by Charles
I just love a good mystery, and Eric Scheie at Classical Values has almost too much fun (starting here and following up here) tracking down the identity of oft-quoted George Harleigh, said to be a retired political science professor from Southern Illinois University. Problem is, there is no evidence that the man exists. The "reporter" who used Mr. Harleigh as a source is Doug Thompson from Capitol Hill Blue. Interestingly, Thompson has been furiously trying to wipe all references of Harleigh from his website, but there remain caches where Harleigh’s name still lives.
Thompson was chumped three years ago by an "intelligence consultant" source (Terrance J. Wilkinson) who allegedly had close ties to the CIA. As a result, his explosive story on Bush and uranium fizzled. Looks like Thompson still hasn’t learned his lesson. I have a hazy recollection of Thompson back in the late 1990s when I was reading freerepublic. He struck me as somewhere on the Buchanan-Raimondo-Rockwell axis (which would be an odd axis), but I could be mistaken.
Today’s other mystery involves the five sock puppets (allegedly) who were haunting Glenn Greenwald’s two IP addresses. Ace, Patterico (follow-up here), Dan Riehl and Jeff Goldstein found characters such as Ellison, Wilson, Thomas Ellers, Sam Mathews and Ryan who had not only written from the same IP addresses as Greenwald, but all are remarkably like-minded. Ellers made multiple appearances at QandO defending Greenwald and attacking his critics. As Riehl noted, "Ryan" even had an e-mail exchange with Greenwald (sort of like me in the living room e-mailing my son in the playroom perhaps?). Greenwald denies that it was he who wrote under those synonyms, but left unsaid was whether he was aware of these pseudonyms operating under his roof. [Update: Actually, he did say refer to "those in the same household" and that "others have left comments", so I take it that he did know. So, for sock puppetry not to have occurred, four Americans (judging by the syntax) were in his house in Brazil, each of them making highly similar comments. The mystery deepens.] Using my keen powers of deduction, there are several possibilities:
- Greenwald is not being truthful.
- Brazil (where Greenwald happens to live most of the time) has an unusual "party line" IP system, where multiple Internet users can all access the same IP. Not only that, those Brazil-residing users with English surnames are all big fans of Greenwald and have a thorough working knowledge of his bio.
- The right-of-center bloggers conspiratorially colluded, forging the IP to make it look like sock puppetry was taking place.
- Greenwald lives in a sort of commune and all these commenters really do exist, each having nearly disturbingly similar opinions of both Mr. Greenwald and his detractors.
- His live-in partner was the sock puppet master.
The mystery is still unsolved, but my best guess is that it was the Partner in the Brazil House with the Keyboard.
I have another theory:
It doesn’t matter if GG has used sockpuppets in the past because that issue is clearly an attempt to change the subject away from the idiot filled and venomous right leaning blogs.
I personally don’t give a damn about the he-said she-said crosslinking blog posts feigning shock and disgust at the morally bankrupt NYT / Supreme Court. It is all done to drive pageviews. Who. Cares. If anything it reveals the utter hypocrisy of the emotion-driven and self fellating blogs like protein wisdom. What a revelation.
But an attempt to smear GG over using pseudonyms on the internet (oh the humanity!) is completely stupid. It is obviously an attack on him for pushing this non-story. Don’t be fooled by the pointless details, look at the big picture on this.
As Patterico has said over and over, it’s not the pseudonyms, it’s the sock puppetry, the practice of dishonestly creating fictional characters to bolster your side and criticize the other. See John Lott and Mary Rosh.
I was pretty mystified by the various attacks on Glenn — like this one, which as far as I can tell comes up with basically nothing. (So he spends time in Brazil: this is important why? So some of his book comes from his blog: this is non-standard how?) And repelled by the stuff about his sexual orientation. I’m with you on the mystery of the IP addresses, which strikes me as equally unimportant.
Hmm.
I should say: it’s unimportant if your assumption (partner w/keyboard) is correct, and not that important if it was Greenwald. — I always thought that part of the joke with Lott was that he was not a particularly good scholar, and it fit in with that that he would have fictitious people springing to his defense. I would not have bothered laughing if, say, Einstein had defended relativity with sock puppets: his work would speak for itself.
I’m not meaning to draw analogies between Greenwald and either of these people, of course.
The case against “George Harleigh,” and thus Doug Thompson, seems pretty compelling and (if so) disgraceful. How hard would it be – impossible, I suppose – to “unpick” all the untruths that originated with this unjournalist? Yecch. I’d like my utter contempt for GWB to be rooted in reality, not contaminated by the inventions of someone who apparently believes we need to imagine even more evidence against him.
On Greenwald and the alleged sockpuppetry, I’m at this stage more bemused than shocked. Maybe all will become clear later. It does seem as if GG’s enemies have tried to throw everything they can against him (gay! Brazil-lover!! LAWYER!!! what will they think of next?), hoping that something would stick, which is not generally a sound strategy for those seeking Truth, rather than Truthiness. But that, alas, is a routine byproduct of the adversarial system of justice/politics/younameit under which we all live, so I won’t hang that on you.
And CB – having just called for your ouster from ObWi, it is only fitting that I acknowledge this as an interesting and a civil post, snide only to the point of humor. More like this, without the gratuitous offensiveness of certain previous posts, would cause me to reverse my verdict. (If anyone were paying attention to my opinion.) (Which AFAIK they’re not.) So, even if it means little or nothing to you, I say: well done.
This is much better. No treason, no shooting, just a plain old flame-war, and with factual assertions. Thank you.
That said, I think the preponderance of evidence is pretty clear (particularly after looking at that QandO thread!) that your partner conjecture is correct. Which makes me wonder how sock puppetry enters into it. I think in order for something to qualify as sock puppetry you have to post in defense of yourself using multiple aliases in a single context, no? This is a non-Glenn-Greenwald person who is using different pseudonyms in different contexts… Whether that’s good netiquette is debatable, but I don’t think it’s sock puppetry.
Ignoring the fact that the various accusers IP-based sleuthing is unverifiable, how does this statement:
Other than a 9 month period after college when I lived in Europe, I’ve lived in the United States my entire life. My partner is Brazilian and is a citizen of Brazil. Revealingly, American law prevents the recognition of our relationship as a ground for him to live in the United States, while Brazilian law recognizes same-sex relationships for visa and immigration purposes. As a result, for the past year, I have spent substantial time in Brazil while also having a residence in New York.
square with your claim that Greenwald “spends most of his time” in Brazil?
He doesn’t define substantial — could be 3 months or less — but “most of” makes me wonder how we writes as prolifically, how his book came together so quickly, and how he managed a book tour.
I wonder if these budding Hardy Boys are the same ones who defended Michelle Maglalang about how posts were made while she was physically unable to post (ie, on the tv)? The timestamps of posts are verifiable, unlike server log entries, yet it was a big deal when questions were raised about who was posting on Our Lady of the Internment Camps’ website.
FWIW I would find it difficult to credit a sockpuppeteer. If it turns out to be Greenwald I’ll probably stop reading him; if I were his partner and had posted under multiple names (not socking incidentally I think, but not something I approve of) I would say so stat to protect Glenn’s rep. I believe Glenn’s denial and can understand why he wouldn’t say “that was my better half”.
dr ngo: it is only fitting that I acknowledge this as an interesting and a civil post, snide only to the point of humor. More like this, without the gratuitous offensiveness of certain previous posts, would cause me to reverse my verdict.
rilkefan: FWIW I would find it difficult to credit a sockpuppeteer. If it turns out to be Greenwald I’ll probably stop reading him;
Being of an agreeable temperament — see, Slarti, it’s working already! — I basically agree with all of the above.
Brazil (where Greenwald happens to live most of the time) has an unusual “party line” IP system, where multiple Internet users can all access the same IP. Not only that, those Brazil-residing users with English surnames are all big fans of Greenwald and have a thorough working knowledge of his bio.
Or, as multiple people in Glenn’s comments pointed out and you (and the troll class on the thread) cheerfully ignored (your own post on Glenn’s comment thread came after three separate people pointed this out), the IP in question is a 16-bit class C router IP, most likely a commercial router owned by Greenwald’s ISP in Brazil, and therefore it’s entirely possible that tens of thousands of people (if not more) could be tracked back to that IP.
(I also note that thus far one of the supposed sockpuppets posted from a different Brazilian IP. But that’s horribly inconvenient to this whole sockpuppet theory.)
In any case, Greenwald has stated firmly that he isn’t sockpuppeting, and frankly, why shouldn’t we take him at his word? He doesn’t need to create an illusion of popularity; he’s one of the most influential bloggers on the Web. He has a bestselling nonfiction book on the Times bestseller list, for crissake. He routinely posts in comment threads under his own name, is meticulous about updating his own posts for corrective purposes, and cites to an extent that’s almost anal-retentive.
There’s no need for him to sockpuppet, his behaviour and conduct indicates someone unlikely to sockpuppet, and he says he doesn’t sockpuppet. Furthermore, the “evidence” laughingly provided by the Unusual Gang of Idiots doesn’t actually, you know, prove anything. So I say PFAH to your deductive powers, Charles. Pfah and piffle, even.
Greenwald’s really got them flustered, hasn’t he? Poor darlings.
“(I also note that thus far one of the supposed sockpuppets posted from a different Brazilian IP. But that’s horribly inconvenient to this whole sockpuppet theory.)”
I don’t see that – compare the Lott story, where several locations were involved.
Of course one should identify emphemeral handles praising Greenwald and list their IPs – if a preponderance come from Brazil, that would be surprising. Of course there’s probably a community there with bloggers (or blog commenters) sympathetic to him – that would be a simple explanation for the IP overlap.
“Greenwald’s really got them flustered, hasn’t he? Poor darlings.”
If the poster in question were, uhh, Jeff Goldstein (not vaguely comparable, I know), I can imagine the fun the Jane Hamshers of the left would have with him (though they’d surely be more careful about the alternate explanation).
This is waaaaay too inside baseball for me. 🙂
So let me see if I’m keeping up adequately. Yesterday, Mr. Charles Bird called for the summary execution of Jane Fonda and Noam Chomsky.
Today, Mr. Bird gives vent to rather easily-debunked ravings of the rightwing Nutosphere.
And there he is, on the front page of Obsidian Wings!
I think I know all I need to know about this site. Have a nice weekend.
Don’t get caught committing thoughtcrime, sedition, or treason!
Stickler, if it’s so easily debunked, perhasp you could link to an argument against the first story?
As for the second, I’d read Greenwald’s account of it, and the comments as of this afternoon. Charles’s guess 5 is the one that had jumped out at me as well. I don’t personally think it’s a big deal — it’s a bit embarrassing, admittedly, but it should not (imo) affect his readership too much. When Greenwald makes an argument, he typically links directly to a post; his identity or even his honesty isn’t as relevant. (Contrast this to Lott — the Mary Rosh incident is very minor; the only way in which it matters at all, although not much, is the charges against Lott are about his honesty).
George Harleigh, RIP
A cyber-construct outlives his journalistic usefulness. A veritable quote machine, he will be missed by many. From the Capitol Hill News FAQ: “We insist that every story published on Blue have at least two independent, verifiable sources for any and…
George Harleigh, RIP
A cyber-construct outlives his journalistic usefulness. A veritable quote machine, he will be missed by many. From the Capitol Hill News FAQ: “We insist that every story published on Blue have at least two independent, verifiable sources for any and…
Well, I’m with stickler. Charles has committed the biggest writing offense of all — he is consistently boring. Because I like ObWi, I’ll just add a filter for his posts in my news reader. I can always peruse Red State if I ever miss him.
How is this relevant?
Greenwald’s posts are without exception well crafted and well sourced. I would love to read a conservative voice likewise dedicated to civil discourse. Unfortunately, most of them are too juvenile and suffer from power illusion.
I admire Greenwald’s stamina in reading all these corked utterings and even engaging them in debate (and trying to help escaping from groupthink).
Again, even if this accusation holds, how does this compare to the routine misdemeanors of his accusers? Do they police their own behaviour as vigorously?
For those calling themselves Christians, consider Luke 6,41-42: “Why do you see the speck of chaff that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye? Or how can you tell your brother,’Brother, let me remove the speck of chaff that is in your eye,’ when you yourself don’t see the beam that is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck of chaff that is in your brother’s eye.”
Stop! Stop, will you?! Stop that! Stop it! Now, look! No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say ‘Jehovah’.
Excellent image for the current state of the blogosphere, Jes.
Unfortunately, the demented virtual stonings (or swiftboatings) have real consequences.
No, no. Look. This shed business — it doesn’t really matter. The sheds aren’t important. A few friends call me Two Sheds and that’s all there is to it. I wish you’d ask me about the music. Everybody talks about the sheds. They’ve got it out of proportion — I’m a composer. I’m going to get rid of the shed. I’m fed up with it!
I walked out with Scheie on many occasions and found him a charming and erudite companion. He was wont to introduce one to eminent celebrities, celebrated American singers, members of the aristocracy and other gang leaders, who he had met through his work for charities. He took a warm interest in Boys’ Clubs, Sailors’ Homes, Choristers’ Associations and the Grenadier Guards.
Mind you there was nothing unusual about him. I should say not. Except, that
Scheie was convinced that he was being watched by a giant hedgehog whom he referred to as ‘Spiny Glenn’. Normally Spiny Glenn was wont to be about twelve feet from snout to tail, but when Scheie was depressed Glenn could be anything up to eight hundred yards long. When Glenn was about Scheie would go very quiet and start wobbling and his nose would swell up and his teeth would move about and he’d get very violent and claim that he’d laid George W. Bush.
I see Phil’s gotten into the spirit of it. Bravo, Phil!
Me, I don’t care. If Greenwald were someone I read and admired, I’d probably care a bit more. If he were someone whose blog were, for instance, read aloud in congress…oh, wait.
No, really. Greenwald’s stuff is all very interesting, I’m sure, but he lards it with so very much broad-brush ad hominems of anyone who might harbor any leanings to the right that…well, imagine Charles sprouting some legal scholarship, and you might consider why Greenwald simply rubs me the wrong way. Apologies to both parties for the comparison.
Perhaps a better example would be to imagine Dale Brown writing treatises on law and government, with all the cute and self-congratulatory crap that he slathers on his military-adventure novels. Or did, last time I bothered to pick one up, which was over a decade ago.
I think this is only of interest to the extent that Greenwald’s reputation is self-inflated. And, again, neither his reputation nor what he’s got to say from its summit are of much import as far as I’m concerned. His sexual orientation is, of course, entirely irrelevant.
Compare and contrast style with that of Katherine, for instance, and you might have an indication of why I’m not his biggest fan.
What, are you saying Scheie nailed your head to the telly?
Look, this is still funny, but realize that after a couple of more rounds it’s going to have gotten rather old and potentially annoying.
Look, this is still funny, but realize that after a couple of more rounds it’s going to have gotten rather old and potentially annoying.
No, really? Gosh.
Oh, sorry. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine you sought to increase your nuisance value.
Slarti, to spell it out:
Yes, I know that repeating a joke too often means it stops being funny. Turning every single Charles Bird thread into a Monty Python thread would eventually stop being funny, long before the Monty Python quote mine ran out. (We could, of course, talk about the Beatles. Or John Thullen’s done sterling work on HoCB talking about baseball.)
But Bird Dog’s brand of right-wing rantage has long since gotten rather old and more than potentially annoying. Yet you defend keeping him around to make Anarch a better person. Clearly (using good Golgafrincham logic) the Monty Python quotes on Charles’ threads would make you a better person.
Of course, in my opinion both you and Anarch are fine just as you are.
Which was, ironically, a joke. A joke I keep making on one occasion.
I suppose I’m going to have to resort to emoticons. That might get annoying, but think of how edifying it will be to your character.
Slarti: I suppose I’m going to have to resort to emoticons. That might get annoying, but think of how edifying it will be to your character.
It looks like I need to use emoticons more often, too.
😀
i promise to give a crap about Greenwald’s sock puppetry as soon as Goldstein makes his final d!ck slap threat.
No, I think you’ve edified my character quite enough.
8p
why not see the monty python thread-jack as a sort of filibuster by the back-benchers?
A particularly odious minister has been censured by a majority of the members, but insists on rising to speak, even when it is manifestly unwelcome.
I don’t see a filibuster as an unreasonable response.
I suppose it hardly needs to be pointed out that Greenwald’s popularity, influence and success are precisely the reasons WIngnut Blogistan is flogging this non-story for all it’s worth.
Greenwald really has Righty Blogostan’s panties in a bunch. I find it funny that Lefty bloggers can rip apart Charles Bird’s arguments without having to resort to personal attacks, but Righty bloggers (including Charles) have to resort to looking up Greenwald’s IP addresses, law licences and resume in order to answer his arguments. Why do you suppose that is Charles?
Greenwald’s posts are almost always excellent. He provides cites with links. His reasoning is excellent. His writing is persuasive.
That is why I chose to read his site consistently.
I could care less if he was an uneducated felon in prison if his writing is excellent, well-sourced, and persuasive.
I also do not care who claps for him or who criticizes him if his writing is excellent, well-sourced, and persuasive.
I have also never found myself wondering what his law school grades were or where he lives or what his sexual orientation was.
Perhaps some people are just more persuaded when they know what kind of sex someone is having or where they live.
…the IP in question is a 16-bit class C router IP, most likely a commercial router owned by Greenwald’s ISP in Brazil…
This seems like a particularly relevant piece of information, which pretty much destroys the IP coincidences’ evidentiary value.
A lot of this IP tracing BS has more than a whiff of CSI-wannabe to it. It is strongly reminiscent of script kiddies and Kewl Warez Dudes from the early days of the internet, the kind of strutting and posturing teenagers who milk their limited skills to pose as 1337 #@kz0r2, not realizing that no hacker worth her bandwidth would waste time on that kind of silly BS.
Greenwald’s posts are almost always excellent. He provides cites with links. His reasoning is excellent. His writing is persuasive.
exactly. and that’s why BD spent most of his post discussing those very points! right?
I’m not tired of the Monty Python yet.
But if this keeps up, my niche at Obsidian Wings will have been infringed upon and I may need to resort to being rational, sober, and, dare I say, erudite. And think of the linking, I beseech all of you! And then Gary Farber will not be asked to vacate his apartment every time his landlord hears him throwing his keyboard against the wall and yelling “I’ve told Thullen umpteen times about the HTML guide!” And then Sebastian will be compelled to don the funny nose and eyebrows.
Everyone return to their originally-assigned roles.
As one who grew up in a family who to this day at, say, Thanksgiving dinners, can ask each other to please pass the salt in a tone of voice that really says “I’m going to cut out your spleen with the butter knife,” let me just say that I have no problem with Charles posting here, nor do I have any problem with Phil letting him have it, nor do I have a problem with Tacitus doing his thing from time to time. Nor do I have a problem with folks stalking off in a huff. And then coming back for one more word.
Like my mother, who would on occasion pick up her fully loaded plate and utensils and with great dignity vacate her seat at the dinner table and like Miss Havisham, sweep out of the dining room and retire to her bathroom, slamming the door behind her, to eat in peace.
