Episode 274 - Hero Stuff (w/ Thomas Chatterton Williams)

Bad Faith

News, Comedy, Politics

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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Writer and cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams returns to Bad Faith to discuss the deeply divergent perspectives on the subway killing of homeless performer Jordan Neely by former marine Daniel Penny. Thomas engaged in a lengthy exchange with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie last week that got quite a bit of attention, so Briahna reached out to TCW to have an "offline" chat about why there seems to be so little appetite for engaging with the disproportionate use of force applied by Penny -- rather than past acts by Neely -- or the fact that Neely did not start the physical encounter in the subway that day. Also, are some left actors at fault for engaging in a degree of hyperbole in describing the event as a lynching? Or is that language appropriate given the initial framing by the New York Post and others of Penny as a "hero"? This is the best version of a tough conversation you're likely to find anywhere.

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Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Daniel Penny, the man who put Jordan Neely in a deadly chokehold on a New York City subway,
0:05.9	arrived with his attorney at a Manhattan police precinct to turn himself in on Friday.
0:10.8	He's expected in court later today. The 24-year-old Marine, being charged with manslaughter in
0:17.6	the second degree with a maximum penalty of 15 years according to prosecutors. Penny's
0:23.8	surrender to police comes after days of protests around New York. Activists had been demanding
0:29.4	Penny's arrest, some calling Neely's death a quote lynching.
1:00.4	This is going to be very chill and very offline. Okay. I need offline. I think we all got to online.
1:08.6	Look, it happens to the best of us. Someone asked me recently if I had any metrics that I use or
1:16.2	any kind of rules for myself, for how to know when to log off or who to respond to. Do you
1:22.0	try to corral your online behavior in any way with rules? I wish I did. I mean, make this mistake
1:28.5	about who to respond to all the time. It's not just that you should only respond to people who are
1:33.5	well-known or have a large platform. There are lots of people who are just like random people,
1:37.2	sometimes anonymous, who are really worth responding to. So I try not to like ever be one of those
1:42.4	people that doesn't respond to someone I don't know who just doesn't have a profile. But actually,
1:47.8	I find myself questioning what good it can do to actually try to correct somebody's opinion about
1:55.1	you or about something you said. Try to restate it over and over to try to be clearer. When a lot of
2:00.8	people are not motivated by trying to actually get to the bottom of what you're expressing in a very
2:05.4	short format, they're just trying to hang on some aspect of the position so that they can build
2:11.6	their own position or catch the attention of someone else. They're trying to signal their views to
2:16.0	Sam Harris actually talked about this quite a lot. And I don't know why I can't learn from other
2:19.7	people's examples as much as I would hope to, but he said at some point, he just kept thinking if I
2:25.5	just rationalize with this person, if I just reason a bit better, if I just try to clear up some
	...

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