I’ve found lots of de Boer’s writing funny and sharp (usually when he’s attacking people I also find annoying) and I enjoy his kamikaze attitude to his arguing endlessly with his own commenters about gender while telling them how bored he is of the whole subject.
But I did have a similar experience to you. He emailed me after I wrote an Atlantic profile of a controversial educator to tell me that because of my cozy corporate perch, I couldn’t ever address the REAL issues in education (aka the ones in his book).
I think we should just consider the possibility that a sense of being excluded from the Cool Kids Table is the engine that underpins his writing, and that has positive and negative effects.
Maybe his issue wasn’t with agency. Maybe it’s more that writers encapsulating so many bad takes in their work?
Such as pretending someone’s only crime is being against Israel (after they’ve participated in shutting down university buildings). We used to call much less than that unlawful detainment.
It’s bizarre that Obama deported 3 million, Clinton more than 12 million, and Bush2 more than 10 million—but only NOW is it a constitutional crisis.
2. The constitutional issue is not the deportations, as you know. That's why you're intellectually dishonest. Be more honest. It's a better way to go through life.
The funny thing is, he wrote an essay, years back, on this exact subject. It was called something along the lines of "It's All High School." The sad irony is that he still seems to remain unaware how perfectly the piece diagnosed his own unresolved issues.
The baseball analogy is dead on. The last time Freddie wrote something relevant to the current cultural climate was in 2022.
He’s also a deeply unpleasant person who’s constitutionally incapable of receiving criticism of any kind with good grace. His go-to response to disagreement—his only response—(which I predict will be his response to this piece)—is “but you didn’t understand my argument!!” To which I always want to reply: if not a single one of your readers understands what you're saying, do you think they're the problem, or do you think you are?
Actually, Freddie's recently discovered a second response to disagreement -- unfortunately, as Ross alludes to here, that second response is "grotesque misogynist putdown."
Can I really write a comment here? How liberating. Thanks. Here goes.
What a nonsense pissing match. I get Ross's point that Freddie does return to the same arguments time and again. In this he is hardly alone. I feel like most columnists have a narrow brand they stick to. But yeah, he should be more varied and interesting! We all should. But since he attracts a range of readers, maybe his repetition is actually a good thing? Maybe the fact that some conservatives read him is a good thing? Worth thinking about? Are we thinking here?
I personally like Freddie's writing style generally. It's entertaining. He's clever. He can flat out write, even if what he is writing is a little odd/wrong/offensive/repetitive from time to time. I like writers who challenge their own tribe, a lot. I hate partisan purity. Dumb. That said, I also find his need to remind his readers that he is a genuine leftist (Marxist even) amusing.
That has always struck me as bullshit. But who cares? This is not life or death. So far from it it boggles, Freddie was also a recently mentally ill, deranged lunatic. (I'm sure he'd be fine with this) Happily he managed to get this under control, gain a career, a wife/partner, and a baby. So bravo to him.
I don't know much about Ross. I have read and like much of his stuff. Not this piece exactly, mostly because it just seems petty and gratuitous. I like the definition of wisdom as being "knowing what to overlook." Not sure why he takes such umbrage to Freddie writing that he thinks Ross is getting some things wrong. So what? Not sure why Freddie chose him to be in the crosshairs either. Maybe he'll write back and continue this low stakes beef?
I very much agree with Freddie's main point that acting as though what happened before is not relevant to what is happening now, and likely in the future, is naive and perhaps suicidal. Woke is not dead. It lives on in the minds and plans of those who hate it and those who revere it. Woke is dormant. It's not the policies, it's the manner of reasoning that is so rotten.
Replying to my own comment. I forgot to mention that whatever other insights Freddie provides or doesn't, his simple yet powerful observation that it is politics that decide things, not virtue, is just absolutely correct, and needs to be repeated to those who think "virtue" always wins the day. It doesn't. Winning is important is an important message. Do the work! Or get Trump.
It's true they have the token conservative opinion columnist you mention. But that's counting on one hand. Very few woke critical liberals. It's telling that Paul was forced out. The day to day reporting also still mostly takes woke race and gender positions for granted. They certainly have never published anything along the lines of "how did we fall for and amplify the BLM hoax of a fake police murder of black men epidemic "
That's really my point. All of the legacy liberal media is still very woke. I would not have considered them as such at all before 2012 or so. There many Substacks now with a healthy diversity of thought. And I will grant that even the NY Times is not as bad now as it was in 2016-2021. But to say woke is limited to academia and book publishing now is ludicrous
I don't even know how to answer that because it would be so hard to create the evidence, but basically - the language that is used, the attitudes toward education status and location that one lives in the country as determinate as to who someone is, the framing, the selective inclusion of certain perspectives or data and the exclusion of others, the subliminal fear in outwardly being too critical of certain causes or errors, excessive worry about the types of things that upper middle class educated people worry about, occasional outlandish doomerism.
I think some people have been sold that the NYTs is some sort of true reporting of what actually happened and they are better people for reading it, that they just can't wrap their heads around the idea that the NYT is as tailored to a specific audience and what it wants to hear as Fox News.