Even though she started it.
As John Lennon said: “I think women should be obscene and not heard”.
Not that I believe that. I think women and men should be obscene and as vocally opiniated as they please.
ask each other to please pass the salt in a tone of voice that really says “I’m going to cut out your spleen with the butter knife,”
This is marvelous, mind if I steal it? (The rest of your comment is marvelous as well, of course, just not quite as likely to find immediate practical application in my own life).
So Glenn Greenwald’s partner made various comments under different names. WOOOOOOOOO! How scandalous! Now I just can’t trust anything Greenwald says anymore. I mean, his arguments are still cogent and compelling, but – dear god! – his boyfriend has violated blog netiquette, which calls everything he’s written into question. I also hear Glenn’s mom writes in all caps! DUNH-DUNH-DUNNNNNH!
Option six: the IP isn’t his IP, but is instead the IP of the ISP who serves him and other customers by using a NAT.
I administer a network of some 200 computers. They are all NAT’d – Network Address Translated – and so from outside all appear to have the same IP address. There are several smaller ISPs here in the US who use this technique as well as it saves money – buy one or two or so addresses on the net, but serve hundreds of customers.
When listing options, it’s silly to ignore the ones that are in normal play.
Thullen’s obviously got his Lennonism and Marxism all switcheroo.
Sure.
McCartney: “When in doubt, steal.”
GG denies having used sockpuppets. Does it matter whether he’s telling the truth, or is lying just another right vs. left issue nowadays?
xrlq: does it matter? It depends for what purpose. I would think less of Glenn if he had lied. I would not stop reading him, however, because when I read his posts, I’m not taking what he says on faith. He links to what he writes about, and I read his links whenever the argument turns on them.
That said, nothing I’ve seen so far makes me think that he has lied.
It matters because as Dan Riehl persuasively argues, “Greenwald’s image was manufactured by the ideologically driven liberal money machine behind his book’s publication”
And:
“There is evidence below of a larger effort to prop up both the book and his image as part of an orchestrated campaign to elevate his visibility and status and ensure that his anti-Bush punditry was picked up on by the MSM at a critical time.”
In short his PR image is that of a political centrist and a working lawyer in NY. He is being groomed as a pundit. He is being cited as a Constitutional Law expert.
Dan makes a pretty convincing case that in reality he lives out of the country most of the time, may have exaggerated his work experience (or at least let misconceptions stand), has no obvious qualifications as an expert on constitutional law, and is far from centrist.
The book is primarily to give him credibility beyond the blogosphere, to get him on TV and in front of the media. His persona has been manufactured and polished by liberal activists with money. Of course the right side of the ‘sphere is going to use this occasion to challenge his credibility.
I administer a network of some 200 computers. They are all NAT’d – Network Address Translated – and so from outside all appear to have the same IP address.
True – but then we still have to believe that there are a half dozen Brazilians, all using the same ISP, and all big GG fans willing to rise to his defense using the same phrases and writing style all in perfect English.
Of course the right side of the ‘sphere is going to use this occasion to challenge his credibility.
Because they can’t challenge his arguments. Typical.
“Brazilians… in perfect English”
The “bad English” thing keeps coming up, and it really leaves me baffled. Have these people never actually met someone from a foreign country? Are they unaware of the fact that there are many, many, many foreign nationals who speak English with far greater fluency than the average American?
jeezus–
You mean Greenwald is only a lawyer with experience on first amendment cases, but he isn’t a recognized authority on Constitutional interpretation?
That’s appalling.
Next we’re going to find out that George Will doesn’t really have a PhD in Economics.
Or that Bill O’Reilly is not widely cited by military historians.
Or that Rush Limbaugh doesn’t actually have a degree in pharmacology. (Well…practical experience is something, I suppose).
Look: actually *knowing* anything has never, ever, been considered to be a prerequisite for being a right-wing pundit. Indeed, to judge by the utter morons and ignoramuses who emerge, it seems to be a disqualification.
So don’t tell me that you have a problem with Greenwald writing on Con Law, where he only knows quite a lot, but perhaps not as much as Marty Lederman.
Because the general comparison between what right-wing pundits know about *anything* they talk about, and what Greenwald knows about the subjects he talks about, is–jeezus, I don’t even know what to–
wait: it’s like comparing what Chris Muir knows about Kant to what hilzoy knows. Okay?
OCSteve: I read Riehl’s piece, and I couldn’t find any argument for this claim: “Greenwald’s image was manufactured by the ideologically driven liberal money machine behind his book’s publication.” (Unless it just means something like: the people who put it out also put out press releases.)
Glenn Greenwald’s image comes from his blog, not from the ‘liberal money machine’. Likewise, the blog seems to have driven the book’s success — last time I checked, it had received very little in the way of reviews, advance publicity, etc., and what MSM publicity it got was of the ‘heavens, how did this book get to be no. 1 on the Amazon chart when no one we know was paying attention to it?’ variety. (I.e., treating the book as a curiosity, not a book.)
Since I couldn’t see why Riehl thought that (a) the image he referred to existed; (b) that it had been “crafted” by anyone, or (c) that it mattered, I wasn’t sure what the point of saying things like: hey, he spends a lot of time in Brazil! was supposed to be.
It matters because as Dan Riehl persuasively argues, “Greenwald’s image was manufactured by the ideologically driven liberal money machine behind his book’s publication”
i’m not going to bother looking up the Latin name for this logical fallacy.
“There is evidence below of a larger effort to prop up both the book and his image as part of an orchestrated campaign to elevate his visibility and status and ensure that his anti-Bush punditry was picked up on by the MSM at a critical time.”
…or this one. or any of the others.
do you have anything that’s actually about what he writes, or is everything some kind of ad hominem variation attacking Glenn himself ?
but then we still have to believe that there are a half dozen Brazilians, all using the same ISP, and all big GG fans willing to rise to his defense using the same phrases and writing style all in perfect English
and this relates to what he writes, how ?
uh–for those of us who didn’t grow up on usenet.
What’s a sock puppet?
In particular, am I sock puppeting every time I don’t sign my own name?
Or only if I don’t sign my name and refer to myself in the third person?
(Does it matter whether I refer to myself in the third person to attack myself or defend myself? Is one of those more sock-puppetty than the other?)
Or only if I sign one name to some really stupid arguments so that I can sign another name to a devastating take-down of them? (But then isn’t that more straw-man-ing?)
Since I don’t really understand what it takes to be guilty of sock puppetry, I don’t really know how heinous to think it is.
I don’t understand why it matters how much of Greenwald’s time is spent in the US and how much in Brazil, and I certainly don’t understand how being in Brazil would in any way impede his writing, publishing a book, or planning a book tour. There’s this thing called the Internet that makes it possible for people to communicate with geography being pretty irrelevant, especially when there’s not a big time zone difference.
KCinDC:
What are you stupid or something?
Everyone knows that you have to be on United States soil and having sex with women to have any valid opinion about anything related to being a red, white, and blue United States citizen!
I’ve heard that the conservative-controled Congress is rushing to pass vital legislation requiring all writers to disclose the physical location where they wrote their piece.
From the Encyclopedia Dramatica sock puppet entry:
From wikipedia:
In particular, am I sock puppeting every time I don’t sign my own name?
If it turned out that Macallan was actually the same person as Tacitus, Macallan would be a sock puppet. If it turns out that they are two different people but their legal names are not, in fact, Tacitus or Macallan, they are not sock puppets.
Everyone knows that you have to be on United States soil and having sex with women to have any valid opinion about anything related to being a red, white, and blue United States citizen!
That’s woman and you have to be married to her, and “you” have to be male.
Christmas: Are they unaware of the fact that there are many, many, many foreign nationals who speak English with far greater fluency than the average American?
*waves*
What’s a sock puppet?
it’s when you secretly invent an online identity then use that identify to praise your real self, to make it look like you have real support.
It’s when you take a sock, sew on buttons for eyes…
cleek–
whew.
since I have never expressed any praise for my real self, nor made any attempt to make it look as though I have real support, I am innocent of sock-puppetry.
you can’t imagine what a relief this is. It means I still retain credibility in the eyes of the wingnuts arrayed against Greenwald.
I was so worried that I wouldn’t meet their exacting standards of ethical on-line conduct.
So, why don’t these blogs just ban GG’s IP address from their comments sections, if they are convinced someone there has violated the blogs’ express or implied posting rules? That’s their prerogative, and that would be the appropriate response to such behavior. Problem solved!
Why all the melodrama? What else am I missing?
Ugh, are you saying Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter, Peggy Noonan, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh fail to meet the official right-wing standards for punditry?
It’s really touching to see several commenters speculating on the likelihood that there might be completely unrelated Brazilian Greenwald-supporters leaving similar comments on blogs that Greenwald reads, due to how IP addresses are assigned. But even Greenwald himself doesn’t stoop to alleging this such an extremely improbable event — his post admits that “others” in his “household” made the posts in question. The only question is whether THAT explanation was true, or whether it was actually Greenwald himself.
Sock, we will need to know whether you are having vigorous heterosexual sex and that you spend all of your time in the United States.
We also need to make sure that you are not corrupted with any actual thought.
“his post admits that “others” in his “household” made the posts in question. The only question is whether THAT explanation was true, or whether it was actually Greenwald himself.”
I would think that many chickenhawk right wing bloggers might be sensitive to this issue as their mommies and daddies or siblings might use their computers as well.
In short his PR image is that of a political centrist and a working lawyer in NY.
As Greenwald points out, his blog says “For the past 10 years, I was a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges, civil rights cases, and corporate and securities fraud matters.” (Emphasis added.) That is: Used to be a working lawyer, isn’t any more. It has said this for as long as I’ve been reading it.
but but but
If I claim it was “vigorous”, I’m afraid that would count as praising myself!
Can I ask Mrs. Sock Puppet to answer that question instead?
Dear? Would you mind stepping up to the keyboard?
Oh for —-‘s sake. Did you ever try to get it on with an empty tube of threadbare cotton? Let’s just say–his elastic’s shot. He sags down to the ankles. If that’s vigorous, then–
Thank you, dear, I think that’s quite enough!
But I do spend all my time here in the States!
Truly sophisticated sock puppetry involves creating both supporter and opponent puppets. I know of cases where puppeteers were running 6-8 puppets with distinct, Turing-test-passing personalities, and up to *hundreds* of puppets who basically stood in the backround and said “Yay!” or “Boo!” And these were in situations where no-one was being paid to do anything.
I have yet to see the “Glenn Greenwald practices puppetry!” case laid out in sufficient detail and clarity that I can judge what’s going on, who might be the puppeteer(s), and why. I would be surprised if the comments section of his blog isn’t infested with puppets serving various masters, and just because they agree with him doesn’t mean he’s running them.
GG himself does not fit the profile of a puppeteer: he’s met too many people in RL, for one thing. If there *is* a puppeteer and that person *is* in Brazil, the chances are that it’s GG’s partner or a friend of theirs, trying to be helpful.
It would be interesting, if we hadn’t seen it happen so many times before, to see the right-wing wingnut technique of abstracting a few words that can be used to prove a point from a quote, and ignoring the fact that the full quote actually reverses the point the right-wing blogger wants to make. We saw this happen with Eason Jordan, with John Kerry, with Joseph Wilson: it’s essentially how conservative Christians read their Bible, ignoring all the stuff about rich people who don’t care for the poor going to hell and focussing on a few obscure verses which can be interpreted to mean that God doesn’t like gay sex.
This is the full quote from Glenn Greenwald, whose blog isn’t on my regular reading list: “Not frequently, I leave comments at blogs which criticize or respond to something I have written. I always, in every single instance, use my own name when doing so. I have never left a single comment at any other blog using any name other than my own, at least not since I began blogging. IP addresses signify the Internet account one uses, not any one individual. Those in the same household have the same IP address. In response to the personal attacks that have been oozing forth these last couple of weeks, others have left comments responding to them and correcting the factual inaccuracies, as have I. In each case when I did, I have used my own name.”
Only truly tortured thinking could twist this into an admission. The best I can get out of it is that it’s a possible admission that Greenwald’s partner also comments on blogs, and would do so from the same IP address. Given the router system in use in Brazil, there could be several thousand people posting from the same IP address, and if Greenwald’s partner does not want his screen name “outed”, it would be disloyal of Greenwald to do so.
But, given how common truly tortured thinking is in the right-wing blogosphere, I think Greenwald should probably just have ignored the whole screaming mess as unfit for intelligent comment. Which it surely is.
Are they unaware of the fact that there are many, many, many foreign nationals who speak English with far greater fluency than the average American?
Believe it or not, there are even native English speakers who live, or spend time , in Brazil!
And some of them even live, or spend time, with OTHER English speakers who live, or spend time , in Brazil!
Guess these right wing bloggers never heard of the phenomenon of “expat community”!
“Are they unaware of the fact that there are many, many, many foreign nationals who speak English with far greater fluency than the average American?”
They are unaware.
This reminds me of the thought that we know God favors the United States above all others because he wrote the Bible in English.
will: that reminds me in turn of the story of a very proper, very arch Proper Bostonian, sometime around the turn of the century, who started studying Hebrew when she was around 90. When asked why, she replied that she was preparing to meet her maker, and wished to be able to address Him in His native tongue.
(I love the sentiment, so let’s not point out that the only member of the trinity who could possibly have a native tongue was not a native Hebrew speaker.)
The whole “shock” that Greenwald might actually know people in Brazil who are as articulate and can type in “American” English, and that as carib stated, might be part of an “expat” cliche is very disheartening. Or that these people would know his history and qualifications.
It is a very sad state of affairs when the supposed bright lights of the right wing community do not stop and think what they are saying.
Them furrinners…they can’t speak American!
As for some of the bright lights, now they’ve decided that calling GG id GiGi is the height of sophisticaton. Or referring to him as “her”. Not to mention the now deleted “fagboy” post. Which I saved on to a word document. (16 pages worth). Yes, more examples of the right wing discussing the issues.
This does feel very Usenet…and just as childish.
This reminds me of the thought that we know God favors the United States above all others because he wrote the Bible in English.
I love that line, especially the two-fer: as if God wrote it in english; and as if the U.S. invented english.
it’s essentially how conservative Christians read their Bible, ignoring all the stuff about rich people who don’t care for the poor going to hell and focussing on a few obscure verses which can be interpreted to mean that God doesn’t like gay sex.
I recall reading somewhere that the modern “Conservative Christian” movement has all but abandoned the teachings of the new testament, other than belief in Jesus’ existence (though not what he said), and has essentially become hellfire and brimstone old testament types. Rang true to me.
“It matters because as Dan Riehl persuasively argues, “Greenwald’s image was manufactured by the ideologically driven liberal money machine behind his book’s publication”
Uhh, Steve: are we to take this comment, then, that you somehow disapprove of a blogger (or lawyer, or plain citizen, for that matter) trying to make money by selling their political (or legal) opinions on that “free market” (which of course, includes publishers) so beloved of conservatives?
Or do you think that Glenn Greenwald ought to emulate the example of such altruistic pundits like Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin, who provide their opinions to the public free-of-charge without ANY considerations of making money from, say, selling books?
[/snark]
Jay C: I am also still waiting for an explanation of that ‘persuasive argument’. I read Riehl’s post several times, and I couldn’t find it.
All of this can be summed up by reference to the old lawyer saying:
“When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law.
When both are against you, attack the plaintiff.”
If there’s any more stock film of women applauding, I’ll clear the court.
Shorter OCSteve: “The Democrats are stealing all of our most successful ideas, therefore those ideas are now bad ones. Can someone please change all the signs to read ‘Eurasia’?”
You are hereby charged that on the 28th day of May, 1970, you did willfully, unlawfully, and with malice of forethought, publish an alleged English-Hungarian phrase book with intent to cause a breach of the peace. How do you plead?
Wingnut foreign policy menu:
GWB: Well, there’s egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and war; egg bacon and war; egg bacon sausage and war; war bacon sausage and war; war egg war war bacon and war; war sausage war war bacon war tomato and war;
Right-wing blogosphere: war war war war war…
GWB: …war war egg and war; war war war war war war baked beans war war war…
Right-wing blogosphere: War! Lovely war! Lovely war!
GWB: …or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and war.
Reasonble people: Have you got anything without war?
GWB: Well, there’s war egg sausage and war, that’s not got much war in it.
Reasonable people: I don’t want ANY war!
…
hmm…
filibustering via Monty Python:
sillybustering?
I suppose this is almost completely irrelevant, but there did exist a civil back-and-forth between Greenwald and Goldstein, once upon a time, in which points made by either party were addressed by their respective opponent.
Then Glenn posted this. Relevant passage:
Links not relevant to the conflict omitted because I’m lazy. And emphasis mine.
In response to which Jeff posted this.
And then the donneybrook began. Just to underscore that this was the breaking point, here‘s Jeff’s previous post addressing Greenwald. It was preceded by about a dozen civil exchanges, each of which addressed actual points that Greenwald was making.
Slarti – I do notice that when Greenwald talks specifically about Bush supporters, as opposed to the administration, he throws in a lot of specifically targeted incendiary rhetoric that could be turned off and still make the same point (I think he defended this at QandO at one point saying he did so to motivate people). When he gets away from the administration’s misdeeds, I find him less convincing.
I think it was after the second or third post of Greenwald’s that did that sort of thing, in an escalating fashion, that Jeff just decided he wasn’t worth serious treatment.
Dunno if that’s the right explanation, but it’s pretty clear that there was some withering-away of civil discussion. It wasn’t all at once.
Ah, right-wing blogosphere imitates Monty Python spam comment, recommended diary on redstate right now:
Umm…you have no recommendations at present?
Oops, after the colon above should be:
We Better Get Ready to Kill a Few Million People.
that Jeff just decided he wasn’t worth serious treatment
no doubt the feeling is mutual
“I do notice that when Greenwald talks specifically about Bush supporters, as opposed to the administration, he throws in a lot of specifically targeted incendiary rhetoric that could be turned off and still make the same point”
Lesson learned about that by all of us on the “A Way Out in the Israel-Islamist Battle in South Lebanon” post I hope.
And no, I certainly don’t recommend it, just that its recommended by redstate readers.
Jeff just decided he wasn’t worth serious treatment.
Does anyone get such treatment from Goldstein?
Exactly.
My Exactly above was supposed to be in response to Sebastian.
Greenwald got quite a lot of serious treatment from Goldstein up until the point where he started with the rhetorical willy-pete. I’ve linked one of them. Would you like links to the rest?
sorry–
is anyone here denying that Bush *is* the subject of a creepy personality cult?
And has Goldstein ever been able to masquerade as a reasonable person for *more* than a dozen exchanges before going ballistic?
Would you like links to the rest?
Nah, I take it back.
Oh, goodness.
Thank you, Slartibartfast. That first link to Protein Wisdom (again not a blog I read regularly) treated me to this mordantly funny comment from Jeff:
I honestly don’t think I’ve read anything so funny since, well, the last Monty Python sketch.
is anyone here denying that Bush *is* the subject of a creepy personality cult?
first rule of Creepy Bush Personality Cult: there is no Creepy Bush Personality Cult.
