Also, in case I hadn't made this clear earlier, I believe all children should eat. This stance, I should note, is one that Glenn Reynolds has never bothered to espouse.
That's the way they think, isn't it?
I wish I could stop getting mad about this sort of thing.
Nor Michael Ledeen, for that matter. I can only assume that they believe either that children should starve or that they photosynthesize.
The Greenwald & Edroso "more rubble, less trouble" quotes are sort of funny in this context, where by "funny" I mean "completely ridiculous."
2 -- Do you pay any serious attention to the rantings of (apparently) mentally ill street people? Have these blog writers that make you mad ever shown any more credibility, or intellectual rigor in their analyses?
The double standard is taking raving lunatics seriously because they can (if they want) use sentences with correct grammar.
Nu, we should be surprised to see them advocating genocide in words, when their actions have supported genocide around the world for the past 60 years?
In all seriousness, Labs, why do you try to engage these people? If they're writing in bad faith, what's the point--they'll just purposely misconstrue any response you make. If they aren't writing in bad faith, it's even less clear what the point could be. Their "common priors" are sufficiently different from yours that there is no reason to believe that your response will be intelligible to them.
Charley, you racist, you just refuse to take their agency seriously. You think Reynolds is some kind of untermenschen because he's white, don't you?
Tim, I honestly don't know. It's like an addiction. Even just taking the posts I've blogged about here as evidence, I'm firmly convinced that this is either rank intellectual dishonesty or intentional chain-jerking, and neither of those is worth wasting time on. Yet I always give in.
At the risk of inflaming ogged (for using an analogy) and JM (for using an analogy to childrearing), I'll tell a little story. So I'm in a restaurant, and reprimand my son for a minor etiquette infraction. He points to an adult, of different race, two tables over doing exactly the thing for which I reprimanded him. Why do I not reprimand the adult? I am (a) unconcerned with etiquette, but just used it as an excuse to reprimand him because I hate him; (b) racist, because I think the adult is 'incapable' of behaving politely; or (c) a hypocrite, because in fact the continuing infraction by the adult is much worse than the now-ended conduct of my son.
I ban myself.
I hope your son presented you with (a)-(c).
Is anyone else a bit confused by rating the "morality" of weapons based on the rate at which the chemical reactions produce damages or their route of administration? WMDs are indiscriminate and choking on chlorine isn't pleasant but I'm not getting the morality issue. What does Randy C. say about this?
(An old prof of mine once said the Geneva Convention signers prohibited expanding bullets simply so they could get their troops to fight. The wounds are too messy otherwise, they'll make even an eighteen year-old think twice about the glory of combat.)
What does Randy C. say about this?
He says take it to the ground and go for the submission.
10: Mockery ready for warp speed, sir!
Engage!
15: There's no room for morality in the octagon.
No one needs to apologize for losing their temper at someone who's stupid, malevolent and influential, or for being upset by them. In our world quite reasonable leftists are marginalized like street people, and obnoxious morons are at the centers of power.
CharleyCarp, I'm impervious to your analogous powers. Or I don't get your analogy. Or something. I deem you off-topically anecdotal and unbanned.
[unbanning self]
18 -- When someone's influence is directly a function of how much attention is paid to them, paying attention to people who are stupid and malevolent is counter-productive. I hate to sound like an unhinged 'nut complaining about Pelosi talking to Assad, and it's different because he's a player whether we want him to be one or not. GR is beneath the attention of anyone serious about anything. Like Drudge -- except that Drudge is, to my mind, more honest (and maybe more self-aware -- I'm not sure how much of GR's wankery is malevolent, and how much is simply gross negligence, but of course it doesn't matter) about what he's doing.
paying attention to people who are stupid and malevolent is counter-productive.
'Zactly. Pretending obviously bad arguments are something more--something that needs to be refuted or at least something that deserves a considered response--is harmful, both on the specific matter at issue, and for future debates. It's not much different than pretending Fox is just another news service that occasionally makes mistakes.