There’s a thing in fandom culture where, when a fan theory gets proven dead, the subculture promoting it seems to get crazier and more vicious - mainly just because all the normal people are filtering out. I think that dynamic applies to a lot of politics as well.
Agreed this is inaccurate. Its very alive in government bureaucracies especially those that are public facing (I have a front row seat), most media, and most education. That's quite a lot.
I think if you are inside the machine you only see difference, and how no idea what its like looking in.
Yeah that's kind of true, I've noticed he's a bit better critic and problematizer than theorist. Like idk how TF we're supposed to treat, say, bipolar nazi people. Seems there's lines of energy in multiple directions on that. FDB is very good at showing that some really dominant ways of treating such people are very wrong. But there's still no new theory.
My view — as someone who’s followed Freddie’s writing for the last decade — is that he’s both correct and eloquent 80% of the time, while the other 20% he’s off on some bizarre, windmill-tilting tangent against perceived slights. To me, the piece in question falls squarely in the latter category.
Interesting. I think you're right that Freddie is almost always eloquent (and he's Yglesian in his ability to write both well and incredibly quickly), but I definitely didn't find him correct 80% of the time.
I think he is always worth reading on the subjects of mental illness and education. On the latter, I'm not sure I agree with him (at least, I have always believed differently), but I think he makes a compelling case that I need to reckon with. On wokeness, I think he's generally right as well, but I think it's easy to be right on that subject.
But when it comes to almost everything else, I find Freddie to be a lazy thinker who straw mans the opposing side of the argument in ways that can be fun to read but that are, at best, empty calories and not infrequently just wrong.
Oh no, this is like two siblings squabbling and being caught in the middle! Ross, Freddie is the guy who first alerted me to your work a few years ago (and I'm grateful). I like you both. I think you both represent some of the best of Substack.
You mention "certain segments of academia and book publishing" as places where woke censoriousness still flourishes. That's where I live, and I'd have to agree. Although I'm seeing hopeful signs. I have a nasty woke colleague -- a frightful little Maoist with a mask -- and some people now find her kind of pathetic. (I realize that's just one data point but maybe it's revealing.)
But most academics who are finally exhausted by wokeism also are not interested in seeing anyone dunking on the woke. I've learned this lesson myself, because as appalled as I was by the election results, I let people know I was vindicated. (I thought Harris would win, but if she didn't, I said it would be because of the absurd cultural overreaches the far left.) Some friends and colleagues have told me, in so many words, that I was being ungracious, and that under Trump 2.0., we have much bigger problems now. I don't quite see it that way, but that is where they're at.
All of this is to say that I tend to agree with you on the main points of contention between you and Freddie.I think I agree with Freddie, though, about NY Mag. It's alway stylishly written, but it's predictable and it certainly likes flattering it's readers. I've not forgotten that they fired Andrew Sullivan. I'm glad, however, to see you there Ross.
I'm pretty sure if FdB said "Hi everyone, I am severely sleep deprived due to the stress of caring for a newborn, so I'm going to have a few months of guest posts while I adjust to life as a dad," it would be a win for every single person involved -- he would have more time for his son, his subscribers would get some new takes, and the guest bloggers would get some more eyeballs from his platform. Is there a good reason for him not to do that?
I feel like you don’t understand what The Free Press is trying to build. It’s not just “Bari Weiss and her anti-woke opinions.” They publish pieces on a variety of issues in politics and culture, from different points of view. They host debates.
The FP has holes and biases, but they don’t need to come up with a single position on Trump or wokeness because it’s not that kind of publication anymore.
There is a ton of substantive, meaningful disagreement between the cultural left and the rest of the country that will continue to be salient regardless of whether BLM is in the news, or Trump is president, or the vibe has shifted away from pronouns. As a society, we're debating things like natalism, smartphones, education, crime and policing, masculinity, the role of religion in society, debates in healthcare, how to think about disability... there's just so much. And the FP covers a bunch of foreign policy issues too, most obviously Israel. As a subscriber the idea that it’s becoming irrelevant just seems weird to me, like you must not be reading it very often if you think their beat is that small.
As for FdB, I find his writing on disability and mental illness to be essential. I also think he’s right that the woke left continues to matter—but I would say it’s becoming less about the narrow frivolous wokeness of 2020 and more about bigger debates in culture.
You can go to the Free Press right now, and click on the link where they summarize their values.
The last one they list is "Belief in the American project."
And yet they are mum, or lazy, when it comes to addressing Trump's threats to our freedoms. Trump is a proud authoritarian who is gleefully attacking our liberties, with astonishing results, while the Free Press -- this stalwart defender in the "American project" -- won't say a word crosswise. It's disapppoiting.
The reason The Free Press is so successful is that they're actually willing to publish pieces that will both argue for and against Trump, which most of the old, formerly intellectual media refuses to do, and they actually should. I highly doubt Weiss voted for Trump, or cares for most of what he's doing, but the fact that she is able to publish interesting voices from the old left and the new right, and many points in-between, makes her project unique (although I'd agree that the overarching editorial slant and Weiss's own opinions aren't too far off from the Wall Street Journal, and that editorial voice is often heavy-handed).
