Yesterday, a reader alerted me to a piece published in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life.” After reading it, I recognized just how much it relates to the flap that has emerged locally in regard to ASUCD senator Azka Fayyaz.
As I wrote on Saturday, I see little to be gained by the public flogging of a UC Davis student, even a student senator who does not seem to be able to extricate herself from a self-created mess. Ms. Fayyaz became the center of a controversy when she posted on Facebook, “Hamas & Shariah law have taken over UC Davis. Brb crying over the resilience.”
The story told by New York Times reporter Jon Ronson is about 30-year-old Justine Sacco, who flew from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013. At the time she was senior director of corporate communications at IAC (InterActiveCorp, an American media and internet company).
During her travels, she began tweeting “acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel.” On December 20, she made a tweet that would change her life forever, as she was about to fly to Cape Town from London, she tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”
She did this about half an hour prior to departure from Heathrow, and no one replied. She had only 170 Twitter followers.
It was an 11-hour flight and she went to sleep. She finally turned back on her phone on the runway. Suddenly she got texts from people she had not heard from since high school. Her best friend texted that she needed to call immediately. Her friend called, “You’re the No. 1 worldwide trend on Twitter right now.”
Mr. Ronson writes: “Sacco’s Twitter feed had become a horror show. ‘In light of @Justine-Sacco disgusting racist tweet, I’m donating to @care today’ and ‘How did @JustineSacco get a PR job?! Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #AIDS can affect anyone!’ and ‘I’m an IAC employee and I don’t want @JustineSacco doing any communications on our behalf ever again. Ever.’ And then one from her employer, IAC, the corporate owner of The Daily Beast, OKCupid and Vimeo: ‘This is an outrageous, offensive comment. Employee in question currently unreachable on an intl flight.’ The anger soon turned to excitement: ‘All I want for Christmas is to see @JustineSacco’s face when her plane lands and she checks her inbox/voicemail’ and ‘Oh man, @JustineSacco is going to have the most painful phone-turning-on moment ever when her plane lands’ and ‘We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. In REAL time. Before she even KNOWS she’s getting fired.’”
He adds, “The furor over Sacco’s tweet had become not just an ideological crusade against her perceived bigotry but also a form of idle entertainment. Her complete ignorance of her predicament for those 11 hours lent the episode both dramatic irony and a pleasing narrative arc.”
“By the time Sacco had touched down, tens of thousands of angry tweets had been sent in response to her joke,” he writes.
Jon Ronson segued to write, “In the early days of Twitter, I was a keen shamer. When newspaper columnists made racist or homophobic statements, I joined the pile-on. Sometimes I led it.”
He noted, “In those early days, the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective. It felt as if hierarchies were being dismantled, as if justice were being democratized. As time passed, though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment. It almost felt as if shamings were now happening for their own sake, as if they were following a script.”
It was at this point, he writes, that he started to wonder about “the recipients of our shamings, the real humans who were the virtual targets of these campaigns.”
As Mr. Ronson notes, when they finally met, the first thing Sacco told him was, “Only an insane person would think that white people don’t get AIDS.”
Mr. Ronson writes, “I could understand why some people found it offensive. Read literally, she said that white people don’t get AIDS, but it seems doubtful many interpreted it that way. More likely it was her apparently gleeful flaunting of her privilege that angered people. But after thinking about her tweet for a few seconds more, I began to suspect that it wasn’t racist but a reflexive critique of white privilege — on our tendency to naïvely imagine ourselves immune from life’s horrors.”
“To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,” she told him. “I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.”
My takeaway from the Justine Sacco saga from a little over a year ago is that she wrote something incredibly stupid in a forum that she very well should have known was public. She was a communications executive, for crying out loud. And while social media is relatively new, people have long come under fire for ill-considered remarks, especially about a touchy subject such as race.
Long before Justine Sacco and the advent of Twitter, ill-considered comments about race would land public figures in hot water. Remember Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, who was a sports commentator who told a reporter in a Washington, DC, restaurant that African-Americans were naturally superior athletes because they had been bred to produce stronger offspring during slavery.
