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| Kara Swisher: Tom Cotton’s Whitewashing | |
| (about 20 hours later) | |
| If your drunken self should agree with your sober self, should your online personality agree with your analog personality? | If your drunken self should agree with your sober self, should your online personality agree with your analog personality? |
| Not if you’re Tom Cotton. The Republican senator from Arkansas managed last week to pull off what I thought was pretty hard in these twitchy digital times: Forget about Dr. Jekyll; he showed us both a Mr. Hyde and a marginally less fiendish version of Mr. Hyde. | Not if you’re Tom Cotton. The Republican senator from Arkansas managed last week to pull off what I thought was pretty hard in these twitchy digital times: Forget about Dr. Jekyll; he showed us both a Mr. Hyde and a marginally less fiendish version of Mr. Hyde. |
| The latter persona was on display last week in The New York Times Opinion section, where Mr. Cotton tried to cast himself — in an essay jaw-droppingly titled “Send In the Troops” — as your basic law-and-order type. Certainly not all protesters were lawless, he wrote, but the military should be brought in for those who were, since the country, according to him, was on fire. | The latter persona was on display last week in The New York Times Opinion section, where Mr. Cotton tried to cast himself — in an essay jaw-droppingly titled “Send In the Troops” — as your basic law-and-order type. Certainly not all protesters were lawless, he wrote, but the military should be brought in for those who were, since the country, according to him, was on fire. |
| As it turned out, anarchy was not loosed upon the world. It’s mostly been just peaceful people protesting police brutality aimed at African-Americans, making Mr. Cotton’s suggestion of siccing U.S. troops on them look itchy-trigger-fingery in hindsight. Since Mr. Cotton launched his essay like a metaphorical tear-gas canister into a tense national crisis, you can certainly argue about the shamelessness of it — it was shameless and also shameful — and whether he should have been given such a prime platform to air his views. (I don’t run anything but my mouth at The Times, but I would not have given him this opportunity, largely because the article was meant to shock and scare, and not to illuminate a difference of opinion.) | As it turned out, anarchy was not loosed upon the world. It’s mostly been just peaceful people protesting police brutality aimed at African-Americans, making Mr. Cotton’s suggestion of siccing U.S. troops on them look itchy-trigger-fingery in hindsight. Since Mr. Cotton launched his essay like a metaphorical tear-gas canister into a tense national crisis, you can certainly argue about the shamelessness of it — it was shameless and also shameful — and whether he should have been given such a prime platform to air his views. (I don’t run anything but my mouth at The Times, but I would not have given him this opportunity, largely because the article was meant to shock and scare, and not to illuminate a difference of opinion.) |
| The essay was also lousy with mischaracterizations, including the presentation of some questionable assertions as fact. In what felt like a vain attempt to clean up the mess post-publication, The Times said in an Editors’ Note attached to the top of the essay that it “should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny.” | The essay was also lousy with mischaracterizations, including the presentation of some questionable assertions as fact. In what felt like a vain attempt to clean up the mess post-publication, The Times said in an Editors’ Note attached to the top of the essay that it “should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny.” |
| And how. | And how. |
| “Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved,” The Times said, which is a nice way of saying more people in charge should have read it before it was sloppily slapped up. “While Senator Cotton and his staff cooperated fully in our editing process, the Op-Ed should have been subject to further substantial revisions — as is frequently the case with such essays — or rejected.” | “Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved,” The Times said, which is a nice way of saying more people in charge should have read it before it was sloppily slapped up. “While Senator Cotton and his staff cooperated fully in our editing process, the Op-Ed should have been subject to further substantial revisions — as is frequently the case with such essays — or rejected.” |
| There is no doubt that a major debate needs to happen at news organizations and also inside social media companies about who gets to speak what and where. But The New York Times is not a public square any more than Facebook or Twitter is. At The Times you must be invited in and — typically — adhere to a rigorous vetting of your work before the publish button is hit. | There is no doubt that a major debate needs to happen at news organizations and also inside social media companies about who gets to speak what and where. But The New York Times is not a public square any more than Facebook or Twitter is. At The Times you must be invited in and — typically — adhere to a rigorous vetting of your work before the publish button is hit. |
| The editing process should also have included asking Mr. Cotton to put in what was not in his piece: proper context. Part of that context was clear only if you also had seen his inflammatory posts from earlier last week over on Twitter, in which Mr. Cotton, an Army veteran, appeared to suggest — with his use of the term “no quarter” — that lawbreakers involved in the protests should be not just arrested but shown no mercy. | The editing process should also have included asking Mr. Cotton to put in what was not in his piece: proper context. Part of that context was clear only if you also had seen his inflammatory posts from earlier last week over on Twitter, in which Mr. Cotton, an Army veteran, appeared to suggest — with his use of the term “no quarter” — that lawbreakers involved in the protests should be not just arrested but shown no mercy. |
| “Anarchy, rioting and looting needs to end tonight. If local law enforcement is overwhelmed and needs backup, let’s see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they’re facing off with the 101st Airborne Division. We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction,” he tweeted. | “Anarchy, rioting and looting needs to end tonight. If local law enforcement is overwhelmed and needs backup, let’s see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they’re facing off with the 101st Airborne Division. We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction,” he tweeted. |
