Desperate Times
Radley Balko on the Allen-Webb race:
Let's summarize: While George Allen was discovering his love for the Confederacy in Southern California and at the University of Virginia, Jim Webb was fighting the war in Vietnam, finding himself wholly immersed in a completely foreign culture. Webb was obviously rather profoundly affected by that experience. Because he chose to write about it, in a series of books that have won widespread praise from politicians, from fellow Vietnam vets, and from literary critics.But war-loving, flag-waving George Allen has decided to hold all of that against Jim Webb. Tonight, Allen took what was clearly a scene-painting, cultural passage from one of those books, grotesquely took it out of context and sexualized it, then slapped it on a press release in an attempt to cheapen Webb's well-received books as cheap porn with hints of pedophelia.
This isn't just a political attack. It's an attack on art. On writing. On expression. Hell, it's an attack on knowledge and learning. It's cheap and tawdry and cynical.
K-Lo, one should note, has an initially sound response to this nonsense before letting her readers browbeat her into know-nothing philistinism. A few hours later, she's ready to endorse anything that works.
Comments
It's an attack on art. On writing. On expression.
God, this is the most foolish thing I've read in a while.
Hey, Mark Foley only wrote too! I guess the Democrats were just attacking his "writing".
I don't know. That's of course idiotic and incredibly hacky on Al's part, but given his talents I think he should be able to come up with something even stupider and hackier. Hopefully he'll try again.
It's the sniggering equivalent of endorsing a Beavis and Butthead version of literature. "Heh heh. He said 'penis'".
I also wonder whether Balnko realizes that Allen's flag-waving is ALSO "expression". I mean, is he not aware of the Supreme Court? No difference between waving a flag and writing a book.
I realize that Balko is not the sharpest tack in the box. But I'm surprised that Matthew is repeating this stuff.
The point is obviously that Webb's writing is fiction. Not that it is "writing". Or "expression". Or "knowledge and learning" (and what the hell makes fiction "knowledge and learning"???).
It really gives me the heebie-jeebies to even partially endorse anything Al says, but... I think the passage would have been a lot more persuasive if it had merely noted that Allen's behaving like a stereotypical political bullshit artist by squawking about "Sex! Sex!". Instead, Balko decided to plunge into self-parody himself, screeching "Art under attack! Philistinism! Allen hates poetry slams too!"
Al's point is ridiculous, and Balko is 100% correct. This idea that anything an author writes about in a novel respresents the beliefs of teh author is know-nothing philistinsim, and it's not as if this is uncommon among right-wingers these days (including Al, who apparently can't distinguish between direct IM communications and fiction.)
The Als of this world are all about distraction. If you don't have the facts, argue the law. If you don't have the law, argue the facts. If you have neither, slam the table. If you can't slam the table, bring up Clinton.
Al: The point is obviously that Webb's writing is fiction.
Scott Lemieux: including Al, who apparently can't distinguish between direct IM communications and fiction
Hmmmmm...
"It's an attack on art. On writing. On expression."
The point is obviously that Webb's writing is fiction. Not that it is "writing". Or "expression". Or "knowledge and learning"
Taking things a wee bit literally, aren't you now?
Actually, the more salient point is that Webb's work of fiction has a historical setting, and he described a phenomenon that he either witnessed with his own eyes or heard about first-hand.
This is an attack on "writing" and "expression" because it strips the passage of context and implies, slanderously, that Webb wrote a salacious book glamorizing pedophilia. It means that anyone writing nonfiction, or historical fiction, or a textbook, or even a mystery novel, runs the risk of being demonized for simply setting ink to paper and writing about the strange and disturbing things that human beings do to each other. So, yes, this is an act of willful ignorance and base aliteracy and a direct challenge to the freedom of human beings to write about their experiences and acquire knowledge of the world without living in fear of censorious twats who accuse them of obscenity for simply reading or writing about subjects that might offend a few people.
(and what the hell makes fiction "knowledge and learning"???).
This may be the stupidest thing you've ever written, Al, and that's saying something.
Are you really sneering at the notion that knowledge and learning come from works of fiction? You want to stop and think about that statement for a minute?
How is it this blog's comments section is getting Kevin Drum levels of noise-signal ratio at Crooked Timber levels of comment tally?
A relevant comparison is to the controversy over The Tin Drum a while back. It is taking a passage completely out of context with malicious intent, and is an attack on art.
However, it is going to hurt Webb.
This is a lower quality Al than we're used to seeing, without a doubt. He did manage to hijack the conversation, though.
Do we suppose that I Scooter Libby's classic tome on bear rape is fair game for ridicule and political exploitation or no?
In this case, I fault Allen (who is to be sure a inveterate douchebag, your classic pretty-boy sociopath and poseur) less than I fault the morons that would vote against Webb on these grounds (who I gather number in the thousands).
Do we suppose that I Scooter Libby's classic tome on bear rape is fair game for ridicule and political exploitation or no?
Please. No liberal would ever ridicule Scooter Libby for writing that book. That would be attacking writing and expression!
Just like, surely, I would never find any liberal attacking Lynne Cheney for writing a lesbian sex novel. Horrors - good liberals would surely excommunicate any other purported "liberal" who ever attacked Lynne Cheney for her writing and expression! Like, I'm sure that if I googled Lynne Cheney's novel, I would never, ever find any blogs attacking her for such writing and expression.
