Get-Me-Through-the-Weekend Links: Mangu-Maher, Kmele in the FT, Moynihan Hates Swede, Welch Welching

OK, well at least ONE of us is conscientious about time-pegged content promises….

* IMPORTANT FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT: Welch-boss, former Fif’ guest (Episode 75), and most importantly NAMER OF THIS DAMN PODCAST Katherine Mangu-Ward is keeping the 2021 streak alive of Our People going on HBO’s Real Time w/ Bill Maher tonight. What’s more, she’ll be on with #226 guest Matt Taibbi. Please check it out tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

* Big new Financial Times interview w/ multiple Fif’ guest (#121, #158, #197) Thomas Chatterton Williams. Lotsa Kmele shout-outtery:

Even before the Harper’s letter, though, the 40-year-old had stoked controversy because of his views on race. Alongside other public intellectuals such as John McWhorter and Kmele Foster, Williams is a prominent figure in a kind of counter-movement pushing back against the radical and uncompromising doctrines of the so-called “anti-racism” taught by writers like Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. […]

Williams recently co-wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that he knew would be badly received by some people who consider themselves to be on “his team”. He and his co-authors argued that new laws being passed in Republican states seeking to ban the teaching of what they label as “critical race theory” are antithetical to free speech principles and pose a danger to liberal education.

Williams opposes CRT — until recently a niche academic theory emphasising the structural nature of racism in America but now one of the hottest topics on Fox News — because he doesn’t share the idea that racism is permanent, and because he thinks CRT recreates and exacerbates the forces it claims to want to counteract. But he wanted to make clear that outlawing something you don’t agree with is not the answer.

“It’s not like it gets any good points with the people that hate you from the left — they say it’s too little too late . . . and you get nothing but hate from the right . . . But I’m in this because I’m trying to be honest, I’m not in this because I want to play for a team. I’ve lost people who had become allies — I lost a bunch of them with that op-ed, me and Kmele [Foster, one of the co-authors], people that we thought respected us for thinking clearly. No, they just wanted people on their team, and they’re just as tribal as the worst people they say they’re against.”

* Anything up w/ Moynihan? Well, Vice News Tonight won four Emmy Awards last week, and he works for them, so by the Transitive Property of award-winning I think that means he qualifies for … the Nobel Peace Prize! Speaking of Swedes, one of Moynihan’s very least favorite of the species, Andreas Malm, was recently given the kid-gloves treatment by New Yorker EIC David Remnick after Malm proposed blowing up oil pipelines to fight global warming. So Nancy Rommelmann, who was already bent out of shape about this journalistic treatment of violence-advocacy, threw Hollywood’s mug onto the Paloma Media YouTube channel to talk about it.

* As for me, usual Reason stuff: Roundtable, then some questions about employee vax-mandates, then some objections to K-12 student vax requirements (audio readings of the latter two available at the Paloma Media page).

OK! I successfully blogged from a moving train. Which means now it’s time to reward myself with a delicious beverage…. Happy weekend, y’all!