Not-So-Cancelled (or, Hey, We’re Still Talking About the Wrong Things)
In a semi-recent piece for The Nation, David Klion discussed what is by now no longer the “latest” bit of Internet “free speech” theater in response to the cancellation of a collection of Norman Mailer’s essays. I shouldn’t say “cancelled,” really. The publisher passed on publishing the book, which means it could very well be published somewhere else (even by Mailer’s estate), thereby making the meaning of a “cancellation” rather dubious at best. Can you really be “cancelled” in the lofty meaning that term has now taken (undeserved, really) when you’re both very much dead and your work is otherwise still available? I mean, the presumed offending work, “The White Negro,” is literally right there on the Internet. Google it if you must.1 As far as I can tell, this essay has been legally published online in Dissent since 2007. While I can’t say that all of Mailer’s non-fiction will be available in similarly legal venues, it’s not exactly hard to find his writing out there. ↩
On Ethics and Linking Policies (or, Yeah, DNL Doesn’t Work That Way)
The Internet is a wonderful place. The Internet is a terrible place. The Internet is where dreams go to live and die in a messy conglomeration of joy, hate, madness, rage, love, sadness, and bewilderment. We want this Internet place to be safe for everyone. Yet, so often it is not. Given the right prompting, Internet detectives can hunt down your information, reveal your identity, and really ruin your day. Hell, in some cases, these folks have ruined entire lives, making people feel unsafe in their actual homes. It’s an obvious problem, and one that thus far we don’t really have a solution for — at least, not one that doesn’t involve putting your entire online identity behind a firewall of private accounts. Even then, it doesn’t necessarily work, since your private accounts can be infiltrated by especially motivated people.