I hesitate to write this post due to the intensity of the feelings on both sides. Nonetheless, I feel it is a discussion that needs to be had.
Blogs have grown far quicker than anyone expected. Our influence, though limited, is strong among a powerful portion of the electorate. I remember when Trippi said to The New Republic that he wasn't going after people like David Broder, he was going after people like Ezra Klein -- he said bloggers were shaping an important constituency. Now I, particularly at that time, had no important constituency save Joe Trippi, and that held true for most blogs. Even our top dogs, Kos and Atrios and Marshall, boasted a mere fraction of the influence they hold today. How times have changed, huh?
We wear many hats as bloggers. We promote candidates and parties, raise funds and organize activists, educate our readers and attempt to sway their opinions. Occasionally, we run for office or work for those who do. We're embedded in every level of the political process. If the media did half of what we do half as blatantly as we do it, we'd be calling foul left and right. But we don't, we're a different medium and play by different rules. Some of us, however, are beginning to get too large to play in such an ill-defined arena. Missteps and harsh words can cause real harm to greater goals, and it's something we should discuss.
This brings me to Jerome and Kos. More than anyone, they have pushed this medium forward, and pushed it hard. I remember reading MyDD daily during the 2002 elections, being astounded that someone could provide such comprehensive coverage while still being independent. Most don't know this, but Matthew Gross, of Dean for America fame, got his start as a guest blogger on MyDD. And Jerome's partner, Kos is certainly the largest force in blogging. Unlike Instapundit, he's not a portal. Unlike Atrios, he's more specific than a Democratic partisan. Kos provides horserace coverage, fundraising services, a huge activist organization and campaign consulting. It's a potent mix. He might have been the deciding factor if we take a seat in Congress next week (Go Chandler!). He is certainly the most influential in terms of horserace coverage and electoral analyses. If I were running for office and could convince only one person on Earth to strongly support me, it would be him. Such is the power of the activists who take their cues from him. His partner, Jerome Armstrong, shares in that influence. Which brings me to tonight.
Jerome is deeply anti-Kerry. It's not a hidden thing, or something I'm interpreting. Tonight's post by him, linking Kerry to the attack ads against Dean from months ago, resulted in an argument in the comments between him and a Kerry supporter. Within that, he said: "You are absolutely going to love it around here when it gets down to Kerry against the alternative Democrat, and we all choose the alternative. " I don't begrudge him the sentiment, God knows I've been clear in my biases. But it brings up an important question for bloggers, both large and small. At what point do our missteps become as damaging and irresponsible as the media's? Over 100,000 people will read Jerome's comment, what if he's wrong? What if Kerry had nothing to do with it? Over 100,000 people will read what he has to say about Kerry in the future. What if he hits Kerry often enough and with damaging enough things that the activists who read Kos no longer want any part of John? And what if these things turn out to be untrue, or motivated by partisanship?
My question here is at what point do bloggers begin having the same responsibilities as the press? Do we never have them? Is it the nature of our medium to say what we think and consequences be damned? Is it up to our readers to filter through it all and keep their heads despite the occasional misstep or exaggeration? Or do we have a responsibility to be as certain in the claims we make as we expect the media to be? I'm amazed daily at the traffic of Pandagon. Kos, Atrios and Instapundit have larger circulations than many newspapers. More importantly, their readers are far more affected by their analyses and opinions than the average reader of a newspaper. The personal bond formed between a blogger and his readers makes the dynamic more like one between friends than between media and consumer. But it's a conversation with your really smart and informed friend, and he's talking to tens of thousands of people all at once. That's a lot of power, so what are his responsibilities?
Is it possible for Mickey Kaus to get a Mike Tyson-esque elephant tattoo on his face so that we know he's an open shill for the GOP? The man has gone from criticizing Democrats in a nominal effeort to better counter Republican ideas to simply hoping that the Democratic Party crashes and burns.
Oh, and he accuses Kerry of at least half a dozen character problems. Predictably. Another question: is there anything Democrats have done since January of 2001 that Kaus thinks is a good strategic idea? Has he commented on a single Democratic idea or strategy without concluding that it's destined to fail?
Glenn Reynolds - often parroted in the media - launches a V.D. Hanson-lite (keep in mind, kids, that there are very few times where being called Hanson-lite in any situation is a good thing) attack against the anti-war line, mainly by attacking a very few things that don't actually tie into the anti-war argument
Okay, okay. This is Instapundit. He vaguely bats at the outline of an idea, while linking to someone else making the attack. My bad.
Anyway, he says that there are two facets of the anti-war argument that supposedly undermine
Never mind that (1) He said the opposite; and (2) Most of those saying "he fooled us" both believed that Iraq had WMD and nonetheless opposed the war. The point is to hope that people miss that if it's repeated often enough.
It's amazing how, you know, this is a complete misrepresentation of reality. Unlike Glenn, I'm not going to outsource my political thoughts and debates to other people, however.
What Glenn, and everyone else arguing against the imminent threat idea seemingly forget in the orgiastic glee of being "right" seem to forget is that (1) Bush argued frequently that Saddam maintained an active stockpile of WMD that he might give to terrorists at any second. Regardless of whether or not the specific word "imminent" came out of Bush's mouth, it's as clear as it can possibly get without George Will declaring it "axiomatic" that we were supposed to believe the threat from Saddam Hussein was hidden and immediate. A secret network of currently active agents with actual weapons of mass destruction seems pretty "imminent" to me.
But, you know, using words to describe or summarize things is something the "media" would do.
(2) Bush also went above and beyond talking about whether or not Saddam had WMD to contending that he was producing new WMD. As we've been over repeatedly, Bush's case for war was premised on the new and active threat of Saddam developing a nuclear weapon - the tubes, the uranium, etc. There was already doubt about the veracity of those claims when Bush was making them - and yet he not only made them, but claimed they were certain. Everyone may have believed that Saddam had WMD, but that was almost beside the point.
