Melanie Phillips on 'gibberish studies'

[ErrolTheDragon]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/academics-are-embracing-gibberish-studies-ln679gkc7?shareToken=140202cf8c82ab52e460e2ef88d24182

But Melanie is deeply racist and, based on her articles, misogynist.

That doesn't mean she doesn't occasionally hit the nail on the head, does it? It doesn't mean I share her opinions on the stuff, just because I agree with her on one thing.

@bemoretiger

But Melanie is deeply racist and, based on her articles, misogynist.

Not sure who you meant to reply to, bemoretiger; several people upthread have called out Melanie PhilIips for various reasons, but has someone wholeheartedly endorsed her?

I still haven’t forgiven her for Brexit, the Iraq War, Thatcherism, UKIP, climate change, Obama conspiracy theories, and her opposition to same sex civil partnerships and to the self-determination of peoples. (I would not have picked out generic sexism and racism, at least as the main issues, but happy to look at evidence of that too.)

For now: I'll read her writing when she’s saying something interesting and thought-provoking, and I'll say what I think about it and ask others I respect to weigh in, just as the OP here did. The faux purist idea that we must shun all work by someone who’s ever said something “problematic” is personally limiting and culturally impoverishing. The idea that we should be unaware of a full range of political positions is naive and idiotic.

When I left the UK in the summer of 2016, it was reeling from the Brexit vote and the murder of Jo Cox. “More in common than what divides us” was everywhere. Twitter was full of widgets to analyse your “bubble” and suggest accounts to follow from underrepresented perspectives. I remember being particularly outraged because it recommended Stephen Daisley. Now I read Daisley (still periodically muttering “wrong!”) because he covers issues that hardly anyone closer to my political views is willing to tackle (or able to get published).

We've gone from “balance your bubble!” to “she is following some very problematic accounts!” In less than five years, and the people who were marginalised five years ago are even more marginalised now. Cui bono?

A: "Yesterday Trump came out against paedophilia."

B: "Yes, but Trump is deeply racist and, based on his comments, misogynist."

A: "Oh, perhaps you have a point and I'll need to rethink my opposition to paedophilia. Or something."

The faux purist idea that we must shun all work by someone who’s ever said something “problematic” is personally limiting and culturally impoverishing. The idea that we should be unaware of a full range of political positions is naive and idiotic.

It's intellectual and moral cowardice, not to mention overweening arrogance.

I am waiting to read this when it comes out

www.waterstones.com/book/fractured/jonathan-yates/9780008463960

@nauticant

To balance things, remember that Phillips supported Andrew Wakefield and his MMR anti-science:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Phillips#MMR_vaccine

These days I'm reluctant to have heroes or villains. I try to think more about good and bad ideas rather than good and bad people.

You are so right... but I reserve the right to disagree with you on other occasions!

Something I have been thinking about with regard to social media is that we get locked in to choices and people; there's no natural digital expiry. I haven't spoken to loads of people on Facebook for ages, and yet they're still there as "friends", whom I have to remove deliberately (it seems anachronistic to use the term "manually"!) even though the relationship has expired through disuse.

Similarly, one might have "blocked" Melanie Phillips after the Wakefield/MMR scandal above, and never heard her other ideas. Contrast that with the ability to name-change on Mumsnet, and the lack of ability to block posters (unless I'm missed that feature): that is closer to the way in which humans really live and interact, and there's always banning as a last resort. (please keep this up, @MNHQ)

@maduixa do you have any more information about those twitter widgets? I wonder if they still exist!

[quote MedusasBrandyButter]@maduixa do you have any more information about those twitter widgets? I wonder if they still exist![/quote]
@MedusasBrandyButter - I wish I did! I think I retweeted the one I ran at some point, but I also later deleted my Twitter account. I'm not very Twitter-literate, so not sure what ever to search for. All I remember is that you could enter your username (as long as you were logged in to Twitter on that account) right from the tweet, and get results. This would have been very late June/early July 2016.

Ah, thank you, @Maduixa It's a very interesting idea, though, isn't it?

It is! Now that I think about it - I was following quite a few accounts that were not in English, and I wonder if some of those were just excluded from the analysis if they couldn't parse the data. Also, I wonder how they sourced the recommendations. Recommend me Daisley, OK - he's an established journalist. But if I'm mainly following people's personal accounts, you're not going to offset those as much without doing some pretty sophisticated (and fallible) data mining.