Don’t Be Mad At Sarah Jeong: This is Bryan Cranston’s Fault
Just as you can’t apologize to a group of people, you can’t forgive on behalf of others. Therefore, I can’t forgive Sarah Jeong on behalf of all white people, or even all white men. What I can do, is say that at the time she made those tweets, it would never have occurred to me to be even remotely offended by them. The only thing offensive about Sarah’s statements today, is the fact that other people have had their lives destroyed for doing exactly the same thing. The only thing shocking about them, is that some people want to take them seriously. Let’s refuse to see these comments as anything more than a immature person’s attempt to call attention to herself. Identity politics is played out. It’s time to put this boring argument aside and move one to something else. (I’ve highlighted certain lines for the benefit of any journalists that would like to scan this article looking for incendiary quotes.)
I accept Sarah’s apology and hope the fact that her statements were about white people saves her career. I never liked the “hey why isn’t he getting in trouble too” rhetoric in elementary school, and it sounds even worse from the mouths of adults.
Make no mistake, the idea the you can’t be racist against white people because “racism is prejudice plus power” is complete nonsense. First of all, it’s a weasel’s attempt to argue based on definitions rather than logic. Secondly, if power means anything, it means the ability to get somebody fired. The “prejudice plus power” crowd are experts at getting people fired and are well aware of their power. It’s disingenuous to claim white people can’t be victims of racism. As I look to the future my heart bleeds for the boatloads of South Africans who will soon be turned away from the coast of Australia, and told “You should of thought of that back in 1962 mate!” It’s evil to treat individuals differently according to characteristics like race, gender, and sexual orientation. If you do it in America, you’d better have a damn good excuse or you’re breaking the law. The only ethical way to evaluate people is as individuals.
If you look at what Sarah did in isolation, which is the only fair way to judge a crime, you see that there’s a larger phenomenon at work than racial politics. As humanity turns away from earthly distractions and looks towards the stars, racism may someday be eradicated. The challenges posed by the effects of context on meaning will follow our descendants from one galaxy to the next. Sarah fell afoul of the what I call The “Twitter Time Bomb.” We make Tweets in the zeitgeist of a particular instant, and then evaluate them in the context of the infinite future moments that follow the publication. Our outrage manifests our inability to imagine what it would be like to know more or less than we do at a given moment.
When Sarah Jeong made those tweets, the world had just been graced with 5 breathtaking seasons of Breaking Bad. At the time, it was more dangerous to dislike “House of Cards” than to ask “what gender did trans-women start out as again?” Sarah was just doing her best to be an attention-whore (I use the term in its absolute best sense.) With the tools available at the moment. She was drumming up traffic by attacking large groups of people that she knew would respond in kind. #cancelwhitepeople Wasn’t an attempt to amend the constitution to take land away from white farmers, it was just an attempt to engage fans of Breaking Bad and BSG, by making them angry. As I interpret them, the laws of decency state that trolling is fair game on the Twitter, and anyone old enough to appreciate the tense emotionally charged tragedy of Breaking Bad, should know what a flame war is and not take one too seriously.
Nowadays, it’s hard to remember when Bryan Cranston and Kevin Spacey were Gods. Back in the day, I heard Kevin Spacey’s name more frequently than Obama’s, and the references were glowing. It’s hard to remember how it felt, but 5 years ago the POTUS wasn’t the most talked about person on earth, and using racially charged rhetoric to get somebody fired from a job was a rare phenomenon. Tweeting in 2014 #cancelwhitepeople was on par with going back to the 90’s and saying you thought Leonardo Decaprio’s performance ruined the Titanic. In other words, all this talk of racism and patriarchy is trivial compared to the larger truth that popular culture references do not age well.
In a flame war, the person who gets the most upset looses. In the interest of staying a winner, I refuse to be offended. Furthermore, I acknowledge that #cancelwhitepeople meant something different in a world where everyone over the age of 15 was under the spell of Bryan Cranston’s inexhaustible talent. The problem of the ruthless double standard remains. We can’t build a better future, by pretending that “what’s bad for white people is good for America.” That’s why it’s so important to accept Sarah’s retraction and take it as an apology.
Sarah says she was counter trolling. She never really said she was sorry, but she admits she was saying rude, mean spirited things to provoke an emotional reaction. That’s all we need. As long as she doesn’t want to be taken seriously, she can say whatever she wants. Let’s just calmly draw the line here and say “People who speak like 2014's Sarah Jeong, won’t be taken seriously.” Being laughed at is the punishment for people who are actually hateful, and the reward for people who want attention more than they wanted their dignity. No further measures are necessary or desirable. Recognizing this conversation for the worn-out joke it is, will disappoint people who have based their careers on the premise that “outrage is a renewable resource”. Don’t cry for them, they can probably find similarly productive employment by eating beans and powering Microsoft servers with methane.