This was 1988 and CBS fired him. According to his New York Times obituary when he died in 1996, he regretted his comments, remarking: “What a foolish thing to say.”
The year before longtime Dodgers General Manager Al Campanis, who had played with Jackie Robinson, on the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s April 15, 1947 baseball debut, on Nightlight stated that there were few black managers and no black general managers in Major League Baseball because blacks “may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager” for these positions.
A protest would erupt the next morning and two days later he resigned.
As we learned as early as the late 1980s, racial comments of this sort would no longer be tolerated. Many people in public life have gotten themselves in hot water, if they have not lost their job due to off-color remarks and jokes made in poor taste. Some would argue this is political correctness run amok; I would argue that, given the racist legacy in this nation, we can no longer give people the benefit of the doubt that words won’t turn into action.
There is really no defense for what Ms. Sacco said. However, what is different is the medium has changed. Ms. Sacco was not making her comment on national TV, she was not making her comment to a news reporter – she was on a private trip and made the mistake of making the comment on social media.
As the reporter Jon Ronson notes, at some point the shaming became disproportionate to the offense in some of these incidents. And instead of targeting people in influential positions – Jimmy the Greek had a national platform as a commentator and Al Campanis was a general manager of a prominent baseball team – the shamers of the social media age are indiscriminate in who they target.
This gets me to the point about Azka Fayyaz. Like Ms. Sacco, it is hard to defend the content of her comments.
As we reported last week, there was harsh criticism for them as they threw gasoline on an already flammable situation surrounding the divestment vote by ASUCD. She also did herself no favors in her extensive public statement in the Aggie where she called the comment “satirical” but then turned the blame onto others.
In last week’s column, seeking to end some of the public flogging, the response from a couple of readers was interesting. One stated that it “seems more than a bit hypocritical to me considering your previous rabid stances regarding anything remotely resembling hate or hate speech.” Another, “I totally agree. Some on the left are willing to look the other way and let bygones be bygones if the hate speech is coming from a leftist cause.”
Those are interesting to me for a few reasons, and I think those reasons underlie why I chose to defend Ms. Fayyaz – not for what she said, but against the reaction for her saying it.
First, the Vanguard has rarely gone after private individuals on issues. It is one thing to be critical of public officials for their public remarks, but there is a clear line here. Ms. Fayyaz falls into an interesting gray area.
In fact, two gray areas. The Aggie editorial notes, “Although the posts were published on her personal Facebook profile, Facebook posts are a grey area, as ASUCD senators historically use Facebook politically to promote their campaigns, publicize events and release public statements.”
While Ms. Fayyaz serves on ASUCD, it is a student body that lacks authority on the issue of divestment and, moreover, she is a student.
The second point is, in response to the second reader, I don’t agree with her. I believe that she, like Ms. Sacco, said something incredibly stupid, and, while she was not in a completely public venue when she said it, young people should be sophisticated enough to know that what they say on Facebook can end up haunting them possibly for the rest of their lives.
Much like Ms. Sacco, what Ms. Fayyaz said was wrong, and unlike Ms. Sacco, she said it as the result of a controversial public debate over policy, and she inflamed it.
Jon Ronson writes, “I would be the only person she spoke to on the record about what happened to her, she said. It was just too harrowing — and ‘as a publicist,’ inadvisable — but she felt it was necessary, to show how ‘crazy’ her situation was, how her punishment simply didn’t fit the crime.”
But Justine Sacco was a 30-year-old professional in communications. Azka Fayyaz is just a student, learning that her words can come around to bite her.
Jon Ronson puts a human face on this situation. He writes, “Whenever possible, I have met them in person, to truly grasp the emotional toll at the other end of our screens. The people I met were mostly unemployed, fired for their transgressions, and they seemed broken somehow — deeply confused and traumatized.”
I think, in the end, this is what we need to remember. There is a real person on the other end of this. Sacco made mistakes. She certainly did not help herself once things blew up, but they were just mistakes.
We may agree with her positions on the issue or what she did, but, at some point, hammering her is beating a dead horse.