I'm sick of discussions of "woke" (and "anti-woke" and now even the "woke right") but the synthesis of #resistance/woke/partisanship as new religion/"justice always bends towards the Democratic Party" is still very much with us. From the moment the #resistance was formed, with days of protest outside of Trump tower after the 2016 election, hoping some cosmic goalie could come into existence and overrule the reality of the voting results (and Russiagate may have been an attempt to do just that), the Democrats and their media apparatchiks still think one-sided reporting, wild histrionics and paranoia will bring the traditional base back into the fold. It won't.
Lots of people (including me!) don't care for Trump, but they mostly hate the Democratic Party even more — which all polling points to — and refusing to accept the reality that different strains of Trumpism and post-partisan populism are ascendant is something that needs to discussed by both its opponents and supporters in the press. A purely partisan press is not really a press at all. All-rich, all-white boomers singing sixties protest songs about ending racism in a park in Washington Heights surrounded by Hispanic residents who mostly voted for Trump means reality hasn't yet settled in. Reality will hit, and it will hit hard.
I don’t need to outsource my opinion to Andrew Sullivan because I subscribe to the FP and read it every day. They cover Trump’s excesses and publish people who criticize him (while also publishing people who support him). They just haven’t become obsessed and hysterical. But people can read The Bulwark for that.
I'm with you. I often read Sullivan, and he can be good, but he's been incredibly hysterical about Trump from the beginning. There's been a near-consensus among the old neoconservative order to go from really angry to batshit unhinged, with no points in between on Trump. See the Bulwark, the Lincoln Project, Sullivan, the Bushes, the Cheneys, et al. (One of the Bulwark's staff said in a podcast that the neoconservatives have "taken over the Democratic Party" and another said "you're not supposed to say that out loud." They're right, and you can add the Dems to the neocon list.)
The fact that Sullivan is over his skis that the Free Press, which is dozens of different writers from different walks, publishes pieces he disagrees with instead of marching totally in lockstep with his opinions, says more about him than them. The "respectable conservative" type really hates a diversity of opinion (see also: the Democrats), which also explains the screaming fits over Joe Rogan having kooky comedians like Dave Smith (who really has something of a regular guy/Chomsky-ite opinion on geopolitics) dare to speak on such a large platform. I'm sure Bari Weiss would mostly rather have the "declared expert opinion class" speak on Iran/Ukraine/Israel too, but I don't know that she'd be quite as brazen about wanting to shame or silence Rogan and his audience.
I agree with Sullivan in this case, but he is the worst person to have advocate for any position because he is so histrionic and over the top. I've never been a big fan but I've seen a decent amount of his writing because he's so well-known, and in almost every case he stakes out a defensible position but then ruins whatever case he is making by going down the most deranged rabbit holes. I remember when he obsessively tried to prove that Sarah Palin faked her last pregnancy and was so emotionally distraught when her autobiography was published that he had to take the whole week off.
Yes! I have been happy that Andrew Sullivan has been calling them out. Disappointed in the FP and have not been reading them as much as I once did. Too predictable and repetitive.
I said mum or lazy. (Maybe "lackadaisical" or "uninspiring" would've been better words). I'm glad for these short essays you've listed, but I don't see the Free Press making full-throated denunciations of Trump's attempt to replace our Constitutional government with a police state.
And make no mistake, that is what is happening. Our country, and our way if life, is at stake like never before. I recall Bari Weiss, before the election, scoffing at Trump's critics -- she called us "deranged" -- and predicting that Trump 2.0 would be very much like his first term. She was wrong. It's okay to be wrong, but if you're a public thinker, with an adoring audience, and it turns out you were completely mistaken about something, I think you you should address it.
And I'm less alarmist than a typical leftist/liberal; I do not think Trump will actually destroy the US and I think a lot of what he's doing now was pushed in more effective and darker ways by Bush. But Trump 2.0 is quite bad! And TFP is mealy-mouthed at best. It's not that hard. Greenwald, Sullivan, Tracey, and Zaid Jilani all speak out. They're all deeply anti-woke.
Doesn’t the Free Press publish Zaid Jilani, and other old left, former Intercept guys like Lee Fang and Leighton Woodhouse, Ruy Teixeira, as well as some more mainstream Democrats? I’m not a paid subscriber and I only peruse their offerings, but they seem to cover the bases you’re saying they don’t cover, as well as hundreds not even touched by New York Magazine.
I’m sure they have some blind spots, and some of that is guided by Weiss’s view of geopolitics, but if you want “all screaming about Trump, all the time” try the Bulwark, or the Unpopulist, or the Contrarian, or Medhi Hassan, or Heather Cox Richardson, or Robert Reich, or any NYC legacy media publication.
Hearing smart people argue both for and against Trump’s policies is good actually.
Maybe the FP editors see things differently. It’s not a bad publication just because they don’t have the exact same view of Trump that every mainstream and liberal publication does. Why do we need every publication to say the same thing?
