Harper's Letter - Movie City News

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Harper’s Letter

By Ray Pride

July 9, 2020

Jessica Valenti: “The Harper’s letter also mentions editors being “fired for running controversial pieces” — a reference to the ouster of New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet. What the letter doesn’t mention is that Bennet lost his job for, among other things, running an op-ed section that published a senator advocating the use of military force against peaceful American protesters — a column that employees pointed out literally put Black lives in danger — and without even having read it before publication. Who signed the letter in Harper’s is just as important as what’s written in it. Ian Buruma, for example, was fired from his job at the New York Review of Books after he published an essay by Jian Ghomeshi — a Canadian radio personality who had been accused by more than twenty women of sexual assault. Buruma later defended the decision in a disastrous interview where he said, “The exact nature of his behavior — how much consent was involved — I have no idea nor is it really my concern.” New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss, who has made a career for herself railing against “safe spaces,” was recently outed for reporting a Black editor to management just because she declined an invitation for coffee. Then of course there’s J.K. Rowling, who recently used her considerable platform to push forward bigoted ideas and debunked myths about trans women while fashioning herself a defender of women’s rights.”

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