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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Not the person you are replying to, but.

I suspect how the coverage is affects that judgement, as does whether the platform hosts other arguments and interrogates them at the same level of rigour. It’s probably also important to note that someone - or some organisation - might not be strictly “pro-x”, but nonetheless is “x-sympathetic”.

As far as that goes, I’m willing to agree with the woke left on a very weak version of that argument, but that amounts really to no better than “people and organisations have biases, and some groups often find common cause or sympathy despite disagreeing on some issues”. It certainly is not the almost maximalist version of that idea that woke people often resort to (the “you tried to argue with some right wing person? Literally Hitler!” level of guilt-by-association), and I suspect most would not take kindly to efforts at equivocating the extreme end of this with the mild end of it.

In any case, though.

share his idea that a news outlet interviewing someone with controversial opinions is an endorsement of them — as evidenced by your framing of that NPR interview with an author who does not work for NPR but thinks looting is justified.

I thought that piece close to a puff piece, or at the very least tries really really hard not to ask any real questions of the author. Does NPR do similarly toothless pieces on other political positions?