Many readers have been writing me about Weinberg's coverage of the 3AM fiasco--in which Richard Marshall's interview with Holly Lawford-Smith was withdrawn because it offended those who "think correctly"--which may have set a new low for the ridiculous contortions required by the New Infantilism that he has long championed. I'll let a couple of my correspondents do the commentary, although they have asked for anonymity for the obvious reason that Weinberg's standard modus operandi is to feign a commitment to civility while letting the anonymous commenters at his blog dish out the insults, abuse, and lies about the disfavored.
Weinberg titled his post "Richard Marshall resigns from 3AM Magazine," which manages to omit all the significant facts about what happened from the headline. One reader amusingly suggested some other possible headlines in the spirit of Weinberg Whitewash:
"John F Kennedy Dies Suddenly"
"Sudetenland Now Part of Germany"
"Berlin Wall Disappears"
Of course, Weinberg can't wholly avoid acknowledging what transpired in the body of his post, but he quickly shifts gears to pandering to the thought police and their alleged special "knowledge." (Philosopher Kathleen Stock [Sussex] tweeted aptly about this display, as did Daniel Kaufman [Missouri State].) But a philosopher elsewhere who wrote to me put it best:
Thanks for your coverage of the 3AM nightmare. Watching Justin Weinberg turn that into another occasion to lecture us about the need for interpretive charity (!! -- and "moral resisters", FML) was enough to make me want to put a fork into my eye.
Despairing philosophers: put down your forks, and remember that the most salient perspectives are often not the most sensible or typical.
UPDATE: Another reader (not a philosopher, but a writer and journalist) writes with more amusing thoughts about the Weinberg Whitewash:
Just a quick note to agree on Weinberg's preposterous invocation of an elect of "moral resisters." I'm not familiar with Calhoun's work, but Weinberg's selected quotes about these visionary superior beings--
"Some segment of a society produces advances in moral knowledge that outrun the social mechanisms for disseminating and normalizing that knowledge in the society as a whole...When moral resisters have the opportunity to explain what they are doing, and thus make their actions legible, they may still be unable to make themselves seem reasonably justified. Their justifications may be received as wildly implausible, irrational, based on patently false assumptions, and thus not really justifications at all."
--apply just as easily to anti-vaxxers, cult members, Scientologists, and Trump supporters as they do to trans activists. Weinberg apparently doesn't think that determining what qualifies as a genuine "advance in moral knowledge" is enough of a problem to merit mention. Weinberg's analysis boils down to "Take the lunatics seriously, but only the right ones!", begging every fundamental ethical question he encounters.
If anything, this illiberal anti-logic harms the groups Weinberg claims to be advocating for. I did not follow the 3am dustup, but the level of discourse around it is an embarrassment.
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