The issues over the Iraq war have little to do with what Glenn is talking about, which is why the arguments are so easy to make. Anti-war folks felt that Saddam, given what we knew about his capabilities, could be contained, and was not a military threat to us. Bush felt that Saddam posed new and immediate threats to our nation's safety. His evidence for that either hasn't turned out to be true, or wasn't what he claimed it was at the time. That's the issue, but as long as we're batting above the Mendoza line against strawmen, why bring up that inconvenient point?
I'm not sure how an entry talking about how the relative quality of the Bush/Russert interview had to do with Bush's almost nonexistent political profile outside of his talking points can be used to argue that I'm calling Tim Russert biased, but I guess when there's a will, there's a way.
What's strange is that in every critique he listed, the writer says absolutely nothing about any particular partisan leanings of Russert, or partisan tint to the questions. We all simply lamented the incomplete quality of the interview. What Jon is talking about may rise from others reading our critiques, but grouping us together and pointing out something we aren't doing only sets us down the funhouse hall of mirrors that constitutes the liberal/conservative bias idea.
Isn't it sort of strange to bring up something we're not doing in order to criticize us for potentially doing it?
What do you get when you combine utter intoxication and an hour of G.W Bush on Meet the Press? Well, whatever it is, it ain't pretty.
I think Matthew Yglesias has the best take on this whole anonyblogger thing:
Anonyblogger Atrios recently called the New York Times' Nick Kristof "human scum." Welcome to the pond, Nick! Of course, Atrios is immune from personal attacks because he's anonymous.How is he immune. You can say it with me: "Atrios is human scum!" The name "Atrios" works like any other name and refers to the person who is the source of the writings done under the byline "Atrios" in much the way that "Andrew Sullivan" refers to the person who writes articles on blog posts under the byline "Andrew Sullivan." You can take any theory of reference that you'd like and the results all come out the same for "Atrios" and "Sullivan" the fact that "Atrios" isn't really the name of the guy who writes Eschaton doesn't make a difference.
We're not animist tribespeople here who thinks his real name has magic powers -- it's just a label, and one label's as good as another.
Is anonyblogging wrong? Short answer: no.
Long answer:
The concerns about credibility in blogging ignore the general thrust of blogging. The point of most blogging is commentary, not reporting. You look at most bloggers, anonymous or named, and they're people who bring in journalistic work from elsewhere and comment on it.
For instance, a few days ago, the Corner was posting anecdotes about John Kerry and Wesley Clark. Even there, the issue was more the validity of the information they were sharing, who sent it, and whether or not it actually happened than what the Cornerites thought of it. Most bloggers share factual information from trusted sources - if I show you a story in the New York Times about George W. Bush going off on a classroom of second-grade students in a profanity-laced tirade, it's the New York Times' credibility that's on the line more than the blogger's. It's more important that people who are giving us what they claim are factual representations of reality give us their real identities, rather than the people who comment on said factual representations.
Even if you believe that pseudonymity (and let's be clear, all of the people cited in the article are pseudonymous, not anonymous) is problematic, it ignores the fact that the use of pseudonyms still creates a consistent identity (and a consistent source of information) which can be addressed, trusted, and discredited. If, say, Digby over at Hullabaloo declares that there's an international Jewish conspiracy to keep his voice from being heard, he will be discredited immediately and roundly by virtually everyone who reads him. Hullabaloo and Digby as source and provider of information will not be respected.
I find that the people most concerned about identities in blogging are the ones who derive an air of authority from their biography. I don't care whether Glenn Reynolds or LibrulzSux04 says that Concerned Women For America is a nonpartisan organization - however, the assertion seemingly derives more weight from a law professor than it does from a guy with a haxxor name, even though it's equally wrong. Folks like Reynolds and Sullivan who are so concerned with anonymity are people who believe that their identities entitle their opinions to greater weight - which is why they're so frequently attacked on their identities, oddly enough. A resume doesn't necessarily make your opinion any more correct.
Jonah Goldberg, who seems to think that calling someone a "traitorous crapweassel" (sic) is serious, high-minded debate, responds to my critique of his bizarre attack on Star Trek.
There's really not a whole lot here to respond to. He does the whole "deeply conservative" stick and shuffle, makes reference to the original Star Trek being a morality tale against Communism (which I don't necessarily disagree with, but which is really besides the point), and then, says this:
To clarify for Jonah, by moving the words into a more accessible pattern for his interpretation: "As it headed into space, a technologically advanced humanity had unified." In other words, as Stewart recommended, humanity had solved many of its earthly problems and unified under the common banner of the Federation before heading out on interstellar voyages. Which, incidentally, would completely negate Jonah's argument.
I'm still amazed that a man who refers to other people as "traitorous crapweassels" (sic) and talked yesterday at length about which corpses he would defile, given the chance, can refer to anyone else as "sophomoric".
In other words, Jonah, don't try to pull yourself out of the mud when you filled in the ditch in the first place, m'kay?
P.S. - Jonah doesn't like me, and just pulled the "you don't have enough qualifications to criticize me" card. Sigh.
Andrew Sullivan turns out to be the #1 Liebermaniac, riding the Joementum train all the way.
What I find most interesting is that Sullivan supports the guy who most disagrees with him - Bush. I took the test, and got Kerry, Dean, Clark and Edwards in that order (93, 91, 89 and 83%). Lieberman got 75%. Bush got 4%. Does it strike anyone else as strange that the guy Sullivan's fighting to reelect is the guy who agrees the least with him? A bit...counterintuitive?
Via Mattesias (it's fun to say!), Roger Simon is declaring his new standard for blogger honesty.
He does preface it as his opinion, which isn't quite as egregious, but I do get really frustrated at people who declare blog-specific standards like we're members of a journalist's guild.
Anyway, his tenure at the Department of Redundancy Department begins in earnest, asking political bloggers to reveal who they vote for in the primaries and the general election, which is sort of like asking political bloggers to, ah, weigh in on politics. Roger shockingly reveals that he supports George W. Bush, which is a surprise for anyone who hasn't caught up on the past few months of his attacks on Democratic candidates and steadfast support of Bush.
