Hadley Freeman Article About Graham LInehan

[Igneococcus]

Not actually read it yet but here for anybody who'd like to read:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6f23ce7c-596a-11ee-a62b-d21c2c8f0b9b?shareToken=3adab3e87e06a1d37788d0b2482f02b6

I also get fed up with this expectation that everyone must be measured in everything they say or do like media trained luvvies.

Graham is a mean comedy writer. You don't succeed in comedy by being careful and measured and choosing your words so precisely that nobody can criticise you. And it's not even as though being careful with language to try to avoid offending has even helped them.

The poster upthread who said GL & KJK are similar in that regard are right. They just speak truth extempore. They're both extremely effective, they both make "gaffs" every so often. As do the people criticising them.

I really did not like this article. What was the point of it? The last paragraph was pretty horrible.

He was and is completely right. And if we had all been brave like him from the start things wouldn't have gone so far.

I think her article was a piece of self-important, patronising shite. She tone polices him, which is her bag, but it’s the more-in-sorrow-than-anger pitying of him like he’s a mental defective makes my stomach turn

I think she demonstrated the nuance in the GC position.

In that there is no one GC position.

That's a good thing.

I'm GC but I would never put my family and career on the line over it either.

We are not a homogenous mass.

Perhaps my thoughts are coloured by having experienced what it's like to be a whistleblower (made a protected disclosure at work over legitimate safeguarding concerns and was bullied out of my job).

There really is no point martyring your own self personally just because you're 'right'.

I'm with Hadley.

I don't like this article at all. Seems exploitative.
I am a huge supporter of Graham, I think he's amazing.

Entirely agree what @HumphreyCobblers & @SmugglersHaunt said

I don't get why she wrote it - if a conversation about this was necessary surely she could have written to Graham directly? Writing ABOUT someone you were once friends with, policing his tone as she does, seems very odd and quite pointless other than to be mean.

Yep

I think Freeman is just being very American, culturally. She couldn't resist the temptation to cast an outcome that is down to luck and circumstance as much as anything - him being cancelled, her not - as her achievement. Down to her better judgment, you see.

Ime Americans are socialised into claiming good luck as achievement and disowning failures as bad luck more than most. And there's a hint of 'do it to Julia' about it too - she must be scared cancellation could catch up with her.

I'm not saying none of Linehan's tweets have been problematic, but given how much he has suffered for his convictions, the decent thing would have been to be either supportive or silent. Disappointing.

I have nothing but admiration for him. Yes, at times I wish he'd be a bit less full on but the thing is I've thought that about others and then realised that they're right to be full on because beating around the bush and being all "Well toilets are okay, but not prisons and maybe changing rooms but maybe not." It's all wrong, it's all a total bollocks because it really is a case of give them an inch and they will take a mile. And the thing is the TRAs are full on and downright nasty, threatening violence as and when. If we didn' have some GCs who are fully obsessed with the GI thing we'd be in big trouble. The people, like Glinners who do it are brave and I really hope that in time they will be understood better and others will see how right they were all along.

I don’t really get what her last sentence is meant to convey. There are lots of heroic people who I wouldn’t want to be because they sacrificed so much but it doesn’t mean they’re not admirable or that they haven’t done huge amounts of good. So what is she trying to say? It seems a really downbeat, negative way to conclude her piece.

It's fucking disgusting.

I am so sick of these people who don't take as many risks and aren't as honest as people like KJK and GL instructing us about how that's not the way to do it.

They make me sick. The ones who are holding on to their careers, using the pronouns they're required to, who are going to have jobs when this is all over where they can take credit for having fought this terrible ideology and beaten it and marginalise others who fought it harder than them, longer than them and braver than them but who they will erase out of the history of this.

FWIW I think GL has made mistakes as has KJK. But both of them are obviously such decent people who put human values before their public image and careers, that their mistakes are totally forgiveable. Whereas people on "our side" who patronise or attack them, I think lots of us are going to have a very hard time forgiving them.

He’s a hero. She is a columnist desperately casting about for an alternative gig, and not finding people beating a path to her door.

Shame on you, Hadley.

What's wrong with being measured? What's wrong with looking at both sides of an issue? What's wrong with pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of an argument or a person?

