Monday morning roundup and first ramble

It's a slow news morning; all I have for you link-wise is this column on efficient dishwashing. You may also check out Andrew Weiss's piece on Russia's still-powerful oligarchy.

With that, I wanted to articulate some more detailed thoughts about Nottowaygate. The bottom line is that absolutely it was a bad "idea," but it wasn't an idea; it was a confluence of circumstances that grew into a bad situation that gobbled up in an internet smear campaign. At stake, together with the much more minor Kevin Smith kerfuffle, is whether we can preserve any part of the internet for intelligent debate about things without immediately reducing the discourse to ad-hominem attacks. So here are my thoughts, in bullets:

• Yes, much of the South, like much of the country and much of the world, is built on slavery. In other words, I agree with this:

 i believe that one cannot draw a line around the nottoway plantation and say "racism reached it's depths of wrongness here" and then point to the other side of that line and say "but not here".

But the issue with the location is not solely its history; it is the way the plantation's current management whitewashes its history. There's a guy who goes around traveling to historical slave dwellings for the real, brutal history. That's the opposite of how Nottoway paints its history.

• It is also true that may any of us whose daily behaviors in no way contribute to exploitation, cast the first stone. This does not invalidate the statement above--that Nottoway is not a business to support--but this does compel the stone-casters to think about their own purchasing decisions. I respect the following statement:

it is a very imperfect world we live in and i, like everyone else, am just trying to do my best to negotiate it.

And would have to point out that my standards for negotiating it fall short of Ani's, since I would only deem two of the corporations she mentioned as evil. Which comes back to the key point: we all pick our battles and set our own lines in terms of whom we let profit from our work (as well as our purchases). 

• Yeah she and her people could have, should have vetted better, but they didn't, and--again with this--I'm sure we've all been there. So her question--should hatred be spit at her for this mistake--is the key issue here. And it comes down to two issues, one of which is irrelevant (does she "deserve" it) and the second of which is the only one that matters: is it constructive? Also not constructive is the tone of Buddy Wakefield's message, but there is truth in it:

I think it'd be most productive for y'all to continue assuming the absolute worst, don't you dare ask thoughtful questions as to how this really went down, venomously insult Ani and her years of efforts, then write as many demolishing statements and articles as possible in an effort to eternally shackle her to this oversight. If forgiveness is off the menu, consider compassion and the possibility of extenuating circumstances before discounting 20+ years of sincere activism. I think it's pretty safe to say all the artists involved are amply bummed about the situation, and that your hateful approaches/vitriolic statements/narrow understanding of how things transpired have safely arrived to our inboxes. I happen to know that given all the facts I/we were otherwise not privy to, Ani is cancelling. You can all go feed on someone else's mistakes very soon.

It doesn't serve us--us being the community who cares about things (social justice, for example) to cannibalize each other over mistakes, or to hurl insults in 140 characters instead of actually discussing the issues. Just sayin'.