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Don’t Feel Sorry for Cathy Newman, She Deserves the Mockery
By now many on Ricochet will have heard about or seen the now infamous video between Channel 4 “journalist” Cathy Newman and the darling of the new right Jordan Peterson. Channel 4 “news” is like Britain’s version of MSNBC except it, in the condescendingly British way, pretend to be fair and impartial. A lie if ever there was one.
Anyway as Jordan Peterson was on a tour of the UK they perhaps felt he would be good for their ratings to invite him on to discuss topical issues. What happened next is the video that is perhaps one of the greatest takedowns of smug liberal feminism that you will ever see this year. Why Channel 4 news agreed to publish the whole video is beyond me. Perhaps they taught their arch-feminist inquisitor would decimate poor Jordan or that his fans would give them some much-needed internet volume. Their news show is least watched of the big UK channels.
Spoiler alert — that didn’t happen. Instead, Cathy Newman was outclassed, outsmarted, and overpowered by a polite, soft-spoken Canadian who answered every acid-laden question she threw at him and was still respectful to her. It becomes clear to even the most sympathetic viewer that the whole interview was a set-up from early on as she tried — more than once — to trick him into saying something “bigoted” or hateful so Peterson would able to be labeled as at best a fool at worst a far-right bigot. Thankfully Jordan with his politeness and straight-talking not only destroyed her arguments but made it so that the interview backfired on her. So much so that the brilliant English conservative journalist Douglas Murray said she should take out a super-injunction on the video.
Its normal under some circumstances now to feel pity for her. But most Americans and those outside Britain should not fall for such pity. Cathy Newman has a history of doing the above stunts to politicians or people she disagrees with politically and launching attacks on those with different opinions to her.
- She repeatedly asked one of Britain’s few openly Christian politicians his opinions on gay sex. This meant he eventually had to resign as leader of his political party.
- She lied about getting kicked out of a Muslim mosque — never happened
- She openly and angrily denounced the Christian (again) MP Jacob Rees Mogg for his opposition to abortion and his stance on gay marriage.
- She openly called for a ban on pro-life vigils outside abortion clinics. (Free speech for pro-choice liberals but not pro-lifers)
- She lied about pro-lifers and stated falsely that they had helped influence mass shooters at abortion clinics. Vile statement altogether.
- She openly and repeatedly argues for feminism (enough said).
- It’s very easy to see her own positions come across in the people she interviews. (Sadly a flaw all too common in “journalists” today)
There are many more things I could add. It’s just that I don’t feel like now. You get the point. One last note: Apparently Newman is supposed to be getting a lot of death threats now, post video. I don’t doubt its true and that threats of death are wrong. But I also don’t doubt that much of the milder criticism she is getting is more than justified. Some of it is also quite funny.
Some of the comments underneath the video are great fun. Read them and enjoy. Oh, and God bless Jordan Peterson. It’s nice to see Canada is producing some excellent people.
This is why people hate journalists. After showing up one of their own, Channel 4 news did this.
Its sole purpose was to make Jordan Peterson look weird. Dishonest. But Peterson still got the last laugh. God bless him..
Published in General
I found her to be extremely offensive if not down right rude.
From the evidence provided above, she would probably say something along the lines of: “So you don’t think women deserve equal pay?”
If I read this article correctly, he suggests there were lost opportunities in this interview. Yet, he remains the paragon of class in his calls for everyone to calm down.
She talks about a “right to not be offended” as being so important that it should trump something as fundamental as free speech. Then when he suggests that her behavior right now might be offending him, without pause or reflection she laughs and says she’s glad!
[insert head shake] [and some eye-roll]
Yeah, I’d like to see some proof too. I don’t trust her (or anyone, really) to be honest interpreters anymore.
Could be stupidity or it could be intentional. However, it came off to me as an example of how constraining language/vocabulary constrains the ability to think. It’s almost as if she simply couldn’t conceive of the basic things he was saying and was making efforts to jam his thoughts into her constrained vocabulary.
If the threats are wholly online, then I tend to be dismissive of them. If a physical note has been left somewhere for the victim or loved ones to pick up and read, it should be taken more seriously.
In the case of online threats, if it’s someone you know, that is have physical face to face relations with, those too should be taken seriously.
Online death threats are a part of being a celebrity these days, especially if controversial, and regardless of political views.
Great link and analysis of Peterson’s interview tactics and persona.
I’ve received death threats, too. ObamaCare is a death threat, for example.
I found this video yesterday. It’s a good follow up to the interview.
If Trump had Peterson’s personality along with his current policy victories, his approval numbers would have progressives howling at the moo……….oh wait.
I am starting to worry about Peterson as I worried about Andrew Brightbart. JP just seems to be everywhere. I hope he doesn’t burn out. His self discovery suite has been so beneficial to me. I’m a neurotic personality type which has caused me great difficulty throughout my life. I’ve always felt like such a failure. I wish it hadn’t taken me 43 years to seek out someone who could help me identify my issues and take positive steps to overcome them.