But the editors are willing to publish pieces that go against their views. They even published a piece by Andrew Sullivan that was very critical of Israel called “How many children is Israel willing to kill?” (With a warm intro from Bari)
Given the utter catastrophe the Trump Administration is and will continue to be, I don’t give a flying fig about the whole woke vs unwoke thing. Given the destruction of our economy, which will lead to economic ruin for many of our fellow citizens who aren’t plugged into the Trump grift, given the willful and systematic destruction of our Constitution and the rule of law, given the degradation of our once formidable reputation on the world stage and its attendant sell out of allies and democratic organizations, woke vs unwoke is irrelevant small ball. Any so called intellectual who even countenances taking Trump and his clown show seriously is stupid and small and is on the wrong side of logic and history
Great counter-punch, Ross, pretty sure I heard the ringside bell. I unsubscribed to FdB a while ago, but for perhaps slightly more superficial reasons - those columns are just so long-winded. And look, I don't happen to share your assessment of TFP, but I'd never dream of going off on such an aggrieved, personal tirade in response. If we don't fight for free speech with every last fiber, then our grand experiment truly is extinguished.
I loved deBoer when I first discovered him a few years ago, but I have to agree with this piece. It's been a while since his writing surprised me, and I feel like he's exhausted a few opinions he holds strongly, as happens to many pundits. Hopefully he can get his mojo back.
I stopped reading Freddie because of his frequent boorishness. He makes things personal too often, sometimes completely out of the blue. I was taken aback by a comment he left on a Slate Star Codex article. The article was lamenting modern architecture and how he prefers older building styles. Deboer swanned in and made a direct attack on Alexander without mentioning the content of the article at all. It was needlessly antagonistic and Deboer knew it. He started his comment with “Feel free to ban me…” I really like a lot of his writing on certain subjects but I find him exhausting.
One of the keys to appreciating FdB's writing is that he sees the institutionalization of thought as an enemy to progress. For him, "woke" isn't just about having particular positions. (You'll note he might make a point that he agrees with the subject of his critique on the particulars.)
What animates FdB is how those working within a set of shared positions become insular, attached to the pure vision of their movement to a degree that transcends its political object. They become unwilling to compromise, more concerned about group integrity and the performance of purity for in-group cohesion and credit.
I think this explains why Freddie saw Ross's latest article the way he did: as effectively, if not intentionally, as a gesture of allegiance and granting of permission to the group, which, in Freddie's estimation, is how we end up with more censorship and performative righteousness across the culture, which plays out in real ways for people's lives (like whether you can get a job).
I take Ross at his word that he isn't acting as part of a New York magazine hivemind. But for Freddie, he sees the anti-anti-woke expressions as playing to the clubby prejudices of the New York readers and the insulated culture of boutique New York writers.
Note that Freddie mentions "instrumentalizing the audience's perceived approval." I take this to mean that what New York is doing as a publication is presenting Ross's article in a way that's meant to elicit the "party like it's 2015" reaction. The key line supporting this interpretation is where FdB writes: "Indeed, were it the case that Barkan’s argument was meant to be read as a matter of logic and political sense...." Emphasis on "meant" in that sentence. It's about the distance between Ross writing toward the ideals of logic and political sense, and what the magazine is effectively saying to its readers.
Freddie sees the nuance between Ross's current article and the one from November. But he doesn't think the readers will, and I think that's what upsets him.
It's also nearly 3 in the morning, and I could just be very tired.
I’ve found lots of de Boer’s writing funny and sharp (usually when he’s attacking people I also find annoying) and I enjoy his kamikaze attitude to his arguing endlessly with his own commenters about gender while telling them how bored he is of the whole subject.
But I did have a similar experience to you. He emailed me after I wrote an Atlantic profile of a controversial educator to tell me that because of my cozy corporate perch, I couldn’t ever address the REAL issues in education (aka the ones in his book).
I think we should just consider the possibility that a sense of being excluded from the Cool Kids Table is the engine that underpins his writing, and that has positive and negative effects.
I found it annoying he couldn't imagine a writer having agency and just coming to a conclusion it he didn't like
Maybe his issue wasn’t with agency. Maybe it’s more that writers encapsulating so many bad takes in their work?
Such as pretending someone’s only crime is being against Israel (after they’ve participated in shutting down university buildings). We used to call much less than that unlawful detainment.
It’s bizarre that Obama deported 3 million, Clinton more than 12 million, and Bush2 more than 10 million—but only NOW is it a constitutional crisis.
Writers act as though nobody remembers the past.
You're an intellectually dishonest idiot.
Do you go through life telling everyone they’re wrong, but never providing details why?
I guess that’s why the Left is never wrong, they never say anything.
1. I'm not a leftist.
2. The constitutional issue is not the deportations, as you know. That's why you're intellectually dishonest. Be more honest. It's a better way to go through life.
The funny thing is, he wrote an essay, years back, on this exact subject. It was called something along the lines of "It's All High School." The sad irony is that he still seems to remain unaware how perfectly the piece diagnosed his own unresolved issues.
Maybe Freddie should consider that these big-name publications won't publish him often not because of ideology, but because he acts like a jackass.
The funny thing is, they do publish him, but then he seems to burn a bridge
The baseball analogy is dead on. The last time Freddie wrote something relevant to the current cultural climate was in 2022.