Are we supposed to unilaterally take sides and willfully ignore any mistakes or unwise moments by anyone on our side? Because history tells us that that rarely ends well.

Knee jerk reactions to anyone who comes up with a "...but..." really don't help any cause.

Why, what risks have you personally taken to be shrieking about what risks others take?

List them, please.

This, it's just plain mean and completely unnecessary.

With 'friends' like these.....

She's really fallen in my estimation. The way she writes about the 'distaste' an elite group of self-appointed taste police feel towards Glinner? Well, it reflects badly on them, not him. Funny how those with such a precise opinion on what's ok and what's not can't read the room.

I agree with Hadley and rocklObster. I have sympathy for Lineman but I don't think spending that much time on social media is healthy. I hate gender ideology and opposing it is important to me but it's not the only important thing in my life.

Wow, I'm usually a fan of Hadley Freeman but that piece is nasty. Disappointing to read from a journalist who's been bullied so much herself.

I think Hadley’s article was aimed at “civilians”, i.e. people who aren’t immersed in the topic and follow it regularly like readers of FWR on MN. I read it as saying that yes Glinner comes across a bit strong sometimes but there’s a reason why. And he’s right.

i think she’s right that Glinner needs a friend/loved one to take him out of himself sometimes. He feed on substack and on X read like he feels like he’s in a foxhole on his own under fire. And I think that’s what the final paragraph is about.

I don't see it as nasty. More as sad. Sad that Graham's commitment has cost him so much. He has done so much, yet could have done less and still made his point - without, perhaps, having paid such a price. It's generally women who are severely punished for being honest and caring for women and vulnerable people. JKR is unusual in that she's too wealthy to be punished. Graham Linehan is unusual in that he's a man who has been severely punished.

As for I think he is as motivated (if not more so) in wanting to be vindicated and to restore his tarnished reputation, why shouldn't he be? Are you suggesting that this is a lost costs fallacy, and that he should let go of it in order to move on?

Yes, maybe being obsessed about something and on social media isn't healthy but do you know what else isn't healthy? Being called out / shamed for the same in a major newspaper. Doing that nasty thing is highly unlikely to be an intervention that leads to healthier habits and quite clearly shows fuck all concern for the person being publicly castigated.

Disappointing article from Hadley, not her best.

When the actor David Tennant wore a T-shirt expressing support for trans kids, Linehan described him in a tweet as a “groomer” — a term that implies paedophilia.

No, it’s a term that implies grooming, into any belief or ideology and is applicable in a number of scenarios. The fact that grooming isn’t seen as grooming when it is grooming is part of the problem. Adults teaching children they can be born in the wrong body is just that. It’s TRAs who want people (and MNHQ🤨) to believe that to call it what it is is an accusation of paedophilia because they don’t want you to see it. It’s why the word gets posts banned from here. I’m sure those reporting say “they’re saying we’re paedophiles!” in their reporting to MNHQ. Pity Hadley fell for this too.

Her main issue with him seems to be he compared doctors experimenting on children to the Nazis. She doesn’t mention it specifically but my inference is that because she’s Jewish she thinks that this should be always off limits and to bring any comparison makes you automatically the bad guy.

But what’s wrong with that analogy? It’s gay children being given experimental drug and surgical treatment that sterilises them, makes their bones brittle, prevents their brains from fully developing and removes healthy body parts. Done for ideological reasons. Is it a perfect analogy? Probably not, but there are certainly parallels. Just because it’s done by smiling rainbow people in the NHS doesn’t mean there aren’t parallels.

It seems that’s Hadley’s purity spiral limit. Which is fair enough, but why write an article about it? No one prior to her bringing it up today thought “Hadley Freeman is dismissive of her Jewishness because she’s failed to publicly condemn Linehan’s Nazi comparison three years ago” did they?

Somehow she’s felt compelled to correct this today because she didn’t at the time. Very odd given she was at the Guardian then and I’m sure they would have lapped up an article accusing Glinner of misappropriating the holocaust. Also very odd she didn’t communicate her disappointment with him about it to allow a discussion to prevail about the appropriateness of the comparison.

All in all, it’s confusing.

All good points

I'd also argue that publicly shaming someone supposedly with common cause for money isn't particularly healthy behaviour