It just doesn't work that way. These people have to be confronted because they're influential. It's terribly painful to realize that, to all intents and purposes, we live in their world and they don't live in ours. But that's the truth.
They won't go away just because we ignore them. This might change two years from now, but at the moment Limbaugh, Reynolds, and Malkin are the normal Americans, and we're the freaks.
Rank intellectual dishonesty and/or frank idiocy is my guess.
That said, clearly the proper response to things that we find morally unacceptable is to bomb the people responsible. Let's declare war on the wingnuts.
When someone's influence is directly a function of how much attention is paid to them, paying attention to people who are stupid and malevolent is counter-productive.
I don't think this is right. "Paying attention" isn't a content-neutral sort of thing: "paying attention" by saying "note that this popular blogger, is, yet again, full of it" is different from linking with approval and has, I suspect, a different sort of effect on someone's influence. I don't think anything that happens here matters, but it just doesn't seem like the sort of thing that Reynolds does, in this post and elsewhere, should be allowed to slide without comment.
I'm always stymied how to contemplate a social discussiong when one group is prone to outrageous over-generalizations, and the other tries very carefully to speak accurately.
I don't think anything that happens here matters
Gasp! I suppose you'd say that we're just "wasting" our time here? Well, I think the parents of those brave young men and women who've given their lives for Unfogged would disagree with you, mister man!
It's terribly painful to realize that, to all intents and purposes, we live in their world and they don't live in ours. But that's the truth.
I disagree. We don't live in their world, and they don't live in ours. To the extent possible, we ought to aim at minimizing their effect in our world. Engagement of stupid arguments doesn't blunt the effect; it opens the door to them, and invites them in. Or put it this way: as you note, we've ignored the dirty hippies for a long time. Has that yielded greater influence? The strongest response I would find credible is "Maybe."
brave young men and women who've given their lives for Unfogged
If tomorrow all the things were gone
I'd worked for all my life,
And I had to start again
with just my children and my wife,
I'd thank my lucky stars
to be blogging here today,
'Cause the blog still stands for pedantry
and they can't take that away.
I'm proud to be an Unfoggedian
where w-lfs-n still corrects me,
And I won't forget Bob and Unf who died
who gave that right to me,
And I gladly stand up next to Labs
and defend her still today,
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this blog
God Bless Unfogged, fuckin' A.
From Emerson in Minnesota
to Apo in Dixie,
All the commenters in Texas
and Ogged's one good kidney.
From the Flophouse up in DC
and wherever Bitch lives today,
There's pride in every Unfogged heart
and it's time we stand and say:
I'm proud to be an Unfoggedian
where everybody is twee,
And I won't forget Bob and Unf who died
and gave that right to me,
And I gladly stand up behind you
At the Mineshaft still today,
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this blog
God Bless Unfogged, fuckin' A.
Salon's being bitchy about the same post.
For the record, I think the "ignore it and it'll go away" argument is silly.
Oh, and Apo's song is funny. Painful, because that fucking tune is now going through my head, but funny.
Oops, here's that salon link I failed to post earlier.
While they controlled the government we lived in their world. For six years their control was absolute. This meant that we went to war if they wanted us to, they spent our tax money, they represented us to the world, etc. etc.
This is a pretty interesting question. It used to be that Reynolds was widely read by liberals and conservatives and journalists, so if you saw something objectionable on his site, you could write a refutation that you hoped would be picked up by one of the big liberal bloggers, or write to Reynolds himself, and he'd often post the objection in an update. That all seemed worthwhile when the audience wasn't so polarized and ghetto-ized. Now, only wingnuts and people who like to see what latest outrage Glenn has perpetrated read him, and he doesn't have a reputation as a fair analyst, so it's not clear what use there is in engaging with him since he's essentially a right-wing talking points hack, and the talking-points arguments are being handled by folks like Atrios, Media Matters, etc.
That said, it's still interesting to see what the hackocracy is up to, and if you have relevant expertise on a topic being discussed, it can be worthwhile to write something that might be picked up by bigger bloggers.
One and two-thirds, apostropher, one and two-thirds.
