Patrons Only: Dread Letter Day
Blocked and Reported
Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal
4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Katie and Jesse signed a letter that was published in Harper's! It's pretty basic but given Twitter's reaction you would have thought it was an excerpt from Mein Kampf. In today's episode, the hosts discuss why they signed the letter and run through some of the most unhinged and disingenuous reactions to it, discovering, in the process, that one of the letter's loudest critics tried to get them both fired. Katie also asks Jesse about the time he reported a fellow journalist to her boss, and the two hosts work through whether this is different from the behavior they themselves are complaining about. Also: Jesse's trajectory on the even more emotionally charged question of cargo shorts.
Show notes/Links:
Harper's: A Letter on Justice and Open Debate - https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
Jesse's too numerous and Mad Online tweets about the response to the letter:
-on Matt Yglesias getting reported by a colleague for wrongthink: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1280603481531912192
-on one of the letter critics publicly calling for him to get fired: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1280577317421625346
-on someone literally editing the letter to make it offensive: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1280666236754579458
Medium: Katelyn Burns Fabricated Several Exchanges With Me That Never Occurred (archived version) - http://archive.is/UEsMj
(current version, without screenshot-proof for reasons explained at the top, here: https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/so-about-that-katelyn-burns-thread-58c736647bc9)
Medium: A (Hopefully) Final Update On This Katelyn Burns Thing (Updated) - https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/a-hopefully-final-update-on-this-katelyn-burns-thing-da17730e13aa
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Katie, how's it going? Pretty good, Jesse. How are you? Good. Have you read any good books lately? |
| 0:04.7 | So I committed to only reading books in 2020 by orphan transgender women with one leg. |
| 0:10.9 | And unfortunately there aren't any, so I haven't. Oh, that's too bad. How's the weather? |
| 0:15.2 | Uh, you know, it's like it's pretty good here out in the Pacific Northwest, you know, not too hot, |
| 0:19.9 | not too cold, lots of blues. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. How's your dog moose? Moose is great, |
| 0:24.8 | very cute. Have you signed any, uh, any note where the open letter is? |
| 0:28.4 | Oh, open letters, you know, I did sign an open letter recently. How about you? Have you signed any |
| 0:33.3 | open letters recently? Yeah, a bunch. Um, one of them was like to take away a bunch of people's rights, |
| 0:39.1 | the other was a gamers rights thing. Was, was this one about um, open open discourse free inquiry, |
| 0:44.9 | blah, blah, blah. Yeah, there was one. I also signed one about giving podcast or special tax breaks |
| 0:51.2 | and then there was one about freedom of speech and open discourse. Yeah, yep. |
| 0:56.4 | It's hard for me to keep track because honestly, I will sign anything anyone puts in front of me. |
| 1:01.6 | God knows what petitions I've signed over the years, but yes, we were both signatories on a |
| 1:07.2 | letter published yesterday. It was yesterday, right? It was yesterday, I believe yes. |
| 1:11.6 | In a little magazine called Harper's and uh, well, I guess before we proceed, this is a |
| 1:17.7 | patron's only episode of Blotter Report. I'm Jesse single and I'm Katie Herzog and we're going to |
| 1:21.7 | talk about the giant cluster fuck online uncork by this letter. Katie, would you say this letter |
| 1:28.3 | contained deeply controversial content? Apparently it did. It seems um, pretty anodine to me, but |
| 1:34.1 | from the reaction on Twitter, you would have thought that this was an open letter endorsing, you |
| 1:39.1 | know, Donald Trump for his fifth presidency and, you know, kicking baby seals. One would get that |
| 1:43.8 | impression. And yet if you read the text of the letter, which we will include in the show notes |
| 1:48.6 | as always, it was a rather anodine defensive of free speech and open inquiry and, and you know, |
... |
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