At the conclusion of the article, we learn that Ms. Sacco has a new job in communications. Mr. Ronson notes that her view changed, “perhaps she had now come to understand that her shaming wasn’t really about her at all. Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to her undoing. Her tormentors were instantly congratulated as they took Sacco down, bit by bit, and so they continued to do so. Their motivation was much the same as Sacco’s own — a bid for the attention of strangers — as she milled about Heathrow, hoping to amuse people she couldn’t see.”
I am not asking the reader to sympathize with Azka Fayyaz or Justine Sacco. I’m certainly not defending their actions. Some will undoubtedly argue that their situations are not that parallel.
However, my purpose here is to argue that I do think as we all learn the intricacies of the new social media age, we learn a little about proportionality of the offense and the overwhelming public ostracism that comes with shaming.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“I would argue that given the racist legacy in this nation, we can no longer give people the benefit of the doubt that words won’t turn into action.”
“As I wrote on Saturday, I see little to be gained by the public flogging of a UC Davis student,”
two conflicing statements. FYI she was not publicly flogged.
she most certainly was publicly flogged just not literally.
“FYI she was not publicly flogged.”
I would say that this depends upon your definition of “flogging”. From a conversation with my son who, although not a student there himself, is closely connected with the UCD campus through friends, that there is a great deal of “flogging” going on and that the “hate comments” and/or religiously motivated derogatory comments depending on your point of view are not isolated to any one group but are being bandied back and forth. “Flogging” today is not limited to what occurs in person, but also to what occurs in the news and on social media. Seen in this light, Ms. Fayyaz has indeed received quite a “flogging”.
“ we can no longer give people the benefit of the doubt that words won’t turn into action.”
I fundamentally disagree with this statement. I believe that unless the comment is overt and immediate such as a call to violence, we are obligated to “give the benefit of the doubt” and be tolerant of the speech of others even if we do not agree. This country has as one of our basic principles, freedom of speech. We have an obligation in my view to call out offensive speech when we hear it, but we have no obligation nor any right to attempt to silence it.
This is as true for those who would attempt to “silence” Ms.Fayyaz by calling for her ouster as it is for those who would “silence” speakers at a public forum by shouting them down.
Tia,
You mix two separate issues. First is her right to free speech. Let her speak her mind and be judged on her views. The second is her fitness to be in ASUCD. Should someone with her views be an elected student representative? She can continue to post offensive comments on Facebook, but maybe not as an elected member of ASUCD. I for one would not want to silence those who call for her removal from this position. If the students at UCD want to recall her for her views let them go through that process.
zaqzaq
‘I for one would not want to silence those who call for her removal from this position”
I agree with this statement. I would not call for silencing anyone. My point was merely to point out that a call to remove her from a post of responsibility is, in effect, an attempt to stifle her voice. All points of view should be heard. I simply do not believe that she should be removed for this particular expression of her sentiments, just as I would not support the removal of a Jewish student who promoted the establishment of more settlements even though I do not agree with that position.
Tia,
Not at all. She can still make statements if removed from office. Her points can still be heard although many may not respect them. Holding a representative office has certain responsibilities and removal is appropriate if the views she takes are not supported by those who elected her. That is democracy at work.
[moderator] edited for language I find it difficult to believe that she is just some naive student. This was a celebratory statement after a “political” victory on campus. She followed it up with additional incendiary comments in news articles and again on Facebook. More importantly there was not apology, just excuses or blame on the audience for not getting it. These young politicians use Facebook as a tool for getting their message out. They see the white house doing it and find it effective. She got her political message out there loud and clear. Her comments on Facebook clearly identify her agenda and where she stands on the Israeli/Palestinian issue. She earned the scorn of the public and it should follow her. This type of hate should not be tolerated.
Hamas used religion as a weapon. Over the last year we have witnessed a man burned alive, over twenty Christian men beheaded for being Christian, shootings in Europe motivated by religion and women and girls sold into slavery where they are raped. Some as young as ten years old. Either because they were Christian (Nigeria) or Yazzidi (Syria/Iraq). All in the name of Islam, allegedly a religion of peace.
zaqzaq
“This type of hate should not be tolerated.
