William Sitwell was, until yesterday, the editor of Waitrose magazine. He was known for his ways, which to some seemed debonair and urbane, to others seemed chokingly entitled. I have no view: I never saw the ways, I merely heard about the ways.
A freelance writer, Selene Nelson, contacted him offering a series on vegan cookery, and he replied: “How about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Exposing their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?”
It’s not a reply dripping with wit, and if you saw it at a live event – at a party, say – you might be moved to weigh in, with 10 good reasons why vegans haven’t really been targets for mockery since the 80s, why filling your face with animal products isn’t the rock-solid proof of social and intellectual superiority it once was, and why, since we’re here, if you’re holding the power in an email exchange, it’s better if you’re not a dick.
But this is not a sackable offence. It is not a resignable offence. It is not a threat of violence, unless we’re going to take every email at face value, every x as a kiss, call a lifeguard every time anyone says they’re drowning. It is not bigotry against a discriminated group, except by the most circuitous means; you’d have to start with meat eating as a prejudice against animals, and work from there.
It is actually much more important than whether or not a magazine changes editor: if you can’t distinguish, intuitively and without reference to rules, between casual nob-endery and problematic hate speech, or even if you can, and you treat them both the same way for mischievous reasons, you leave yourself incapacitated in the face of either.