Oh, he might be. What that’s got to do with anything relevant is still a little cloudy for me, though.
I have no idea; if you’re keeping score, please share.
Rule One: No Poofters! Rule Two, no member of the faculty is to maltreat the Abos in any way at all — if there’s anybody watching. Rule Three: No Poofters!! Rule Four, now this term, I don’t want to catch anybody not drinking. Rule Five: No Poofters! Rule Six, there is NO … Rule Six. Rule Seven: No Poofters!!
What that’s got to do with anything relevant is still a little cloudy for me, though.
you bolded it in the passage you quoted. clearly you think it’s relevant to something.
I bolded the authoritarian cult? Then clearly, it exists!
“Just to underscore that this was the breaking point, here’s Jeff’s previous post addressing Greenwald. It was preceded by about a dozen civil exchanges…”
“I have no idea; if you’re keeping score, please share.”
you were the one keeping score; clearly you think it’s relevant to something.
Slart: “I bolded the authoritarian cult? Then clearly, it exists!”
Hmm, that sounds a great deal like something Mac would write…
I bolded the authoritarian cult? Then clearly, it exists!
sadly, i think your ability to type exceeded your ability to read.
you were the one keeping score; clearly you think it’s relevant to something
Just noting that there was a change in behavior, and that change was actually prompted by…something. Something I’ve already mentioned.
sadly, i think your ability to type exceeded your ability to read
I have no idea what you mean by this. If you have a point, having it make itself isn’t working.
Hmm, that sounds a great deal like something Mac would write…
You’ve caught me out; I’ve always been a sock for Mac.
The “actually believe” link should apparently go to this Goldstein post, for what it’s worth. Greenwald made a typo in the URL, or possibly Goldstein changed his URLs at some point.
Slarti,
I know you’ve been hanging around Goldstein’s site, so you are more aware of what’s been going on there. However, the links you gave in your 1:51 don’t go to any comments made by Glenn. While the posts may be respectful back and forth, you peel back and look at the comments, you’ve got Jeff going on like, well, a typical stereotype of a wingnut, I’m afraid. Now, perhaps I’m biased because of all those examples of slapping with a specific part of the anatomy, and the fact that what’s his name who came over here and got banned (and you pulled the trigger, I believe) for raging at Hilzoy, took up residence at PW comments and not only made a number of unflattering references to Hilzoy, but also had a particular animus towards you. But I’d suggest that arguing that Jeff’s posts represent a time when things were calm and reasoned when you have comments like this and this is not really a meaningful argument.
My impression is that Jeff wants to have it both ways. He wants to be able to claim the mantel of thoughtful commentor on the political scene, but then engage in all of the yuk yuk, mine is longer than yours humor. As much as I think that people do (and should) have different facets of their personality, at some point, the discontinuity becomes too great to ignore.
I also have to gently note that you have been particularly bad at remembering particulars of disagreements here, so I’m wondering if your memory of those exchanges is influenced by the fact that you have been a long standing member of the commentariat over at PW.
Looking at preview, KC suggests that there was a mistake in linking. I would also note that if Glenn commented in PW, all of those comments have been scrubbed. This does not speak well to assertions of a desire for honest debate.
I have no idea what you mean by this
i know. and honestly, it’s not worth explaining it all.
okay, I know this is hard, but try to focus.
You proposed that Greenwald’s post was the cause of Goldstein’s going ballistic.
I offered an alternative explanation: that Goldstein always goes ballistic, and that the root cause is his own internal instability. What Greenwald said might be at most a triggering cause–if Goldstein hadn’t gone off his nut after exchange 12, it would have happened after exchange 13.
I made this proposal in the form of a rhetorical question, by asking whether Goldstein had ever been able to pretend to be normal for more than a dozen exchanges.
You countered by pretending that you never count exchanges,
I pointed out that in fact it was you who had begun by counting exchanges in your original post blaming Goldstein’s behavior on Greenwald.
Now, in reply to this, you say that “there was a change in behavior, and that change was actually prompted by…something”.
Good, you’re doing very well. Now we’re back to the original question:
What was that something? Was Goldstein’s break really caused by Greenwald’s post, as you first alleged, or would it have equally been caused by the next air current, or by the mere extended strain of trying to pretend to be normal?
You say it’s all the fault of that uncivil Greenwald. I say it’s the fault of Goldstein’s own inevitable instability. And we haven’t advanced from that starting point.
Got that?
Greenwald’s posts are without exception well crafted and well sourced. I would love to read a conservative voice likewise dedicated to civil discourse. Unfortunately, most of them are too juvenile and suffer from power illusion.
That includes Charles, as demonstrated by this post, since he echoes this nonsense.
Does Charles have any comment on what started this contoversy — righties having a hissy-fit because Greenwald documented rather clearly the wasteland of rightwing blogs? No — Charles goes for the ad hominem. Rest assured that if anyone now cites a Greenwald observation, no matter how cogent, Charles will snear about sockpuppetry and dismiss it.
I’m not going from memory, LJ. I searched Jeff’s site for mentions of Greenwald, and they come out chronologically. Which is a cool feature; wish ours worked like that.
Now witness their attempts to fly from tree to tree. Notice that they do not so much fly as… plummet.
“Hmm, that sounds a great deal like something Mac would write…”
Slarti, I wouldn’t take that insult if I were you.
Don’t you people still have posting rules?
Oh, I got that part, “why”, I just don’t get how your assertion that it’s all because Jeff’s an unstable fellow ought to be taken at face value.
Me, I just offered that there is in fact some history, there. If you can point to an air current that might have set Jeff off in that way, please do. And provide links, because I like to click them.
Mac: “Don’t you people still have posting rules?”
“No silly jokes at Slart‘s expense” got deleted when Earth_1 and Earth_2 (re?)combined to make thread #foo consistent with – ahh, whatever, someone with the requisite cultural knowledge can complete this.
Actually, silly jokes at Slart’s expense is now compulsory.
Yes, I just bought myself another twelve hours of respite from the pain chip implanted in my brain.
“Don’t you people still have posting rules?”
Nope.
I’m not going from memory, LJ.
I disagree on this. Just because you are finding posts thru a search function does not mean that you are not selecting them according to some objective truth value, but according to how you perceive what went down. If you want to view the exchanges as a cross blog conversation, you have to look at the other posts and comments Jeff was putting up or else you are going to be victimized by selection bias.
Let me give an example from my own experience so as to take any accusatory tone off. I worked in an NPO in Japan that perennially had money problems, and the officers (of which I was one) set out some steps to try and come up with a more reasoned idea of how to budget. One of the members took great umbrage at the suggestions because they involved and sparked a huge online debate about the philosophical basis of the budget proposals. After the officers had resigned in disgust, and pieces were being picked up, this person accidentally posted a private message to a list that basically said ‘we have no idea how long those officers had their hand in the till, but I know we have enough money to make things work’. The fact that this person believed this (and you’ll have to take my word that there were no hands in the till, unless it was to clear the dust that had accumulated in it) meant that any argument offered would have been meaningless to him. When Jeff says ‘it’s all a game to these people’ and continues to participate, it means that you can’t take what he says at face value because, well, all’s fair.
Again, I haven’t followed this closely, but I haven’t seen Glenn do anything but cite and link comments that have been made. He hasn’t scrubbed comments, he hasn’t rewritten posts, he hasn’t outed people after signing an online petition promising not to.
I hesitate to post this because there has been enough harshness here to last for quite a bit. But it’s my feeling that by finding the posts that seem to portray a reasoned Jeff Goldstein, it is overlooking a whole swathe of other writings on the same blog. It also overlooks the rhetoric that Goldstein deploys in his posts where he accuses various groups of various sins, yet carefully deploys quotation marks to distance himself from the true implications of those remarks. To take two from the link you gave, JG says
yet again imputing to “Bush supporters” the kind of bad faith he seems determined to practice in his own lengthy posts
which suggests that when GG says ‘bush supporters’ he doesn’t really mean it, he means, well every person who doesn’t agree with his politics.
and this
Just because Tbogg and his fellow travelers in the legacy media don’t believe we’re truly at war doesn’t mean we aren’t.
Jeff prides himself on being hip to literary theory and such, so he would have less of an out than Charles when he deploys phrases like ‘fellow travelers’. Add to that his comments (which the search does not bring up) and his behavior, I don’t see how claiming GG has somehow started something. Of course, YMMV, but that’s just what I see from following the back and forth.
Again, apologies if this seems too critical, I will let you have the last word.
He hasn’t scrubbed comments
IIRC, he does delete inappropriate comments. you can sometimes find replies and references to comments that don’t exist anymore. but i don’t think he deletes his own, or that he deletes garden-variety disagreements (he’d be pretty busy with that job) – i’m pretty sure the things he deletes are waaaay over the line (at least based on the referencing comments).
just clarifying…
Actually, silly jokes at Slart’s expense is now compulsory.
Aw, you take all the fun out of things.
I don’t think the mistake was really important. I just pointed it out in case anyone else clicked on the “actually believe” link and was puzzled to end up at the Protein Wisdom front page. The reason is a missing question mark in the URL. But Slart included a link (from “this”) to the same post under a different URL, and when LJ followed that (presumably) and picked out comments, the comment permalinks used the correct, question-mark-ful URL.
But enough of this gay banter.
seconding what cleek said:
Over months of reading Unclaimed Territory, I’ve noticed that Glenn Greenwald rarely deletes comments himself (and then, only the real whoppers or obvious spam). I’ve noticed though, that since the Blogspot comments function lets comment-posters delete their own comments, the threads often get sprinkled with blanks, reading “This post has been deleted by its author”. Ones with “This post has been deleted by Blog Administrator” are quite rare
(but will proabably, alas, become more common in the future).
I’m with you on the mystery of the IP addresses, which strikes me as equally unimportant.
Agreed, Hil, it’s pretty small beer.
I’ll be reading and responding to the rest of the comments tomorrow.
To me, Glenn G. is a good writer and a very sharp thinker who is genuinely disturbed by some of what he sees on the right. And what he’s disturbed by — the frequency with which death threats, charges of conspiracy, etc., are bandied about — are genuinely disturbing. I’ve seen him be sharp, but never in a way I thought was over the line.
Jeff G., on the other hand — well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but the Tristero and the dog episode convinced me (unprofessional though I am) that there’s something profoundly off about him. (Had I known about the, um, dick slap stuff, I would probably have drawn the same conclusion from that, though the Tristero episode had a more disturbing ‘where on earth did that come from?) feel to it.) I mean, he seems to me to live over the line I haven’t seen Glenn cross. Plus, unlike Glenn, he often talks about things he really doesn’t know about.
For what my opinion is worth.
Outside the Beltway has an explanation for the so-called sockpuppet comments which supposedly originated from Glenn’s computer. The explanation is written in computerese so I didn’t understand it and reproduce it but it had something to do with errors in IP addresses due to taking a laptop to foreign parts and using their hookups.
Charles has got the right wing passive aggressive thing down. He is joining in the rightwing attempt to bully and discredit Glenn while pretending he isn’t. Just up a few comments he says that the IP address thing is “small beer”. So why did he write about it? To make it big beer, of course. And why make the small beer big? Because Glenn is right.
Speaking of profoundly off, when I read everyday stuff like this I think the same thing:
Macallan, when I said that you are like a stream of bat’s piss, I only mean that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around it is dark.
My native turf in cyberspace is one that has considerable documented experience with sockpuppetry (much more, for instance, that is available at Wikipedia.)
Do those of you whose principle cyber-residence is the political blogosphere think you-all would benefit from a Field Guide to Sock Puppets?
I’m asking because on the one hand, there are online communities with great depth of knowledge about this problem, a problem I suspect of being very widespread on political blogs. On the other hand, that depth of knowledge comes from painful, deeply embarrassing experience, and I don’t want to drag those communities’ dirty laundry out into the mud of the political blogosphere unless it’s going to do some actual good.
uh…right.
Because noting that many Republicans don’t think laws passed by Congress apply to Bush,
and observing that many Republicans have called for criminal proceedings against the NYT,
and reminding us of the number of times those opposed to the war have been called traitors,
is really a lot like fantasizing about sodomizing dogs and claiming to have molested children.
right. Very similar.
Dr. Science–
personally speaking, I think that reference to “dirty laundry” was just uncalled for.
Your Majesty is like a dose of clap.
not: right. Very similar.
Mine was pithier.
Charles, do you intend to devote further effort to posts about “small beer”?
that the Leader has the right to act above the law because he is good
take a look at the right’s reaction to Janet Reno and her investigation of Clinton compared to their reaction to the revelation that Bush personally nixed the DOJ investigation into the NSA.
is it pure partisan politics, or is it the belief that what Bush is doing is right and that he deservesto be allowed to continue doing it, oversight be damned?
that journalists who publish stories embarrassing to the Commander-in-Chief are criminals
you can’t have any argument with that.
that those who are opposed to the war in Iraq are seditious extremists
or that.
even though most Americans hold that view
the polls tend to agree with the author.
and whose rage and inadequacies drive them to seek more and more war as the only solution they desire or recognize to every external and even domestic conflict.
that’s exaggerated, no doubt.
but take a sampling of the leading righty blogs and mdeia, and it’s hard to deny that WAR!! (“faster please”) isn’t a conclusion they seem to enjoy jumping to.
oh sure.
yours was pithier. his is shinier. hers doubles as an mp3 player. everyone’s is better than mine.
it’s unfair.
“Charles, do you intend to devote further effort to posts about “small beer”?”
People post about all sorts of things. I found this particular beer distasteful but interesting.
Slarti said:
I’m sure, but he lards it with so very much broad-brush ad hominems of anyone who might harbor any leanings to the right that…well, imagine Charles sprouting some legal scholarship, and you might consider why Greenwald simply rubs me the wrong way. Apologies to both parties for the comparison.
This is false.
As Slarti admits that he/she doesn’t read Greenwald, how does he/she know.
You’re obviously not a liar, so sloppy should do the trick.
that journalists who publish stories embarrassing to the Commander-in-Chief are criminals
“you can’t have any argument with that.”
The counterclaim is of course that the stories in question are bad because they harm the country somehow or other (while incidentally embarrassing Bush).
The counterclaim is of course that the stories in question are bad because they harm the country somehow or other
and the counterclaim to that is that nobody has any proof of such a thing.
Slarti said:
I’m sure, but he lards it with so very much broad-brush ad hominems of anyone who might harbor any leanings to the right that…well, imagine Charles sprouting some legal scholarship, and you might consider why Greenwald simply rubs me the wrong way. Apologies to both parties for the comparison.
This is false.
As Slarti admits that he/she doesn’t read Greenwald, how does he/she know.
You’re obviously not a liar, so sloppy should do the trick.
The counterclaim is of course that the stories in question are bad because they harm the country somehow or other (while incidentally embarrassing Bush).
I forget the details, but the last time I remember that a journalist was claimed to be a criminal was because of a puff piece in the Travel section of the New York Times.
And the time before that, wasn’t it because of a story about the Bush administration spying on US citizens that was based solidly on information already publicly available, that was claimed somehow became more available to terrorists because it was on the NYT rather than elsewhere on the web?
Slarti said:
I’m sure, but he lards it with so very much broad-brush ad hominems of anyone who might harbor any leanings to the right that…well, imagine Charles sprouting some legal scholarship, and you might consider why Greenwald simply rubs me the wrong way. Apologies to both parties for the comparison.
This is false.
As Slarti admits that he/she doesn’t read Greenwald, how does he/she know.
You’re obviously not a liar, so sloppy should do the trick.
wow, rilkefan, I think that sort of even-handed attempt to understand the right-wing on their own terms is a laudable and valuable thing.
Or at least it was. About four years ago.
When we could last, still, kid ourselves that there *was* such a thing as an honest supporter of Bush. Or a responsible conservative. Or a right-wing that argued in good faith.
But now? Well, I dunno–how much time do you want to spend being Al Capone’s defense attorney? Cause I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for every lie that comes out of his throat. But I’m not sure I would really want the job of defending them.
Slarti said:
I’m sure, but he lards it with so very much broad-brush ad hominems of anyone who might harbor any leanings to the right that…well, imagine Charles sprouting some legal scholarship, and you might consider why Greenwald simply rubs me the wrong way. Apologies to both parties for the comparison.
This is false.
As Slarti admits that he/she doesn’t read Greenwald, how does he/she know.
You’re obviously not a liar, so sloppy should do the trick.
Slart.
Why are you misrepresenting Greenwald?
Apologies for th triple post.
Angela, I think you have more to apologise for than the triple post.
It’s entirely possible, from what Slartibartfast said, that he used to or has attempted to read Greenwald, gave up because Greenwald irritated him/bored him/made him see green puppies, and therefore now doesn’t read Greenwald.
It’s also possible that Slartibartfast has never read Greenwald except in quotes on right-wing blogs and is basing his entire judgement on that, very much as Charles judges Noam Chomsky or Sebastian judges Joseph Wilson… or as I judge Ayn Rand. Let she who has never judged a writer except after reading their works in full cast the first stone.
But not until I blow the whistle, no matter who says Jehovah.
made him see green puppies
The horror! The horror!
Not as bad as green kittens, however.
cleek: “and the counterclaim to that is that nobody has any proof of such a thing.”
Sure, but then one’s off into the wrangling. The point being that the claim in question (that conservatives think “journalists who publish stories embarrassing to the Commander-in-Chief are criminals”) isn’t correct (or is misleading, based on the correlation I noted) if you give conservatives the benefit of the doubt, i.e. accept that their claim about harm to the country is arguable. That is, Greenwald should in my view say that they are incorrect about the harm in question and show (how I couldn’t guess modulo a mindreading device) that they are in fact only interested in the political damage to Bush. (Which maybe he argues separately – but anyway one needs to get the threads untangled.)
Rilke: The point being that the claim in question (that conservatives think “journalists who publish stories embarrassing to the Commander-in-Chief are criminals”) isn’t correct (or is misleading, based on the correlation I noted) if you give conservatives the benefit of the doubt, i.e. accept that their claim about harm to the country is arguable.
Only if you accept that “harm to the country” is caused by the New York Times publishing information which is readily available elsewhere.
“Only if you accept that “harm to the country” is caused by the New York Times publishing information which is readily available elsewhere.”
I didn’t say I didn’t think the issue was dumb. The part you refer to surely is; there were other aspects about which I think it’s possible for reasonable people on the other side (e.g., John Cole) to wonder, even if the idea that Keller’s Times would publish govt info to the country’s detriment seems silly to me.
i’m astonished that this nonsense is still going on. remember BDS — Bush Derangement Syndrome? for a long time it was (and maybe still is) the threadkiller on conservative blogs. try to disagree with the prevailing viewpoint? you’ve got BDS.
now, considering that politics has been played with very sharp elbows by both sides since at least the Gingrich days, claiming BDS seemed to me (a) pointless and (b) pretty typical.
but turnabout is fair play. So, GGDS!!!