He’s also a deeply unpleasant person who’s constitutionally incapable of receiving criticism of any kind with good grace. His go-to response to disagreement—his only response—(which I predict will be his response to this piece)—is “but you didn’t understand my argument!!” To which I always want to reply: if not a single one of your readers understands what you're saying, do you think they're the problem, or do you think you are?
Actually, Freddie's recently discovered a second response to disagreement -- unfortunately, as Ross alludes to here, that second response is "grotesque misogynist putdown."
He’s cool but rude
Give me a break
One out of two ain't bad.
I get what Freddie is saying, that the excesses of the Woke moment led directly to the mess we're in now. I couldn't agree with that more.
But I also think he badly misread your NY article, and his behavior on Notes was disgusting. Don't know wtf is going on here.
Well he’s mentally unstable. Just because he’s on meds didn’t magically make all his issues go away.
Can I really write a comment here? How liberating. Thanks. Here goes.
What a nonsense pissing match. I get Ross's point that Freddie does return to the same arguments time and again. In this he is hardly alone. I feel like most columnists have a narrow brand they stick to. But yeah, he should be more varied and interesting! We all should. But since he attracts a range of readers, maybe his repetition is actually a good thing? Maybe the fact that some conservatives read him is a good thing? Worth thinking about? Are we thinking here?
I personally like Freddie's writing style generally. It's entertaining. He's clever. He can flat out write, even if what he is writing is a little odd/wrong/offensive/repetitive from time to time. I like writers who challenge their own tribe, a lot. I hate partisan purity. Dumb. That said, I also find his need to remind his readers that he is a genuine leftist (Marxist even) amusing.
That has always struck me as bullshit. But who cares? This is not life or death. So far from it it boggles, Freddie was also a recently mentally ill, deranged lunatic. (I'm sure he'd be fine with this) Happily he managed to get this under control, gain a career, a wife/partner, and a baby. So bravo to him.
I don't know much about Ross. I have read and like much of his stuff. Not this piece exactly, mostly because it just seems petty and gratuitous. I like the definition of wisdom as being "knowing what to overlook." Not sure why he takes such umbrage to Freddie writing that he thinks Ross is getting some things wrong. So what? Not sure why Freddie chose him to be in the crosshairs either. Maybe he'll write back and continue this low stakes beef?
I very much agree with Freddie's main point that acting as though what happened before is not relevant to what is happening now, and likely in the future, is naive and perhaps suicidal. Woke is not dead. It lives on in the minds and plans of those who hate it and those who revere it. Woke is dormant. It's not the policies, it's the manner of reasoning that is so rotten.
Replying to my own comment. I forgot to mention that whatever other insights Freddie provides or doesn't, his simple yet powerful observation that it is politics that decide things, not virtue, is just absolutely correct, and needs to be repeated to those who think "virtue" always wins the day. It doesn't. Winning is important is an important message. Do the work! Or get Trump.
thanks for writing this well thought out critique I was lazily going to say substackers whinging back and forth is super indulgent.
Apropos of nothing, I like that definition of wisdom -- "knowing what to overlook." I hadn't heard that before. Thanks. (Something I need to work on.)
'anti-woke has conquered woke. Beyond certain segments of academia and book publishing"
Far from true. Most of the NY Times is still super woke.
That said, it's true FDB has been writing the same four columns for two or three years
How do you see the Times as "woke"? Sure, Jamelle Bouie writes there, but so does Ross Douthat, David French, Brett Stephens, etc.
It's true they have the token conservative opinion columnist you mention. But that's counting on one hand. Very few woke critical liberals. It's telling that Paul was forced out. The day to day reporting also still mostly takes woke race and gender positions for granted. They certainly have never published anything along the lines of "how did we fall for and amplify the BLM hoax of a fake police murder of black men epidemic "
That's an interesting criteria for "woke," to say the least.
Listen to a few hours of NPR from 2011 and then 2025 and it will be very clear how woke those legacy outlets still are
NPR, I think, is far more captured by that mindset than the NYT.
Do you all consider the Wall Street Journal "woke"? That's pretty much legacy media.
Yes very true
You can count over 30% of the 16 NYT columnists on one hand. Not exactly a useful framing.
As I said the staff opinion columnists are ultimately a very small part of the paper
What papers (not including places like the Free Press) would you consider "non woke"?
That's really my point. All of the legacy liberal media is still very woke. I would not have considered them as such at all before 2012 or so. There many Substacks now with a healthy diversity of thought. And I will grant that even the NY Times is not as bad now as it was in 2016-2021. But to say woke is limited to academia and book publishing now is ludicrous
This is where woke goes to die 😩😎
I don't even know how to answer that because it would be so hard to create the evidence, but basically - the language that is used, the attitudes toward education status and location that one lives in the country as determinate as to who someone is, the framing, the selective inclusion of certain perspectives or data and the exclusion of others, the subliminal fear in outwardly being too critical of certain causes or errors, excessive worry about the types of things that upper middle class educated people worry about, occasional outlandish doomerism.
I think some people have been sold that the NYTs is some sort of true reporting of what actually happened and they are better people for reading it, that they just can't wrap their heads around the idea that the NYT is as tailored to a specific audience and what it wants to hear as Fox News.
