Pamela Paresky is a psychologist, one time extra in Goodfellas and, if the New Yorker is to be believed, self-proclaimed mother hen of the cancelled. Each month, Paresky invites around 200 famous, infamous and unknown “thought criminals” to come dine at the Olive Tree in Manhattan. Her “denizens of defamation” include former Princeton Professor Joshua Katz (who alleged an anti-racist protest group was a small local terrorist organisation), comedian Tyler Fischer (known for mocking Dylan Mulvaney) and The Rumpus founder Stephen Elliott (accused of rape and sexual harrasment by former colleagues). But why her? Paresky does travel in the “anti-woke” space; she helped Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt with their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, developing the idea of “safetyism” to describe a culture where emotional safety is the primary value, dislodging things like moral values. Paresky herself hasn’t been cancelled (so far).
Photograph @paresky/substack