GGDS!! GGDS!! CHARLES (and xrlq and dean esmay and patterico and the posters at poorman, sadly, no and greenwald’s site) HAS GLENN GREENWALD DERANGEMENT SYNDROME! IGNORE EVERYTHING HE SAYS!!
GGDS!
.
.
.
GGDS!
etc.
Rilke: I didn’t say I didn’t think the issue was dumb.
If you thought it was dumb, why bother trying to defend it?
there were other aspects about which I think it’s possible for reasonable people on the other side (e.g., John Cole) to wonder
To wonder if “journalists who publish stories embarrassing to the Commander-in-Chief are criminals”?
Which stories, that were embarrassing to George W. Bush, where the right-wing blogosphere called the journalists who published them criminals, did you think it was “possible” for reasonable people to “wonder about”?
And why am I even botherin’?
Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Jes, again, the argument isn’t (from the conservative point of view) about the press embarrassing the President, it’s about whether the press should publish info that might help terrorists evade us. I see no reason for them to simply assume the NYT always makes the right decisions on these matters – lord knows the paper has published plenty of irresponsible stories in the past (see, Wen Ho Lee, or Whitewater, or the oeuvre of Judith Miller).
I probably had in mind this from Cole.
No doubt several ideas I think are dumb are correct – that’s why we argue. I think the particular statement by Greeenwald is question-begging or missing a step or in bad faith. He has to show that not only are conservatives wrong on this point (which you and I believe) but that they are widely lying about it (about which I’ll maintain a Slartibartfastian silence in the absence of a mindreading device).
I probably had in mind this from Cole.
Oh yes: that was the story in which the New York Times published information already publicly available elsewhere, but which they claimed was “damaging to the nation” because it was on the NYT website.
He has to show that not only are conservatives wrong on this point (which you and I believe) but that they are widely lying about it
Since the only example you could up with was one where they were either lying or stupid (and John Cole isn’t stupid) I conclude that Greenwald’s case is proved.
Jesurgislac:
Macallan, when I said that you are like a stream of bat’s piss, I only mean that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around it is dark.
Or try this quote ascribed to John Randolph, when criticizing the arguments of another member of Congress:
“…like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he both shines and stinks.”
Funny how the apssage to which Mac takes offense follows a series of supporting references. How impolite of Mr. Greenwald to then draw the conclusion that follows from the evidence.
“Since the only example you could up with was one where they were either lying or stupid (and John Cole isn’t stupid) I conclude that Greenwald’s case is proved.”
0) I was hardly bothering to come up with examples, because really.
1) To reach any conclusion on that basis is ridiculous.
2) I don’t think the “they did it too” argument makes a lick of sense in any case – well, it perhaps reflects on some conservatives’ argument as formulated, but not on the question at hand.
So, tell me, Rilkefan, why don’t you accept the evidence that right-wing bloggers widely lie about stories, that were embarrassing to George W. Bush, where the right-wing blogosphere called the journalists who published them criminals?
Hint: it does not work to offer examples where stories that were embarrassing to George W. Bush, as for example the New York Times story about how the Bush administration is prying into everyone’s bank account, based on publicly available information, was claimed by the right-wing blogosphere to be “criminal” because the Bush administration claimed that when this publicly-available information was on the New York Times website it damaged national security.
Presumably because terrorists never bother to do their own Internet research, they just read the New York Times.
You know, Monty Python makes more sense than this case you’re trying to make, Rilkefan.
Dr. Science: I, for one, would be interested in a guide to sock puppetry.
Angela: what Jes said.
The point is that I’m able to hold in my mind two concepts – that someone I disagree with is wrong, and that they are sincerely wrong. That non-libertarian conservatives think the NSA disclosures hurt the country directly is I think uncontroversial. That Cole has some reason to question Keller’s claim is I think uncontroversial. That Greenwald’s claim above is lacking from a formal logical perspective as it stands ought I think to be uncontroversial.
Plenty of people don’t get Monty Python – that you don’t get my argument here isn’t more worrisome to me.
rilkefan: I thought that the passage Mac quoted above — if that’s what we’re talking about — was compatible with the conservatives he’s talking about being sincere — just sincere people whose commitment to Bush has corrupted their judgment. — Remember the place — can’t find it now, but I’ll try if you want — where Hinderaker called Bush a misunderstood genius, so far ahead of his time that no one appreciated him? That’s the kind of thing that makes me think: he could be sincere, or he could have his intellectual integrity intact and be lying, but I don’t think he can have both sincerity and intellectual integrity.
I think one could make a similar claim about those conservatives who thought that every time Janet Reno or Bill Clinton drew a breath, our liberties were in danger, but somehow fail to mind the fairly massive infringements on those same liberties that Bush has undertaken.
Jes/Hilzoy,
Can we agree that…
‘I’m sure, but he lards it with so very much broad-brush ad hominems of anyone who might harbor any leanings to the right that…well,
…is false?
I agree — since I read him as talking about a specific group of Bush supporters. What his own general policies on anything other than civil liberties are, I have no idea. For all I know, he may well be to the right.
I have no interest in Hinderaker’s thought – ftr I thought that quote was meant as a poke in the eye to Bush critics more than a statement of opinion, much as Coulter’s sentences are not (I assume) reflective of her opinion.
Re Reno, of course 9/11 changed everything, and anyway people can change their minds, and anyway there is an argument to be made that one isn’t crazy to trust one’s political enemies less than one’s friends.
The “bad English” thing keeps coming up, and it really leaves me baffled. Have these people never actually met someone from a foreign country?
Personally, I lived in a foreign country for more than 6 years. English is one of the hardest languages to learn. I will grant you that writing English as a second language is easier that speaking it. But your comment ignores the fact that we have a half dozen “people” parroting the same points, in perfect English, using American handles, sometimes in very short timeframes on different blogs.
OCSteve: I read Riehl’s piece, and I couldn’t find any argument for this claim: “Greenwald’s image was manufactured by the ideologically driven liberal money machine behind his book’s publication.” (Unless it just means something like: the people who put it out also put out press releases.)
He did not come up with a book proposal, float it to publishers, and get a book deal.
Click through enough and you come to this piece in The Nation. The title is “How to Create a Liberal Bestseller”.
“Working Assets president Michael Kieschnick had charged me in January with studying the progressive blogosphere to identify emerging talent and ideas.”
…
“On February 15, I asked Greenwald if he’d like to do a book. Working Assets stepped up to fund the project and launch Working Assets Publishing. By March 1, we had a contract and Greenwald sat down to write.”
…
“After some very long days, we delivered the book to the printer on April 24. The day before, I sent digital manuscripts to seven bloggers I’d been working with and asked them to post about the book, if they found it worthy. Within days How Would a Patriot Act? rose from obscurity to number one on Amazon largely because those initial blogs ignited a wildfire of mentions and purchase links throughout the blogosphere.”
…
“This book rose to best-sellerdom primarily because of the pre-launch push from progressive blogs.”
…
Etc.
Big money wanted to push liberal ideas. They contracted a person to find someone in the progressive blogosphere they could promote. They slammed together a book in a few months, formed a publishing company just for this book, and used the libro-sphere to garner early attention. Dan quotes the article pretty clearly: “Patriot” is an offspring of Bay Area political activism and technology culture, and the rush to get it into print has a distinct purpose: To foster national debate about the Bush administration’s approach to post-Sept. 11 civil liberties, in particular the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.”
In other words – get in out there before the midterms.
Uhh, Steve: are we to take this comment, then, that you somehow disapprove of a blogger (or lawyer, or plain citizen, for that matter) trying to make money by selling their political (or legal) opinions on that “free market” (which of course, includes publishers) so beloved of conservatives?
Not at all – good luck to them. What matters is someone trying to pass themselves off as a centrist when they are clearly far-left, and having big money behind their rise to prominence while the left-sphere pretends it is because of their brilliance and great experience. He can string some words together so he was plucked out of the sphere and supported with big liberal dollars. Fine, good for him. Just don’t try to sell me this heroic 9-month meteoric rise of the great progressive blogger stuff. There is serious money behind him.
To me, Glenn G. is a good writer and a very sharp thinker who is genuinely disturbed by some of what he sees on the right.
Jeff G., on the other hand –
Reverse the names in these 2 paragraphs and I am in total agreement. Jeff’s site is primarily humor, with some serious posts thrown in to keep the regulars on their feet. GG is supposedly a serious constitutional thinker whose posts are more often than not quiet funny…
English is one of the hardest languages to learn.
OCSteve, I commend this book to your attention. The notion that languages exist on a continuum from easy-to-learn to hard-to-learn is, well, wrong.
What matters is someone trying to pass themselves off as a centrist when they are clearly far-left
This would be far more persuasive if backed up with citations and links to Greenwald where he demonstrates that he is “clearly far-left”. I should think it’d be obvious by now that that is not an assertion likely to be accepted in the absence of evidence.
OCSteve
You are welcome to your opinion, but if you think that Jeff is such an insightful thinker, it would stand to reason that since he is basically an unemployed writer (no snark implied, some of my best friends are currently unemployed writers), why does he not put something of the wit and wisdom of JG and sell it? The fact that he hasn’t/doesn’t says something about the reach of his humor. Also, please don’t suggest this is right/left thing. Here is Ann Althouse, who is certainly not on the left side of the spectrum replying to Goldstein
Jeff: My post is about how I’m not interested in watching the crap that unfolds over there. I’m sure you’re happy that more people are reading you, but I’m not going to be one of them. I don’t like you. I think you’re a pr**k. Some folks are a bigger pr**ks than you. Sorry, I have a life.
(I redacted it a bit)
“The notion that languages exist on a continuum from easy-to-learn to hard-to-learn is, well, wrong.”
Is that true generally? That is, for all languages L and M, an adult L speaker can attain the same fluency in M that an adult speaker can attain in L for all times X? I would think that English or Spanish or Korean would be easier to learn to write than Chinese simply based on orthographical simplicity – that it’s easier to learn to write in Italian than English because spelling isn’t an issue – that it’s easier to learn basic functional spoken English than basic functional spoken Z given the former’s simple grammar.
Another question that I’ve wondered about – for languages L and M, do children attain the same fluency at the same time? Do bilingual children learn both their native languages at the same rate for all language pairs?
Uhh, Steve: are we to take this comment, then, that you somehow disapprove of a blogger (or lawyer, or plain citizen, for that matter) trying to make money by selling their political (or legal) opinions on that “free market” (which of course, includes publishers) so beloved of conservatives?
Follow up – again not at all.
I think Marcos has the greatest scam on the internet short of the top porn sites. He has all these ‘front pagers’ creating most of his content. He has legions of readers and commenters generating page hits for the advertisers. He was quoted after YKos as saying “I wish I could pay them something”, but I guess things are tight…
Let’s see:
#1 Blogad spot: $14,000 / month
#2 Blogad spot:: $9,000 / month
We won’t bother with the other dozen ads on the site. $276,000 per year for the top 2 spots with maybe what – $200/month hosting and bandwidth? All that with willing dupes providing the bulk of your content and generating page hits. The dude is in to 6 figures once you add it all up, not even counting consulting fees, etc.
I just find it ironic that a progressive makes so much money off the capitalistic system he would seem to despise. Disapprove? Personally I envy him – I am totally jealous! You da’ man Marcos. If I had thought of it first I would be the loudest liberal you folks have ever seen!
OCSteve: Are you familiar with Working Assets? It’s a little long-distance company that donates some of its profits to progressive causes, not “big money”. Part of the reason I couldn’t find the argument was just that in that piece, it basically just says that this pretty tiny company that normally sends .01% of your phone bill to battered women’s shelters and environmental organizations decided to try publishing it, and then they sent word around to seven bloggers. Nor is there any mention of “manufacturing” his image. If anything, the idea that they sent the ms. to seven bloggers, who would presumably already be familiar with him, suggests no manufacturing at all.
I mean, I’d assume that two of the seven were Atrios and someone at FireDogLake, both of whom had at that point been linking to him regularly for months, as had a lot of other people.
Thus, my perplexity.
OCSteve: just saw your most recent post, and I should point out that most progressives do not, in fact, despise the market system at all. I don’t. Does Markos? I can’t remember him saying so.
“I just find it ironic that a progressive makes so much money off the capitalistic system he would seem to despise.”
Uhh, huh? Where did Kos ever say anything about despising capitalism? And what does “progressive” have to do with it?
Note that front-pagers at DK are likely getting well-paid in the coin of exposure. And note that (low) 6 figures doesn’t mean all that much out here in the Bay Area – it’s enough to think about buying a modest home eventually. If those numbers go up by a factor of ten though I would expect him to start taking a reasonable salary and put the rest into staff or somewhere.
“I just find it ironic that a progressive makes so much money off the capitalistic system he would seem to despise.”
See, *I* find it ironic that someone would criticize “progressives” without having the least clue about what they actually believe, rather basing their notions on Bill O’Reilly and National Review.
Capitalism, like democracy, is the least bad system known to man. Doesn’t mean it has no bad results & can’t be tampered with; but no viable replacement appears to exist.
OCSteve, I commend this book to your attention. The notion that languages exist on a continuum from easy-to-learn to hard-to-learn is, well, wrong.
I should have said in my experience, which consists of many Americans learning Spanish, German, and Korean with greater ease than Germans learning English. Mind you these Germans started learning English in high school and the Americans where learning it in their 20’s and 30’s in night classes. It was Germans, who had been taking English since high school, who consistently told me English was hard in comparison to other languages. I should have made it clear that it was anecdotal evidence and opinion. I assume that the lack of a link kind of states that.
This would be far more persuasive if backed up with citations and links to Greenwald where he demonstrates that he is “clearly far-left”. I should think it’d be obvious by now that that is not an assertion likely to be accepted in the absence of evidence.
Well, the main URL to his site should be enough… Everything he writes is anti-administration, and not from the perspective of say a libertarian… I have never read a post of his that was not full of invective and right in line with the lefty talking points of the day. Many days the only difference between him and say FDL is better grammar.
but if you think that Jeff is such an insightful thinker
Where did I say that? I said, “Jeff’s site is primarily humor, with some serious posts thrown in to keep the regulars on their feet.” And that is how I see it. I go to Jeff’s site to read about the ‘dillo and other crap. When he gets serious I have to skim – he is over my head and seems to know what he is talking about, but I have no interest in it. I want the ‘dillo and ‘overheard in a bunker’. The humor also comes into play because he has a knack for driving the far left sites absolutely bonkers. I guess that is “insightful”…
OCSteve, are you under the impression that Greenwald’s popularity in the blogosphere came after his book was published? “Greenwald’s image” existed months before the “money machine” of the behemoth Working Assets showed up to “manufacture” it.
See, *I* find it ironic that someone would criticize “progressives” without having the least clue about what they actually believe, rather basing their notions on Bill O’Reilly and National Review.
For the record, I don’t watch O’Reilly on any regular basis and generally think he is an ass. I think he has done some good work (pushing Megan’s law, etc.). I generally don’t hit NRO unless I am following a link. I find it ironic that you would assume that about me – anyone right of center is an O’Reilly/NRO fan?
It is my life experience that causes me to (mostly) equate progressive/liberalism with socialism. It is not entirely accurate I admit, but in my experience it is damned close.
OK – you guys have me way outnumbered and I am getting tired. I give.
OCSteve, “far left” in traditional political discussions used to have something to do with supporting certain policies. Are you honestly saying that you use it to mean nothing more than “anti-administration”? Does that mean two thirds of the American people are far left nowadays?
Charles ‘dodgy’ bird IS A SILLY PERSON
hilzoy —
OK, I’ll get on it. It’ll take at least a week, while I figure out how to air dirty laundry in a way that will focus people’s attention on what they need to know to keep stains off their own clothes, instead of mocking other people’s laundry skills.
Big money wanted to push liberal ideas.
who the hell cares? can you dispute what he actually says, or just that he says it?
dispute
shoot. make that ‘refute’.
Two conservatives with pretty much my feelings on the matter. (Glad I don’t have to bother writing them.)
Wizbang
Qando
Hmm, more of the libertarian-conservatives. Great I get to be even a smaller minority. 🙂
Wow, Seb. That Qando post is, almost to the word, one of the finest things I’ve read about this entire incident of manufactured outrage. Minus the conjecture about GG being a crackpot.
But I can see I have a new blog to bookmark.
OCSteve, you must not hang in the circles I hang. All of my German friends have English that is much much better than my German. As for Americans learning languages better than their foreign counterparts, this ERIC page has this
The U.S. postsecondary education system offers opportunities for students to develop language proficiency through language, literature, and cultural studies. However, the typical undergraduate program offers only 3 contact hours per week, which, after 2 years, yields at most 180 hours of instruction. Even the Advanced level of proficiency (one level below Superior) can take up to 720 hours to achieve; to acquire proficiency at the Superior level in a language such as Russian, the Foreign Service Institute estimates that a minimum of 1320 hours is required (Omaggio-Hadley, 2001).
I can give more info about the ‘foreign language gap’, but take it from me, the situation is abysmal.
Also
but if you think that Jeff is such an insightful thinker
Where did I say that?
I apologize for using ‘insightful’ when you didn’t use it. You suggested switching the names here, which yields ‘[Jeff] a good writer and a very sharp thinker’, so I thought that ‘insightful’ was basically the equivalent. You admit that what Greenwald writes is over your head, I don’t understand how you can argue that Jeff is making defensible arguments when addressing Greenwald’s points.
I’m sorry you feel outnumbered, hope you’ll come back later.
Seb: I’m with you. Although I have some minor perplexity about why anyone cares about e.g. his living in Brazil, just from a psychological standpoint.
Feh.
And yes, OCSteve: don’t feel outnumbered. — The only reason I mentioned Working Assets is that I happen to know about them since they are my long distance carrier. (Their target market: the vanishingly small number of people who are on the left and go to the trouble of finding out how to get miniscule proportions of their phone bills given to charity, despite the fact that the total benefit from he has probably been around 6 cents.)
“The notion that languages exist on a continuum from easy-to-learn to hard-to-learn is, well, wrong.”
Is that true generally? That is, for all languages L and M, an adult L speaker can attain the same fluency in M that an adult speaker can attain in L for all times X? I would think that English or Spanish or Korean would be easier to learn to write than Chinese simply based on orthographical simplicity – that it’s easier to learn to write in Italian than English because spelling isn’t an issue – that it’s easier to learn basic functional spoken English than basic functional spoken Z given the former’s simple grammar.
Easier for whom? Someone who can read and write Cantonese is going to find reading and writing Mandarin much easier than someone who can only read and write Portuguese. Likewise, an Italian speaker is going to find learning French much easier than Montana Salish. When you’re talking about learning a language, you have to consider the totality of the language, not just one aspect or another. (A recent trip I took to Greece and Turkey illustrates this perfectly: spoken Greece was far more familiar than spoken Turkish, because so many English words come from Greek. Written Turkish was far easier than written Greek, though, since contemporary Turkish uses the Roman alphabet while Greek doesn’t.)
