A while ago, someone mentioned to me, offhandedly, that a friend of theirs had become akin to "the mother hen of the cancelled." Naturally, I was like, "I need to know everything about this."

That's how I met the Thought Criminals. (1/x)
https://t.co/8lFmBpp9kx

The Thought Criminals are cancelled or cancelled-adjacent. Some of them you might know—notorious professors or journalists. Others are regular people. They get together in NYC once a month to hang out, drink, and share their banned opinions. (2/x)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled

There are two rules among the Thought Criminals: You have to be willing to break bread with the cancelled, and Pamela's gotta like you. Pamela—she's the "mother hen" that I had heard about. (3/x)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled

Hanging out with @PamelaParesky's Thought Criminals made me think a lot about how we as a society figure out our boundaries for acceptable behavior and ideas—and what happens when some people lose trust in those boundaries. (4/x)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled

America is deep into its debates about cancel culture. Pamela's group is one example of a different way—of being willing to make community with people who might say or do or think things you find intolerable, for better or for worse. (5/x)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled

Read my piece on Pamela's crowd. The party, indeed, is cancelled.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled