SE Hoya Containment Thread (aka Politics)

Tesla, a future case study for securities law classes across America, had to stop delivering Cybertrucks this past weekend. No, not because the hundred-thousand–dollar medium-duty pickup, which is only any of those things in the loosest interpretive sense, tends to brick when it gets rained on; nor because its stainless steel panels get all rusty and nasty-looking after weeks exposed to the rare, harsh condition of "being outside." Perhaps you think it has something to do with the shorter-than-advertised driving range and longer-than-advertised charging time, but no: Rather, the cause of this snag is that the trucks struggle with the basics of stopping and going, by which I mean that the accelerator pedal cover slides off and gets stuck under a panel and locks the accelerator pressed down and keeps the Cybertruck stuck at maximum velocity.

Other Tesla models have had issues with speeding up and slowing down at the wrong times. The company was sued in 2017 by drivers whose cars drove themselves unexpectedly through garages and into walls; a German paper reported last year on over 2,400 complaints about sudden braking problems; and a safety researcher published a white paper showing how voltage spikes could lead Teslas to speed up without warning. You are supposed to like this because it means you are on the cutting edge, helping Elon Musk in his quest to save humanity.

Tesla's bad, stupid week got worse and stupider on Monday, when the company announced it would be laying off more than 10 percent of its workforce, cutting some 14,000 jobs. In typical Tesla fashion, the layoffs were ruthless and sudden, following hot on Tesla's announcement of its first quarterly sales decline (a drop of 8.5 percent) since the pandemic. Drew Baglino, an executive who'd been around since 2006, and Rohan Patel, a former Obama administration guy hired to help Tesla do corruption and skirt regulation, also announced they would be leaving the company of their own accord. I am tempted here to wonder whether this means Tesla is beginning a meaningful decline–indeed, the stock is down—but the company, which is a stock racket that happens to sell cars, has operated at a level beyond rational analysis for years.

There are many options to choose from, but a New York Times article from April 1, with the headline "Israeli troops pull out of a major Gaza hospital after a two-week battle," serves as a useful example of how the newspaper has covered Gaza within its own intentional framework. The report cites death toll and arrest numbers provided by an Israeli military official, adopts the IDF claim that its siege of Al-Shifa Hospital was a legitimate military operation aimed at rooting out "terrorists," and reinforces the notion that the total obliteration of the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip was the byproduct of a battle between military forces.

This framing does not square with any further context: Survivors described horrific scenes including drones with speakers telling those in the hospital to "come out, you animals," executions of children, and the systematic sorting and killing of hundreds of people. Palestinian doctors continue to find bodies outside the hospital complex. But the primary objective of this article is that it adheres to the standards set by the New York Times.

On Monday, The Intercept published excerpts from an internal Times memo from standards editor Susan Wessling and international editor Philip Pan. The memo's ostensible purpose was to ensure that Times journalists use standardized, accurate language when covering the Israeli military's destruction of Gaza, although the memo's authors would phrase it rather differently. Writers are discouraged "except in very rare cases" from using the words "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "Palestine." They are not supposed to use the phrase "refugee camps," even though the United Nations recognizes eight of them in Gaza.

Of course, these guidelines are applied differently among the paper's various departments. A breaking news writer isn't there to compare the Middle East to bugs, but Thomas Friedman can. Bret Stephens is allowed to label anyone he disagrees with as supporting Hamas. David Leonhardt has the imprimatur to cook the numbers and suggest that the situation in Gaza is improving, because the dead-Palestinian line went down for a week.

If the Times were to actually describe what happened, rather than what it's currently doing, its coverage would look much different. Any portion of the endless footage of maimed or dead Palestinians could fit the requirement for "carnage"; the word "massacre" would properly represent, for instance, Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinians trying to receive aid. How would something like the destruction of Gaza's largest IVF facility cheapen the definition of "genocide" that the Times is committed to preserving?

The clarity and accuracy that Wessling and Pan are striving for is supposed to be clear and accurate, but only to certain groups. When 17-year-old Palestinian-American Tawfic Abdel Jabbar was shot and killed in the occupied West Bank in January, the Times headline was "He Loved Basketball and Wanted to Help His Family Stores. A Bullet Ended It All." After Israeli tanks killed more than 20 people in mid-March while they were waiting in line for an aid delivery, the Times headline was "Another Gaza Aid Convoy Ends in Violence, With at Least 20 Killed." In 2022, when an Israeli soldier fatally shot Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the head, the same publication originally headlined the article as if she had died of an illness. By the standards of the Times, Palestinians can do bad things, but bad things tend to happen to Palestinians, with minimal explanation.

The intended effect of this selective language is to cover up what anyone can plainly see, under the veneer of objectivity. By narrowing the scope of available words, the Times can prevent its reporters from describing reality. Somewhere between an Israeli soldier firing a gun at a Palestinian, the bullet acquires agency. The passive voice can dissipate when a different kind of victim is the subject.

And when the Times stretches that objectivity far enough that it becomes journalistic malpractice, management has chosen to menace its own workers who speak up. [...]

On Monday, the University of Southern California canceled its valedictorian's commencement speech. The word "cancel" has been stretched to include a lot of different things for a long time now, but here was the genuine item: The valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, was invited to give a speech at a certain time and place, and then the university declared that the speech wouldn't happen. The university had canceled it.

"To be clear: This decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech," USC's provost, Andrew T. Guzman, wrote in a university statement about how the valedictorian would not be allowed to make a speech. "There is no free speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period."

[...] Tabassum is a Muslim student who had posted pro-Palestinian messages online, and people on and off campus responded to her selection as valedictorian with that frenzied mix of moral panic, bullying, and abuse that has defined the past six months. Some people claimed to feel threatened by Tabassum; other people reportedly issued threats against her—although Tabassum noted, in her own statement, that she was "not aware of any specific threats against me or the university" and that "my request for the details underlying the university’s threat assessment has been denied."

[...] If USC wanted to say it was simply bowing to safety concerns, though, what was the point of declaring that there was "no free speech entitlement" involved? That part read as a rebuke of Tabassum, sandwiched between declarations that Tabassum's speech had nothing to do with the decision. It cast Tabassum's plan to speak as selfish, an unreasonable burden she was trying to load onto the university.

Yet Tabassum did have an entitlement to speak at the graduation, literally. The University of Southern California gave Tabassum the title of valedictorian: "farewell speaker," from the Latin. The USC valedictorian speaks at the USC commencement. Or did, anyway.

What are words—or concepts or principles—to a campus administrator? Two different university presidents have been hounded out of office, with the New York Times bugling along, for fumbling around with meaning and nuance when presented, under the auspices of the House majority, with the premise that the words "from the river to the sea" were tantamount to genocide. This morning, the Times reported in a front-page story that the president of Columbia, Nemat Shafik, in her turn under the inquisition, had "seemed more willing … to condemn and potentially discipline students and faculty" who used the phrase. "Columbia President Testifies That Antisemitism Warrants Punishment," the full-width jump headline read. Today, Shafik called in the NYPD to tear down a protest encampment on the Columbia campus. [...]