Another question that I’ve wondered about – for languages L and M, do children attain the same fluency at the same time? Do bilingual children learn both their native languages at the same rate for all language pairs?
Are you trying to start another Chomsky thread?
Interesting, SH. I’m hoping this comment at QandO is supposed to be a joke (despite coming from someone who has “Day by Day” on his blog):
“But I can see I have a new blog to bookmark.”
What?!? You weren’t already reading Qando?
🙂
Josh: “Easier for whom?”
My suggestion was to compare language pairs crosswise. It’s my feeling that Italian is easier than classical Latin – teach either to Basques or Japanese or Navahos and see which takes longer to master. (I recognize the comparison of mastery is a non-trivial problem.) Going the other way allows one to calibrate out some effects.
I can well believe that all natural languages are equally expressive, but since I can imagine simplifications for the languages I know, it’s hard for me to believe that all languages are equally difficult to master, given the possible variation in grammatical complexity and general irregularity and size of vocabulary.
Swedish, for instance, has almost nothing in the way of cases and conjugations. It made life a lot easier when I was living in Sweden. I can’t imagine that this wouldn’t be easier than, oh, learning Arabic (which I have also tried, and though part of the difficulty was that it wasn’t nearly as closely related to English as Swedish, part of it was not.)
What?!? You weren’t already reading Qando?
Selection bias. 😉
However, the opportunity to read sane conservatives is not one to be passed up. From where I’m sitting, they’re in depressingly short supply these days.
As far as the language discussions go, I actually found Japanese to be remarkably straightforward and easy, and my native language is English. Memorizing kanji is, of course, more complex than English letters by orders of magnitude. But you can count the irregular verbs in Japanese on one hand, and there are exactly two types of regular verb, and they follow very predictable and logical patterns. Adjective conjugation is stupid easy, and most nouns have neither gender nor number.
Think I’ve been told that Japanese is relatively easy to master at a functional level but very difficult to get the niceties down – the right word order to use when addressing one’s mother in law, or something. Supposedly it’s harder than Chinese for an English speaker to attain full fluency. (Just European languages for me…)
When linguists say that all languages are equally difficult to learn, they’re talking only about spoken languages — no one would claim that written Japanese, for instance, is just as easy as written Korean. It’s based mainly on the fact that children develop speaking fluency in their native tongues at roughly the same rate no matter what their language.
If we could somehow use information theory to do complexity comparisons then of course languages wouldn’t all come out the same, but I doubt there’d be any huge disparities. Some languages have complicated case or gender systems, but those languages usually aren’t near as picky about word order as English. Things tend to balance out.
Hilzoy: The only reason I mentioned Working Assets is that I happen to know about them since they are my long distance carrier. (Their target market: the vanishingly small number of people who are on the left and go to the trouble of finding out how to get miniscule proportions of their phone bills given to charity, despite the fact that the total benefit from he has probably been around 6 cents.)
What, you mean you don’t subscribe for the free ice cream? (Do they even still do that?)
I can well believe that all natural languages are equally expressive, but since I can imagine simplifications for the languages I know, it’s hard for me to believe that all languages are equally difficult to master, given the possible variation in grammatical complexity and general irregularity and size of vocabulary.
How are you defining “grammatical complexity” here? All of the research I’ve found so far suggests that languages are of equal complexity (excepting pidgins and creoles). See, for example, this Ph.D. dissertation. From the abstract:
“Hypothesis A: Languages are equally complex. No overall differences were found in the numbers of errors made by speakers of the five languages in the study. This supports the basic assumption that no language is more difficult than any other.”
What rilkefan says is true, admittely–my opinion is that anyone determined to do so can reach a certain level of functional Japanese in their spare time, but reaching true perapera fluency is something else entirely.
I wouldn’t dream of attempting to converse in Japanese in a business situation, for example, although I have no doubt of my ability to make myself understood in just about any situation.
“Hypothesis A: Languages are equally complex. No overall differences were found in the numbers of errors made by speakers of the five languages in the study. This supports the basic assumption that no language is more difficult than any other.”
Perhaps I’m having a failure of imagination, but how would one even begin to dream of testing that hypothesis?
Perhaps I’m having a failure of imagination, but how would one even begin to dream of testing that hypothesis?
The author covers that in Chapter 4. Basically, she had native speakers of five different languages narrate a video, and counted slips of the tongue. Then she categorized the slips of the tongue and broke down the number of errors that way.
Now we’re talking! Favorite subject alert. Pedanticism ahead.
The big problem in comparing difficulty is defining it. With some languages, phonological difficulty is huge, like Na-Dene or some other Native American languages, but because kids learn phonology like they learn eating, it’s difficult to make comparisons. English actually has some really tricky bits to its inventory of sounds, such that it is very easy to spot out non native speakers.
But areas of difficulty, as matthew b. notes, tend to balance out. Almost 100% of children learn a language with native fluency, and the ones that don’t have some very clear problem that prevents them. And children will learn 2, 3, 4 and more languages if they are expected to understand and communicate in them, barring some social/cultural mores that prevent them from learning them. This suggests that the notion of difficulty as a scalar quality is problematic.
A second problem is the culture of acceptance for a particular language. Japanese is very easy to make yourself understood in, in part because a lot of Japanese look at foreigners like dancing bears, i.e. it is not amazing that the bear dances so well, but that he does it at all. This creates a real glass ceiling, such that perfectly fluent Japanese coming out of a foreign mouth has Japanese thinking, wait a minute, there is something wrong with that Japanese. This is not the case for me, but I know a number of people who were raised in Japan, and have perfectly fluent Japanese, such that they call on the phone, the Japanese person on the other end thinks nothing out of the ordinary, but when they meet in person, they suddenly find ‘mistakes’.
English is interesting because it is such a widely spoken language that we tolerate a lot of differences, but if the person is speaking with a non-native accent, some immediately believe that the English is faulty somehow.
It also depends on what we term as fluency. Though we are more aware of things like dylexia, it is still hard to get one’s head around the fact that there are people who may speak a language perfectly, but are unable to write or read it. It’s funny now, because japanese students are using word processors, when they have to handwrite things, they make mistakes that I recognize, like using one chinese character when another should be used. The fun value of those observations goes thru the roof.
the whole thing about comparing langauges crosswise was something seized upon in the late 50’s under a name that escapes me at the moment. The idea was that we could understand where the problems were in learning a new language if we compare the language the speaker is coming from to the one that the speaker is learning. I think there is still some validity in it, but the problem is that if the language has a completely novel structure, it is sometimes easier to remember it because it seems striking, while a subtle difference can be very difficult to remember. Thus, the ‘distance’ of difference is not an adequate measure of difficulty.
more later, off to a meeting.
I was just waiting for you to jump in, lj.
I will grant you that writing English as a second language is easier that speaking it.
OCSteve; you probabely wrote fast? Writing a foreign language is always hardest afaik. Reading is usually easiest.
Rilke: my kids speak English and Dutch. The 7yo speaks both at a high level for his age, the middle one is more fluent in Dutch and the 3yo seems to have more or less the same level in both. I think learning Chinese would be hard because it is a tonal language, but kids still have the ability to pick that up easily.
Adults seem to be much more limited in learning new sounds. There are some things in English that I cannot distinghuish from each other (cattle and kettle sound exactly the same for me) and my spouse has the same thing in Dutch. There are English sounds I cannot make properly and there are Dutch sounds that can be used to recognize non-native speakers too. But talent to mimic and do accents differ from person to person, so it might need an inborn talent.
I am quite fluent in normal day-to-day English (speaking that is, not writing) but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write and discuss with the nuance and hidden messages I can use in Dutch. And I usually need lots more words than a native speaker to get the message across 🙂
Most European languages are more or less comparable in how difficult they are, at least the ones I learned in school (spanish, german, french). Latin was not hard, Greek was much harder because the word order works different (the alphabet is different too, but that is not a major obstacle). When I tried Turkish because a friend lived there for a few years I found it very regular and once your vocabulary was big enough you’d get by with small conversation quite easily. On the other hand my spouse and I took a shot at Irish (he is half Irish) and I gave up because of the complexity. Just trying to say ‘thank you’ required knowing three different sentences *and* when to apply each of them 🙂
BTW,
Does anyone visit this blog for Charles’s ‘contributions’?
“I agree — since I read him as talking about a specific group of Bush supporters”
Any group in particular? Do they have ID cards?
Wonder what sort of response could be expected if, for example, Charles did a series of posts on BDS sufferers and how BDS steered each and every opinion emitted by said victims. Sort of a cult of anti-personality.
I don’t know of any right-leaning person that’s read those posts that didn’t find them objectionable or, as a minimum, silly. Maybe it’s just us. All of us.
But to recap, I’ve offered a little history on the whole Greenwald/Goldstein affair, and no one appears interested that there was ever civil exchange between the two, despite the often-made assertion that Greenwald is never challenged on substance. I’m not all that interested in general fault-finding against either Greenwald or Goldstein; I think that the assertions of sock-puppetry aren’t all that interesting or even well-made, and I likewise think that Fristian long-distance psychoanalysis of Goldstein is of dubious plausibility.
So, take it or leave it. I’m not going to rehash and defend what Goldstein has said to others; if any of you want to defend all that’s been said to Goldstein, have at it.
Slarti: When I mentioned a specific group of Bush supporters, I meant the ones GG links to or specifically describes. In my experience, he does not criticize people on the right en masse; he’s more specific. Here it’s specifically neoconservatives, which GG seems to use in a quite particular (and accurate) sense; and this passage:
— is actually quite specific about the sort of person he'[s talking about, and it’s pretty easy to identify bloggers who meet that description, with the possible exception of the part about being driven by ‘rage and inaqeduacies’. Although even there, I have very little trouble attributing that motivation to, say, Hinderaker, after watching the deranged video in which he accuses ‘almost the entire Democratic Party’ of not caring about ‘hundreds of thousands dead’, or anything except power.
But your comment ignores the fact that we have a half dozen “people” parroting the same points, in perfect English, using American handles, sometimes in very short timeframes on different blogs.
This is beyond painfully silly. When the commenters in question are addressing a very specific issue — Greenwald’s professional experience and blogging success vis a vis other bloggers — there’s a limited universe of facts from which to pull. Of course they’re going to be “parroting the same points.” What do you expect them to say? “Glenn dresses better than you and drives a cooler car?”
Everything he writes is anti-administration, and not from the perspective of say a libertarian
And this is so far beyond painfully silly that it’s circled back around and become painfully silly. To these libertarian eyes, Greenwald writes about the administration’s privacy violations exactly as a libertarian would, and when he addresses people in comments, he’s even more so. He’s also, as he’s made painfully clear, a First Amendment absolutist, and in fact recently got into a dust-up with a Canadian commenter who defended Canada’s hate speech laws, with Greenwald saying he disagreed completely with them.
It’s clear to me that you have absolutely no idea what either “libertarian” or “far-left” actually mean, nor do you read any actual libertarians on the Bush administration.
I just find it ironic that a progressive makes so much money off the capitalistic system he would seem to despise.
Catsy, Jes, hilzoy — any of y’all despise the idea of using your talents to make money in an open market?
Slarti,
if you could link to specific posts you find offensive, this would carry a lot more weight: perhaps I am just eliding over precisely those points when I read them (I read Greenwald pretty regularly, but don’t do commments very much) I understand if you don’t want to dig thru his blog to find things that piss you off, but I’ve been a regular reader for at least a year, and I haven’t noticed the kind of broad brush accusations that I can easily find in Powerline. I repeat, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t there, but if you don’t say what is problematic, I can’t really evaluate it.
It’s obviously not a year, since his archives only go back to October 2005, though looking back at his posts, I distinctly remember the Libby line that he opened up in October, possible linked to by Hamsher?
It was, by the way, such “small beer” that Charles felt compelled to comment at Greenwald’s blog.
Phil: Catsy, Jes, hilzoy — any of y’all despise the idea of using your talents to make money in an open market?
Hell no – and I suspect that of the three of us I’m the furthest to the left. All but the most committed socialists would agree that when you live in a capitalist system, you’re entitled to earn a living in the open market: and all but the most committed socialists would agree that while there are things that are done better via socialism (roads, trains, health care, military) there are also plenty of things that are done better via capitalism.
As for example: the BBC is run on good socialist lines (if you own a TV in the UK, you pay to support the BBC) but commissions programmes from small capitalist companies with fantastic ideas. Which, incidentally, is how come Monty Python’s Flying Circus was ever made: no big company would have taken a risk on something that weird, but supporting weird ideas for programmes is what the BBC is for. This blend of socialism and capitalism is ideal, IMO, and the whole point of it is that there’s room in the system for a talented individual to make money/have their work seen.
Oops. Well, that’s one secret identity blown.
Seems I need to sew another sock puppet.
OCSteve:
I just find it ironic that a progressive makes so much money off the capitalistic system he would seem to despise.
I find it predictable that you simply make up crap in order to despise Kos — as if Kos has ever advocated or intimated in any way that he has hostility toward capitalism or making money.
I guess to you, liberal = capitalist hater (Soros must have a real self-hate complex). I understand that you seem to believe that nonsense with some earnestness, but don’t mistake the strength of your nonsensical belief with the assumption that somewhere, somehow, some fact exists to support it. Just believe it — that is so much easier.
I think in order for something to qualify as sock puppetry you have to post in defense of yourself using multiple aliases in a single context, no?
I’m not so sure, Radish, because one identity vigorously defending Greenwald in several venues at least be known as such. After all, these guys (and apparently Greenwald and his “people”) read these blogs. If it were not Greenwald but his partner engaging in sock puppetry, Greenwald would be absolved. At worst, perhaps it’s sock puppetry by proxy, or one-degree-removed sock puppetry. His partner would be guilty, however, because he dishonestly gave the impression that five different commenters (assuming “Rick Ellensburg” is now part of the gang) are defending Greenwald and criticizing his critics instead of just one person. Online Integrity says the following:
At least, that’s how Aziz views it.
Ignoring the fact that the various accusers IP-based sleuthing is unverifiable, how does this statement…
square with your claim that Greenwald “spends most of his time” in Brazil?
Because, Paul, I based my statement on a different Glenn statement (via Riehl):
This assumes, of course, that it really was Glenn who posted this.
…therefore it’s entirely possible that tens of thousands of people (if not more) could be tracked back to that IP.
Lots of things are possible, chdb, but Greenwald himself doesn’t make that claim, instead saying that “others” in this household wrote those things.
Yesterday, Mr. Charles Bird called for the summary execution of Jane Fonda and Noam Chomsky.
Except that I didn’t, stickler. Read the whole post.
By the way, let me reiterate that I don’t know if Glenn Greenwald was actually sock puppeting. I’m not Dr. Bloody Bernofsky (best said in falsetto).
Charles,
did you feel compelled to write this ‘small beer’ post because you got the memo?
Additionally, I echo Hilzoy’s confusion as to why you and rest of the online right-wing lynch mob are so obsessed with Greenwald’s place of residence.
@OCSteve: As dmbeaster suggests, your clearly very strong belief in the ‘Kos as hypocritical web tycoon’ does not rest on any facts. I suspect it may be impermeable to facts at all. But in case not:
In figuring out from afar the net from the Daily Kos site, have you taken into account what is surely its largest fixed cost, the salary and benefits for a full-time administrator?
A little while ago I made the mistake of reading a chunk of the comments on Glenn’s thread, and also some of Ace’s latest.
Yikes.
I mean: to read all these people doing this gotcha thing, and discounting entirely the possibility of someone else in GG’s household not being entirely under his control, you’d really think that none of these people ever had friends, let alone partners, who stuck up for them.
— Actually, I just had a thought. Maybe it’s completely nuts; if so, I’m sure someone might disabuse me. However: experience, including my experience talking to friends about relationships, makes me suspect that guys are somewhat more likely, maybe because it’s culturally expected, to feel some need to protect their significant others, and less likely to accept the idea of letting their significant others stick up for themselves. (I am not making any kind of uniform blanket statement; just “somewhat more likely”.) — Is it conceivable that some small part of the reason I find Glenn’s story so completely plausible, while a lot of the odder commenters seem to not to, is because apparently Glenn and I date guys, while as best I can tell the blogosphere is disproportionately straight guys who, being straight guys, date women?
I mean: it’s not as though the idea of having completely well-intentioned lovers who do things I wish they didn’t do in an effort to protect me or avenge me or in some other way defend me is, um, wholly novel.
Just a thought.
Online Integrity says the following…
…but who cares?
I mean: to read all these people doing this gotcha thing, and discounting entirely the possibility of someone else in GG’s household not being entirely under his control, you’d really think that none of these people ever had friends, let alone partners, who stuck up for them.
This presumes that they are in fact interested in the truth of the matter. I see no reason to make that assumption.
Hilzoy: I mean: to read all these people doing this gotcha thing, and discounting entirely the possibility of someone else in GG’s household not being entirely under his control, you’d really think that none of these people ever had friends, let alone partners, who stuck up for them.
And quite possibly this is the case.
If this incident is accurate, there is also a reasoned and persuasive argument as to why Chomsky should have been put before a firing squad and shot (and add Jane Fonda to make it a two-fer)
lj, I’m quite aware of the varying error tolerance in native speakers – the difference between Italians’ acceptance of beginner’s Italian and Parisians’ acceptance of entirely understandable American-accented French is startling.
dutchmarbel, I’d say you write fluent (if imperfect) English – maybe I don’t know what the official standard of fluency is, but I never read your comments with the least degree of uncertainty of your intent (something I would imagine some Americans would not say about my comments).
I want to make a claim along the lines of, “All children learn to speak their native language around the same time, but not the full language – to learn the the full English vocabulary at an accomplished level is a task of decades for most people”, etc., but I don’t have the expertise. It’s e.g. my sense that one can learn useful English faster than useful German, and the full German language faster than the full English language, and the full German writing system (Rad fahren? radfahren?) is impossible to master – that the Aeneid is harder than Paradise Lost – that it’s entirely possible that there are effects restricting languages to a narrow band of difficulty (real-world expressivity requirements vs our brain-power), but it would be surprising though cool to see that shown.
Jes, is that you at 2:10? – if so that’s surely a posting rules violation.
And if it’s not, it’s a double violation.
Jes: if that was you, what on earth was the point? Why here? Why now? Why at all?
OT: this is funny…
The same IP number argument is so absurd. My elderly parents have a computer and Internet account that they NEVER use.
Yet I and other family members and relatives use both when we visit them .We check our emails etc.We all have different email accounts and screen names too.
I guess my parents would be found guilty of violating some rule of nettiquette by permitting this. When I tell them, I hope that they are properly ashamed.
Charles- I have to agree with Anarch here, and to amplify. When a bunch of right-wingers organize something like online integrity, and promise to delink anyone violating the rules they have to do so. After Goldstein mentioned that it was ok to out someone online because he got Trevino’s permission I knew to ignore the rest of your post as soon as you mentioned online integrity.