It's a brand new era in political debate - challenging everyone to do what they're essentially doing anyway. Note that this doesn't have anything to do with Roger's political leanings. It's just a pet peeve of mine when someone steps up and creates arbitrary standards for bloggers as bloggers.
See if you can follow this. They revealed the identity of a covert agent. However, according to Glenn, if she was really covert, they shouldn't have known that she was covert. Which means that if they revealed her as a covert operative and knew she was a covert operative, then she really wasn't a covert operative because they wouldn't have been able to know that she was a covert operative if she actually was one.
So, if they knowingly revealed her as a covert operative, then she actually wasn't one, because a covert operative would never be revealed as a covert operative, which means that, regardless, it couldn't have happened even if it did.
Liquid List asks an interesting question: whose win in New Hampshire would make the most interesting primary battle?
I'm sure that if you have an internet connection, you know about the Sully/Atrios tiff, which is more like the Sully Making An Ass Of Himself Extravaganza Royale.
Long story short, they were on the radio yesterday, debating. Sully stood up and said that it's wrong to be anonymous/pseudonymous, and that Atrios had to reveal himself to the world in order to be taken seriously (which is nonsense, but we'll get back to that). The other side of it was that Atrios supposedly doesn't "criticize both sides" as much as Sullivan does, so he is the suckiest suck what ever sucked. Or something.
First things first: there's a long and proud history of responsible political anonymity. Hell, Sullivan's letters pages are anonymous (also, edited and posted and very likely read by someone who's not Sullivan, but I'm not here to split hairs, especially with a man who's got so many). The issue I've always had with anonymity is when it's used abusively, which isn't the case with Atrios.
(Just so you all know, I have met Atrios, and I do know his secret identity.)
Moving on to the important point: how much do you criticize "your side"? Andrew Sullivan considers himself a Republican and a conservative, but there's a small problem - the side he considers himself a part of openly disagrees with him on several of the issues most important to him.
I get incredibly tired of the faux-respect garnered from people who criticize "their side". Mickey Kaus is the most obvious example of this, the liberal who criticizes other liberals. In general, this has nothing whatsoever to do with scruples - it has to do with bad labelling. Mickey Kaus has been a "Democrat" about four years longer than he's been a Democrat. Sullivan is basically a conservative-leaning libertarian who really, really likes war.
Even more than the prevalence of exculpatory labels, the absence of which would relegate David Horowitz's life to the annals of the Obnoxious Used Furniture Salesman Hall of Fame ("I used to be a socialist, and the Black Panthers threatened to beat the shit out of me! I can get you a good deal on a chaise lounge, if you'll listen to the story!"), is the idea that one must criticize one's own "side" in order for their criticisms to hold weight. This is nonsense.
As pundits/critics/massively pissers and moaners, most of us are driven to write by a core set of beliefs that we find either supported or affronted in the public and political sphere. If I'm motivated by a firm support for abortion rights, of course I'm going to criticize the right more than the left, considering where advocates and opponents are found. So-called "balance" in political criticism should never be an end in and of itself, because it restrains actual thought in favor of a tit-for-tat exchange of dissimilar transgressions. Call it the Spinsanity Dilemma - if a focus on a particular issue and a particular take on it leads you to criticize one side of the issue more strongly than the other, you're in no way required to paw around for scandals on the "other side" if one side is simply more guilty than the other.
What Sullivan is asking for, a legitimacy test through self-criticism, is a banal and ultimately destructive brand of litmus. If Sullivan is unable to handle criticism from anyone who hasn't undergone the proper pre-approved self-flagellation, however contrived (which is fairly obvious by the "liberals" he cites approvingly), then it shows an inability on his part to handle legitimate disagreement more than it does a weakness on the part of his critics.
There's analysis, and then there's analysis. Kevin Drum gives us some of the latter. When most of us heard Bush say:
They may be libertarians. their philosophies may internally contradict. But they run a damn entertaining blog. Give it up for the people who demonstrate what Instapundit, with wit and intelligence, could have been, Reason's Hit and Run.
It's amazing how fundamentally dishonest you can be when you have no comments and hire someone else to read your e-mail.
Hm. For a law professor, Glenn Reynolds sure as hell can't read even barely complicated statements without screwing it all up.
I've determined (with the help of some commenters who reminded me of his existence) that Glenn Reynolds is the Billy Zabka of the internet - just watch Karate Kid or Just One Of The Guys to understand what I mean.
See, as we discussed yesterday, InstaZabka has had a filter put on his brain that doesn't allow him to read English properly, particularly when spoken by a Democrat. As such, he tends to quote folks who also can't read, such as Roger Simon.
Philosoraptor has already dealt with the actual argument (for which I thank him, as it not only saved me immeasurable minutes, but was also likely done more clearly and cogently than I would have done it), but what's interesting is that King Zabka of the Blogosphere takes this very clear interprepretation of a complex, but ultimately anti-war article, and asks the following:
Perhaps because the fundamental dishonesty of Zabka has so thoroughly infused him, Glenn is unable to read what he has linked to. It's only hard to pin down if you've decided that the average anti-war person was an anti-Israel Communist who thinks that all war is wrong and that neoconservative is a synonym for Jewish.
Sweep the leg, Glenn!
You have to admire Mark A.R. Kleiman for doing what I no longer really have the patience for: taking apart the latest Instahackery. When Glenn talks about apolitical law, or science, or his latest trip to Chick-Fil-A, he's fine. It's generally dry, geeky, but ultimately harmless and sometimes even informative stuff. But politics apparently makes that part of his head go "boom".
Long story short: Glenn thinks that Wesley Clark did something very wrong, and was relieved of command. There's no evidence for this. But Ann Coulter lies about what some people said, so couldn't it be true, even if there's no evidence? Clark says that he was rotated out, not relieved of command, which Reynolds doesn't understand, so couldn't it be true, even if there's no evidence?
