Comments: Week of October 7, 2024

1.

"It's Not Complicated" September 23-October 6 For New York's latest cover story, Ryu Spaeth profiled best-selling writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has reentered ­public debate to express his relatively newfound support for Palestinians and his anger at the mainstream press coverage of Israel's ­actions. The story garnered ­copious reactions on all sides of the issue. Richard Beck, ­author of Homeland: The War on Terror in ­American Life, wrote , "it's really ­striking how rare it is for an American writer/­commentator to say, 'Yeah I got some big questions totally wrong, and so now my job is to become a better thinker so that I don't get similar questions wrong in the future.' " Tyler Huckabee said Coates's willingness "to burn through all his political goodwill for the just and righteous cause of Palestinian dignity is one of the more morally courageous acts from a public figure i can recall in my life." Israeli journalist and co-founder of +972 Magazine Dimi ­Reider said , "tfw when one of the greatest living writers on race lays eyes on your country for the first time and goes '­jesus f. christ this shit is so racist! fuck!!!!' (He's not wrong.)" In the story, Coates partly ­credits his epiphany to a dissenter at one of his talks. On X, Carly Pildis of the Anti-­Defamation League wrote , "That was my synagogue. The Protestor? Assad apologist Rania Khalek. How far the mighty have fallen." Khalek, a Lebanese jour­nalist, ­ tweeted , "That was ­really hard to do, I ­remember being very nervous about ­saying what I said. I'm so proud ... Good lesson in the importance of speaking out even if it makes ­others feel uncomfortable. You never know the impact it can have." Many readers disagreed with Coates's view that the conflict is simple and called into question some of his specific ­assertions, such as the idea that Israel reserves water in all the occupied territories for Israeli use. ­Others noted he ­refrained from criti­cizing Hamas. In a letter to the magazine, Bella Pliskin wrote that ­failing to mention the ­decades of terrorism against ­Israel "is an ­exercise in willful blindness and warrants him not being taken even remotely seriously. This is not someone who respects truth; this is someone who respects his own narrative and cannot see beyond it ... The current ­status quo is a stain on Israel and we must demand accountability and change. At the same time, the studious avoidance in acknowledging any wrong­doing committed by ­Palestinians in the decades of this conflict has become pathological." On X, Brit ­Hemming challenged Coates's ­authority to speak on the subject, calling him "the epitome of arrogance. What's fascinating about his analysis on the I/P conflict is that he as a non-Arabic and non-Hebrew speaker who spent a ­total of 14 days in ­Israel/some PA controlled ­areas of the WB thinks he's qualified to make any analysis at all." Commenter potatoeater wrote that Coates "­decides to resurrect his career by beating on the Jews, a popular ­position in some radical aca­demic circles, who equate Jews with the idea of Western cultural superiority—a concept that they would like to defeat." ads63 replied , "Coates once told us that history, context, social norms, and the intangibles of daily life are essential to understanding privilege and ­oppression in ­America. Now, he has switched gears to say that none of those things are important to understanding the situation on the ground in Israel ... ­Acknowledging the history of the region would ­require anyone to confront the fact that this is not a one-sided story with a clear ­villain. It would require self-professed progressives to acknowledge that the hero in their narrative actually bears as much responsibility for the outcome as the party they view as the villain."

"Drowning In Slop" Also in the issue, Max Read revealed the economic forces behind the proliferation of AI-generated content. Zito tweeted , "The internet was fun while it lasted." ­clubsoda83 inspected an AI-­generated book mentioned in the story: "What's creepy is not the writing or design of the book ­itself ... it's the other text pop­ulating the page. The highlighted '­reviews' are all AI-generated platitudes, technically grammatical but with no ­detailed spe­cifics, no signs of a life lived ­behind the words." And quoted the author bio: " 'An accomplished psychologist, she's traveled extensively, infusing her ­insights into a life well-lived.' This exact sentence construction, 'an adjective this, she's verbed adverbly, verbing her verbiage into a blah blah blah of blah blah blah' is like an AI fingerprint." ­Musician Darcy James ­Argue concluded , "We built the modern-day ­Library of ­Alexandria, and now the people who are supposed to be protecting it are dumping buckets full of wood-­boring beetles inside of it."