A couple of years ago, one of my heroes, Bari Weiss, resigned her position at the New York Times. She did this because she watched, and many of us watched, in horror as Twitter became the Greek Chorus that decided what should and should not be published at the Times. For me, this was a major transformational moment. I stood up for her on Twitter, was attacked for it, and over time I would slowly extricate myself from my former tribe that thought Twitter throwing fits was perfectly fine when it came to demanding things from the New York Times.
Weiss wrote the now infamous resignation letter:
Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.
Bari Weiss has now built The Free Press, a new outlet on Substack with many great writers and open-minded essays. They have launched a podcast called The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, which aired its last episode today.
I listened with great interest to the entire thing, but it was the last part of it that brought me to tears. It suddenly brought together for me what I’ve been going through of late, how hard it’s been, but how I have to listen to my own mind and heart (if you’re interested in a longer conversation about this, you can check out my interview on James Strock’s podcast, which just posted).
The JK Rowling podcast closed this way:
“This series is dedicated to everyone out there who is trying to have difficult conversations, trying to listen with empathy, and to speak with honesty and in good faith, even when it’s hard.”
Witch Trials is hosted and co-produced by Megan Phelps-Roper who was once a member of the Westboro Baptist Church who left.
Listening to both her Ted Talk on leaving the Church and then, this podcast from Rowling, is illuminating, I think, and helps explain, at least for me, why it has become so hard to align with people who demand I stand alongside them in what they believe is justified hatred.
The seven-episode series has Phelps-Roper heading to Scotland to visit JK Rowling, who agreed to the interview after reading Phelps-Roper’s letter to her. Everything JK Rowling believes is in this podcast, but with a well-rounded and balanced dialogue. Rowling explains what she thinks, why thinks it, what brought her to that way of thinking, and ultimately, why she refuses to back off her own feelings on certain elements of the transgender debate – okay, that’s a nice way of saying it.
But the podcast also interviews reasonable transgender people who offer up the other side of the debate, speak at length about how they feel betrayed by Rowling and where they’re coming from. I think it is, despite how Twitter demands everyone go along with one extreme side or the other, a nuanced conversation.
There is so much packed into these seven episodes, and they absolutely did their research into the history of the internet starting back when the Harry Potter books first launched. I was here for all of it and they are right over the target with how some of these things we’re living through now began, especially the Tumblr phenomenon, the Harry Potter fandoms and social media.
As far as the central issue goes, it remains complex and complicated. But there is only one thing that matters to me in life (besides my daughter and my dogs): the ability to express myself freely, to have freedom of the mind. The transgender debate seems to have come down to silencing dissent as the main form of activism.
When I look at this podcast, and I imagine all of the courage it took to produce it and release it to the public – Bari Weiss resigning from the New York Times and launching the Free Press, Megan Phelps-Roper leaving the safety of her family and deciding to humanize those she had been damning to hell, is remarkable. No one in Hollywood right now has that kind of courage, with the possible exception of Netflix for standing by Chappelle.
JK Rowling was always a hero to single moms like me. No matter how broke I was, whether I was buying food with food stamps or cleaning toilets, I could always point to her and say, okay, she wrote that book, and look at her now. Watching her treated the way she’s been treated, not just by activists or fans but institutions that have dropped her name or her book from lists (shame on them) is reminiscent, as the podcast points out in the final episode, Salem in 1692.
JK Rowling herself pointed out on Twitter through all of this that it was another kind of witch hunt to police the thoughts and speech of other people. For those of us who are old and remember the old Left, it’s nothing less than shocking to see all of this play out. Reasoned debate is always going to be far preferable to mass hysteria.
Here, Andrew Doyle (another hero) is speaking up on a recent event where Posey Parker (aka, to the trans activist community, a TERF) was treated. Not the irony in his voice when he says she was “attacked at a Let Women Speak” event:
That’s not the way. Even if you believe that words are harm, words are violence and that anyone who protests transgender ideology is causing the deaths of trans people, the right road is still not shutting other people up. It never will be.
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is proof enough that civil conversations are always going to be preferable to screeching and screaming, throwing water, spitting, etc. What century is this?
Beyond the content of the podcast, I also enjoyed listening to not just Rowling and Phelps-Roper, but the various guests they feature on the Pod, from the super awesome Kat Rosenfield to the equally awesome Stacy Schiff.
We don’t often write about or review podcasts on this site, but we will probably be doing more in the coming months, mainly because this is one industry that really can exist and thrive outside the clutches of Twitter. And that means it’s a growing and exciting industry.
I don’t expect that the mainstream media will be honest about this. They are, as with all cultural institutions now, expected to comply to the activists or risk constant attacks on social media. But the great thing about outlets like the Free Press is that there are now alternatives for those of us out there who still care about the truth.
Here is a link to the podcast. Have a listen. Let me know what you think in the comment.