So, since Glenn's ass is a bit achy from having this pulled out of it, he'll go take a sauna and leave us with the dark implication that Wesley Clark is a massive fuck-up.
This take on James Lileks is spot-on, but it missed one increasingly obnoxious thing about his Bleats: when his Ermil Bombeck and Anti-Idiotarian Shih Tzu sides mix, and he starts intermixing domestic tales of his daughter's antics with his sheltered political view of the world, and in particular when he starts using the former as an implicit justification for the latter.
"Gnat was watching the television, and she asked if Mojo Jojo was like Saddam. I told her no - Saddam was hairier. Liberals don't understand this. Especially not Michael Moore, who could do nicely for a funnel and some sleeping pills, as well as a sadistic nurse (have to give the fat pig some satisfaction before he croaks). Gnat does not need to be exposed to this."
Oh, and James Lileks is a remarkably poor thinker, a mediocre-to-okay writer when he sticks to the fluff of his life, and honestly doesn't deserve the fame that he has. I don't hope to find him dead and bloated on a bathroom floor, or seek to invalidate his thought because he doesn't have the "stones" to say what he says.
Everyone knows you don't have to have stones to pull the warblogger schtick.
Atrios notes that Dennis Miller was quite the fan of Hitler comparisons back in the day.
He ignores, however, the obvious conclusion. Miller thinks that liberals making Hitler comparisons is stupid. He was a liberal when he made those statements. He's now a conservative. Therefore, there is no contradiction, even though he won't ever say he was wrong to make the comparison.
Miller, as a Bush Republican, asks that you stop being such a fucking Nazi.
Instapundit has a fact-correcting policy?
Really?
I mean, if someone hacked into the site and put that up as a satire, that was definitely wrong, and whoever did it should be found and punished. That seems like the most likely explanation.
The Angry Bear, Dave Johnson, David Neiwert, Jeralyn Merritt, Kash, Kevin Hayden, Luis Toro, Mary Ratcliff, Mark A.R. Kleiman and Skippy have combined to form the biggest fucking blog anyone has ever seen. I swear, they're growing by the minute too. I checked them out this morning and there were 5 writers, now there are about 720. Like liberal bacteria, these bloggers. Anyway, they all rock harder than your grandfather on viagra so go tap the keg over at the American Street.
Okay, I'm trying to stay away from Glenn, but he's got a new egregious bit of Glennuendo. In an entry discussing how Bill Clinton suspected Saddam Hussein maintained WMD, Glenn characterizes criticism of Bush's case for said WMD as such:
He also says that since Clinton suspected that Iraq had WMD, it excuses the Bush Administration's obviously flawed attempt to prove that Saddam had WMD, because, as we all know, suspicion is the same thing as evidence. It's yet another example of Glenn's inability to properly synthesize an argument outside of his basic axioms (another of which is that "the buck stops at Clinton").
Nobody that I know of is saying that Bush made up the suspicion that Saddam had WMDs, or historically had them. What many are saying (be careful to pay attention to this, because it's the actual argument) is that Bush's case for Saddam's present WMD was based largely on purposeful misreading of intelligence, fabrications, and a passion for getting the war he wanted, facts be damned. Bush's case for Saddam presently being a threat, based on the information available to him as the president from his intelligence services, was MADE UP. It's not an intelligence failure - it's a failure of integrity and honesty.
One of my New Year's resolutions was not to ever think about Adam Yoshida again. I swear it was. But I'm just surprised at how close to sensible Yoshida comes here, and then proceeds to forget everything he just said and go whacko again.
He's opposed to gay and lesbian marriage, but realizes that as soon as a gay or lesbian couple gets legally married (in Massachusetts, not Vermont - he's fixated on Vermont), the full faith and credit clause will destroy the Defense of Marriage Act, and force gay and lesbian marriage to be recognized all over the United States, even if states themselves don't actually marry gays and lesbians. The FF&C; clause doesn't dictate to states that they all have to homogenize their laws if another state is allowed
Keep in mind that the full faith and credit clause is in Article 4, Section I of the Constitution, and is not an amendment, nor does the 10th Amendment (the reservation of powers to the states) have much bearing on the clause. Yoshida's solution to the problem of the clause is to pass a Constitutional amendment which changes the meaning of the 10th Amendment so radically that it invalidates the full faith and credit clause...as well as the rest of the Constitution.
Oddly enough, though, Ann Coulter became a "Constitutional lawyer" with a similar degree of respect and knowledge of the document. Essentially, Yoshida's amendment would all but destroy two branches of government, as well as all Constitutional law. It would basically be a return to the Articles of Confederation, minus the good parts.
You know, I'm really hoping Yoshida was a legacy admission to Harvard.
As a preface to this, I have to say that one of my biggest blog-related annoyances is when someone decides to create a new political taxonomy without doing any more research than what's available through their own experience.
That having been said, Michael J. Totten decides to create a binary system of what the differences between "liberals" and "leftists" are.
Actually, I'd hope that most liberals would support the free-speech rights of those who would burn the flag, even if they wouldn't themselves (I'm looking at you, Clark and Kerry). Plus, I neither fly nor burn the American flag. Where does that put me?
What if I think the ideal of America is opportunity, freedom and equality, but I can't accept the deus ex americana that it has attained those goals, therefore the problems of racism, inequality, etc. are gone, or that it's closer to those goals than at any point in history, so I need to stop focusing on the problems we do have?
Of course, many conservatives will argue that the former is simply a gussied-up version of the latter, but I think this is true. Although even the most supposedly "class warfare" oriented "leftists" that I've met still agree far more with the former than they ever would the latter. This is the problem with most of the argument - if people were saying these things, I'd be inclined to agree. The problem is, are people actually saying this, or are they saying something else that Totten has, through his prism, decided means this?
Once again, it's simply a definition on a slope, using bad words for "leftist" and good words for "liberal". Thing of it is, either plan (however vaguely he defines them) involves "destroying" some vestige of market control over healthcare and imbuing the government with that power. It's not based on a hatred of the private market or a desire to see a socialist order - it's based on the fact that there are certain commodities the private market is poorly suited to deliver, and in some areas, healthcare is one of them. Once again - not "liberal", not "leftist"...not anything?