A partial kidney is not a *good* kidney, Ogged. Definitely admirable, in the same way that the special ed kids marching at graduation are, but not good.
Oh, Unfogged will be served and the battle will rage:
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage.
An' you'll be sorry that you messed with the Unfogged, fucking A.
'Cos we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the Amerifogged way.
Hey, Uncle Ogged put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Bitcherty started shaking her fist.
And the Apo will fly and it's gonna be hell,
When you hear Mother Fontana start ringing her bell.
And it'll feel like the whole wide w-lfs-n is raining down on you.
Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and Lizardbreath.
Apo, are you saying that the special ed kids aren't good? So typical of progressives, pretending to care but failing to hold everyone to the same moral standards just because of skin color or mental disability.
Apo, are you saying that the special ed kids aren't good
Special ed kids are delicious.
I'm not too impressed with either of Ogged's kidneys, to be quite frank. I haven't said so up until now only because of the exquisite tact for which I am famous.
It is time that every commenter ask him or herself: how best can I honor the sacrifices of the Bob and Unf who went before?
42: No baby-eating jokes on Easter, you anti-semite.
Moreover, I'm holding special ed kids to the same moral standards applied to, say, the jocks and the goths.
There are several blogs (e.g. Volokh) such that I became happier when I quit reading them.
Might I suggest that Instapundit might be such a blog for you, FL?
It's not that if you ignore GR he will go away, exactly, any more than ignoring Drudge means he'll go away. Or Limbaugh. The question is whether there's any mileage in engaging, or paying any attention to any of them.
My point is that anyone who wouldn't waste time listening to Limbaugh (a set which includes most anyone reading these words, I imagine) shouldn't feel like they have to read GR. Much less refute GR.
Emerson, I understand your point. I've never thought, though, that GR, or AA to pick another, are influential enough for us to say that we live in their world. They are, at most, cocks crowing in the gloaming. Drudge, and to a greater extent, Limbaugh, are far more influential.
I would listen to Limbaugh if he didn't have so many damned commercials.
49: Dear God, why? Oppo research can't be important enough to sacrifice brain cells that way.
Commercials disfigure Air America and syndicated liberal talk too: I'm always switching away because of them. And what is with all the hosts doing ads for gold purchases? It's not like touting something harmless like adjustable firmness mattresses.
12: Or d), that you're correcting your kid because he's your kid and having him not violate etiquette is part of raising him, whereas the etiquette-violator over at the other table isn't your responsibility, and it's kind of obnoxious to correct a grown person you don't even know. Wait, what was your point again?
29: Josh WILL NOT STOP singing that. I'm packing him up on a plane and sending him to YOUR house, Apo.
50.--Horrified fascination? He really is kind of astonishing, in his way.
JM, megadittoes. But why does Rush use that huge reverb effect on his voice? If I were him, I'd go with a warmer, more intimate sound-- he's got such a great voice, but I think the production could take better advantage of it.
I wonder how well he hears himself now?
Read transcripts of his show some time. It's one thing to listen to it, but when you see it written out, he really is almost completely incoherent.
52 -- From my son's perspective, (d) just isn't all that satisfying, now is it.
54 -- To each her own, I guess. I stand corrected.
Reading the transcripts is a completely different exercise, though, apo. Limbaugh uses his voice to sooth over those logical incoherencies: a beat change here, a drop in register there, a little laugh to bring the listeners back. It bears no relationship to the truth or even to logic, but it's really very artfully done.
59: That's the substitution of personality for reasoning. (Rhetoricians call this "ethos", I think -- establishing yourself as a credible, persuasive individual). Along with it there is the substitution of "intuition" for reasons, as in personal journalism. TV and talk radio seem to magnify this. "Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?" is an example.
One thing conservatives have succeeded in doing is to persuade the public to refuse credibility to thoughtful, well-informed, educated people. That's the caricature of the liberal, a sort of laughingstock -- so much so that a tweedy guy who speaks in a fussy academic way is sometimes assumed to be liberal (for example, Bill Schneider on CNN, who's actually a centrist but "represents" liberals by seeming like one).
