The Left is big on empathy and compassion. How big? When one of its own “takes it out” (to paraphrase “Seinfeld’s” Elaine Benes) during a video conference between staffers at The New Yorker and WNYC radio, we should not judge lest we be judged.
That is the message from The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, who tweeted in re New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin’s exposing himself to coworkers during a Zoom call:
When Occam’s Razor suggests someone humiliated himself through a combo of technological error, pandemic circumstances, bad judgment, & bad luck, it seems like we should react w/ empathy, politeness, & forgiveness, as we would want to be treated, rather than punitive mockery
When Occam's Razor suggests someone humiliated himself through a combo of technological error, pandemic circumstances, bad judgment, & bad luck, it seems like we should react w/ empathy, politeness, & forgiveness, as we would want to be treated, rather than punitive mockery
— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) October 19, 2020
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Technological error? Are we to construe from this explanation that Toobin is unaware that his phone line sends as well as receives a signal? Pandemic circumstances? Is Toobin’s lascivious act the sort of thing that forced sheltering in place is causing the Left to do? Bad luck? You mean that what Toobin did is OK to do as long as you don’t get caught?
Maybe Friedersdorf’s appeal for charity should have been made directly to Toobin’s employer, The New Yorker, which suspended him after getting wind of his shenanigans.
Sadly, Friedersdorf failed to take his own advice on Occam’s Razor, instead continuing his sermon in a subsequent tweet:
The most terrifying thing about the Puritan mindset is when someone says *don’t throw stones at the person who did the bad thing* and someone in the crowd turns on that person and says *he must have done/thought a bad thing too*. Do you want to be that person in the crowd?
— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) October 20, 2020
As one Twitter user replied, and I paraphrase:
Conor, with all due respect, expecting to not see your coworker’s member while you’re at work is not a “puritan mindset.” A mistake is posting a screenshot on Twitter with a tab for porn visible, not self-pleasuring on a conference call.
