Elizabeth Spiers
@espiers.bsky.social
NYT opinion writer, Slate Money co-host, Dem messaging consultant, NYU prof, former EIC The New York Observer, Dealbreaker founder and Gawker founding editor. Brooklyn via Bama. Rednexican. Striver with no chill. Newsletter: buttondown.email/spiers
GOP apparatchik: law enforcement should be out fighting crime instead of here fighting crime
Crime committed by white guys in suits who used to be mayor is still crime, Caroline
One thing vastly overlooked in the Harrison Butker discourse, by the way, is this piece of nasty anti-semitism in this speech:
wow, notorious misogynist Bill Maher has no idea why women are mad at the sexist place kicker telling us we belong in the kitchen and don't need to use our brains to have thoughts, surprise surprise
Predictably, my inbox is full of people of the Boomer generation persuasion calling student protesters childish and stupid and they for some reason think this is a rebuttal to my column and not evidence that my thesis about generational disdain for student protesters is correct.
Lotta people determined to demonstrate what I was talking about in the column!
This is a really incredible thing and I wonder how antivaxxers will react when it becomes widely available. They are happy to skip Covid vaccines because they’ve politicized them and many of them genuinely believe Covid can’t kill them. I’m pretty sure they know brain tumors can tho.
Really exciting stuff happening in oncology, y'all.
A doctor with glioblastoma—an aggressive brain cancer that kills most patients less than a year after diagnosis—has now been cancer-free for a year, thanks to a world-first personalized vaccine.
www.bbc.com/news/world-a...
Richard Scolyer: Top doctor remains brain cancer-free after a year
Richard Scolyer has undergone a new treatment for glioblastoma, based on his own melanoma research.
www.bbc.comYou’re responding to me, bro, and we don’t know each other. I didn’t seek you out. Seems like you’re the one who’s a little obsessed. But I will say telling a woman who’s dealt with threats and harassment that it’s nothing is exactly the kind of misogynistic gaslighting that tells me who YOU are
There's also something perverse about forcing them to take a module on moral reasoning as if deciding to protest is a moral failing and not itself a principled outcome of moral reasoning!
(And also that mad emails to my editors do not get me in trouble, because this is not fifth grade and they are not my teacher.)
Lol, sir, you have no idea how much email I get. I worry about death threats (which I sometimes get after Fox News or the NY Post distorts one of my columns), not this stuff. If you had people periodically threatening to rape, you'd understand why mad emails to my editor are small potatoes.
Btw, I had a bit about this in the column and had to cut it for space. I guess it's better than expulsion, but this is the kind of infantilizing of student protesters I'm talking about.
“In order to return to the university, some students would be required to complete a 49-page set of reading and tasks — “modules” — known as the Ethos Integrity Series, geared at helping participants “make gains” in “moral reasoning” and “ethical decision making.”” 🧐
Why Is N.Y.U. Forcing Protesters to Write Apology Letters?
The university calls it a “restorative practice”; the students call it a coerced confession.
www.nytimes.comIf entertaining me for the afternoon is winning, I'm happy to have more winning!
If history is any indication, they unfortunately might. But I hope they better remember this moment when they're older than prior generations have.
And if you're wondering, might this person be person of the Boomer Generation? Who is of the sort that I discussed in my column? Why, yes! Yes, he is.
He also generously suggested that the Times publish something "sensible" to offset "Professor Spiers's drivel" and offered up a blog post he wrote criticizing the faculty of Columbia for voting no confidence against the university president after she called the cops on the students.
On the upside, I don't have to ask for anybody's email anymore. Because if you're wondering, did this guy use the BCC field when he emailed 300+ people, no he did not!
PSA: If you don't like one of my columns and decide to voice your opinion by emailing (not kidding) 300+ of my Times colleagues--but weirdly, not me--the effect will be that I spend the rest of the afternoon laughing my ass off, which is probably not what you intended to happen.
And the idea that they’re less informed than their elders because TikTok is nonsense too. If you’re worried about misinformation re Gaza, start with what people older than the students consume on Facebook, from Fox News, and talk radio. Gen Zers are more likely to triangulate between sources.
Not all Boomers, of course. But statistically, most. So they twist themselves in knots trying to justify crack downs, insult people who are old enough to serve the country, get married, have kids, and according to many of the elders are responsible enough to sign off on six figures of student loans.
Survey research shows that older generations always hate student protest, no matter what’s being protested. They think students are essentially children and have to earn the right to have a real voice in political affairs.
I’m tired of people infantilizing student protesters and suggesting they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t understand what’s happening in Gaza, are trying to get out of class blah blah blah, so I wrote this: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/o...
Opinion | What Hillary Clinton Got Wrong About Student Protesters
Older folks’ objections to protests and encampments may not be as reasoned as they claim.
www.nytimes.comYes! I think that kind of routine disciplines and teaches, and if you had somebody teach you how to do argumentation on the page, I’m jealous!
I think this is a very narrow generational affliction that makes no sense to anyone outside of it.
And yes I know I can technically do this, but it’s about adapting to a writing mode and then kind of being unable to muscle memory recall the prior way of doing it.
I make a lot of notes about columns I want to write and sometimes I wish I still had the blogger instinct to immediately write a 250 - 500 word piece to make an argument. Now I can only write in posts that are sentences and 2000 word columns that get chopped to 1200.
This is a very good read: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/o...
Opinion | I Was Shot in Vermont. What if It Had Been in the West Bank?
The dehumanization of Palestinians has become a norm.
www.nytimes.comCongrats to the person who stole a package off my stoop yesterday and is on camera struggling to stuff it into a bag because it’s heavy and then awkwardly made off with it on their bike. You are now the proud owner of a $15 case of 36 cans of seltzer! #stayhydrated
We’ll monetize the eyeballs
I just finished the first episode and enjoyed it but too soon to tell overall!
Also why threatening journalists backfires: it gets them excited and motivates them. We don’t have a normal sense of self preservation.
The podcaster is alarmed and wants to know if she’s ok. But she is gleeful. “This is extremely good news!” Sounds unhinged but funny portrayal of good journo mentality, which says if powerful people are threatening you out of nowhere there’s probably a story there.
I’m watching the Will Forte Netflix show Bodkin about a true crime podcaster who gets paired up with a Guardian journalist who doesn’t want to be there and she’s dismissive of the story he’s chasing until she gets hit by a car and two guys threaten her if she keeps poking around.
I see they’ve entered the Media Time Machine and emerged in 2003.
There are very few true swing voters, and they swing for arbitrary reasons. They’re kind of impossible to target as a result. Most independents vote in a partisan manner and big shifts are often about turnout and engagement of people who are not swing voters but vote irregularly