Okay...?
What if I'm opposed to constrictive IMF globalization contracts that hurt a lot more than they help, am opposed to human-rights violations in the name of "free trade", and find that the "opportunity to boost labor and environmental standards in the Third World" is actually an opportunity for many companies simply to swoop in on the cheapest, most impoverished labor until other, cheaper and more impoverished labor comes along? What if I think that globalization and trade in the abstract is a great idea in the Wilsonian vein of "diplomacy through dollars", but think that the current prosecution of it is ultimately harmful to almost everyone involved?
Religious and political extremism in the Middle East is the main cause of the terror threat we now face. But America is, at the very least, somewhat culpable for the current environment in the Middle East. Not totally, and not even mainly, but our historic actions, whether left, right, or middle, have helped to shape what the Middle East is today, for better and for worse. That's not a leftist fantasy - that's basic geopolitical fact. It doesn't make America at all responsible for acts of terrorism taken against it, but it does mean that there is a historical record of numerous First World powers tinkering around in the Middle East that we need to learn from and avoid repeating. It also means that our actions do have consequences, intended and unintended, and that simply being "right" is no substitute for actually thinking about what you are doing, a quality sorely missing from the prescriptivist neoconservative dialogue.
I'd agree with this, except that I'd hope the current troubles would have taught the Bush Administration a lesson about preemptively invading other countries on wholly over-optimistic intelligence and predictions. I hope we get out of there safely, I hope that Iraq becomes a free and democratic state, but I also hope that we never repeat this experiment again. Liberal? Leftist? Flip a coin.
This does, of course, completely boil down the entire I/P debate to "support whatever Israel does" vs. "support terrorism". I'd certainly hope rightists, leftists, conservatives and liberals could all agree that the situation is just a wee bit more complex than this.
Okay. Again, sort of a strawman that boils down to some people with little power and little voice, but whatever. Also, what does "support the troops" entail? What does "opposing the war" entail? (For some, including Totten patron Glenn Reynolds, opposition to the war is the same thing as supporting the resistance, and supporting the troops is the same thing as supporting the war.) It's nice to throw around generalizations like this, but "support the troops" is one of those phrases that changes meaning fifteen times if fifteen people say it, depending on who they want to demonize.
Given what Totten's definition of "mainstream" appears to be so far (a series of nice-sounding generalities), everybody could be mainstream, and nobody could be mainstream. Also, I'm not a fan of the Green Party, but I honestly don't think they're as far left as Communists, I'm sorry. And since one would hope that the Democratic Party would allow a dialogue on the interpretation and range of Democratic issues, at least moreso than Totten is allowing, is liberalism simply a teetering peak upon which Totten finds himself perfectly balanced, or, is it (much more likely) a plateau upon which many ideas rest and which is more broadly disputed and interpreted than the simple good stuff/nutso dynamic on display here?
I know that I was "disturbed" by the nature of ANSWER. Although I have a feeling that there's certain level of disturbedness that I was supposed to reach in certain areas, and I'm not sure if I reached them.
The main problem that I have with this isn't Totten trying to distinguish mainstream liberals from the far left-wing. That's fine, and even appreciated. It's that in order to distinguish the range of thought that is mainstream liberal from that which is far- or radical-left, we're left with a bevy of meaningless statements that are still left up to the interpreter to decide the actual meaning of them is.
The definition of American liberalism and leftism is, in Totten's critique, a distinction between a series of overly deterministic mainstream vagaries and a series of overly deterministic non-mainstream vagaries. I appreciate the effort, but it utterly fails to describe liberal thought outside of a simplistic and useless binary. I understand and share Totten's desire to divorce mainstream liberalism from far-leftism, but what he outlined as liberalism isn't a political ideology - it's a caricature.
World O' Crap points us to "American Thinker" (a misnomer if there ever was one, in this case), who says the following:
After picking myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I decided to make a list of the things Americans have collective grudges over, whether it's certain subsections of America or the entire nation, and for better or for worse.
- The Civil War
- World War II
- The Alamo
- Vietnam
- All professional, collegiate, high-school, junior-high, pee-wee, intramural, "powderpuff", and imaginary sports, with the exception of the Los Angeles Clippers
- The cancellation of the original Star Trek
- Their ex-girlfriends and/or boyfriends
- The Cold War
- John Travolta's career from 1980-1994 and 1998-present
- The yearly end of the McRib
- Not getting what we wanted for Christmas when we were seven
- Roe v. Wade
- Brown v. Board of Education
- Watergate
- Johnny Carson's retirement
- The 1960s
- The half-hour of the day not covered by Law & Order reruns.
And that's just off the top of my head. Americans hold grudges. It's what we do. It's a part of our national character. Sure, we like being happy, but if you pretend that being American is all about being pretty and happy and riding ponies down to the levy...well, you're probably going to write the aforementioned sophomoric take on American anger.
Editor extraordinaire Jim Capozzola takes the swift pen of Common Sense to Amber Pawlik's latest, and it's not pretty.
My favoritest part is that she comes to the conclusion that anyone who critiques her Objectivism is an anti-Semite because Jews are money-hungry and materialistic, and so is she. Additionally, by critiquing her Objectivism, you're critiquing black people, who also love fried chicken and don't care about their familes any more than she does.
Why have I been such a bigot?
Completely ignoring what I said except for the parts that were convenient, Jon from Q and O replies to my earlier post about his Krugman-bashing.
Apparently missing the part where I pointed out that the ad visually linked Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to Cleland, Jon decides to pretend that the part of the ad he quoted was the only part of the ad that was relevant. Well, when you ignore the part that proves you wrong, you tend to be right quite often.
He writing was unclear, though - a problem I am subject to, as well - and allowed for both readings. Re-reading it, I am prepared to accept that was his intent.
I'm glad you've prepared yourself. Bully.
