Over the past couple of days, I’ve been confronted with the alarming reality that many of you do not know what Adam Baldwin is doing when he tweets “Your intolerance of intellectual diversity is noted. Farewell.”
Now I don’t claim to read Mr. Baldwin’s mind, & I sure as hell do not speak for him, but I will let y’all in on a little secret. I enjoy reading, & I am fascinated by discourse. Twitter lets me participate in both at the same time, with millions of people. Fricken’ score! Â I enjoy reading & discourse because it helps me to understand people’s intentions and ideas. It’s pretty clear to me why he posts that parting remark.
The first time Adam posted that, I thought, as many of you still do, “Whiskey tango foxtrot, what’s that all about?” so I clicked on the “in reply to” dealie & was confronted with the first of many tweets like this:
@yayzomg6969 I’m not following @adamsbaldwin anymore cuz he’s a republican & eww already. Makes me sick. Meanie!
We can deduce, based on the content of the crass “I’m not following you any more” tweet (look at me, I’m bossy & important!), that the tweeter is not Republican or Libertarian or Conservative as such concepts, which Adam Baldwin does admittedly espouse, make the tweeter “sick” & they think he’s a “meanie”. No engaging him in conversation as to why they don’t agree or think that’s mean, just out & out dismissal. Hoo. Rah.
This person probably either clings to no political philosophy, or the opposite of Adam’s. Or, if they themselves are what they hate, nuts. So anywho, the idea here is that this person has a set of ideas & doesn’t even want to be exposed to the other set.
Some of you, without irony, have expressed bafflement so I will break it down for ya (& if you think this is in response to you, it’s probably not. No shit, like 8 people over the past 48 hours have been questioning this very sentence, for different reasons, in different ways):
Your = possessive you
Intolerance = unwillingness to even see tweets from the other side, let alone click on ’em
of Intellectual = thoughts
Diversity = different from yours
is Noted. = I see your obnoxious unfollow announcement, you dolt. Like anyone aside from you, even the 153 Jo Bros fans & porn bots following you, could give a shit.
Farewell = But I wish you success & happiness. And KABLOCKA!
Does that make sense now? This person with different ideas than Adam doesn’t want to hear different ideas. They are intolerant of intellectual diversity. This is a very pleasant way to respond to the Twitter equivalent of “Fuck off even though I chose to listen to you.”
Those on the receiving end are lucky they’re getting Baldwin & not any of his characters. How would Casey respond? “Yeah, get outta hear, ya moron, before you get lead poisoning of the brain.” How would Jayne respond? “I don’t like folk following me no how anyhows <blammo>.” How would Animal Mother respond? Well, I think there’d be a lot of “motherfucker” and then some machine gun fire & then quite possibly collateral damage.
So…that should make sense now. He isn’t claiming he’s posting a bunch of different perspectives (though he does give the opposing view point airtime on occasion, for which he is rewarded with “Fuck off”); he’s saying that the trog announcing they are unfollowing him appears to be intolerant of even the concept of other ideas. Because on Twitter, you click on the links you want. You can look at Metallica photos or you can read about sustainable development. It really is up to you.
When he says “intolerance of…” in chat rooms (ahem), he is A. being snarky B. responding to you making a disrespectful comment about his views. If you get to be funny at him, he gets to be funny back. Fair’s fair.
When I say “intolerance of”, I am giving you shit. This is something you should be used to by now if you talk to me a lot. It’s fair to say that the more shit I give you, the less afraid I am of you & the more I love you.
Please don’t be intolerant of my amicable expressive diversity.
*kisses*
Princess of Swords 
Well said! I did think it was a bit stupid that people were getting pissy about it…
I don’t pretend to know anything substantial about either side, but geez people- listen! How are you ever going to gain valuable insight into anything if you don’t look at both sides? This is why there are debates, right? And you can’t just go “lalalalalala I’m not listening!” in the middle of a debate, just because you don’t like what you’re hearing, right?
anyhoo… I just wanted to say “Well said that girl!”
😛
So people didn’t understand this or they didn’t *want* to understand it? I had heard nothing of it before and it was immediately evident to me what he was saying in a nutshell. The only people who would pretend not to get this or who would get pissed off by his response are the same types who would elicit that response in the first place. So fuck ’em.
Personally, when I come across those sorts that just want to judge or mouth off without any discussion or thought, I usually just leave without a word, because intelligent responses are usually lost on people like them, but I can see the frustration for sure. I don’t like confrontation either, so I’d be too afraid to say too much anyway. But I was Adam Baldwin, I’d probably feel more ballsy.
A very nice summary for those that truly don’t get it, which is kinda sad, but necessary I suppose.
First off, as you know, there are many a troll and asshat lurking on Twitter. It unfornately comes with the territory. The way in which people choose to unfollow others in Twitter is sometimes laughable and always telling.
Folks that publicly announce that they are unfollwoing someone else are being both passive aggressive and toting a huge neon that flashes “Look at me! Look at Me, I’m Better Than You!” I would whispter in their ear to just quietly click the “unfollow” button if they are so unhappy (that is indeed what it was created for), but, alas, that would fall on deaf ears, and I value my talk time.
Adam Baldwin is a class act all the way around, and he certainly shows it by the grace with which he acknowledges people’s attention-seeking unfollows, bidding them a heartfelt and genuine “fare thee well.”
I could go on and on, but I have already, haven’t i?
On a side, and parting note, you have inspired me to further explore and discuss the personal enrichment I have been embued with by bumping up against and engaging in discourse others whose beliefs somtimes differ from my own. It has been challenging, mind opening, and most of all, fun!
Catch you on the flip side. 🙂
There is a bit of cognitive dissonance in simultaneously holding views that support intellectual diversity while rejecting relativism. Isn’t it the equivalent of saying, “Well, I’ll listen to you, but first we have to establish that I’m right”? Seems to stifle good (or at least, productive) debate unless you can be a relativist in situ.
I think there’s more to unpack given the corpus of tweets beyond the polite dismissal of trolls (which is good and necessary — if you don’t want to participate in the discussion, pack your bags and enjoy your ignorance without disturbing those who are interested in fostering good debate).
Well said!
Any time my feathers get ruffled [so to speak] that’s the universe/Fate/ono pointing something out in ME that needs attention. Jesus didn’t advise us [strongly!] to deal with the beams in our own eyes first for nothing.
A friend of mine is fond of saying, ‘The faults I most observe in others are always my own. Therefore I will not criticise or condemn anyone; least of all myself’.
Wow. I’m not sure I can keep up with the traffic, here, but I’ll give it a shot. 🙂
How interesting that the most recent posting I found clicking through to here was about Adam.
Love his acting, but wasn’t all that thrilled to find out he’s typecast as Casey. It’s fun to watch, but only from a distance.
What caused *me* to give him a pass was his apparently wilfull disinclination to understand — or believe us when we (where by “we” I mean me) pointed it out to him — that the whole Psalm 109:8 riff was people wishing death for President Obama… and that the Secret Service really was actively investigating people who were making a big fuss about it.
I do have to say that the idea of *real* Guys in Black Shades showing up at Baldwin’s door was a bit amusing to me, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, regardless what I thought about their politics.
I *did* note, though, that Adam seems to fall back on what I perceive to be the standard right-wing responses in argument: you provide him with a factual reference on a point, and he’ll take any apparent road to undermine it’s reliability… regardless of the source, or how many different sources one provides.
At least, that was what it looked like to me.
And I don’t call that engagement. Or intellectual honesty.
It was, honestly, threatening to affect my enjoyment of the show. So I unfollowed him. Quietly. Like a grownup.