We talked some about self-censorship by writers at the Free-For-All a couple of weeks ago. I posted about it below at https://writefreeordie.org/2020/01/16/censorship-produces-better-writing/. The other day Tomek circulated a pointer to an excellent article by George Packer in The Atlantic.  It’s one of those Atlantean articles with tons of words, and my lips have been chapped so it took me longer than usual to finish reading it, but it’s by-damn well worth it. If you haven’t read it, you really owe it to yourself to do so.

There are lots of gems in it, but overall it gives serious pause to the notion that writers’ concerns over “political correctness,” and identity politics (among other things) and their effect on writers’ livelihoods and/or “writing life,” are not misplaced and that those concerns are not indeed responses to a phony media hype.