Great. I just had someone (using a Boston Comcast IP address) googling for “Glenn Greenwald book signing” find a blog post from last month and post this silliness:
using the name Ellison and the URL http://www.iloveglenngreenwald.com. I guess it’s someone making fun of the GGDS sufferers, but I deleted the comment regardless.
instead saying that “others” in this household wrote those things
so, uh, what’s the big deal ?
from over here, it looks like the entire ‘right’ side of this is wallowing in a grand ad hominem smear-fest. nobody offers criticisms of what he writes, they only moan, groan and foam about his ‘backers’, his timing (are authors now required to schedule their work according to the desires of righty bloggers?), his place of residence, his sexual preference, the actions of people in his house; but about the reason we know of him at all – what he writes – zip.
it would be pretty difficult for you guys to be more hysterical and fallacious. and you’re making it pretty clear that none of you want to be taken seriously.
I’m not reading the blogs in question, but as far as I’m concerned there are many people who voice outspoken opinions and who have a club of clueless defenders defending there every thought. Wether those people are manifestations of the same person, people in the persons household, of people who live elsewhere does not really make a difference for me. Once detected I just don’t take the followers serious anymore.
If you disagree with someone, debating their arguments and statements makes more sence than debating what label his ‘clueless followers’ should have.
Rilke: thanxs. But I quite often don’t post, or don’t elaborate because I feel I can’t convey all I want to say. Or because it takes too much time & effort to write it all in proper English. My German actually used to be better than my English, but I’ve not used it for soo long that I’m back at toddler level :).
Charles, do you intend to devote further effort to posts about “small beer”?
Like any other blogger, KC, I intend to devote further effort to any topic I feel like writing about.
It’s also possible that Slartibartfast has never read Greenwald except in quotes on right-wing blogs and is basing his entire judgement on that, very much as Charles judges Noam Chomsky…
False. I’ve read the New Military Humanism and am working through Understanding Power.
In my experience, he does not criticize people on the right en masse; he’s more specific.
Au contraire, Hil. In this passage:
I’ve been on record as criticizing Bush on multiple occasions, and I’ve said more than once that I disapprove of his performance in office, and I’ve also admonished Bush and his supporters for mistaking criticism for lack of loyalty–both here and at Redstate–and no one has accused me of being “liberal”. Plenty of other conservatives, including stalwarts such as Jonah Goldberg, are in exactly that same boat.
Greenwald’s statement is a combination of absurd, stupid and false, and it reveals a disturbing ignorance of what conservatives are about. What’s more, the issue isn’t that Bush’s right-of-center critics are being called liberals, it’s Bush himself has not governed as a conservative, so there’s a vast number of critics who are to the right of Bush, not to the left. Greenwald’s argument fails basic logic. When Greenwald complains that he’s unfairly labeled a liberal, it’s because of ignorant-to-borderline-bigoted comments such as above that lead people to those assessments.
This is exactly why he pisses off right-of-center folks: ignorant, overly broad and inflammatory comments. Just as I’ve been criticized for inserting inflammatory sentences in otherwise well-supported posts, Greenwald is also guilty of the same behavior, not that I intend to portray myself as some right-of-center version of him. This has actually been a good learning experience for me, because for the most part, he does put together well-supported posts. Unfortunately, he self-nukes them with overwrought hyperbole and bone-stupid ignorance of what he thinks conservatives are about. On more than one occasion, I’ve gone through his posts, and then found myself closing the window after reading some grossly provacative, semi-bigoted statement presented authoritatively by him as fact.
Jes,
The name you used at 2:10 is a posting rules violation and I judged it delete-worthy. One more offense and your commenting privileges will be deleted.
Charles, that’s a real stretch. The title of the piece is ‘Do Bush followers have a political ideology?’ Since you define yourself as a non Bush follower, the piece cannot refer to you and others you feel are in the same boat as you. That you assume it to be so tells us more about the ideas you bring into reading Glenn than what Glenn is writing. In addition, he is responding to two specific writers to whom he links. If this is the best you got, you really got an itty-bitty beer.
As for Jes, while not approving of it, I hope that you are stating a decision that was arrived at by everyone and they had some reason for having you make the announcement rather than someone like hilzoy or slarti.
What LJ said.
Charles, as one of the bloggers here you are of course free to do what you like (at least if the other bloggers agree), but it seems to me that the posting rules have a lot more legitimacy when they are enforced by people other than those the offending comments are directed against, preferably by people coming from an ideological position similar to the offender’s.
Additionally, you’ve now flushed the evidence. I’m assuming that the IP’s matched. Unless you took a screenshot, it’s now a matter of memory.
Look, everybody, it was a straightforward out-of-left-field provocative posting-rules violation, and I’m pretty sure the commenter regretted it soon after hitting post.
CB, I suspect Greenwald is referring to such cases as that of Andrew Sullivan and perhaps to Greg Djerejian – people I think we can agree are conservatives now being labelled liberal. I certainly would have written the sentence in question with more specificity, but there is a tendency among some conservative supporters of Bush to label former supporters as liberal, and even among some former supporters to label Bush as liberal (I’m using Digby on the latter point I think).
I believe there are other ways of removing a post without removing the evidence. I think “unpublish” does this.
Course, it’s been a while, and my memory is not as good as I recall it being.
nobody offers criticisms of what he writes, they only moan, groan and foam about his ‘backers’, his timing (are authors now required to schedule their work according to the desires of righty bloggers?), his place of residence, his sexual preference, the actions of people in his house; but about the reason we know of him at all – what he writes – zip.
Except that the sock puppet posts are all on blog posts that are doing exactly that: critiquing his writing.
Just stick your head back in the sand and repeat after me:
Conservatives are evil.
Conservatives are evil.
Conservatives are evil.
We now return your to your regulary scheduled alternate reality.
Do we have to say it three times, like saying ‘talaq’ 3 times in order to get permanent divorce?
Oh, and the “Glenn is soooo bitchin’, and you’re just jealous” content of those sock puppet posts? That’s damned fine topical rebuttal.
Do we have to say it three times, like saying ‘talaq’ 3 times in order to get permanent divorce?
Actually, it probably works better the more you say it, like “Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.” 😉
So far, the Greenwald situation reminds me of nothing so much as March’s brouhaha over Ben Domenech. The most significant differences I have seen to date is that Greenwald hasn’t confessed in longer than it took Domenech to change from proclaiming no plaigarism to admitting to it, and no one here on the left has indicated that “there aren’t a lot on the right who should walk away from this one feeling proud”
Notice: I previously posted this over at Q&O. No one seems inclined to address the question:
Let me look at this from a grumpy old blog reader’s POV, here.
In the last, what two months, we’ve seen TruthOut post a completely bogus scoop on a Karl Rove indictment, and continue to defend it even while refusing to offer any proof. We’ve learned that two “sources” Doug Thompson repeatedly quoted, Wilkinson and Harleigh, were either blatant frauds or never existed — and now we are watching Doug Thompson diligently and futilely trying to erase any sign he ever referred to either source. Now we’re watching Glenn Greenwald deploy his personal peanut gallery of nonexistent boosters, in the course of which we’ve learned that most of his resumé as a big-deal free speech attorney was also bogus.
We’ve watched ’progressive’ bloggers lie, lie again to defend the lie, and even lie about who’s defending the lie.
So, and this is a serious question, what exactly does the left side of the blogosphere offer that I can’t get from CBS and the LA Times…? I’d genuinely like an answer.
richard mcenroe: “Now we’re watching Glenn Greenwald deploy his personal peanut gallery of nonexistent boosters”
A shred of evidence would be nice to go with this assertion.
“We’ve watched ’progressive’ bloggers lie, lie again to defend the lie, and even lie about who’s defending the lie.”
Umm, sorry, are you trolling, or are you here to have a conversation?
People can lie without it implicating “all progressives”
richard mcenroe: OK, here’s a serious answer.
On the one hand, virtually no one on the left has relied on Capitol Hill Blue in all the time I’ve been reading blogs. When I started, back in late 2003, every so often someone would post a link to some CHB story in a kos diary — look!!! it says X!!! — and a chorus of old hands would say: no. That’s Capitol Hill Blue. They are untrustworthy. If the old hands were feeling particularly nice, or had extra time on their hands, they’d document why. So the revelation that they are faking stuff is, for me, about as surprising as it would be if the Weekly World News was discredited, and it would also be about as good a reflection on the left blogs.
Pretty much everyone was skeptical of the Truthout story from the get-go as well, and (iirc) a bunch of people (Salon, for instance) posted rather extensive explanations of why they were.
In Greenwald’s case, on the other hand, there is zero evidence that there’s anything more going on than several houseguests, or one partner, or some combination thereof, posting comments about him from his home. We have not learned that his resume was bogus, at least not that I’ve seen; we have not learned that he deployed an army of sock puppets, or anything else.
What I think you can infer from this is: (a) that not all left blogs are trustworthy, which should hardly come as a shock — not all right blogs are trustworthy either. (b) Left blogs, at least those in a position to know, will often explain why untrustworthy left blogs are untrustworthy, especially when those blogs (or some specific story on them) is getting a fair amount of play.
There are, of course, other differences. Personally, I think the level of argument at the top left blogs is higher than on the top right blogs, and we also are much less likely to call anyone a traitor, or to say that they should be shot.
You can get a much more interesting range of opinions from us than you’d get from CBS news — and it would of course be even broader if you included good right blogs as well. You can ask us questions and get answers. Plus, we have more of a sense of humor (at least as long as CBS doesn’t hire Fafblog.)
Richard,
A genuine answer would require that you identify the persons rather than make a blanket accusation against ‘progressive’ bloggers. People get attached to their spin, as can be seen from this QandO thread
I believe that you are new here, so a lot of it has to do with where you are getting your information. If you believe that just one side of the blogosphere is guilty of spin and the other side is just giving the facts, I’d have to politely disagree with you.
Note to those on the right who say that Greenwald is excessive, too broad-brush, etc.: I was just reading his blog, and it occurred to me that one possible problem is his use of the term ‘Bush supporters’. It’s worth trying to read his latest post, which I take it is an instance of the kind of thing that bothers people on the right, with the following thought in mind:
When he says ‘Bush supporters’, he does not mean ‘people on the right’. Lots of people on the right are no longer Bush supporters, if the polls are to be believed. He also does not mean ‘people who don’t exactly support Bush, or have any actual enthusiasm about him; who are, truth be told, pretty disappointed, but think that Democrats would be worse.
He means: Bush supporters: those people who are still not just less anti-Bush than anti-anyone else, but who think that Bush is doing a good job, and who therefore don’t just accept him faute de mieux, but support him. The people who are unfazed by how things turned out in Iraq, and the evidence that it turned out badly because of serious failures by the administration; by the response to Hurricane Katrina; by basically anything that has happened in the last six years.
Most blogs are on the left or the right. Glenn is different: he just focusses on a fairly narrow range of issues, like the rule of law, which really should not be the property of the left or the right. (That’s why I said above that I really don’t know what the rest of his politics are like; for all I know, he could be a Goldwater conservative. I mean this quite seriously.)
He’s not about left v. right; he’s about people generally v. what he regards as the radicalism of the Bush administration. So try reading the latest post while resisting the temptation to read ‘Bush supporters’ as referring to the right, and see if that helps.
Pretty much everyone was skeptical of the Truthout story from the get-go as well, and (iirc) a bunch of people (Salon, for instance) posted rather extensive explanations of why they were.
I’ll freely admit that I was insufficiently skeptical of the Truthout story and that I got burned by it. That said, I’m not actually a blogger so I don’t think I count towards richard’s tally.
Talk Left was one prominent blog buyoing the truthout foolishness.
In Greenwald’s case, on the other hand, there is zero evidence that there’s anything more going on than several houseguests, or one partner, or some combination thereof, posting comments about him from his home.
So, that settles it then. Nothing amiss here. Nope. Nothing at all. No reason to believe otherwise. Nope. Perfectly innocent, it is. Yup.
Actually that should probably read:
“…there is zero evidence that there’s anything more going on than Glenn Greenwald, or several houseguests, or one partner, or some combination thereof, posting comments about him from his home.”
Which helps to account for the shamless self-promotion. Or host promotion, maybe.
Most blogs are on the left or the right. Glenn is different: he just focusses on a fairly narrow range of issues, like the rule of law, which really should not be the property of the left or the right.
Then would someone please explain to me why he would have joined the Townhouse list which was all about a unified message from the left? Or why he would have been invited?
“Which helps to account for the shamless self-promotion.”
I think this actually says the opposite of what you want it to say, Pablo.
“Talk Left was one prominent blog buyoing the truthout foolishness.”
Comically wrong. Talk Left actually reported on the issue skeptically, posting many comments from Rove’s attorney, e.g., e.g., e.g.
Glenn Greenwold has a must-read post today about the mental processes of rightwingers. He explains why some people care more about sockpuppetry than torture, corruption and the abuse of power.
Lily, Do you mean the review of the John Dean book? The newest post is about Specter.
Is Glenn speculating about the mental processes of all rightwingers, or just the ones that fit his profile?
Slarti: the Dean review is the piece I meant when I wrote above: try reading it while resisting the temptation to read ‘Bush supporters’ as ‘right-wingers’. He’s not talking about the right generally; he’s talking about those who support Bush now (at this late date.) Thus, not about you, von, Andrew (best I can tell), or Seb, but about Hindrocket and most of RedState.
I asked, hilzoy, because Glenn’s on blogspot, and blogspot isn’t loading for me just now. Otherwise, I’d be…well, not delighted, but willing, to read it.
Ah, it’s loading now. Interesting…Glenn thinks the conservatism’s loss of Pat Buchanan was somehow a bad thing? That a loss of a conservative as…prominent as Pat Buchanan isn’t a net gain for conservatism? Glenn thinks the fact that we’re selling bombs to Israel is somehow a policy change that involves us in the the current conflict to some greater extent than, say, two years ago?
This is sloppy work, hilzoy. Seriously, Glenn has some good points to make. Sometimes the key to decorating your house for the holidays is knowing how much is too much.
before our resident conservatives sink any further into GGDS, they should consider that WFBuckley is now arguing that Bush is not a conservative. here.
that’s pretty much everything that GG is trying to say. movement conservatives are so wrapped up in their obsessive quest for “true” conservatism that even GWB is now not a conservative.
So, Francis, it’s your contention that Bush IS a true conservative…whatever that means?
Michelle Malkin’s upset about that arms story.
Slarti: it’s not my favorite post, nor is Dean’s psych theory my favorite theory. I just meant that I had been reading things like this forever, and last night I suddenly thought: well, this would read a lot differently if I thought that he was talking not about the hardy band of true believers who think that everything is going swimmingly, but about the much larger group that includes, say, you. And then I thought: and it would be so easy to read him that way, now that I think of it.
The thing about Glenn is: first, he is, imho, really, really good on the law. Second, he really, really cares about a lot of the constitutional issues involved, in (according to me) exactly the right way. Third, whether or not you think he paints with too broad a brush, something deeply bizarre is going on in parts of the right, and he’s often very good at spotting parts of it and figuring out what’s wrong with them.
To be clear about what I mean by the ‘bizarre developments’ in some parts of conservatism: the sudden willingness of people who only recently were horrified at expansions of governmental power to countenance and defend virtually anything Bush claims the right to do; the leaping to defend things like torture without, apparently, bothering to ask whether it’s so much as necessary; the endless calls for more and more wars, and/or for ‘taking the gloves off’, as though there were much more we could do in that regard; the willingness to call their opponents traitors and to advocate killing or jailing them for their political views, even when those opponents are e.g. a majority of the Supreme Court; what I can only describe as hatred of the left, buttressed by a fairly developed view of what ‘liberals’ are like that has very little to do with reality; all that stuff) have a lot to do with ‘the authoritarian personality’, as I understand it. (Maybe something, but not a lot.)
Myself, I do not think that these things have much to do with the authoritarian personality. Something, maybe — I mean, I’m sure there are such people, etc. — but my best guess is that it’s not the driving factor. (I think the hatred and anger are deeper than the urge to submit to something.) But I think if you read blogs like Powerline, Anti-Idiotarian R., and the like (not the reasonable ones like QandO), as well as e.g. Bill Kristol and most of NRO, and think that there is some phenomenon going on that needs to be explained, then you’ll see who Glenn is talking about, and think, about that post: it misidentifies the cause of that phenomenon, but it’s talking about something real.
It would probably be a service to write a post along the above lines critiquing Greenwald’s sweep. There are of course (good or bad) reasons why people changed (or apparently changed) their views – dunno if Greenwald acknowledges that.
I think this is just more of my unwillingness (or inability) to read past points that I absolutely reject. I think we discussed previously that I had a similar issue with Rousseau.
Oh, yes, certainly there are rabid rightwing blogs, just as there are rabid leftwing blogs. Are there more of one than the other, or is there more deep psychosis, or is there more average psychosis (I’m using psychosis in jest, here, and also for lack of a better word) on the right than on the left? I can’t say. I do know there is lots of utter bilge on DU and Kos and Atrios, and there’s folks that comment here (not that I think you agree with them) that think that Republican fascists have taken over the country, and will continue to rig elections to guarantee themselves control of the government. I regard comments of this nature as deeply insane; nearly as crazy as those made by people who think the WTC was brought down via controlled demolition and that the Pentagon was hit by one of our own missiles.
And yes, there’s Misha and various other places that I fail to condemn on a daily basis, mostly because I’ve already condemned them by failing to acknowledge them, or ever linking to them. This is what I call the Scrum. The Scrum is occasionally dominated by coordinated athleticism, sometimes by covert knees to the groin, still others by those who taunt their opponents into doing something stupid. The thing is, it’s all scrum. There are few blogs that aren’t; this one frequently teeters on the edge of Scrum-tiousness and then staggers back a few paces. The thing is, the Scrum is about victory, and there are always those who think victory won by knees to the groin are perfectly acceptable. It’s really more about entertainment than, God forbid, communication.
Slart, I have to say that that was a really scrummy comment.
Thanks for thinking of me, kenB.
slarti: i have no idea what Bush is, as compared to a true conservative. he appears to me to be a power-mad neo-conservative narrow-minded overly devout uneducable authoritarian. or, in other words, a true social conservative, willing to sacrifice all the historic values of the Republican party to keep power and advance his agenda.
(tariffs. the failure of the Doha round of trade talks. NCLB. SS privatization. Medicare Part D. gagging administration scientists. “teach the controversy.” not firing Rumsfeld after Tora Bora. no nation-building plan for Iraq or Afghanistan. War on Terror. Signing statements. Gitmo. Abu Ghraib. Lodging appellate briefs with secret arguments. Secret renditions to Syria. Domestic intelligence programs. etc.)
as the poll numbers drop, two interesting things appear to be happening: so-called true conservatives are accusing the president of not being a conservative (Buckley), and the president’s hard-core supporters are accusing the president’s former supporters of being liberal (Hewitt, of Djerejian.)
what, no middle ground?
“I just meant that I had been reading things like this forever, and last night I suddenly thought: well, this would read a lot differently if I thought that he was talking not about the hardy band of true believers who think that everything is going swimmingly, but about the much larger group that includes, say, you. And then I thought: and it would be so easy to read him that way, now that I think of it.”