Well, that's not exactly the same thing, is it, Jesse? In your example, you're writing about Krugmans own opinion, about which he is fully qualified to write. In my own, I was speaking of a Krugman assertion of opinion on the part of a third party.
Actually, it was exactly the same thing. It was his opinion about what was right for Naderites. The key phrase being "his opinion". As I, you know, pointed out.
Ooh. Saucy.
I took issue with his getting agitated over a clear statement of opinion which he openly misread as a supposed statement of fact, and then advised Krugman to put in phrases indicating his opinions in an opinion column on the editorial page. I pointed out that it's kind of goofy to have someone preface their opinions with phrases that indicate things are their opinion in an opinion column. In another section, he acknowledges that he's criticizing an opinion column, which he apparently didn't take into account when he wrote the first part. I was just trying to be helpful, man.
Is that "in English" enough for you? Or are we going to have to dance this dance again?
Might also obscure your sense of humor, but we won't go there.
Someone take apart this mess for me.
Krugman writes a column about the Democratic Party needing to stop, or at least change the focus of their infighting. So does David Brooks. Krugman expresses a desire that voters will see what he sees as the differences between the parties (pretty much the stock reason for any op-ed columnist to be writing), and will act in both the primaries and the general elections based on the substantive differences and ideas of the parties rather than the infighting and attacks currently going on, all without making anything resembling an endorsement.
But, Jon says it does and doesn't prove it, so...yeah.
Of course, since Krugman's discussion of infighting was what the article was about, and was specifically what you were critiquing as an endorsement of Dean/the Democrats, your entire entry was spent "addressing that point". You just happened to accuse Krugman of using that section as an endorsement, and I pointed out that the section wasn't about that at all. So, I suppose that my talking about what the article was actually about rather than what you say it was about technically isn't talking about the point you addressed.
Strawmen much?
That's a very good point, and I was going to respond by pointing out that I repeatedly said that Krugman was coming CLOSE to an endorsement. Not that he MADE an endorsement.
I was going to respond with that, but then I read down and realized that, while I had said that consistently for awhile, I did make this statement: "Moving on, another statement that amounts to an endorsement of the Democratic party". Well, that was a mistake. I should have remained consistent with the rest of my post and said that Krugman was coming very close to endorsing the Democratic Party. Score one for Jesse.
The problem is, saying "very close" STILL SETS A BAR. By saying that X is "very close" to Y, you're saying that Y is somewhere above, but very near X, perhaps on the verge/border/etc. By setting that standard, Jon argues that Krugman's statement is "very close to an endorsement", which means that an endorsement is not much beyond that. Since I argue that Krugman's statement was nowhere near an endorsement, saying that an endorsement is "very close" to what Krugman wrote would (say it along with me, now) set the bar too low.
I'm glad Jon can admit when he's wrong, but he's even wrong in the scope of his wrongness.
Note, though, that I say they have advocated it....not that they have implemented it. Krugmans assertion was that Bush had made pre-emptive war the CORE of his foreign policy. In response, I pointed to the ACTUAL FOREIGN POLICY DOCTRINE.
Dude. Don't rip off my schtick. "Angry and wrong" is working for you.
Here's a question. Suppose that it was January 2003 again. Bush was advocating preemptive action against Iraq. By Jon's reckoning, it wasn't the foreign policy of the United States. Or something.
By the way, don't point to Bush's military doctrine when it contains a passage such as this:
In short, his military policy explictly calls for preventative and preemptive war, through use of military forces. If that's too vague (which it will likely be for Jon, and we'll get into an argument about how the plan simply means that we should update our military, ignoring the obvious conclusion that you improve the military to use it), we also have the ongoing cries of the neocon camp, which includes the Vice President, who's already gotten one war out of this plan.
To sum up: the president includes preventative language, including war, in his foreign policy plan. The Vice President and a sizable number of key advisers advocate this plan forcefully, specifically with regards to military intervention. They've already gotten one war, and are currently pushing for more. It has also become the defining issue and primary foriegn policy focus for the Republican party and for Bush, if his reelection campaign is to be believed.
But no, it's not the core of his foreign policy. There's all that other stuff around it.
Perhaps Jesse feels that nobody should mention, you know, the actual problems we face lest people confuse those problems with the candidates. Presumably, he will criticise the Democratic candidates for mentioned Bush's "failure to get Osama bin Laden". He DARE they try to orally link Bush with bin Laden!
Question: did you actually watch the ad? Because if you did, you'd see that it did visually associate Cleland with bin Laden and Hussein. Completely ignoring that the ad points to bin Laden, Hussein and Cleland in order as people who first threaten America (bin Laden and Hussein) . It seems sort of bizarre that Jon ignores the entirety of the ad in favor of cherry-picking sections as if they didn't occur in the same 30-second spot. And the ad was so right-on and inoffensive that Chambliss ended up pulling the images of bin Laden and Hussein from it. Maybe the ad just ran over the time limit? Who knows.
Yes, I was wrong. I'll amend that. He ignores wrongs done to Democrats that Paul Krugman likes.
::Wipes egg off face::
By the way, if that sounds familiar, you might want to check your defense of John Kerry's "regime change" comment. I just borrowed your explanation. Now, please do explain to me why Kerry's pithy use of a term with negative connotations is acceptable.....but Liebermans is not. And try to frame it such that I look like a partisan hack, even while I'm defending a Democrat and using the same defense you used for a similar statement by a Democrat.
Because, as I pointed out in the very entry, "regime" was and is a common term for administration (used by many of the people who accused Kerry of associating Bush with Saddam, actually), and Kerry used it. Now, unless you can show me where the term "spider hole" was commonly used pre-Saddam's capture in routine political parlance, go ahead, and I'll admit I was wrong about this criticism. But, since you can't, you can calm down and be wrong again. Thankee.
"The United States is not going to do that. President Bush is not going to do that. Now, to the extent terrorists are given reason to believe he might, or if he is not willing to, the opponents might prevail in some way . . . and they take heart in that, and that leads to more recruiting . . . that leads to more encouragement, or that leads to more staying power. Obviously that does make it more difficult.''