Hamas used religion as a weapon. Over the last year we have witnessed a man burned alive, over twenty Christian men beheaded for being Christian, shootings in Europe motivated by religion and women and girls sold into slavery where they are raped. Some as young as ten years old. Either because they were Christian (Nigeria) or Yazzidi (Syria/Iraq). All in the name of Islam, allegedly a religion of peace.”
Please show me where in the writings of Ms. Fayyaz, she has defended any of the actions that you have posted here. Her statements in my view were against the theocracy that is the state of Israel, not in favor of forced immolation, beheading, rape or child slavery. Please correct me if you feel I have missed some of her statements favoring these activities.
If the Vanguard was truly sincere in ending “the public flogging”, the Vanguard would stop creating articles about her and what she did/said, for people to react to, as the Vanguard keeps her name “out there” as a target.
If the Vanguard is sincere in this matter…
The Vanguard used the young woman’s name 7 times in the article, and in the title of this piece. The Vanguard shouldn’t be sticking a metal rod into an electrically charged atmosphere and then being surprised if the rod/name gets strikes of lightning.
Think the expression “you will reap that which you have sown” may be “on point”.
The same for the New York Times article?
Hell yes. Monkey see, monkey do?
David, I’m coming to the conclusion that you “want to pick this scab”, keep the issue fresh, to increase readership (and revenue?). Your protestations that the young lady (please not I am not using her name, and feel a tad guilty that due to your headline, it keeps coming up when I post on this topic) has “had enough” is belied by by the fact you are keeping her “front and center”… to what purpose?
suppose we adjusted her language a bit – replaced the word “Hamas” with “KKK”. would Tia and david feel the same way then?
What makes you think I like Hamas?
How about tweak this a bit to say it is the wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of KKK members. Nobody is making the point that this young woman is personally responsible for the evil acts of the extreme actors in her “family”, but she appears to be a least complicit and maybe even supportive of some of this given her statements that indicate obvious hostility toward Israel.
let’s say she is supportive of some policies of hamas, what does that mean? is she not allowed to be? i guess i’m struggling with the “and then what”?
So, then you would be fine if a person in a leadership position was supportive of some of the policies of the KKK?
David Duke was elected to the Louisiana legislature and served one term. Should they have not allowed him to be seated?
i agree with david on that point, i think it’s extremely unlikely that a student would reference the kkk, but i would point out that conservatives are supportive of some of the policies of the kkk and wouldn’t argue for their dismissal.
Bulldookey!
Bulldookey times two!
But nice and predictable deflection.
Former Grand Master KKK Robert Byrd was a Democrat. It was Bill Clinton and Al Gore who were surrounded and nurtured by Segregationists.
BTW, recent GOP presidential hopefuls include Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, and Dr. Ben Carson. Right now, I’d say Walker and Carson are tops on my list, though I sure wish Bobby Jindahl were a better public speaker.
interesting, none of you guys saw what i did which was restate what steve scalise said in 1999 in generic terms.
“The novelty of David Duke has worn off,” said Scalise. “The voters in this district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also can get elected. Duke has proven that he can’t get elected, and that’s the first and most important thing.”
http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/scalise-vitter-talked-to-roll-call-about-david-duke-in-1999/
I agree, I like both Walker and Carson.
[moderator] off topic….
Frankly
“hostility toward Israel.”
With this limited statement, I agree. She has demonstrated towards hostility towards Israel, not that I can see towards Jews. Is there anyone here who cannot discern that distinction. My comments have not been in support of her message, but have attempted to clarify the meaning of her words when they have been distorted ( substituting “racism” for disapproval of a theocratic state ) for example, and defending her right to express her opinion, just as I would the right of anyone else whether or not I happen to agree with them.
“would Tia and david feel the same way then?”
My feelings are not the point. The point is whose freedom of speech are we willing to defend ? If the answer is not that of everyone who is engaged in attempting to incite violence, then I think we have a problem. For heaven’s sake, I have defended the right of the Westboro Baptist church to spew their evil. I would have thought that should have settled the issue about my feelings about the right to free speech…..but I guess not.
Nothing. BTW, a straight answer to the question will suffice.