I think that would be an immensely sloppy reading.
I think that’s one of the keys here, frankly.
Glenn discusses a specific crowd of people; apparently another crowd of people, who self-identify to one extent or another as “conservatives” don’t observe that Greenwald is discussing a specific set of people with a very specific set of traits, in which they’re not included — entirely clearly, by my reading, at tremendous length — and say, “hey, wait a minute, this doesn’t describe me and folks like me!” — entirely accurately — and then get grossly offended because they are, for some reason, including themselves in the group that Greenwald has described, for utterly no reason other than that both groups identify themselves as “conservative,” even though Greenwald is describing a very specific set of traits and if one doesn’t possess those traits, one doesn’t possess those traits and what he’s saying has nothing to do with you.
I do understand perfectly well that there are all sorts of sloppy readings, and innumerable people are prone to them, but, really, when the writer is clear, the fault lies with the sloppy reader, not the writer.
Slart’s readings of Greenwald continue to absolutely baffle me. Greenwald utterly clearly isn’t discussing Slart, and the honorable conservatives of Slart’s nature. Why Slart would think otherwise: baffled, I am.
On the other hand, that Greenwald discusses a very real set of people, endlessly readable via Memeorandum or any number of other sources of posts from the wacko right, is obvious and clear.
I’m clearly not completely following the mechanism at work here. Why would non-wackos think they’re being lumped in with the wackos when they’re not?
Well, to be fair, Greenwald’s description doesn’t accurately describe Jeff Goldstein, for instance, yet he includes Jeff as an example. It’s not as if Jeff hasn’t ever been critical of Bush, or thinks that Bush can do no wrong.
Yes, absolutely baffling. It’s the group-of-people-who-belong-to-this-group, population and identity unknown.
But Slarti, Jeff has been defending Bush precisely on the area where Greenwald takes issue, the legal questions of various permutations. Saying, for the sake of highlighting, I don’t like Bush’s table manners, so therefore you can’t classify me as a die hard Bush supporter seems a dodge.
Also, the gap between what happens in posts and what happens in comments for Goldstein is pretty marked. I tend to think that this should also be taken into account.
One shouldn’t forget about the whole blog against blog dynamic, that, when happening on blogs across the spectrum, gets taken as a left-right exemplar when it is anything but. Dennis the Peasant going after Roger Simon and Perjamas, the kerfluffle at Blogging of the President, more recently QandO going after Ace and Patterico. People who get in fights often find they don’t like each other, but you shouldn’t read more into it than that sometimes, though people (including me) always will.
he just focusses on a fairly narrow range of issues, like the rule of law, which really should not be the property of the left or the right.
Then would someone please explain to me why he would have joined the Townhouse list which was all about a unified message from the left? Or why he would have been invited?
If you think carefully enough, this question might just answer itself.
Comically wrong. Talk Left actually reported on the issue skeptically, posting many comments from Rove’s attorney, e.g., e.g., e.g.
Talk Left reported on it, with great detail and Jeralyn still couldn’t call it B.S. until Fitgerald came out clearing Rove. Her trust was in Leopold, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, not the least of which is Leopold’s history. To represent those links as proving Jeralyn’s skepticism is Greenwaldian, but not comically so.
Jason Leopold is a man with issues and anyone living the the actual “reality based” reality based community was able to detect that. If you can direct me to something Jeralyn says (and don’t get me started on the commenters) that shows she thinks Jason is full of it prior to Fitz saying so, please quote it.
Some people believe what they want to believe, even when it can’t possibly be true. Leopold had that effect on a lot of people on the left.
Glenn uses Patterico as an example, and Patterico is a solidly normal conservative non-Bush true believer. And that is why people like me suspect that Glenn is actually talking about us.
Pablo: “Some people believe what they want to believe, even when it can’t possibly be true.”
Truer than you know.
Slartibartfast,
Sneakiest typo ever! 😉
lily,
BECAUSE OF THE INSUFFICIENT OUTRAGE!!!
Thank Heaven, Glenn has delivered unto us this wisdom. I can’t wait for the Cliffs Notes.
Truer than you know.
No, I’m aware that it’s a rampant problem. An epidemic, almost.
Sorry, Sebastian, that claim doesn’t stand up. The earliest mention of Patterico by Glenn is Feb 06, but it is merely in a quote by Malkin (who I hope we can agree might be a suitable object of inquiry)
Patterico is then mentioned positively in march in an update. He labels him ‘pro-bush’, I admit, but I don’t think that is sufficient to assume that he has put him in the category of reflexive bush supporter.
Then, July is an explosion but that corresponds to the sock puppet accusations. So your belief that he calls out Patterico for supporting bush is not supported by his blog, but if you are thinking of something else, I hope you could link to it.
Your wish is my command.
In this post Glenn specifically links to Patterico as someone who is not sufficiently outraged by Misha’s (a ‘right’ wing blogger who is about as appealing as Ann Coulter so I’m not linking) statements about the Supreme Court.
In this post Glenn plays the ever-fun “you haven’t written about this thing that outrages me therefore you are an evil person” game. Patterico points out that he regularly heaps scorn on Ann Coulter and has posts about being appalled by O’Reily and Savage. He can’t be expected to keep up on every conservative nit-wit’s statements. This was Glenn’s statement that started the current blogwar. Now in my opinion Patterico jumped way overboard in his response to Glenn’s attack on him. But I note, again, that it was an attack on Patterico as if Patterico were one of the people that Glenn is talking about in his posts.
Then, July is an explosion but that corresponds to the sock puppet accusations.
Before the sock puppet explosions, there was GG’s very snide post essentially accusing “virtually all right-wing blogs” of hypocrisy (the Deb Frisch/Misha fracas); Patterico was included in that list. Whatever you may think about the factual content of the post and the ensuing blogwar, it’s certainly not the sort of post that screams even-handedness or neutrality towards the Right in general.
I meant the Glenn post about Dean’s book. And I should have said “Bush supporters” not “rightwingers” because, as Hilzoy noted, there is a difference, and the Dean book and Glenn’s post are about the supporters.
But kenb, that’s 2 weeks ago. there seems to be a conflation of the current food fight and a notion that Glenn has always been hammering on anyone on the right. In fact, Charles, Slarti, and Seb seem to argue that Glenn has always been like this, so they can safely dismiss him. People get angry, people fly off the handle, it’s just a fact of life. To try and use it to discredit someone’s political position seems a bit, well, scrummy.
Sebastian: Did you read this Jon Henke post?
It seems you (and Kenb) are making the same mistake Patterico (and others) have made regarding Greenwald’s intent re: Misha.
Also, before we get to the “parody” excuse, we should read Glenn on Patterico’s site:
You expect a lawyer like Glenn to notice the distinction between “commenters on her blog” and any old thing found somewhere on the internet. Commenters on her blog are obviously reading her blog at the time. Patterico is obviously not reading every post available anywhere on the internet.
Sorry, Seb, I didn’t mean to ignore you, I just saw Kenb’s comment and didn’t see yours (I do think that this sort of skipping over of things is responsible for a large majority of blog spats, but I disgress)
Your link as well is from July. If you want to be semantically correct, you should say Glenn _used_ Patterico as an example a few weeks ago. Uses suggests that that is all he has done, which I hope we can agree is not true.
Mattbastard, I responded to that even before I saw your post. As of 7/12/06 at 5:01 pm, Glenn didn’t seem to think it was a parody.
Note that Patterico complained about liberals at Goldstein’s not condemning the comment to his satisfaction (e.g. he calls out someone advising her to seek psychiatric help) – probably Greenwald misread that as liberal bloggers more generally. And certainly Greenwald is talking about a particular incident – I don’t see him labelling Patterico “a reflexive Bush supporter”.
re: Patterico.
from his blog, on the Deb Frisch/JG issue:
UPDATE: Amazing. Liberal commenters on her blog are refusing to condemn her.
from which, GG drew the utterly unremarkable conclusion that mainstream conservative bloggers are very good at finding the speck in the eyes of others, and not so good (A.I.R.) at detecting the beam in their own.
and before anyone gives too much credibility to Patterico’s Pontifications, this is a person who (a) claims to be a prosecutor and (b) finds that JG’s comment about touching one’s sister “in her secret places … lots” is not indicative of pedophilia.
right. keep this nitwit away from the sex crimes unit, because if he’s ignoring that kind of evidence, he’s making the public defenders’ jobs way too easy.
“Your link as well is from July. If you want to be semantically correct, you should say Glenn _used_ Patterico as an example a few weeks ago. Uses suggests that that is all he has done, which I hope we can agree is not true.”
Huh? The current month is July. Glenn hasn’t taken down or otherwise repudiated the post. It is still available on his website. Does he need to post a new condemnation of Patterico every five minutes for ‘uses’? Every 30 seconds? Every 5 seconds? Now? Now again? What about now?
In any case you don’t seem to be responding to the content of the problem. Glenn has very recently used Patterico as an example of the kind of right-wingers he is talking about. If someone like Patterico counts, it is very likely that someone like me or someone like Slarti counts as well.
Ack, my last very x-posted, had to go read up.
There was one blog, Confederate Yankee, that said what GiGi was accusing the VRWC of, and even that blog backpedaled as the left chimed in on the human Roman Candle that was Deb Frisch.
The charge was absolutely groundless, Greenwald got called out for making it and he went into victim mode instead of doing the honorable thing: correcting himself.
He likes to link to things that don’t say what he says they say. He won’t acknowledge it when caught. He whines about persecution and personal attacks instead. He’s dishonest, period.
As is Jason Leopold. Both gots them some sock puppets too. 🙂
utterly unremarkable conclusion that mainstream conservative bloggers are very good at finding the speck in the eyes of others, and not so good (A.I.R.) at detecting the beam in their own.
Take out “conservative” and you have a very fair statement. The right has no monopoly on such selective blogging.
That’s only unremarkable if you’re used to idiocy.
I think reasonable people can agree that Deb Frisch went out of her way to put on a full scale production of “What Not To Do When You’re Blogging”. Hell, Deb herself admits it, and she’s not even reasonable. Given that she launched it at Protein Wisdom, it was pretty hard to miss the show on the right side of the ‘sphere.
Finding a speck? Give a lunatic a little credit, would ya?
kenB: “The right has no monopoly on such selective blogging.”
Some examples might help. And note that the point was the relative prominence of the people being criticized.
GiGi? That’s the kind of thing my kids did middle school. Id you don’t want to type Greenwald out try GG. (see how easy that is and not a pointless slur on his sexual orientation)
One blog, Pablo?
Rightwing Nut House:
Sister Toldja
Flopping Aces
Just one…
(Oh, and I don’t think gay-baiting ad homs such as ‘GiGi’ have any place at ObWi. Hopefully the hive mind agrees…)
Still don’t get the point of pointing to the Greenwald Mischa post to show he classes the pro- and not-pro-Bush conservatives together – seems to me he’s talking about a different set, and linking to them.
“gay-baiting”
Oh, please explain the etymology of that.
Goodness, can’t we all just agree that how we feel about Glenn is predicated on our political leanings and move on with our lives?
For the record, I’ve never heard of those right-wing sites. But I’ll be extra safe and condemn them! Will you condemn atrios for his First Up Against the Wall post? Surely he counts as a prominent blogger.
In any case, how does their existence justify including non-extremist blogger such as Patterico? It suggests to me that for Glenn the tight definitions that hilzoy is holding him too are not so tight.
Huh? The current month is July. Glenn hasn’t taken down or otherwise repudiated the post. It is still available on his website. Does he need to post a new condemnation of Patterico every five minutes for ‘uses’? Every 30 seconds? Every 5 seconds? Now? Now again? What about now?
I think the 6 questions in a row may suggest that you are getting a bit angry here. My apologies, but my underlying point is that this was a similar point to the one you made about ‘attack’. Given that the post in question is part of an ongoing food fight, arguing that because glenn hasn’t taken it down, it therefore proves your point seems a bit amiss.
In fact, I would not be surprised if you could trace this things back to the Sadly No! piece of Goldstein, which finds its origins in the comment interventions and the busting of Goldstein over a minor matter of a mistaken historical reference, which led to the outing of a commentator and the various commentariats swarming over each other(I have my own opinions of it, but not having been there, I don’t think they are informed) However, it reminds me of a elementary school soccer game where all the kids just seem to follow the ball, kicking each other and when the ball squibs out in one direction, the mass follows it. If you want to put ObWi into the scrum, count me out.
kenB: “The right has no monopoly on such selective blogging.”
Some examples might help. And note that the point was the relative prominence of the people being criticized
Sorry, don’t have the energy. And the problem with this sort of accusation in general is that the accused can always come up with some sort of justification for the selectiveness. I recall hilzoy and JMM and Atrios and others being charged with this sort of sin, and the response was basically “I blog about what interests me, don’t draw any larger conclusions”, or “the right wing is in power now so their misdeeds are more important”, or “their nutcases have millions of listeners, I’d never even heard of [insert left-wing crank here]”.
And in fact the righty bloggers so attacked also had their reasons — Frisch was getting mainstream media attention, whereas Misha’s just some random blogger that everyone knows is a nutcase.
IMHO, any blogger that spends more than a very tiny fraction of his/her time tilting at wingnuts or moonbats shows his/her bias from that very selectivity, regardless of the facts of any given post. There are plenty of thoughtful arguments and thoughtful commenters on both sides that could be engaged — why waste time with the wingers unless you want to be in the scrum?
“If you want to put ObWi into the scrum, count me out.”
I don’t. I’m not trying to chart the whole history of the stupid blog-fight that has led to the silly sock puppet accusations. I’m pointing out Glenn seems to have a more expansive view of the people he is attacking than Hilzoy or Gary seem to think he has. This isn’t the only post where that is true, it is merely directly linked to the discussion.
lj: “If you want to put ObWi into the scrum, count me out.”
I don’t see SH doing that (even if he’s got his Venn diagrams mixed up).
rilkefan and seb,
My point is that (what I see as) the anger behind Seb’s posts is going to get us into that territory, not that he is trying to align ObWi on one side or the other of the “debate”. he disagrees with hilzoy and gary, fine. He feels that GG’s posts in July are indicative of GG’s total philosophy, that’s his opinion. hil, gary and I have suggested it is not so he can simply say he disagrees and we move on.
kenb,
why waste time with the wingers unless you want to be in the scrum?
which brings us back to the question of the appropriateness of this post for ObWi. Charles is certainly welcome to blog about anything he likes, but one might think that he doesn’t want to build up the site, he wants to tear it down.
Glenn “Rick Ellensburg” Greenwald’s (Is that gay-baiting, one man inside another?) post:
“But what’s so very confounding is that of all the countless right-wing bloggers who spent the weekend so very horrified about the comments of that influential political leader of liberalism, Deb Frisch, or who lamented that she wasn’t condemned aggressively enough for her idiotic comments to Jeff Goldstein…”
The Flopping Aces quote doesn’t come close to saying either of these things. It talks about lefty bile, not insufficient outrage.
Sister Toldja notes that a lot of people ignored it, and that there were exceptions. That’s all quite true.
The RWNH post does fit the bill. I’ll concede that there were two. Does two justify “all the countless right wing bloggers”?
Would you call that an accurate representation of the truth?
Is that gay-baiting, one man inside another?
the parenthetical comment is, and it is rather distasteful.
Wait until “Pablo” finds out that one of three conservative front-pagers here is gay. I bet gay jokes will suddenly become much less funny. Nobody tell him who it is, though — see if he can guess.
“My point is that (what I see as) the anger behind Seb’s posts is going to get us into that territory”
I think you’re mistaking my annoyance at you with anger at Glenn or Hilzoy or Gary. I was annoyed by a semantic point on the word “uses” which apparently you believe ought to have been (I almost wrote “ought to be”, think of the horror) “used one and a half weeks ago”. It is annoying not only because it was a semantic distraction that so far as I can tell doesn’t change my point, but because it distracted so much that you couldn’t even translate it to “used” and try to address my post from there.
kenB: “And in fact the righty bloggers so attacked also had their reasons — Frisch was getting mainstream media attention, whereas Misha’s just some random blogger that everyone knows is a nutcase.”
Frisch got that attention not because she’s prominent or because she said anything of the sort not easily dredgable but because of partisan noise-machine tactics. I’d actually heard of A.I.R., and he does (did?) get lots of links and traffic for a nutcase. Anyway, I’ll take lj‘s hint and drop this.
Hey Pablo, I’m gay but I don’t have a boyfriend–though you aren’t making yourself as attractive as you might with the quips. 🙂
Sebastian: did I ask you to condemn those sites? I was directly responding to Pablo’s contention that CY was the only right-wing blogger who jumped aboard the ‘lefties aren’t shouting loud enough about this!’ bandwagon. I’m sick to death of conservatives such as yourself who, when provided evidence that some (key word: some) self-identified right-wingers may just be *gasp* a$$holes, decide to take the statement as a general attack against all (self-identified) conservatives.
When some right-leaning individual goes off on (eg) Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, or Howard Zinn, I don’t take that personally; the aforementioned ‘lefty icons’ don’t speak for me. I don’t read them regularly, and my political ideology doesn’t significantly intersect with theirs.
If, as you’ve said, you don’t read these blogs on a regular basis (and, in fact, disagree with a number of the positions the blog-hosts espouse), chances are good those condemning said blogs aren’t talking about you.
(As for atrios, I find the raging partisanship and invective at his site [and at DailyKos], especially within the comment threads, extremely disgusting which is why I stopped reading him [and Kos] back in early ’04).
KenB: Cart. Horse. The mainstream media attention came after the right-wing blogstorm – as a result of, one could argue.
Pablo: I’ve witnessed enough of your bile at PW and Pandagon to know that engaging you in debate is a futile exercise.
I will repeat my contention that your insinuations re: GG’s sexuality are a violation of the posting rules.
BTW, this Quando post is a brilliant comment on the whole Glenn/Patterico/Ace thing.
Sebastian,
apologies for the annoyance, I wasn’t trying to do that. I just thought the use of ‘uses’ fit in with what I see as your argument that Glenn has consistently attacked people on the right regardless of their anti Bush tendencies. I’ll also let this drop now and again, my apologies.
. . . Misha’s just some random blogger that everyone knows is a nutcase. . . .
Dude is the #45 most-linked blog around, according to the Blog Ecosystem. The two immediately above him are Pandagon and Goldstein. “Random blogger,” my butt.
Sebastian, you’ve ruined it! (sobs uncontrollably)
Hey, back off – I saw him first!
(I swing both ways, but like Sebastian am currently without significant other. ;))
Frisch got that attention… because of partisan noise-machine tactics.
OK, I’ll cop to posting out of ignorance on that one — I just saw the argument somewhere, didn’t follow up. Anyway, I suspect but can’t prove that a sufficiently motivated conservative could come up with plenty of examples.
That’s quite something, though the deliberate hornet-nest-poking makes me queasy.
I’m almost afraid to ask what I ruined.
Are you crying because I’m single? That is a nice display of empathy.
