortion would be treated as homicide but homicides would not be punished by death; whereas in places where the law did punish homicide by death, he’d nevertheless favor charging abortions as homicides.

Does he want to execute women who have abortions? No. Would he charge them with homicide even knowing that the state would kill them were they convicted? Yes.

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1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

The short version is this:

.... Pushed to clarify, Williamson added, “I have hanging more in mind.” .....

 

Friedersdorf summarizes his view:

In Williamson’s initial formulation, his inclination to provoke evoked a monstrous dystopia. My own reaction is informed by an interview Williamson gave at Hillsdale College (linked above) where he was asked by a student if he really argued that all women who have abortions ought to be hanged.

He called that an “intellectually dishonest” accounting of his deliberately provocative viewpoint. “I am generally against capital punishment, I am generally against abortion, I am always against ex-post facto punishment and always against lynching,” he said.

For someone who is so highly regarded as a writer and thinker, he seems to be a little wobbly on exactly what he is advocating. 

For someone who is so highly regarded as a thinker and writer, he seems to be a little squishy on exactly what it is he advocates.

Regardless, as a one time subscriber and long admirer of "The Atlantic", I do tend to agree it was a mistake to fire him, for the reasons best expressed by Freidersdorf:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/a-dissent-concerning-kevin-williamson/484052/