Populism and demagogy rely on the "ethos" of the leader, and the ultimate outcome of this is the fascist cult of personality, and we're partway there.
58 - No, really, JM has it right in 59. He really is a gifted radio performer. It's a shame his sportscaster career died stillborn, because he really understands and commands the medium in a way that most of the people on Air America didn't, based on the few A.A. shows I listened to.
59: Honestly, I don't hear the soothing. Every so often I get trapped listening to Rush, and every time I wonder how I manage to maintain my sanity. A couple of minutes of that shit and I'm just screaming inside.
I believe I've mentioned here before that there was a short period when I was a kid when I used to watch Limbaugh's TV show. He really is a good showman.
And on Emerson's tip in 60, I had a personal epiphany was reading Howie Kurtz describe Limbaugh as "harsh but fair" when he was spending his hour of hate demonizing Tom Daschle every day. I had read the Daily Howler before, and I was familiar with FAIR (largely from their continuous barreled-fish shooting of that smirking ass John Stossel), but that was I think the moment in which I realized that no, the Post's media critic wasn't actually interested in critiquing the media. Discovering that Kurtz's wife was a Republican political consultant sealed the deal.
One of the houses I lived in in college was near an AM radio transmission tower. The signal would bleed through into our phone line, so whatever the station was broadcasting we'd have to listen to when making phone calls. My housemates had called out the phone company to have the line shielded, but it didn't help. So for the four or five months I lived there, I never made a phone call when Rush's show was on.
Limbaugh's "ethos" appeals only to people whose itch he scratches: above all, anti-intellectual liberal-haters with money. (People reallyget his audience wrong: it's not mostly poor white trash. Here in Minnesota the Limbaugh-trending Congressional district, Bachman's, is a prosperous exurban district.)
thoughtful, well-informed, educated people That was the laughable "Egghead" way back when, right? He's always eventually out-smarted by the ordinary Joe or Jill.
Reason is a thin layer. Emotional states are primary and the right knows how to play those.
This shit is like crack to me. NZ Bear:
But Pelosi, Reid, and Murtha have now doubled down. By actively opposing the surge --- the only strategy available that has even a chance of improving the outcome --- they have now aligned their political fortunes completely with failure for our forces in Iraq. President Bush has never had a choice in this matter: his political legacy has always been directly correlated with the degree of success we achieved in the war. But now the Democratic leadership has chosen to align their party's own political fortunes with the opposite proposition. It is not simply that Democrats will look better the worse things get in Iraq (which was always the case). Now, because of their opposition to the surge strategy, Democrats will also look worse in direct correlation with how much better things get in Iraq. The only way for the Democrats to win politically in the run-up to the 2008 election is for the surge --- and our entire effort in Iraq --- to fail.
This is very, very bad. It is one thing to have an opposition party (call them "loyal" or not) who is actively opposing the particular strategies that the administration in power is taking to achieve victory for America's goals. It is quite another thing entirely when the opposition becomes fully and totally invested in failure. That is the choice that the Democratic leadership has made, and regardless of what the outcome in Iraq and in the 2008 elections turn out to be, the country is worse off because of it.
Magpie, Josh, you just didn't listen for long enough!
it's not mostly poor white trash. Here in Minnesota the Limbaugh-trending Congressional district, Bachman's, is a prosperous exurban district.
So you're saying we're wrong about "poor," is that it?
That's the substitution of personality for reasoning.
This strikes me as wrong. It seems to me that Dems/liberals/the overeducated often pretend that there is a coherent, robust, well-defined, and generally applicable worldview out there that you can drop new situations into which will yield "solutions" or "the right answer." The reason people employ a "beer test" is because they are looking for an agent to manage their government, and they think (probably rightly) that while they may not be very good at sorting out issues in specialized fields of knowledge, they are pretty good at figuring out who is Their Kind. The behavior you describe strikes me as pretty rational.
Ok, Michael Ledeen.
