{"id":31933,"date":"2015-07-08T03:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T07:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31933"},"modified":"2015-07-07T08:11:16","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:11:16","slug":"political-correctness-reaches-even-the-railfan-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/08\/political-correctness-reaches-even-the-railfan-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Political correctness reaches even the railfan community"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his blog at Trains<\/em> magazine, Fred Frailey<\/a> explains why he’s not a fan of the attempt to shut down an advertiser’s access to the magazine for personal expressions of the advertiser that offended certain ultra-sensitive readers:<\/p>\n

Jack runs a company that sells supplies to competitive swimmers. He advertises in Jill\u2019s magazine, which is devoted to competitive swimming. And Bart is a competitive swimmer. On Facebook one day, Jack says that Bart is a alcohol-swilling has-been of a swimmer. Bill and Bob are admirers of Bart and subscribers to Jill\u2019s magazine. They are angered by Jack\u2019s remark and pressure Jill not to accept Jack\u2019s advertising.<\/p>\n

Jill asks, what in the dickens do I have to do with this? I didn\u2019t start this fight, none of it occurred on the pages of my magazine, and Jack meets all our advertising standards. Am I to police everything that every advertiser says anywhere? Impossible, she says, and tells Bill and Bob no, she has no reason to ban Jack\u2019s ads. But Bill and Bob respond, Bart is our hero and the hero of many if not most subscribers to the magazine. It\u2019s a smart business decision to ban Jack. They cancel their subs to Jill\u2019s magazine, naturally, thinking this will really, really hurt Jack (let\u2019s all roll our eyes).<\/p>\n

I have a name for this. It\u2019s political correctness, and it is becoming the death of independent thought. The tempest involving a small advertiser in Trains Magazine<\/em> over a comment he made on social media after the derailment of Amtrak train 188 has upset some readers of Trains<\/em>, who have cancelled subscriptions. To be specific, the businessman ridiculed 188\u2019s engineer, calling him a foamer.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

To go back to my example \u2014 which I think fairly describes the dispute involving Trains Magazine<\/em> as an uninvolved bystander \u2014 Bill and Bob\u2019s normal recourse would be not to patronize Jack\u2019s company. Certainly this is their right. But Bill and Bob don\u2019t patronize Jack\u2019s company to start with, and it is unlikely that boycotting Jack\u2019s business would have much if any effect. So they twist the arm of Jill, a third party who has no dog in this hunt. It\u2019s not her fight. She probably has no opinion of Bart one way or the other and if she did, it\u2019s still a barroom brawl she isn\u2019t interested in entering. And even if her editor wants to stake out a position on one side or the other on the editorial pages, what does this have to do with access to her magazine by an advertiser?<\/p>\n

So now comes the insidious entrance of political correctness. On this blog this past weekend, a poster said to me in a comment: \u201cI’m at a loss trying to figure out how dropping an advertiser that insults many of the magazine’s contributors and readers is somehow equal to stifling dialogue and free speech? Seems like a stretch.\u201d I read that and thought to myself, this is politically correct thinking in full flower. Let me paraphrase the contributor: Some of us don\u2019t like what was said, and therefore this offender must be thrown out, ostracized, punished, silenced. And it is fair to use any means at hand, including bringing outsiders into the fray.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his blog at Trains magazine, Fred Frailey explains why he’s not a fan of the attempt to shut down an advertiser’s access to the magazine for personal expressions of the advertiser that offended certain ultra-sensitive readers: Jack runs a company that sells supplies to competitive swimmers. He advertises in Jill\u2019s magazine, which is devoted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,237],"tags":[97,477,351,997],"class_list":["post-31933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-railways","tag-advertising","tag-magazines","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-socialjustice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8j3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31934,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31933\/revisions\/31934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}