Matt Damon, the F-word, and the nature of forgiveness in woke politics
I was thinking of the recent Matt Damon controversy, and it got me thinking of the nature of both forgiveness and purity politics.
In case you hadn’t heard, Matt Damon got in some hot water after he explained how his teenage daughter recently taught him a lesson in civility. Damon was telling a joke around the dining table, and the joke included the word “faggot.” His daughter was appalled, left the table, and wrote Damon a letter explaining why he should never use that word. Damon read it, agreed, and promised never to use the offending word again. This all happened a few months ago.
A lot of people were understandably upset that up until only a few months ago Matt Damon did not realize that the word “faggot” was a problem. I initially agreed. Now, not so much. Here’s why.
A few things:
Damon was freely telling the story, and was likely proud of himself for both admitting he was wrong and publicly acknowledging it to the interviewer by telling the story.
That means that Damon was likely telling the truth — he really didn’t realize up until a few months ago that telling jokes with the word “faggot” is never acceptable. I know this all sounds crazy and doesn’t make sense — who doesn’t know that using that word is a problem? — but Damon clearly didn’t, or he wouldn’t have told the joke in front of his young kids, and he wouldn’t have mentioned the whole experience during the interview. Think about it. Had Damon fully understood how bad that word is, he’d be mortified to admit the story publicly. But he sincerely didn’t realize, and thus didn’t see it as scandal-worthy to admit publicly that he screwed up and learned from the experience. And it’s hard for me to judge someone who truly doesn’t realize that something is wrong — especially if, when they’re informed, they correct themselves. (And, in Damon’s case, someone who has spent the last several decades as a wonderful liberal activist. And that matters too. It lends weight to the notion that this is not an inherently bigoted guy, and thus, he could have simply just made a mistake, albeit an odd one.)
He corrected himself. He made a mistake, got called out on it, and fixed it. That’s laudable as well.
Now, I realize in the woke age of purity politics you gotta be 110% or you’re dead to me. But I just don’t operate that way. There was a controversy a few years ago about Joy Reid possibly having written some not-quite-gay-friendly blog posts in the early 2000s — Joy said she never wrote the offending text — and I was asked by the Daily Beast to comment, and I told them I’m fine with it. Why? Because Joy is great on LGBT issues today. She’s a wonderful advocate for our rights, and has been for years. So whatever here views may, or may not, have been twenty years ago, I care far more about what she thinks, says, and does today.
And that gets into the larger issue of context. Which is also relevant to the Damon story. In Joy’s case, the context of the story is that Joy is great on our issues today, so I embrace her. Her actions prove to me that her heart (and acts) are in the right place. In Damon’s case, his context includes being a good liberal AND willingly telling the story (both to his kids, and to the interviewer), which suggests that he truly didn’t realize how bad the word was to use in that situation. I am far more critical of someone who uses the word “faggot” in an intentionally bigoted way — for example, angrily calling me one — than someone who, for whatever reason, never fully appreciated how bad the word was, and when informed about it, immediately corrects himself. It goes to the question of intent. Was the intent bigoted, and was the word said with malice? If not, there’s simply less to judge.
I think sometimes, especially of late, we expect too much of people. If a politician who has been great on our issues for decades does one thing we don’t like — or did one thing 20, 30 or 40 years ago — we gnash our teeth and damn them all to hell, without realizing, accepting, that people are imperfect AND that this person has been amazing on our issues since that time. (We also fail to consider that, sometimes, at the time the offense was made, the historical context made the offense not that bad IN CONTEXT.)
Whether it’s performative wokeness (virtue signaling, as the kids call it), or just a sign of the angry times, where we, understandably, are upset about a lot of things, I don’t know. I just think that in politics you want bad people to become good people, and you want them to stop doing bad things and start doing good things. So when they do good things, when they become good people, we should welcome it, regardless of who they were before.
A few other tibdits
Don’t tick off Jen Psaki
Latinos really don’t want to be called Latinxs
Only 5% of Latinos think the word “Latinx” should be used to describe them, yet the media has adopted the term anyway, and jammed it down the Latino community’s throat. It reminds me of how my community suddenly in the last year went from being the LGBT community to then being the LGBTQ community, and then LGBTQ+. And ask around what the Q and + mean, and I guarantee you not everybody knows or agrees. It’s also illogical. Q either means queer or questioning. If it means questioning, it shouldn’t be there at all, as other groups don’t include members who are considering joining (if you’re considering Judaism does that make you a Jew?). And if it’s “queer,” that’s an umbrella term for everyone, so it’s not just duplicative of LGBT, but it’s also duplicative of “+” which means “everyone else.” So LGBTQ+ actually means: “LGBT people, and everyone, and everyone else.” And, of course, the media now all use LGBTQ+ as if it’s something the community actually agreed on. We did not.
Bernie Sanders protégé Nina Turner loses Ohio congressional primary
Nina Turner, who was a former Bernie Sanders aide, and before that a top Hillary Clinton supporter, and who now works for a corporate lobbying firm that represents Ergodan in Turkey and Pfizer, lost her bid yesterday to become the Democratic nominee for Congress in Ohio’s 11th congressional district. Turner, who last year during the election called Joe Biden “a bowl of shit,” and was supported by the socialist advocacy group Justice Dems, lost resoundingly to more mainstream Democrat (and I use the phrase admiringly) Shontel Brown, who, like Turner, is African-American. Brown won by 5.7 points, which is quite a solid victory. It turns out African-Americans are not so big on angry socialists.
True to form, Nina’s concession speech was kind, gracious and hopeful:
Just kidding.
That crazy airline video
And at this point, you must have seen the video of the drunk guy on the Frontier Airlines flight who took off his shirt, accosted two female flight attendants, and then attacked a male flight attendant. The crew responded by tying him up with tape. The video is nuts, and the guy appears to have deserved it IMHO.
It’s Republicans who suck at the federal teat
My TikTok trolls have been claiming of late that they fund the entire budget, and Democrats don’t pay a dime, presumably because we’re all on welfare. So I’ve taken to sharing this table which shows which states take more from the federal government than they give back in taxes. Green are the greedy takers (one might even call them Welfare Queens). Burnt Umber are the generous givers. Take a guess the politics of all the states that actually fund the budget. Yep — Blue, baby, Blue.
I’m gonna call it quits. Oh, I actually did a 3-minute TikTok video about the latest on how poorly Florida is coping with Covid, you can watch that here. And you can check out my most recent podcast, about Covid, Damon, Nina Turner and Gov. Cuomo here.
Talk to you folks later in the week,
JOHN
I agree wholeheartedly. But I don't want to fall into the Tucker Carlson lie that liberals demand instant and forever woke-ness and purity politics. You can always find some crazy person on TikTok or Twitter saying something crazy. But in general I find most progressives -- as is their nature -- to put things into context, to forgive, to listen and to appreciate those who are learning and growing and working to be better allies. People like Matt Damon! Now the rapper DaBaby, on the other hand, has a history of obnoxious and anti-gay comments. So when he makes yet another obnoxious comment about people with AIDS and then sort-of apologizes by mocking the idea of apologizing and then when he starts to lose festival bookings tries to really apologize, yes, smart people expect him to do the work and show some growth and remorse before giving him a pass, due to his history. Tucker may think we're unforgiving scolds demanding 100% perfection, but outside the echo chamber of social media, I don't think it's true.