Ron,

I think the “Jesse Jackson of dinosaurs” thing was a hamhanded attempt at making a little funny about the shifts in acceptable language for describing American black people (“colored,” “Negro,” “Afro-American,” “African-American,” etc.). For some reason this seems to be an endless fount of humor for certain white folks. And Steve Sailer was born with a rare genetic disorder that makes it impossible for him to discuss anything having to do with anti-discrimination activism without throwing out Jesse Jackson’s name, higgeldy-piggeldy, regardless of whether or not Jesse Jackson had much of anything personally to do with the issue he’s talking about, or whether he had even been born when some of the events took place.

Auguste:

Amp’s decision or lack thereof would not end all racist porn tomorrow, and decrying racist porn every time it rears its ugly head is not required to be assumed to be against it.

So, what, that makes it O.K. for him to personally profit from the trade in white supremacist pornography?

You could excuse doing absolutely any rotten thing that’s prevalent enough using exactly the same reasoning. For example, you could just as easily make this argument: “Well, Amp’s refusal to help market child pornography would not end all child pornography tomorrow, so why not?” Or this: “Well, I’m personally opposed to running guns into war-torn regions, but if I didn’t do it, somebody else would do it anyway. So why not make a bit of change off of it?”

It is not as if Amp were just picking up some money that racist pornography peddlers happened to leave sitting out on the ground. Amp is getting money and free services from pornographers because he has gotten himself involved in an ongoing business relationship with them, and they profit from the resources that he offers to them.

Whether or not you are right about this particular fracas over Amp’s decision, you need a better argument to show it.

Chris, thanks for posting this.

Mez: The owners and operators of the Triangle Shirtwaist manufactory, btw, were not successfully brought to book, although some regulations were changed and the example was used during the decades before WWII to promote the need for unions and for reining in galloping “free enterprise”.

Just to be clear, The problem wasn’t free enterprise; free enterprise didn’t exist in the garment industry in the early 20th century. Under free enterprise workers can form whatever voluntary associations they want, can walk out on jobs that they don’t want to do, can air grievances against unscrupulous employers, etc. without the threat of violent repression. But under the corporatist regime in the early 20th century, the bosses’ hired goons and uniformed goons from the government repeatedly attacked ILGWU picketers and used legal intervention and physical violence to suppress union organizing as far as they could get away with it.

That’s not free enterprise; it’s just state intervention on behalf of predatory bosses.