Like many a Gen Xer, let me just say up front: I'm quite relieved they didn't have Twitter in my youth, because... well, God knows what I'd have to be apologizing for now. As it is, I know all too well that hiding in this blog alone are words and pieces I'm not necessarily sure I want repeated or blown out of context.
Still, that said... I'm comfortable with saying generally, nothing I've written went there without a lot of thought beforehand.
But let's back out to 30,000 feet for a moment: In a rather odd week, I've been fascinated with the confluence of a small string of events - the dreadful murder spree in Georgia resulting in the deaths of multiple workers and clients in massage parlors, the discussion it has engendered about attacks on Asians in America, Fox News struggling to not cover this, and the fall of Alexi McCammond.
Bear with me... because I think this all has a central point.
First of all, Fox: it's remarkable, really, how the entire network has been fully flummoxed by the unfolding story in Georgia. It was clearly one thing that, early on, the combination of a young white male shooter and the fact that he killed mostly Asian women working in the massage parlors wasn't, let's say, a good look for them. But a dramatic set of murders, gun play and Southern law enforcement really couldn't somehow get reworked to their purposes? Since January - if not earlier - Fox has been falling quietly apart: a massive reworking on the dayside schedule has resulted in largely sagging ratings, lack of Trump has robbed them of their centrality to each days's new drama, and what's been left in his wake (yes, we all know about the Dr. Seuss thing), well, just isn't much to build an hour broadcast around. And 5 more minutes of Candace Owen trashing WAP? That just sells Cardi B's next single.
It's one thing for Fox to try and flog its own right wing version of a "main story"; it's another problem entirely when the thing leading every other news broadcast on cable or network - or anywhere really - for more than 36 hours is seemingly invisible to Fox. The murders were graphic and public and provided such a high body count in such a short period of time that the story was simply unavoidable. Add in the clearly troubled young man with the guns and his, by his own admission, complex notions of sexuality and deviance... and it's no surprise how this captured the zeitgeist. And when Fox, or any news claiming network really, refuses to acknowledge the zeitgeist happening right in front of them (and what is Fox, but The Voice of What Happened in The South)... well, that's just a failure.
Which isn't to say this is a story where news organizations are particularly distinguishing themselves; from over emphasizing the violence to trying to explore the stories of the victims to getting a bit lost in a tangle of sex work, misogyny and yes, anti-Asian bigotry... this story is a mess and few reporters or news organizations seem to be getting the story right or well. We barely know who the victims are. We certainly don't know much about the shooter's choices or even if he knew any of them. And from his stated reasoning about sexual activity to killing women to the specific choice of establishments with Asian workers... there's a lot to unpack, and mostly, Americans have spent not just years, but generations, trying to avoid just about every aspect this story raises.
Whatever one thinks about just how these events particularly illuminate, or even intersect with a larger conversation about a rise in anti-Asian bigotry arising out of shallow thinking around the pandemic... myself, I'd say there are no accidents. We are here because we were bound to get here, one day, in one way or another. Objectification and sexualization of Asian women, indeed all women of color, is just one piece of the large conversation around race America desperately needs to unpack, examine, and thrash out. It's not an easy or simple discussion. And while it may not be central to the "Kung Flu" type insults of the pandemic... this is where the point is not some round of picking or choosing which insult is worst. Whatever this sad, murderous kid thought, whatever the world taught him to think about others not like him... it's long past time to have a reckoning about yet another way in which our culture fails a minority group and we all need to do more and better to fix it.
So... here's the thing about Alexi McCammond. McCammond's hiring as Editor in Chief at Teen Vogue, announced weeks ago, got hung up on a revived conversation about a group of tweets she'd written in college, mostly using "Asian" in some derogatory way (but others, as well, that casually engage in hawking "gay" or "homo" as pejoratives). Since college, McCammond has worked her way through journalism and publishing, widely respected, and quite successful. When the issue of the tweets came up in 2019, she apologized at length. Yet and still, staffers at Teen Vogue asked why it was still considered ok or appropriate for McCammond to assume the top spot. In the wake of this week's events - and I'd argue, obviously influenced by the developments - Conde Nast gave up and McCammond withdrew her name.
And who pounced on McCammond's unhiring as their latest example of their mythical "Cancel Culture" morality play? Why, Fox, of course.
To her credit, McCammond, at least, isn't playing along; she's offered no hysterical "cancel culture" defense, and while other journalists are at least lightly bemoaning the state of affairs, the "Cancel Culture" narrative remains largely its own peculiar Fox invention. As it should; as I started, I don't doubt McCammond's sincerity and let those of us whose youth is not widely available online show a bit of pause - there but for Twitter in high school go many of us. But the questions raised do linger - is a 27 year old apologizing away her words at 19 really the point? When did you realize that "gay" and "Asian" and "homo" and who knows what all probably shouldn't be used that way? Who needed to tell you? And why, really, did you need to be told?
And therein lies the thread that I gently pick up and use to tie things together: maybe, in a week of extreme anti-Asian violence and bigotry, we can see why Alexi McCamond was wrong for Teen Vogue in a way that (still) flummoxes Fox. We shouldn't have to say "don't kill Asian women working in massage parlors as some sick response to your sexual issues" just as we shouldn't have to say "don't say that" when using racial and homophobic slurs in casual speech. Just as we shouldn't have to explain to Fox why you can't cherry pick the news when it goes against your narrative. You can't do that. Maybe, in some past time, as a culture we let this stuff slide. And yes, that's on us, and that reckoning was, and is, somewhat overdue. But still. When Teen Vogue takes on a tough piece about Asian women, sex work, and the myth of the "Exotic Oriental" - one that Fox will probably say is inappropriate for its audience of teen girl readers - this will all make sense. Doesn't it?
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