Recently, Vox published yet another #MeToo-inspired hit piece. This time, author Anna North aimed her sights at comedian, Aziz Ansari. North writes:
But missing from every single one of Ansari’s public statements…was a direct apology.
North laments that Ansari has yet to publicly apologize for what amounts to an awkward sexual encounter between two consenting adults with absolutely no physical coercion at play.
Instead, the narrative continues to be framed as sexual misconduct on the part of Ansari. Why? Because the woman involved in the intimate shenanigans with Ansari simply regrets her own actions. The woman in question, writing under the pseudonym Grace, claimed Ansari failed to register her displays of discomfort. Once parsed of emotional bias, the details clearly indicate otherwise, but no matter, at least, to progressives.
As with so many instances of #MeToo, men are guilty until proven innocent — and even then they must be shamed and humiliated into silence. Writing for The Atlantic last year, Caitlin Flanagan offered some measure of wisdom and common sense in Ansari’s debacle:
What she [Grace] felt afterward—rejected yet another time, by yet another man — was regret. And what she and the writer who told her story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn. The clinical detail in which the story is told is intended not to validate her account as much as it is to hurt and humiliate Ansari. Together, the two women may have destroyed Ansari’s career, which is now the punishment for every kind of male sexual misconduct, from the grotesque to the disappointing.
Anna North’s indictment of Ansari is also a perfect example of the glaring moral inconsistencies that abound in progressive narratives. Chief among them is the notion of privilege. It has to be one of the most uncritical bits of nonsense that is bandied about ad nauseam by the likes of North.
To be sure, progressives only assert privilege when it’s convenient. When it’s not, they abandon it. North’s diatribe against Ansari is a testament to such confounding hypocrisy.
For the sake of argument, even if we abide by the notions of privilege that North and Vox insist on peddling, then they’re both as guilty as ever of exerting privilege over Aziz Ansari by their very own logic. North is a white woman lambasting a son of Muslim immigrants shades upon shades darker than her. Who, ultimately, gets to sit at the throne of victimhood here? According to progressives, we must cue the music of outrage to see who wins. There is no way to measure such nonsense outside of the decibel level of hysterics. This, however, is the terrible game of moral musical chairs progressives insist on playing over and over again.
#MeToo quickly became synonymous with a certain scarlet letter. Just throw the hashtag on any man and watch him squirm under the public onslaught as an avalanche of ruin looms overhead. At this rate, progressives might soon decide to gauge guilt or innocence by dunking. Regardless, due process is fast going the way of the dinosaurs amid all the idiotic outrage and virtue signaling. Guilt or innocence is no longer a legal or moral issue. It has devolved into a popular vote driven by hashtags and social media. Men, in particular, are now at the mercy of these progressive pitchforks. Aziz Ansari just so happens to be one of the many examples in this pathetic mess.
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