Exactly. Douthat and French are proof positive that conservatives can still possess functioning brains 😎
Well like all of bluesky. If you're FDB and you need opinions to rail against, just go to bluesky and type your keywords.
There’s a thing in fandom culture where, when a fan theory gets proven dead, the subculture promoting it seems to get crazier and more vicious - mainly just because all the normal people are filtering out. I think that dynamic applies to a lot of politics as well.
Agreed this is inaccurate. Its very alive in government bureaucracies especially those that are public facing (I have a front row seat), most media, and most education. That's quite a lot.
I think if you are inside the machine you only see difference, and how no idea what its like looking in.
I subscribed to Freddie's Substack for a year or two and here was my six word summary of his oeuvre at that time:
Always provocative. Frequently interesting. Rarely wise.
But I unsubscribed some months ago because you're right that one more word is now needed to describe his work: repetitive.
Yeah that's kind of true, I've noticed he's a bit better critic and problematizer than theorist. Like idk how TF we're supposed to treat, say, bipolar nazi people. Seems there's lines of energy in multiple directions on that. FDB is very good at showing that some really dominant ways of treating such people are very wrong. But there's still no new theory.
My view — as someone who’s followed Freddie’s writing for the last decade — is that he’s both correct and eloquent 80% of the time, while the other 20% he’s off on some bizarre, windmill-tilting tangent against perceived slights. To me, the piece in question falls squarely in the latter category.
Interesting. I think you're right that Freddie is almost always eloquent (and he's Yglesian in his ability to write both well and incredibly quickly), but I definitely didn't find him correct 80% of the time.
I think he is always worth reading on the subjects of mental illness and education. On the latter, I'm not sure I agree with him (at least, I have always believed differently), but I think he makes a compelling case that I need to reckon with. On wokeness, I think he's generally right as well, but I think it's easy to be right on that subject.
But when it comes to almost everything else, I find Freddie to be a lazy thinker who straw mans the opposing side of the argument in ways that can be fun to read but that are, at best, empty calories and not infrequently just wrong.
This is completely true. Not surprisingly, mental illness and education are the two areas where he has actual knowledge.
His writings on American foreign policy are embarassingly ill-informed.
Oh no, this is like two siblings squabbling and being caught in the middle! Ross, Freddie is the guy who first alerted me to your work a few years ago (and I'm grateful). I like you both. I think you both represent some of the best of Substack.
You mention "certain segments of academia and book publishing" as places where woke censoriousness still flourishes. That's where I live, and I'd have to agree. Although I'm seeing hopeful signs. I have a nasty woke colleague -- a frightful little Maoist with a mask -- and some people now find her kind of pathetic. (I realize that's just one data point but maybe it's revealing.)
But most academics who are finally exhausted by wokeism also are not interested in seeing anyone dunking on the woke. I've learned this lesson myself, because as appalled as I was by the election results, I let people know I was vindicated. (I thought Harris would win, but if she didn't, I said it would be because of the absurd cultural overreaches the far left.) Some friends and colleagues have told me, in so many words, that I was being ungracious, and that under Trump 2.0., we have much bigger problems now. I don't quite see it that way, but that is where they're at.
All of this is to say that I tend to agree with you on the main points of contention between you and Freddie.I think I agree with Freddie, though, about NY Mag. It's alway stylishly written, but it's predictable and it certainly likes flattering it's readers. I've not forgotten that they fired Andrew Sullivan. I'm glad, however, to see you there Ross.
Best wishes to you both!
I'm pretty sure if FdB said "Hi everyone, I am severely sleep deprived due to the stress of caring for a newborn, so I'm going to have a few months of guest posts while I adjust to life as a dad," it would be a win for every single person involved -- he would have more time for his son, his subscribers would get some new takes, and the guest bloggers would get some more eyeballs from his platform. Is there a good reason for him not to do that?
Well, I would gladly pay Edward Snowden $5 a month, regardless whether or not he publishes, but that is because Snowden is a public service.
I feel like you don’t understand what The Free Press is trying to build. It’s not just “Bari Weiss and her anti-woke opinions.” They publish pieces on a variety of issues in politics and culture, from different points of view. They host debates.
The FP has holes and biases, but they don’t need to come up with a single position on Trump or wokeness because it’s not that kind of publication anymore.
There is a ton of substantive, meaningful disagreement between the cultural left and the rest of the country that will continue to be salient regardless of whether BLM is in the news, or Trump is president, or the vibe has shifted away from pronouns. As a society, we're debating things like natalism, smartphones, education, crime and policing, masculinity, the role of religion in society, debates in healthcare, how to think about disability... there's just so much. And the FP covers a bunch of foreign policy issues too, most obviously Israel. As a subscriber the idea that it’s becoming irrelevant just seems weird to me, like you must not be reading it very often if you think their beat is that small.
As for FdB, I find his writing on disability and mental illness to be essential. I also think he’s right that the woke left continues to matter—but I would say it’s becoming less about the narrow frivolous wokeness of 2020 and more about bigger debates in culture.
You can go to the Free Press right now, and click on the link where they summarize their values.
The last one they list is "Belief in the American project."
