I started reading Singal's public tweets last year--don't remember how I found him, but current affairs are of particular interest in our current Era of Horrors so one Twitter acct. tends to lead to another.
His entire shtick, as it took me a bit of time to discover, is to be the reasonable man who wades bravely into the controversy du jour with the mantle of "I'm not mad at anyone and just want to understand." I read the piece and Twitter threads on the "trans" ongoing madness and began to feel a certain "earnest adorable puppy gently self-mocking insecure nerd-intellectual who never means any harm" persona working somewhat against any sort of intellectual rigor and strength of character. A sort of "wise man whose any mistakes come from naivete and not malice."
No--guy's a piece of crap. And I have found with great surprise that sites like Daily Caller, which I'd been conditioned to perceive as the bowels of hell, do in fact do some damned good journalism--not always, but when you're good you're good. (I may have found Jesse originally via Twitchy, which I've found an extremely useful signpost to interesting reads, though they don't always fully hit their targets. But who does?)
Reading your resignation letter, I wanted to offer approbation for being honest and leaving when you knew it wasn't working out. People often take such things very negatively, but there are many different types of company cultures and not all are going to work equally well with every person. (Some are probably poison to just about everyone.)
I am glad you are writing here on Substack; I have seen a lot of really bad academic stuff myself, and it is good to have the corruption demonstrated to a wider audience.
Chris - selfishly, I am so grateful for your return to Substack. Your writing is deliciously acerbic, and your intellect is better suited for somewhere outside of the Daily Caller. Thank you
I started reading Singal's public tweets last year--don't remember how I found him, but current affairs are of particular interest in our current Era of Horrors so one Twitter acct. tends to lead to another.
His entire shtick, as it took me a bit of time to discover, is to be the reasonable man who wades bravely into the controversy du jour with the mantle of "I'm not mad at anyone and just want to understand." I read the piece and Twitter threads on the "trans" ongoing madness and began to feel a certain "earnest adorable puppy gently self-mocking insecure nerd-intellectual who never means any harm" persona working somewhat against any sort of intellectual rigor and strength of character. A sort of "wise man whose any mistakes come from naivete and not malice."
No--guy's a piece of crap. And I have found with great surprise that sites like Daily Caller, which I'd been conditioned to perceive as the bowels of hell, do in fact do some damned good journalism--not always, but when you're good you're good. (I may have found Jesse originally via Twitchy, which I've found an extremely useful signpost to interesting reads, though they don't always fully hit their targets. But who does?)
Reading your resignation letter, I wanted to offer approbation for being honest and leaving when you knew it wasn't working out. People often take such things very negatively, but there are many different types of company cultures and not all are going to work equally well with every person. (Some are probably poison to just about everyone.)
I am glad you are writing here on Substack; I have seen a lot of really bad academic stuff myself, and it is good to have the corruption demonstrated to a wider audience.
Chris - selfishly, I am so grateful for your return to Substack. Your writing is deliciously acerbic, and your intellect is better suited for somewhere outside of the Daily Caller. Thank you
Jesse Singal is a centrist. What is a centrist? A person who gets propped up from all sides.