- Donald Rumsfeld
Just a small correction before I start in on this - Bush's plan has also caused more terrorism, as we can see from the insurgency in Iraq. So, criticism in this vein coming from one of the architects of the plan rings hollow.
Anyway, regardless of how you interpret it, Rumsfeld is saying that opposition to the Bush plan results in a de facto boon to terrorism. Apparently, you can pull from a Paul Krugman thing something he didn't say at all, and that's okay - but when someone says that your opposition to a war amounts to aid for terrorist causes, you can't draw the remarkably reasonable (and obvious) conclusion that the person in question is saying that your opposition to the war amounts to moral support for all opposition to the war, including the enemy.
I agree, and I said so when he first offered up that video. At the time, I wrote that there was something missing from that video...you know, an actual endorsement.
That's very good. Would that you would have exercised the same caution when attacking the Krugman article.
I'm sure Jon is a great guy, but the attack on Krugman's article is remarkably pathetic. It's literal when it needs to be, is based upon an inference for which there is no proof the rest of the time, and is 100% sure that only the things it wants to focus on are relevant. Pretty much the only thing the post proved is that stating things REALLY FORCEFULLY is in no way a substitute for stating things WITH EVIDENCE.
For those of you who view reality in a logical, clinically detached manner:
You should all check out Brother Can You Spare a Job? It's an anti-Bush cartoon made by Greg from The Talent Show and it's really, really good. I've been meaning to link to it for a quite awhile and keep forgetting, so check it out before it's too late.
To prevent the inevitable outrage over Glenn Reynolds' latest written diarrhea in 2004, I present to you the Official Instapundit Stupidity Entry Template:
ENTRY 1
Glenn Reynolds is at it again, this time saying we should [perform action X] to/on/in [country X]. I can't believe he didn't think of [series of geopolitical ramifications that took you five seconds to come up with because they're so brutally obvious, yet Glenn didn't think of them because he's a hack], but I suppose that's what we get from him.
ENTRY 2
Is Glenn really insinuating [crypto-racist statment] and/or [incredibly offensive sentiment re: one of his enemies] and/or [accusation of treason against his political opponents]? Is he [synonym for "nuts", preferably with epithet]?
ENTRY 3
You know, when Glenn "denounced" [racist/bigoted/sexist/murderous/insane blogger and/or columnist that he links to], he could have at least actually denounced it for being wrong, rather than because it's [whatever dumbass excuse he made up for what was *actually* wrong with whatever objectionable article/entry he's commenting on].
There. An entire year of Instapundit outrage-related blogging, in a single entry. Of course, I do have faith that the Internet's Worst Filter will find a whole new way to shock and outrage even before the Democratic primaries are over.
I resolve in the New Year never to write anything this indefensibly stupid without first consulting the cashier at Target.
Can anyone explain to me how Kaus got his job? Something had to make him well known enough that Slate gave his ramblings a blog, but what was it? And does he do it anymore?
I'm actually serious about this. Kaus' success is utterly inexplicable to me, and I'd love to have some light shed on it.
Oh, God. Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg team up, rather embarassingly, to assault some guy on Paris Indymedia who alleges racism in the Lord of the Rings films. It's not so much that they assault the guy for being stupid (he is), but can't you save the real rage over "racism" for somebody who's actually being racist, rather than really oversensitive to racism?
Or is it the LotR attack that got to them?
Some of us laugh at Adam Yoshida. Some of us shake our heads in amusement. Demosthenes rips the little guy to shreds and intellectually humiliates him on a scale that has to be read to be believed.
Now that Steven DenBeste is repeating it, can we simply admit this whole "Howard Dean is a metrosexual" meme is utterly ridiculous? It's like they've never seen Dean before. The guy wears dress shirts of one color, has a neck about half-a-mile wide, and his social graces range from angry to boring and back again. If Dean is a paragon of fifth-avenue style and hipster etiquette, then DenBeste is a succinct and concise writer, and that's really all there is to that.
My old co-writer Matt Singer has a devastating review of Salon's review of the new movie Cold Mountain. It's a liberal spanking the liberal media for the sort of bias Instapundit wishes the New York Times had. Above all, it's an entertaining read, check it out.
Glenn pulls out the newest tack in the Keyboard Brigade's War On Meaning: mocking the point that someone else is making by pointing out that something else entirely is happening.
The war in Iraq is succeeding? Holiday returns are down because of the new prevalence of gift cards! Fuck that static.
If anyone's been looking to start their own webspace, or just owns a domain name, you can get three years of webhosting here for free. It's legit.
Taking a cue from Jonah Goldberg, all the things I need people to e-mail me:
- Research on mid-size foreign sedans under $20,000.
- Coupons for the local grocery.
- A place in Dayton to take a fine young lady, including prices, sample menu and reservation availablity.
- The name and phone number of a fine young lady.
- The line on the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl.
- The national GDP figures for Bulgaria between 1983 and 1997.
- Six jokes to make about this story.
Go!
If the food's as good as the humor, I'm going to Wendy's.
He shall pass it along! He shall! If it's liberal humor, it's stupid. And if it's conservative humor about liberals...still stupid!
I'm sorry, but "[T]he social individualist meta-context for the future"???
I'm about to go take the individualist anti-productive meta-reconstructionist nap in a few minutes. Mind if I'm angry and pretentious about it?
Courtesty of Rittenhouse, among others, I see that the tiniest scintilla of my tax dollars from my four years in Pennsylvania is going to maintaining the webspace of on Ms. Amber Pawlik, the Objectivist answer to Ann Coulter.
The only real difference is that she appears to like men without striving to be one.
There's so very much here, a lot of which other bloggers have gone over. Now, I'm single. There's times where I can be whiny about it, and there's times where I'm just entirely dissatisfied with the opposite sex. But I don't think I've ever done anything on the level of writing that my ideal man is Cyclops. (Amber's in the towel.)