How the fuck much have you been screaming lately about the hideous repression that Ethiopia's been visiting on its own citizens? Oh, I forget! They are Islamofascist fighters. So they can throw people in jail and torture them for disagreeing with the goverment because they're on the right side.
And yes, terrorists I denounce you. Chemical weapons = bad. When I have I said otherwise? When has anyone said otherwise except dumbshits that no one cares two hoots about?
Me = 1. Repression-apologetic scumbag neocon "democratic revolutionaries" = less than zero.
Oh yeah, I forgot to note the accurate-but-misleading "weapons of mass destruction" claim regarding use of the 19th century technology of TNT and the WWI technology of chlorine gas (if bleach and ammonia are outlawed, only outlaws will have chlorine gas). The phrase "WMD" coulda-shoulda-woulda been a huge rhetorical win for the administration, given the callow ineptitude of circa-2002 reporting.
Richmond carries Beck, Hannity, Rush, and Savage. I used to listen and get outraged at the lies and misinformation. Then, I just stopped listening to the garbage. I've never read GR for the same reason.
I am just surprised that he is still a law professor.
The Wikipedia article on chlorine gas has a picture of it trapped in a plastic Evian bottle leaning up against a floorboard. I guess it's not all that difficult to make.
Rational in what sense, Tim? Has their method of choosing One of Their Kind to make the big decisions worked, even at their level?
Bush is not Their Kind -- he's in the top .1%. At best, he's who they wish they were, and he promises that he'll help them become like him, but he's lying. Billions of dollars are spent keeping these folks deceived.
Choosing "the right kind of person" is OK if it's done right, but the beer test isn't the way to do it, especially when the process is being stage-managed in the media.
76: Nope. Like Snarkout said, you can make it in the comfort of your own home with a some bleach (drain cleaner, too) and ammonia. However, the comfort is fleeting.
Chlorine gas, a WMD? Ha! When I made sandwiches for a living, the dullest of my coworkers would often disregard both the packaging of the respective cleaners and firm warnings from the manager and mix bleach and ammonia during the dishwashing process, and none of them ever keeled over. Maybe if these Iraqis were made of sterner stuff, they wouldn't fall prey to these so-called WMD attacks.
It's my understanding that industrial chlorine is widely available in Iraq -- it's used in large quantities for water purification, apparently. The bombers don't have to make it.
Also, the 'ignore them and they'll go away' argument seems completely wrong. These people effectively run your country or at least exert a significant influence upon it.
70: Are you suggesting that the blinding, blinding rage and HATE fade after a few minutes' exposure? I'm guessing not so much.
79: It's important to chant "I want to live!"
I hear that Mark Twain exaggerated sometimes too. Yet people still call him a great author.
51: It's not the commercials that are holding Air America back -- I guess they've changed their lineup since I stopped driving regularly, but Al Franken was about the only one of them I could stand to listen to for more than about 5 minutes.
I'm with Emerson in thinking that the Limbaugh/Reynolds types need to be confronted. And I'm with FL in thinking that anyone who takes up the task does so at some risk to mental health. I'm grateful for Greenwald, but I worry about him.
anyone who wouldn't waste time listening to Limbaugh (a set which includes most anyone reading these words, I imagine) shouldn't feel like they have to read GR. Much less refute GR.
Well, I ignore the lot of 'em. I just think it's for the good that someone is policing the dumbasses.
Bush is not Their Kind -- he's in the top .1%. At best, he's who they wish they were, and he promises that he'll help them become like him
That's sort of the reverse of what I mean: he presents himself as the sort of person that they would be like if they had his X, Y, and Z. Sadly, I don't think that's a deception, or inaccurate.
But do you enthusiastically support an agenda of invading and occupying Muslim nations in order to stand against these Islamofacist terrorists? That's what really distinguishes anti-racist people, the willingness to invade, kill, and conquer!
You know, just like we would bomb and invade Britain if somebody did something nasty over there. No double standards!
OK, but he's skinning them on the basis of some kind of fantasy they have. Bush's main success has been tax cuts, and in the long run they will only benefit a thin slice at the top. So I don't see how it's rational for them to use the beer test; it sounds like silly, destructive fantasy.