This one? I’ll cite, as well as link: Tom Bartlett, “What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?” (Jan. 17, 2018), at Chronicle.com.
Despite the author’s apparent urge to make it a take down, I found it was a balanced introduction to the man as a professor and as a new celebrity. It didn’t really help as an introduction to his actual ideas or claims, which is what I was looking for. I work at a university, and am starting to hear rumblings about his “dangerous” ideas, but I had never heard of him until last semester. The article (inadvertently?) makes the case that, if he is dangerous, it is only to the complacent folks on the faculty.
interrupting – so what you’re saying is….(the worst interpretation I can find inside my pea brain that I have not allowed a new thought into since childhood)
Thanks for the link. I agree with your assessment of the article.
Jordan Peterson knows he’s dangerous to the radical Left.
His stance is that he should not be forced by his employer to use a student’s preferred gender pronoun. He’s against compelled speech.
As far as I know, he has not declared that all alternative pronouns are inherently stupid in and of themselves.
He has opposed the campaign to promote the use of such programs as a political and cultural assault by postmodernists. He says that he has never been asked by any transgender individual to use such pronouns, has received substantial support in letters from transgender persons.
I think you are probably right, but I am open to the possibility that she is deliberately malicious instead of ignorant. Her reaction of speechlessness may have been as you describe, or may have been a recognition she had been caught articulating a false view, and could not think of a way out.
Dr. Peterson has been very influential on my thinking over the past few months. You may have noticed that I now refer to the radical Left as “postmodern neo-Marxists.” I learned this terminology from Dr. Peterson.
For those interested in a fuller explanation, there is an excellent book by a Canadian objectivist (i.e. Randian) philosopher named Stephen R.C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism. It is lengthy and somewhat complicated, but well worth the effort to read.
If you want Petersons’ take on what happened, watch the first part of this long interview. (I haven’t listened to the whole thing and am not sure if I will, but I listened to the analysis of the Cathy Newman interview.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK2-xYyNpYk
I did. I watched it last night. Which is pretty weird, but I am a big fan of Dr. Peterson.
It’s a balanced look at the man, and not so balanced about the perception of his fans who are constantly referred to as followers. The comments following the article were also interesting, illustrating precisely who feels most threatened by his ideas.
The interview was excellent for anyone who cared to listen. Unfortunately, rarely did the interviewer listen. This was proven several times when she stated something to the affect of “Earlier you said (something hateful or bigoted)’, and he replied no I didn’t, and he hadn’t. The other thing that was funny was her statement that the reasons for differences in pay between men and women don’t matter. To her, the only thing that matters is that there is a difference.
I like how he points out that Peterson squanders much (most? all?) of the persuasion capital he’d built up when he utters “gotcha” at the end.
His strength in the whole interview was that he was engaging in good-faith dialectic while she wasn’t, but his utterance of “gotcha” pops that balloon.
I don’t blame him. He’s human. It’s really hard at the end of a dialogue to refrain from getting in a little dig. I try not to do it, and then I hear something tactically stupid come out of my mouth that I immediately regret. “Sorry Babe, I’m unbeatable!”
If you do a victory dance at the end, it merely proves that it wasn’t a good faith dialogue after all.
Conor Friedersdorf has an excellent piece in The Atlantic demonstrating Newman’s rhetorical tactics in this conversation.
Lots of examples at the link above. I’m surprised Peterson actually tried to reason with her at all. She didn’t seem capable of reason.
Abuse? She seems to find it “entertaining”:
I noticed that at the end of Peterson’s talk at the How To Institute in London that he became a bit verklempt and his voice started to falter. I wasn’t sure about what prompted the emotion and thought perhaps he was reflecting on what he had described his daughter had been through with her medical issues…but this video explains why it was he got emotional:
I’m working my way through that interview too, but there’s another excerpt that’s worthwhile in that it depicts a common (mostly male) and ultimately self-destructive behavior pattern.
He talks about how even though Newman was trying to destroy him, following a vicious attack in the Grauniad alleging that JP has an army of trolls at his command, he reviewed the YouTube comments thread, saw “vitriolic” comments but no threats, then thought “well, maybe that’s enough” to justify riding in on his white horse to protect Newman.
As he wrote the tweet – his very highly liked tweet admonishing people not to threaten Newman – a warning bell went off in his mind, but his white knight impulse overrode it, and the tweet became proof of his army of alt-right trolls.
JP is dealing with a situation in which all three Laws of SJWs are in play.
Being who he is, I think Jordan Peterson’s going to learn from this.
This would make in interesting study in perception. I didn’t hear or see someone doing “a victory dance”. What I heard was someone saying in a somewhat flippant or humorous way, “See? It isn’t as simple as your world-view would suggest, is it?” Notice that I am not saying I’m correct, only that there is ample room for interpretation.