Blog des Driesch Verlags
THE NATION did apologize, now the NYRB. Who will be next? The rule of the mob reigns. Even if a court accquits a case, the pure mass of accusers keep it hot and demand obedience - and business follows cowardly.
As one female wrote in a letter, quoted by by the NYT:
One can understand why Ian Buruma, when he was announced as The Review’s new editor in May, thought: “What the hell have I taken on?” But that only came after a happier intitial reaction. “I thought it was a challenge I would regret not accepting,” Buruma said. “The first feeling was a sense of euphoria, of a changed life.”Now it's a fact that he has gone too far. He didn't forsee with fresh eyes the changed climate, the the changed mental sets, the changed powers.
A reviewer once called Buruma’s writing “disarmingly reasonable and calm,” and this is precisely how he comes across in person.
Buruma intends to feature a more unpredictable ideological roster, given the unprecedented nature of the country’s political climate.
“We’re not living in the same time as Nixon or Clinton or Bush,” he said. “Under Trump, the distinctions that used to exist, roughly speaking, between left and right, have become much more fluid. People who may never have come within a mile of the pages of The Review 20 years ago might have a place in it now. Everything will be looked at with fresh eyes.”
Ian Buruma, the editor of The New York Review of Books, left his position on Wednesday amid an uproar over the magazine’s publication of an essay by a disgraced Canadian radio broadcaster who had been accused of sexually assaulting women.Buruma had given an interview to a Dutch paper as well as with Isaac Chotiner from SLATE.
The upheaval at the publication shows the raw emotion still surrounding nearly every #MeToo accusation and response, less than a year after the first reports about Harvey Weinstein’s behavior unleashed a tide of allegations against other famous men.
On Wednesday, the magazine posted a note atop the essay that began, “The following article, which has provoked much criticism, should have included acknowledgment of the serious nature and number of allegations that had been made against the writer, Jian Ghomeshi.” It then listed some of the allegations. *)
Ms. Kipnis also said as news of Mr. Buruma’s departure spread, fellow writers shared alarm. “People are terrified to get caught in a Twitter storm,” she said. “And if they say they support Ian, it’s easy for someone to say, ‘There’s someone who doesn’t care about sexual assault.’”
The following article, which has provoked much criticism, should have included acknowledgment of the serious nature and number of allegations that had been made against the writer, Jian Ghomeshi. In October 2014, Ghomeshi—about whom multiple women had filed harassment complaints—was fired from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after executives saw evidence that he had caused physical harm to a woman. Shortly after, more than twenty women accused him of sexual abuse and harassment, which included hitting, biting, choking, and verbal abuse during sex. Many of these allegations were made in respected publications, including The Toronto Star. That November, Ghomeshi was charged with the sexual assault of three women. (Sexual assault, under Canada’s Criminal Code, can include threats and nonconsensual physical contact. There is no specific legal provision for rape as it is defined in US law.) In January 2015, additional counts of sexual assault were brought against him by three more women. He was acquitted of all charges, and settled a further charge of sexual assault, of a coworker at the CBC, out of court with a peace bond and public apology. Substantial space will be devoted to letters responding to this article in the next issue of The New York Review, dated October 25, 2018.[This note which has been put in front of the article, evokes a kind of déjà-vu. THE NATION felt it necessary to put their craven apology in front of a poem which has insulted thousands of readers.]
Read more in the NYTIf it feels as though we no longer know how to speak or listen in good faith to one another, it’s because we don’t. This is the kind of controversy that might have seemed overblown as recently as the start of the Obama administration. Today it arrives with frequency and fervor — a marker of the country’s rapidly shifting mores, which are the product of new generations increasingly fluent in, in thrall to and in fear of the hyperspecialized language and norms of academia. Whether you even find the above exchange intelligible reveals a great deal more than merely your political bent, touching on aspects of age, education and geography — not to mention distinctions of race and class.