And yet they are mum, or lazy, when it comes to addressing Trump's threats to our freedoms. Trump is a proud authoritarian who is gleefully attacking our liberties, with astonishing results, while the Free Press -- this stalwart defender in the "American project" -- won't say a word crosswise. It's disapppoiting.
You clearly don’t read the Free Press. They haven’t been silent. That’s ridiculous. They publish articles critical of Trump all the time.
https://www.thefp.com/p/no-deportations-without-due-process
https://www.thefp.com/p/donald-trumps-revenge
https://www.thefp.com/p/harvard-had-it-coming-that-doesnt
At least two of these are couched in apologia. "Well, Trump has a point, you know, but he's gone too far here ... "
You should read what Sullivan has been writing and posting. No one is more critical of woke and DEI, and he's absolutely enraged at The Free Press.
Good god man, you can be vacuous and myopic.
The reason The Free Press is so successful is that they're actually willing to publish pieces that will both argue for and against Trump, which most of the old, formerly intellectual media refuses to do, and they actually should. I highly doubt Weiss voted for Trump, or cares for most of what he's doing, but the fact that she is able to publish interesting voices from the old left and the new right, and many points in-between, makes her project unique (although I'd agree that the overarching editorial slant and Weiss's own opinions aren't too far off from the Wall Street Journal, and that editorial voice is often heavy-handed).
I'm sick of discussions of "woke" (and "anti-woke" and now even the "woke right") but the synthesis of #resistance/woke/partisanship as new religion/"justice always bends towards the Democratic Party" is still very much with us. From the moment the #resistance was formed, with days of protest outside of Trump tower after the 2016 election, hoping some cosmic goalie could come into existence and overrule the reality of the voting results (and Russiagate may have been an attempt to do just that), the Democrats and their media apparatchiks still think one-sided reporting, wild histrionics and paranoia will bring the traditional base back into the fold. It won't.
Lots of people (including me!) don't care for Trump, but they mostly hate the Democratic Party even more — which all polling points to — and refusing to accept the reality that different strains of Trumpism and post-partisan populism are ascendant is something that needs to discussed by both its opponents and supporters in the press. A purely partisan press is not really a press at all. All-rich, all-white boomers singing sixties protest songs about ending racism in a park in Washington Heights surrounded by Hispanic residents who mostly voted for Trump means reality hasn't yet settled in. Reality will hit, and it will hit hard.
I don’t need to outsource my opinion to Andrew Sullivan because I subscribe to the FP and read it every day. They cover Trump’s excesses and publish people who criticize him (while also publishing people who support him). They just haven’t become obsessed and hysterical. But people can read The Bulwark for that.
I'm with you. I often read Sullivan, and he can be good, but he's been incredibly hysterical about Trump from the beginning. There's been a near-consensus among the old neoconservative order to go from really angry to batshit unhinged, with no points in between on Trump. See the Bulwark, the Lincoln Project, Sullivan, the Bushes, the Cheneys, et al. (One of the Bulwark's staff said in a podcast that the neoconservatives have "taken over the Democratic Party" and another said "you're not supposed to say that out loud." They're right, and you can add the Dems to the neocon list.)
The fact that Sullivan is over his skis that the Free Press, which is dozens of different writers from different walks, publishes pieces he disagrees with instead of marching totally in lockstep with his opinions, says more about him than them. The "respectable conservative" type really hates a diversity of opinion (see also: the Democrats), which also explains the screaming fits over Joe Rogan having kooky comedians like Dave Smith (who really has something of a regular guy/Chomsky-ite opinion on geopolitics) dare to speak on such a large platform. I'm sure Bari Weiss would mostly rather have the "declared expert opinion class" speak on Iran/Ukraine/Israel too, but I don't know that she'd be quite as brazen about wanting to shame or silence Rogan and his audience.
100%. And I’m really over the whole “why aren’t you denouncing x loudly and often enough” criticism (on any topic).
Why should she read someone else when she has made her points with clarity?
I agree with Sullivan in this case, but he is the worst person to have advocate for any position because he is so histrionic and over the top. I've never been a big fan but I've seen a decent amount of his writing because he's so well-known, and in almost every case he stakes out a defensible position but then ruins whatever case he is making by going down the most deranged rabbit holes. I remember when he obsessively tried to prove that Sarah Palin faked her last pregnancy and was so emotionally distraught when her autobiography was published that he had to take the whole week off.
Yes! I have been happy that Andrew Sullivan has been calling them out. Disappointed in the FP and have not been reading them as much as I once did. Too predictable and repetitive.
I said mum or lazy. (Maybe "lackadaisical" or "uninspiring" would've been better words). I'm glad for these short essays you've listed, but I don't see the Free Press making full-throated denunciations of Trump's attempt to replace our Constitutional government with a police state.
And make no mistake, that is what is happening. Our country, and our way if life, is at stake like never before. I recall Bari Weiss, before the election, scoffing at Trump's critics -- she called us "deranged" -- and predicting that Trump 2.0 would be very much like his first term. She was wrong. It's okay to be wrong, but if you're a public thinker, with an adoring audience, and it turns out you were completely mistaken about something, I think you you should address it.