Wait, I get it now. Sorry. He might not yet know I’m a front page poster. Wait until tomorrow.
“Anyway, I suspect but can’t prove that a sufficiently motivated conservative could come up with plenty of examples.”
I wouldn’t be shocked – but there are some quite motivated conservative bloggers out there, and I tend to think we police our own fairly well. In my negligible way, I’ve criticized The Editors and Brad DeLong recently for behaviour unbecoming.
L_J, no worries. If we all communicated perfectly one of us would be president instead of Bush. I’m sure at least half of the misunderstanding was my fault. Glenn is feeding my persecution complex dontcha know? 😉
Hmm, on second thought communicating perfectly doesn’t seem to be a requirement for a president.
Sorry to drop back in, but I xposted over Sebastian’s QandO link. ‘I was just doing it to teach you a lesson’ is something best left to parents and then only sparingly.
…that engaging you in debate is a futile exercise.
That depends on what you bring to the table. I admit that it might not work for you. Snark will not get the job done.
If I’ve violated some house rule, would someone please explain it to me, or ban me or something?
“‘I was just doing it to teach you a lesson’ is something best left to parents and then only sparingly.”
I agree. But I would tend to file it under “Strategy I wouldn’t have used there but interesting anyway.” It worked rather well. And the funny thing is when I read his previous post I thought “Yikes, he seems like he is pushing all the wrong buttons he is likely to get a blow-up response”.
Oh, mattbastard, before you have me banned, would you answer the question from my 9:12 post above? Would you call that an accurate representation of the truth?
I know it’s a futile argument and all, but humor me. A last wish, if you will.
Quickly, before I say something awful.
I don’t recall requesting your banning, Pablo. 🙂
You seem to be spoiling for a tussle. Alas, I’m a lover, not a fighter (and, as mentioned, single:P). I will, however, note in passing that you’re parsing semantics, but will leave it at that. If you wish to take my abstention from further engagement as an acknowledgement of defeat, then so be it.
(Oh, and if you want him, Sebastian, feel free to have at it – I renege my claim. Hopefully my charitable gesture isn’t forgotten. *Sigh* What might have been…)
I will, however, note in passing that you’re parsing semantics, but will leave it at that.
That’s really not true, matt. Greenwald makes a sweeping claim and we agree on two quotes out of a bazillion blogs. Or “countless”, as the term was used.
It’s a simple question, and it isn’t the least bit semantical. Is his claim true, or isn’t it?
We both know that it isn’t. And yet, it’s the central thesis of a rather nasty post. Why do you want to defend that? Why shouldn’t he step back and correct himself, or at least try to parse his way out of it like Markos would do?
Nah. GiGi doesn’t do corrections.
Pablo, the gay baiting is getting less and less charming with repetition. You know by now that there’s a gay and bi contingent here, and that they are welcome. Why do you persist in the “GiGi” and other such filth?
Now admittedly I feel that way about the vast majority of all insulting nicknames and such. I’ve no more use for “Chimpy” than I do for “feminazi”. But in this particular case, you are presenting as funny and weird and mockable something that’s actually an accepted fact of life around here.
hilzoy, et al — Thank you for the courtesy of responding.
I’d feel better about all this if the malignant left wasn’t driving the debate for the Democratic Party and ‘moderate’ progressives.
Does anyone seriously think Karl Rove is taking the advice of, say, Frank J or Ace of Spades? Is Cheney getting his policy tips from Pajamas Media? Do we see Jeff Goldstein being drafted chairman of the RNC?
But I look at the Democrats, and I see Pelosi and Reid parroting posts from Daily Kos. I see Kos Bialystok dangling a few ‘netroots’ dollars and Democrats rushing to abandon a lifelong liberal like Joe Lieberman. I hear Democrats and progressives ranting about a Republican culture of corruption while one Democrat after another is being convicted or forced to step down from their post on the federal, state and city level. I see ‘peace-loving progressives’ determined to ‘speak truth to power’ but excusing or ignoring the threats and lies of a Jason Leopold, a Larry Johnson, a Deb Frisch, a “Booman Tribue” or Kossacks and DU posters too numerous to mention.
I’ve been a registered Democrat since I cast my first vote for Jimmy Carter, and I can no longer bring myself to think these people and beliefs are not the core and the future course of the Democratic Party. And I have to oppose them.
As far as the sense of humor goes, maybe I haven’t sampled the full range of progressive or liberal humor available, but the stuff I’ve seen so far that rises above the level of “Bush sucks” strikes me as nothing, again, I don’t hear on Letterman or the Daily Show; honestly, I simply don’t see the diversity of subject matter, or, and I freely acknowledge this is a subjective opinion, the wit and humor.
Truth in advertising: I posted a similar post on Protein Wisdom earlier, in response to a poster there.
richard,
I don’t want to be too pointed about this, but googling up your email nick brings up comments like this
The way to save the dignity of hearings is to have them held by Senators capable of displaying dignity. With Schumer, Biden and Kennedy playing the three Marx Brothers and DiFi covering the Margaret DuMont part, we sure didn’t have that… but it’s important see what we _did_ have.
I want every word these graceleless, clueless, self-important louts see fit to belch forth available to the American public 24/7.
or the swiftboat discussion here
or this comment on a TNR post by Zengerle
or this comment at Tim Blair’s place
Now, perhaps you are a life long Democrat who has suddenly turned against the party. However, what seem to be your comments suggest something different.
Assuming that this to be true (and if you deny that it was you who posted this, you need not answer these questions), why do you think it necessary to pretend to moderate credentials here as a way of trying to strengthen your argument? And (again, if this is true) why should we accept your line of argumentation if you feel the need to bolster it with that kind of deception.
Apologies if this is overly harsh, but I really don’t understand why you go thru the contortions of claiming to be a lifelong Dem here. It’s not like anyone in power is reading this blog for political hints. (though I wish some on the right would listen to Seb, von and Andrew)
Yes, of course. Goldstein criticizes Bush outside of Greenwald’s self-limited perception and it’s just superficial criticism. Really, Bush ought to have extended a pinky, don’t you think?
On the other hand, anyone on the right criticizing Bush in what’s viewed as legitimate areas is simply throwing him under the bus. It’s win-win logic!
Hmmm, got you mad too, judging from the exclamation point at the end. Again, sorry about that, but I think I am discussing a real phenomenon here, where criticizing Bush on basically minor things is taken as proof that the person isn’t just a dittohead. I’m also trying to think of a liberal/progressive/leftist of note who defended Clinton or Carter with the vehemence that one finds in Hindraker on Bush.
Oh, good gosh, no. He’s only like that when he is. You know, when he says things that tick me off. Could be all the time; I have no idea. But if he’s just venting, and venting inaccurately, retractions just might be in order.
Or, more likely, not. Glenn strikes me as the sort of fellow who would quickly retract if he thought it was appropriate. Of course, I’ve never met the guy, but I like to give the benefit of a doubt.
Gosh, I go off to write (extensive!) comments for a grad student, and look what happens!
OK: it was my ‘he’s talking about Bush supporters’ comment that started this, so let me explain. When I wrote that, I had in mind a string of posts that GG wrote, of which the Dean post is the latest, about, well, ‘Bush supporters’ and their calls to jail reporters, hang their opponents for treason, etc., etc. I thought that those posts might be the ones that made people talk about his painting with too broad a brush, etc., and wanted to propose an explanation.
I do not, myself, see the post Sebastian referenced here (about Patterico) as one in this string — it was, instead, a post about how some of the people who had howled about liberals not denouncing Deb Frisch had themselves not denounced incivility on their own side. It wasn’t criticizing them for failing to catch each and every bit of incivility, etc.; it was criticizing them for saying that other people ought to do that when they plainly did not hold themselves to the same standard. (In his next post, Glenn endorses this explanation of his point, from QandO.)
The point is: the post Seb mentioned was about a quite specific incident, not about ‘Bush supporters’ generally.
I didn’t mean, in my earlier comment, to suggest that the only people (or: bloggers?) on the right that Glenn ever criticizes are “Bush supporters”; just that when he does use that term, he means, well, Bush supporters, and that you’d probably find his posts more persuasive if you read him that way.
No, that was laughter. Guess it’s time to kick in the emoticons.
Eh? Where’d I say that? We write about what we feel like writing about. Or do you take Kos’ lack of commentary on the whole Israel/Lebanon situation to be telling in and of itself? It’s just GOT to be approval of Hezbollah, I tell you.
More humor, in case you were wondering.
You know, I was barely paying attention back then, but I’m a pretty busy guy, most times. I’m sure you could dig up someone. Still, only Hinderaker is Hinderaker. Try asking him if you want to know. It may be more reliable than the amateur sociology we’re seeing. It could hardly be less.
Richard, I see no evidence that “the malignant left” is more powerful than the malignant right. The Vice President regularly appears on Rush Limbaugh. Ann Coulter was on the cover of Time, which named Power Line “blog of the year”.
Besides, Kos is not the Daily Kos, which contains the comments of thousands of people. The man is not the site, although it was silly of him to name it after himself. He says nothing comparable to the vileness emitted by Limbaugh or Coulter.
And exactly how many Connecticut voters do you think Kos’s mind control rays can work on? Surely not enough to win an election. Lieberman’s troubles have to do with his own actions and political ineptitude, and the way the voters of Connecticut have reacted.
Why should Democratic Underground or Deb Frisch rate any more attention than LGF or Free Republic?
I don’t understand how a lifelong Democrat (registered, I notice you say — presumably you haven’t voted for a Democrat in quite a while?) could be so offended by some uncivil writings on the Internet that he runs into the arms of people who accuse their political opponents of treason. I suspect there’s something else going on.
Slarti: only Hinderaker is Hinderaker, but when you start to add up, for instance, all the people who seem to think that journalists should be imprisoned, and that the likes of me are traitors, and so forth, you get a non-negligible proportion of the major right-wing blogs. (Why, only a few days ago I was accused of being inclined to treason by Tacitus, and that was me and the other commenters here specifically, not just the nebulous “left”. And I didn’t think he was kidding; at any rate, it was not a humorous piece. Engaging in rhetorical overkill, perhaps, but why a deeply serious accusation should be seen as an OK form of rhetorical overkill, I don’t know. To me, it’s like accusing someone of being a pedophile, not in jest, and then saying: oh, just a little hyperbole.)
I’d…I’d find his posts more persuasive if I were persuaded by them?
Hmph. I think this is a matter of polarization. Some people see frequent support for Bush and interpret that as reflexive; others see frequent opposition to Bush and see that as reflexive. Probably some of it IS reflexive on both sides, but I see far fewer people who think that Bush can do no wrong than I see that think Bush can do no right; we have commentors here who loudly declaim as much. I suppose it depends on which point of view is most convenient. Me, I see it all as some meld of mind-reading and amateur sociology/psychoanalysis, and weigh it accordingly.
Which, perhaps, is convenient as well. How’d I get in this corner, and where’d all this paint come from?
“which named Power Line ‘blog of the year'”
Possibly unneeded hyper-clarification:
PowerLine got blog of the year because of its work on the Dan Rather/forgery story which was one of the first big stories that a blog took the lead on. It wasn’t a judgment about general quality or anything like that.
Ack, L_J has inhabited my mind! 😉
Richard: if you let your politics be dictated by the niceness of the people on a given side, you’ll probably have to found your own political party to make sure it doesn’t include anyone you think is a jerk. Personally, I’d be more inclined to weigh the various policy proposals people might be inclined to enact. Although if I were to try to assess the parties on a sort of meanness scale, I don’t see who, of the Democrats who are as influential as Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, is in the same league, vileness-wise.
I’m also puzzled by your claim that “one Democrat after another is being convicted or forced to step down from their post on the federal, state and city level.” Maybe a lot of them are on the city level, in cities whose politics I don’t follow; on the national level, I can only think of Jefferson and the guy from WV whose name eludes me. I don’t think that Democrats begin to stack up to Republicans on this score, just now.
Most people on the left didn’t criticize Deb Frisch because they had never heard of her, and don’t normally read Protein Wisdom. Fwiw, I criticized her on her blog. Whoop de do.
I think you need to throttle back that sarcastic humor a bit, Slarti, the fumes are getting a bit thick.
I didn’t say that you said anything about the minor criticism of Bush acting as a shield for other opinions. _I_ was suggesting it. This is the flip side of the so called Bush Derangement Syndrome, and if you think I was accusing you or Sebastian falling prey to it, I apologize, I was not.
I don’t want to get into a question of what you have or have not read and, having read some of Hindraker’s comments (as well as von’s memorable dissections of some of his posts), I’d pass on contacting the man himself. But in my reading, I’ve only read a few things of praise for Clinton that were bizarrely over the top (like this one)and it was hard to tell if those were done for ironic effect or not. If you don’t feel I am portraying this accurately, you are welcome to google up, but I can’t prove there is an absence of articles short of asking you to find me an appropriate counter example.
Ack, L_J has inhabited my mind! 😉
And I gotta say, the place is a wreck! I’m tripping over all kinds of stuff! You aren’t going to use this stuff. [Post] something to clean this place out! (sorry, I was channeling my wife there)
Correction: “LGF or Free Republic” should read “LGF or [insert small-time right-wing blogger I’ve never heard of]”. Free Republic or LGF might be parallel to DU, but either is far more significant than Deb Frisch.
No, LJ, I’m not being sarcastic. Or at least, not bitingly sarcastic. It’s wafer thin, I promise.
I notice you mentioned Hinderaker in connection with Media Research…could I be the last person on the planet to discover that Hinderaker is really Brent Baker?
Odd…I like to think I’m more clued in than that.
Still, I think the blogosphere would be short a few hundred thousand misunderstandings if folks would simply ask each other what they meant by that, and what they think about this…which, come to think of it, is advice I’d probably benefit muchly in taking. Probably the real answer is that we simply don’t care, or would prefer to instead do battle with some caricature of the POV in question, or both.
Well, I am assuming that the Nina Burleigh quotes are accurate, and I was googling up ‘kneepads + Clinton’, which I fortunately did not have to go too far into the search results to find. From my own POV, I’m looking from the outside (way outside actually) and trying to figure out if things were always this way and I just missed the reflexive Clinton supporters (or the reflexive Carter supporters?!?) or if the situation is actually different and I conclude that it is. Perhaps it’s just a scene painted on the inside of my glasses, but it seems awful real…
Looking back, I see that you didn’t actually say Hinderaker said anything like that. Given that, I’m not sure what point either of us is trying to make. I’m sure we can agree that people have said various things in the public arena that they wouldn’t, probably, in front of their kids. And possibly you might concede that it’s not all directed towad Bill Clinton, and possibly not all emitted by Republicans.
Which would be nice, I think, unless you’re thinking of Pat Buchanan when you say that.
*which would be cheating.
Trying to make a late pass here, I have to say that I can’t make sense of any of it.
It might just be me. Or not.
Maybe everyone should take a deep breath and try again in the morning.
Frankly, based on experience, I can’t say that will help.
It’s just a thought.
As usual, I find Slarti deeply incomprehensible.
But. Still. Breathing. Morning.
Unsaid thought: Time spent here is time unspent reading, y’know, news sources, or even listening to pure music, walking outside admidst grass and gardens and such, and otherwise not huffing and puffing at each other.
Just a thought.
Oh, and something else: I’m one of the greatest fans of Katherine ever.
But the way her series methodically shoves away open threads, with no participation by her, I don’t appreciate.
I desperately want Katherine to keep posting here.
But I also very much don’t want a long series of posts to shove away the necessary outlet that are open threads.
Open threads are necessary to the health of the nation, that is, this blog.
Please don’t let them be shoved away by anything.
A simple solution would be to uplift or upgrade them when a series gets blogged.
I could make other suggestions.
This is important, I suggest.
Responses?
Open thread, please?
And many thanks to Katherine.
Bruce baugh says:
“Why do you persist in the “GiGi” and other
such filth?”
Once again, please explain the etymology that leads you to believe that “GiGi” gay-baiting filth.
It’s mocking, and it’s diminunutive. It is intended as such, and I understand that you don’t care to hear your hero referred to in such terms. It reflects my view of him as a twerp. But any gay baiting you find within it is a product of your own mind, which indicates to me that you might want to rinse that little sucker out, Bruce. I couldn’t care less about his sex life, or yours. (OTOH, mine interests me greatly. I’m biased like that.)
And for the record, heteros are funny and weird and mockable too. Isn’t everybody? Or are you suggesting that gay people are immune to criticism? No poking fun at gay people? Is using the word “poking” gay baiting, too?
So, way to ignore the substance of what I said and focus like a laser on a cute little strawman of your own creation.
Nice dodge.
Pablo, GiGi is a feminine diminuitive. I note its use alongside other insults hurled at Glenn that deal with feminization. I note that all of this is coming from insulters on the right in response to the revelation that Mr. Greenwald is gay. I note that the right-wing insult-throwing wing of Bush administration supporters seems to really like questioning the masculinity of gay men (even as their authority figures keep turning out to be closet cases).
Look, it’s actually not a big deal to me if you’re uncomfortable wtih gay men. What is a big deal is the rush to focus on so many things other than the substance of Greenwald’s argument, and in particular on his documentation. It’s also a big deal to me that once again we find folks apparently unable or uninterested in simply disagreeing, without also trying to tear down their target’s basic stature.
(And yes, I very much feel that way about the matching insult-slinging from the left. At the moment, however, it’s not the topic of the thread.)
However, I’m probably going to let this wrap up my responding to you, as the thread doesn’t need a lot more contempt floating around.
The title of the piece is ‘Do Bush followers have a political ideology?’ Since you define yourself as a non Bush follower, the piece cannot refer to you and others you feel are in the same boat as you.
So the title justifies making overly broad and false statements, LJ? By the way, I have defined myself as separating from Bush. Sullivan was also a “Bush follower”, so we are both moving in the same direction. Am I a liberal? Goldberg is a Bush follower, and he does have a political ideology, so does consider those who disagree with Bush “liberals”? What about Bill Buckley? He is a Bush follower, yet also separated from the Bush position on Iraq. So he’s a liberal? Greenwald’s assertion on its face is unsupportable.
…but there is a tendency among some conservative supporters of Bush to label former supporters as liberal…
If only Greenwald had said that, rilke. Therein is his problem. In coming to Greenwald’s defense, folks are taking the tack that we should read what he means, not what he actually writes. I don’t understand why is being held to such low standards.
Then would someone please explain to me why he would have joined the Townhouse list which was all about a unified message from the left? Or why he would have been invited?
Pablo does have a point, Hil, gratuitous “GiGi” references notwithstanding.
Pablo,
“GiGi” may be phonetically correct but it can also be taken as a insult to Greenwald’s manhood by feminizing his name. You undercut your arguments by resorting to it.
Charles is certainly welcome to blog about anything he likes, but one might think that he doesn’t want to build up the site, he wants to tear it down.
I take exception, LJ. The tone of what I wrote in this post was light-hearted and somewhat bemused. What the commenters have to say is their business. How the conversations evolve or devolve is also the business of the commenters.