An orthodoxy is a system of ideas that adherents insist one must accept without question. In other words, a set of dogmas.
Every media outlet has one. It may be implied or explicit; flexible or rigid; narrow or broad; but it’s there. It defines what ideas that media outlet will allow to be expressed. In publishing media, it determines what will and won’t get published.
An obstacle facing me in my hopes of getting published, is that I seem somehow always to run afoul of a given media outlet’s orthodoxy.
On the one hand, this is karmic.
On a different hand, in one’s personal life, every prudent person has an orthodoxy also. It controls with whom one is, or is not, willing to engage in conversation. This is a current issue for me spiritually: albeit I want The William Tell Show to welcome the broadest possible range of views, I find that there is this person or that person, this author or that one, whom I am not willing to engage in conversation.
(In “Do I need a safe space?,” I mentioned the “bullshit” guy. Several days after that incident, there was a discussion in the day room of current Middle East events. Someone remarked, “The Jews are the chosen people.” Bullshit guy got up and moved away, saying, “There’s no use in even having a conversation.” In other words, he’s unwilling to talk with anyone who takes the Bible seriously. So my questioning of whether or not I can talk with him is well-founded; he is unwilling to talk with anyone like me.)
This article appeared in the LA Times. I read it, and wanted to comment on it. I looked at the comments: there were many offensive and outrageous ones, mainly from a racist direction. Here’s the portion of the piece that I wanted to respond to:
During one interview on a radio talk show, a two-hour marathon of hard questions about my assertion that a great deal of racism is unconscious and unintended, the host of the show laid into me, stating that, since the system of racism in our country operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without mercy or letup, affecting every single black person alive in our country, how could it possibly be unconscious? I had no answer to offer him, and I understood that once again I had failed to understand the racism that, after decades of awareness, probing and trying to change on my part, is still present in me, active in me and blinding me to its reality.
I submitted this comment:
The ascription of malice is normally malicious itself.
That got censored.
Go figure.
Related: The great questions of our time
Reblogged 2023-06-22.
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