And I'm less alarmist than a typical leftist/liberal; I do not think Trump will actually destroy the US and I think a lot of what he's doing now was pushed in more effective and darker ways by Bush. But Trump 2.0 is quite bad! And TFP is mealy-mouthed at best. It's not that hard. Greenwald, Sullivan, Tracey, and Zaid Jilani all speak out. They're all deeply anti-woke.
They just dropped seven essays about Trump breaking the law. https://www.thefp.com/p/is-donald-trump-breaking-the-law
Doesn’t the Free Press publish Zaid Jilani, and other old left, former Intercept guys like Lee Fang and Leighton Woodhouse, Ruy Teixeira, as well as some more mainstream Democrats? I’m not a paid subscriber and I only peruse their offerings, but they seem to cover the bases you’re saying they don’t cover, as well as hundreds not even touched by New York Magazine.
I’m sure they have some blind spots, and some of that is guided by Weiss’s view of geopolitics, but if you want “all screaming about Trump, all the time” try the Bulwark, or the Unpopulist, or the Contrarian, or Medhi Hassan, or Heather Cox Richardson, or Robert Reich, or any NYC legacy media publication.
Hearing smart people argue both for and against Trump’s policies is good actually.
Maybe the FP editors see things differently. It’s not a bad publication just because they don’t have the exact same view of Trump that every mainstream and liberal publication does. Why do we need every publication to say the same thing?
But the editors are willing to publish pieces that go against their views. They even published a piece by Andrew Sullivan that was very critical of Israel called “How many children is Israel willing to kill?” (With a warm intro from Bari)
Second Freddie DeBoer substack beef of the year...huge times for the writer fandom
What was the other one?
John Ganz
Another writer whom I greatly respect, Ross has good company here
Given the utter catastrophe the Trump Administration is and will continue to be, I don’t give a flying fig about the whole woke vs unwoke thing. Given the destruction of our economy, which will lead to economic ruin for many of our fellow citizens who aren’t plugged into the Trump grift, given the willful and systematic destruction of our Constitution and the rule of law, given the degradation of our once formidable reputation on the world stage and its attendant sell out of allies and democratic organizations, woke vs unwoke is irrelevant small ball. Any so called intellectual who even countenances taking Trump and his clown show seriously is stupid and small and is on the wrong side of logic and history
Great counter-punch, Ross, pretty sure I heard the ringside bell. I unsubscribed to FdB a while ago, but for perhaps slightly more superficial reasons - those columns are just so long-winded. And look, I don't happen to share your assessment of TFP, but I'd never dream of going off on such an aggrieved, personal tirade in response. If we don't fight for free speech with every last fiber, then our grand experiment truly is extinguished.
I wish The Free Press would say more about how Trump is attacking free speech
I wish free speech from writers was accurate. It’s weird how writers being dishonest only changes some situations, and only works one way.
I loved deBoer when I first discovered him a few years ago, but I have to agree with this piece. It's been a while since his writing surprised me, and I feel like he's exhausted a few opinions he holds strongly, as happens to many pundits. Hopefully he can get his mojo back.
I stopped reading Freddie because of his frequent boorishness. He makes things personal too often, sometimes completely out of the blue. I was taken aback by a comment he left on a Slate Star Codex article. The article was lamenting modern architecture and how he prefers older building styles. Deboer swanned in and made a direct attack on Alexander without mentioning the content of the article at all. It was needlessly antagonistic and Deboer knew it. He started his comment with “Feel free to ban me…” I really like a lot of his writing on certain subjects but I find him exhausting.
One of the keys to appreciating FdB's writing is that he sees the institutionalization of thought as an enemy to progress. For him, "woke" isn't just about having particular positions. (You'll note he might make a point that he agrees with the subject of his critique on the particulars.)
What animates FdB is how those working within a set of shared positions become insular, attached to the pure vision of their movement to a degree that transcends its political object. They become unwilling to compromise, more concerned about group integrity and the performance of purity for in-group cohesion and credit.
I think this explains why Freddie saw Ross's latest article the way he did: as effectively, if not intentionally, as a gesture of allegiance and granting of permission to the group, which, in Freddie's estimation, is how we end up with more censorship and performative righteousness across the culture, which plays out in real ways for people's lives (like whether you can get a job).
I take Ross at his word that he isn't acting as part of a New York magazine hivemind. But for Freddie, he sees the anti-anti-woke expressions as playing to the clubby prejudices of the New York readers and the insulated culture of boutique New York writers.
Note that Freddie mentions "instrumentalizing the audience's perceived approval." I take this to mean that what New York is doing as a publication is presenting Ross's article in a way that's meant to elicit the "party like it's 2015" reaction. The key line supporting this interpretation is where FdB writes: "Indeed, were it the case that Barkan’s argument was meant to be read as a matter of logic and political sense...." Emphasis on "meant" in that sentence. It's about the distance between Ross writing toward the ideals of logic and political sense, and what the magazine is effectively saying to its readers.
Freddie sees the nuance between Ross's current article and the one from November. But he doesn't think the readers will, and I think that's what upsets him.
It's also nearly 3 in the morning, and I could just be very tired.