| That awful tweet was followed by one even more heinous: “And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters and looters.” | That awful tweet was followed by one even more heinous: “And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters and looters.” |
| Many flabbergasted legal experts quickly responded on Twitter, including the lawyer and journalist David French, who tweeted correctly that “a no quarter order is a war crime, prohibited even in actual insurrection since Abraham Lincoln’s signed the Lieber Code in 1863. Such an order is banned by international law and would, if carried out, be murder under American law.” | Many flabbergasted legal experts quickly responded on Twitter, including the lawyer and journalist David French, who tweeted correctly that “a no quarter order is a war crime, prohibited even in actual insurrection since Abraham Lincoln’s signed the Lieber Code in 1863. Such an order is banned by international law and would, if carried out, be murder under American law.” |
| Of course, Mr. Cotton tried to teargaslight Twitter with the assertion that it was not what he meant. | Of course, Mr. Cotton tried to teargaslight Twitter with the assertion that it was not what he meant. |
| “Definition of ‘no quarter’: If you say that someone was given no quarter, you mean that they were not treated kindly by someone who had power or control over them.” | “Definition of ‘no quarter’: If you say that someone was given no quarter, you mean that they were not treated kindly by someone who had power or control over them.” |
| Not treated kindly? I assume Mr. Cotton will continue to play these kinds of dangerous games, part of his silly proclivity to take meaningless gotcha dunks against his critics. But, for you digital civilians, it’s a classic Twitter feint to say you did not say what you did say. While it is always vexing to see, even more irritating was Mr. Cotton’s ability to remove the appalling digital troll costume he’d worn on Twitter and don a whitewashed version of it for The Times. | Not treated kindly? I assume Mr. Cotton will continue to play these kinds of dangerous games, part of his silly proclivity to take meaningless gotcha dunks against his critics. But, for you digital civilians, it’s a classic Twitter feint to say you did not say what you did say. While it is always vexing to see, even more irritating was Mr. Cotton’s ability to remove the appalling digital troll costume he’d worn on Twitter and don a whitewashed version of it for The Times. |
| Yes, I said whitewashed, which is why someone at the big and highly curated opinion platforms needs to figure out what to do about the many different opinions that appear all over the now impossibly fractured internet. | Yes, I said whitewashed, which is why someone at the big and highly curated opinion platforms needs to figure out what to do about the many different opinions that appear all over the now impossibly fractured internet. |
| Readers may miss a critical frame of reference when there are so many frames to choose from. And some public figure may take advantage of that, slipping in and out of frames like the portraits at Hogwarts, without being tagged for revolting behavior in one when moving to the next. | Readers may miss a critical frame of reference when there are so many frames to choose from. And some public figure may take advantage of that, slipping in and out of frames like the portraits at Hogwarts, without being tagged for revolting behavior in one when moving to the next. |
| Consider the master at this: President Trump. He has perfected a sick performative art form of playing the worst troll in Twitter’s history, even as he struts on the world stage with a flag backdrop and a White House podium playing a great leader. | Consider the master at this: President Trump. He has perfected a sick performative art form of playing the worst troll in Twitter’s history, even as he struts on the world stage with a flag backdrop and a White House podium playing a great leader. |
| While sometimes he crosses the streams — like in the recent bizarre Bible-prop photo op — he is expert at obscuring the links between extremely offensive and pure crazy. Thus, the dirty work is done on Twitter, and the modestly cleaned-up version is presented elsewhere by him and in talking points of his many minions. | While sometimes he crosses the streams — like in the recent bizarre Bible-prop photo op — he is expert at obscuring the links between extremely offensive and pure crazy. Thus, the dirty work is done on Twitter, and the modestly cleaned-up version is presented elsewhere by him and in talking points of his many minions. |
| Mr. Trump did it Tuesday with a truly hideous tweet aimed at the 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was knocked to the ground by the police. We all saw the video, but rather than deplore the over-the-top behavior, Mr. Trump shared a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory that included Antifa, jamming police radios and I don’t even know what other cockamamie ideas. | Mr. Trump did it Tuesday with a truly hideous tweet aimed at the 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was knocked to the ground by the police. We all saw the video, but rather than deplore the over-the-top behavior, Mr. Trump shared a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory that included Antifa, jamming police radios and I don’t even know what other cockamamie ideas. |
| A tweet like that is obviously a distraction and not a point of view we need to better understand others. It is meant to confuse and confound, by littering claims and counterclaims all over the media landscape to make it hard for many to put together all the pieces. | A tweet like that is obviously a distraction and not a point of view we need to better understand others. It is meant to confuse and confound, by littering claims and counterclaims all over the media landscape to make it hard for many to put together all the pieces. |
| It reminds me of the groundbreaking idea in Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”: “The medium is the message.” | It reminds me of the groundbreaking idea in Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”: “The medium is the message.” |
| That was 1964. So, let me update that for you to reflect the rage-baiting stylings of Mr. Trump and Mr. Cotton in 2020: The mediums are a mess. And that’s just the way they like it. | That was 1964. So, let me update that for you to reflect the rage-baiting stylings of Mr. Trump and Mr. Cotton in 2020: The mediums are a mess. And that’s just the way they like it. |
| The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. | The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. |
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