Thinking you're "in on the game" is a pretty big mistake.
Just because a test like the beer test doesn't pan out doesn't mean you were totally irrational to have used it.
89: So your complaint is he doesn't improve their material conditions? Give me a break. First, heebie's point. Second, the issue is "does as I would do if I were in his position," not "helps me out." Maybe they are or would be complete dicks; having an executive whose actions are comprehensible to you is a good in itself. Third, they may value other things than their income stream. Given the way wages move in most fields--cf LB's claims about the income rich working poor, or whatever her term was--it might be much more valuable to you to get action in some other area, like enforcement of morality you like, etc.
I have a feeling I just walked into some Pol Sci argument that was already underway and was assigned one of the sides.
No, Tim, my "main complaint" is that these people got flimflammed up, down, and sideways. Everything their beer buddy did was a disaster one way or another. I didn't spell it out in exhaustive detail.
I fail to see how it's rational to vote for an incompetent fraud who will lead you into a disastrous war and who's conning you with unrealistic hopes of getting rich just because a concerted multi-billion dollar media effort has made him seem like a guy you'd like to have a beer with, when he isn't really that either. (Im confident that he was a mean drunk, especially with his inferiors). You would have to work very hard to construct a customized definition or "rationality" to fit under that stupidity.
If you mean "forgivable" or "understandable" or "might work under some circumstances, just not this time", I suppose I could agree.
But the whole Rove / major media deception machine is geared to people who think of themselves as intuitive, and who think that they can judge character by the application of the beer test to canned media images. Rove wins and the beer test assholes lose; it's really no contest, the deck is stacked that way. It's evolutionary deception in action, I suppose, the parasite enslaving the prey.
I wish I could figure out a non-insulting way to say that a decision or decisions were made irrationally. I'm very confident that I'm smarter than most, and better informed than most, and I make irrational decisions all the time: actually collecting evidence and reasoning through a decision is often too much work, and irrational rules of thumb like 'who would I like to have a beer with' work pretty well in a lot of contexts. I drag out actually getting rational about stuff when rules of thumb break down or start giving me bad results.
But pointing this out -- that other people are making irrational decisions that are also importantly bad ones -- turns into an argument about whether you despise them for it or think you're better than they are. Being irrational isn't unusual or sinful or a sign of being stupid or lowclass or ill-educated; it's just that when you do have occasion to check your irrational decisions against a rational thought process, you should be willing to change them.
The weirdest thing for me about the whole "who would you rather have a beer with" thing, is that I woulda rather had a beer with Gore or with Kerry. I have never understood W's visceral appeal for people - he's always struck me as a doofus with nothing useful, or even entertaining, to contribute.
But then again, I'm leaving this comment on unfogged and not redstate, so I guess that shows how out-of-touch I am.
Gender gap: Bush is NOT a guy you'd want to serve a beer to. You'd sort of expect bullying, practical jokes, and a small tip.
94: Agreed. I don't get why people think smirky spoiled white guys seem like good company, but, hey.
96. We've never met, B. You'll change your mind.
He'd make a lesbian out of you, too. His smirky, white-boy sexual power is so great as that..
Bush is NOT a guy you'd want to serve a beer to.
You're mistaken. I'd love to *serve* Bush a beer, because then I'd get the pleasure of watching him take a big slug of beer cut 50% with my urine.
Hey, anything's possible. I'm starting to appreciate and get along with my cousin, even.
You're mistaken. I'd love to *serve* Bush a beer
Even better would be to order an Exorcist from him.
I want urine involved somehow, M/tch.
Well, you could piss your pants laughing after you pull it off . . . .
"pull it off" is perhaps an unfortunate choice of phrase.
I just meant that "it" doesn't agree in number with "pants", B.
It's harder to piss your pants after you take them off. At that point you might as well just look around for something else to piss.
At that point you might as well just look around for something else to piss.
Great way to get arrested. Fortunately, mugshots stop at chest/shoulder level.