But what's great about her overall, besides the ego, the melding of Phyllis Schlafly and Michel Foucault in a mix that affronts the intellect in the same manner a mixture of mayonnaise and Godiva chocolate might assault your taste buds, and the fact that she manages to squeeze the blood of her writing out of the lifeless rock that is objectivism, is the simple fact that she's basically an anti-gay, anti-liberal bigot without the balls to make a real argument.
Take, for instance, this essay on the morality of homosexuality. She declares all gay people diseased. Why? Not because of scientific data, but because of Tammy Bruce's anecdotal evidence and the assumption that all gay people (for whatever reason, lesbians don't seem to count - they're women, after all) are that way because they're sexually abused by men.
My favorite part is when she says it was okay for the Greeks to be gay, because women were stupid back then. If the PSU Objectivist women are anything like her, I have a feeling that she knows a hell of a lot of gay Objectivists.
There is not a single objective fact on her website (unless it's by accident), besides possibly her name, and I've heard that's actually up in the air. She's simply a Republican who's convinced that being a conservative asshole is right because she's deluded herself into believing that she's an objective arbiter of reality.
By the way, did I mention I'm single? And have eyes that pierce like lasers? I'm objectively desirable!
In honor of Ezra's post below, I introduce Taylor's Law of Internet Correction:
When correcting someone's spelling and/or grammar online, you will invariably make a grammatical mistake of your very own.
Proof 1, John Cole, Balloon Juice:
Donute to we, and will be goood.
The l'il lady du Toit is gone from the ranks of the blogospheric.
Mr. du Toit, when reached for comment, declared, "Bitch couldn't handle it," and promptly divorced her. The du Toit - McArdle marriage will take place as soon as the ceremonial belittling of the bride is complete.
Wedding donations can be deposited in the Paypal button at left.
From Kausfiles (Why bother with a link? The thing's so poorly formatted that it wouldn't matter):
A few more flailingly stupid statements like that--as if hundreds of thousands of Iraqis weren't scared to cooperate with American soldiers out of fear that the man in the hole might return to power--and the Dean campaign could succeed in frightening even Iowa Democratic caucus-goers.
Pardon me while I recede Mickey's hairline a bit more.
The Dean campaign rep who said this was talking about domestic security...and was exactly right. Domestically speaking, the war in Iraq, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the purported "flypaper" strategy - none of them have increased America's security. You might complain about the timing, or perhaps the focus on the "wrong" thing since it's coming from a Democrat (a Slate specialty), but the statement is in no way "flailingly stupid".
If you thought this was possible, you're lying your ass off.
Anyway, for the first time since, I believe, the beginning of the Iraq war, Glenn Reynolds has posted something resembling an original thought. To celebrate this auspicious occasion, I'll save you from having to read it.
Shorter Instapundit: 9/11 was probably preventable, but Democrats would have fucked it up anyway.
Wow. I feel...tingly. And a little bit dirty.
Shameless whoring plug: Reward our original thought with the PayPal button on the left. I really do feel dirty now...heh. Indeed.
AS A REPUBLICAN, I wonder - is anyone else getting every Adam Yoshida blog entry e-mailed to them?
And can anyone explain to me why the Canadian Cuckoo thinks I want to read his horseshit? I'm not going to link to him. I'm not going to take him seriously. If he gets sympathy from other righty bloggers for coming under attack from us despicable liberals, then that just goes to show that his fucked-in-the-headness isn't constrained to his section of Canadiastan.
Yoshida, why do you pretend I care?!?
Sadly, No! shows you exactly what you're getting for your dollar over at the Daily Dish.
I suppose I should have given this the Garrison Keillor Award, based on something Keillor said five years ago as a throwaway comment...but I have some dignity.
If I could be allowed a blatant plug for a second, my good friend Kevin Thurman has returned to the blogging world with Battlegrounds and Ballot Boxes. He's one of the sharpest commentators out there, particularly on the intersection of internet activism and traditional organizing, unions, and Californian politics. Check him out.
When Atrios writes like Nedra Pickler today, he fails to mention that a poster on Yahoo! Sports' message boards didn't start off his day's posting with jubilation over Saddam's capture, instead preferring to talk about the NFC North race.
Other critics on the message boards pointed out that although the poster, ILikesDaVikes84, raised many points about the weaknesses of the Green Bay Packers' quarterback, Brett Favre, this season, he failed to discuss Roger Clemens' impending move to the Houston Astros.
Discount Blogger, who apparently got the discount on tact and decency says that my hoping Bush won't screw up Iraq before next July means that I'm hoping Bush will screw up in Iraq.
Apparently, his secret knowledge of thoughts I wasn't thinking overrides what I actually said. My arcane powers of discerning rightist thought lead me to believe that he thinks we should all die in a bloody mess of mangled corpses for disagreeing with him...am I right? What do I win?
You mean that wasn't what he was saying? But...I can...no? But that would mean I can't just make up what other people are saying because it makes it easier to attack them! GODDAMMIT!
I guess thinking about the war in Iraq outside of certain people's prescripted boundaries is sacrilege. Eh.
The Bear writes:
...
Using your weblog to hack Google like this is like using a master's paintbrush to scrawl obscene graphiti on the bathroom wall. Sure, you can do it, but aren't there better uses for the instrument?
Blogs aren't a master's paintbrush, they are a toddler's chewed up crayon. Some people can make beautiful works of art out of a couple of chewed up crayons, but most don't, and we shouldn't overstate the nobility of our medium.
Update: Check out Roger Ailes substantive counter-argument.
Okay - Poor Man is doing the Greatest Instapundit Posts of 2003. Wampum is doing the Koufax Awards (vote Pandagon!). I already did the Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003.
So, with that, let's have the Worst Conservative Blog Posts of 2003. Nominations in comments. The only rules are that you can't include traditional op-eds, and you can't include the one blog entry on Ann Coulter's Human Events Online "blog". That was a blog like Neil Bush is STD-free.
Go read World O'Crap's dissection of Christopher Hitchen. Charles Krauthammer wishes he could analyze this good.