I don’t have an answer. It would depend on the specifics. But as a general rule, I think in this case, the response was disproportionate to the offense.
If this were an isolated incident. I did a quick search yesterday and found numerous instances and groups which consider Students for Justice in Palestine a “hate group”.
1. Given that racism, race, intolerance, and any number of small instances are assumed to be worthy of investigation and consideration here on a consistent basis, why are the Students for Justice in Palestine given a pass?
My search also revealed consistently poor behavior, if not hate, directed by Students for Justice in Palestine towards Jewish students across American colleges.
2. Was what Ms. Fayyed said simply stupid, or do they reveal her true feelings and convictions? She is clear that she wants Israel to cease to exist. “God Willing.” #NotSureHowtoSpinThat
3. Might this situation illustrate the hypocrisy of the Left? A stupid comment from someone on the right, especially a white male, will be seen as hate talk which violates the Principles of Community; but a woman of color gets a double pass, and her hate comments are called “stupid” and “a flap”.
“why are the Students for Justice in Palestine given a pass?”
I’m not asking that Students for Justice in Palestine be given a pass.
“Was what Ms. Fayyed said simply stupid, or do they reveal her true feelings and convictions?”
Do we have freedom of speech in this country? Or is it just freedom to say things we agree with? I’m all for discourse, debate, I’ve tried to the best of my ability to create that environment here. But there are also boundaries and rules we establish for fairness and civility, and that is where this discussion is focused – where are those boundaries and what are they?
“Might this situation illustrate the hypocrisy of the Left?”
How is this an example of hypocrisy of the left? I’m defending someone whose comments I disagree with. And as I responded above, I believe I would feel the same if she were conservative.
#3 and add to that most on the left are on the pro Palestinian side of this so they’re more apt to forgive and forget. They won’t come out and just say that or admit it but I think we all know the truth.
Except, I’m a pro-Israeli Jew. So maybe we can focus on the real.
Technicality… unless the rules have changed relatively recently, people of Arab, Persian, even Indian/Pakistani descent are “white” for affirmative action purposes. Not saying that’s “right”, but by UCD admissions guidelines, don’t think a Palestinian would be considered “a person of color”. I may be wrong, as my experiences in the matter are ~ 15 years old.
I told you the specifics.
I think it’s highly unlikely that a college student would have an occasion to proclaim support for the KKK. I’m not convinced that Hamas and the KKK are synonymous, particularly since Hamas is the ruling party of a nation. The more likely scenario would be someone making a conservative or right wing comment that was inflammatory in which case, I would feel similarly.
George Wallace making a public statement about Selma is a reasonably close parallel.
george wallace was contemporary about half a century ago. that said, he repented later in life.
Most people don’t know that George Wallace was a Democrat.
Yeah, BP, a “southern democrat”. Today’s “southern republican”. The first elected Republican president waged war against his own people, is famous for emancipating the slaves, is noted as a very spiritual yet non-religious person, suffered personal loss and tragedies. What’s your point? Wallace very much changed his world view after he was nearly killed (and was paralyzed) by a deranged idiot. He seemed to realize that life and human values were more important than raw politics. Would that others do the same, without being shot.
Matt
George Wallace was the governor of a state when he was taking his stand against integration. I do not see that as a reasonably close analogy. But for the moment, let’s pretend it is. He had every right to say what he did. People have the right to say things that are wrong and which they may later regret. It is called free speech. It is not qualified by “if I happen to like it.”
The KKK is not a ruling party of the US only because the people of the US generally reject parties that have a primary platform of hate. That is the point here… the platform of the governance of the Palestinian people is primarily hate directed at Israel and the people of Israel. The ASUCD organization models and reflects the positions of the government of the Palestinian people even if they don’t openly admit to supporting the terrorism and violence against Israel.
Well, that, and the fact that they ‘hated’ too many people… blacks, Jews, Catholics, Muslims (to the extent they were around), etc., etc.
The guy back east who shot and killed the 3 Muslim students recently… the accounts look more and more that had the students been black, Catholic, Pakistani Hindus, whatever, there would have been bodies. If I was his attorney, I’d definitely go with the mental illness/defect approach.