Oh well, what comes around, goes around.
The point, in context, is about culture shock. The Vietnamese have customs that strike American soldiers as really weird.
Knowing that other people in other places have different folkways is sort of important if you are going to be a world imperial power.
I hate to say it, but Allen probably wins because of this.
Which just goes to prove Plato's point that democracy is the rule of the ignorant.
I'm sorry for getting involved with this idiocy, but I officially challenge you to find anyone, including random democatic underground commenters, suggesting that any action (such as not voting for) should be taken in response to Scotter writing a silly sex scene. Or that it had should have any affect on an evaluation of whether or not he was qualified for his job.
Like, I'm sure that if I googled Lynne Cheney's novel, I would never, ever find any blogs attacking her for such writing and expression.
The clock she's ticking. Put up or shut up. There are around 90,000 matches to "Lynne Cheney lesbian novel".
It'd be sporting if the blogs you brought back were certifiably liberal. Otherwise that's a bit too much like salting a mine. You guys wouldn't do that, would you?
"I'm sorry for getting involved with this idiocy, but I officially challenge you to find anyone, including random democatic underground commenters, suggesting that any action (such as not voting for) should be taken in response to Scotter writing a silly sex scene."
Of course, Scooter Libby was an appointed official, not an elected politician, so the analogy is imperfect. Nevertheless, I seem to recall any number of blog comments suggesting that Mr. Libby was a pedophile (or else at least had some kind of deranged interior life to imagine such things in fiction). If the suggestion was not that the bear rape scene represented in some sense his interior life, and that that interior life rendered him unfit to be a high-ranking government official I don't know what it was. In any event, I don't have time to wade through the archives of the dailykos.
For the middle third of the 20th century, the Democrats were the masters of demagogy, and Republicans whined perpetually about it, demanded a politics of civility and rationalism. I would prefer a politics free of demagogy, but a demagogy on behalf of the poor, working people, incarcerated, and otherwise kicked around is preferable to a demagogy on behalf of the wealthiest 1%. The trouble is that Democrats seem to care a great deal more about the Iraq War and bourgeois social issues than the plight of the poor, working people, incarcerated, and otherwise kicked around. And American politics being the way they are you probably need to start caring more about the need for political, economic, and cultural reform in the Arab-Muslim world as well as giving evangelicals a fair peace in the culture wars (as in school choice and faith-based funding) before the American people will start listening to your pleas about those left behind.
Like, I'm sure that if I googled Lynne Cheney's novel, I would never, ever find any blogs attacking her for such writing and expression.
Agree with JD: show your card if you've got them. Remember that mocking bad writing is not the same ill as what's happening with Webb.
Linus,
I'd take you more seriously were it not for your claim that the Iraq war is a "bourgeois social issue" like saving the whales or something.
Yeah, Linus, I like your perspective generally but the Iraq war is a huge deal and no distraction. Just freeing up the many hundreds of billions in direct budgetary costs already spent on the war would have allowed large scale redistribution toward the poor.
Hey, everybody should go contribute to Jim Webb (www.webbforsenate.com). Webb is so obviously the real thing and Allen is such a corrupt, stupid, hack. Put your $ where your comments are.
Even you, Al, if you're into actual conservatism instead of just being a Republican troll, Webb is a better classical conservative than Allen as well.
as giving evangelicals a fair peace in the culture wars (as in school choice and faith-based funding)
Wait, which culture war are we talking about here? Are evangelicals being "targeted" by the government or large groups of people? And by targeted, I mean, are they being discriminated against or attacked? Come on, war? Masses of people burning down evangelical churches across the country?
"Even you, Al, if you're into actual conservatism instead of just being a Republican troll, Webb is a better classical conservative than Allen as well."
One was Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, the other is an obvious loon. Which would a real conservative choose?
"I'd take you more seriously were it not for your claim that the Iraq war is a "bourgeois social issue" like saving the whales or something."
What I said (or at least meant to say [I'm too lazy to scroll up that far to find out]) was that today's liberal Democrats are too preoccupied with the Iraq War *and* bourgeois social issues (gay marriage, abortion) and not preoccupied enough with the plight of working people, prisoners, etc. I don't mean to suggest that the ongoing chaos and suffering of the Iraqi people should not be of central importance to both parties, just hoping to suggest a different way of looking at things.
"Yeah, Linus, I like your perspective generally but the Iraq war is a huge deal and no distraction. Just freeing up the many hundreds of billions in direct budgetary costs already spent on the war would have allowed large scale redistribution toward the poor."
Thank you for your kind words, and you're probably right (at least if there was a measure of leadership in Washington from either party on poverty and related issues). My own view is that the central insight of the neoconservatives and liberal hawks - that authoritarianism (as well as poverty, and the fact that Islam is in a bad place) are the root causes of the Islamic terrorist threat - is more or less correct. It is also my view that liberal democracy as they envision it in the mideast is impossible, and that the Iraq War was probably going to be a disaster no matter how many troops you sent. What I think is possible in the region is something like the Balkans, smaller nation-states formed along sectarian lines with local governance, open borders, and a centralized bureaucracy (I'm thinking here of all the former Yugoslav states eventually joining the EU) managing trade and currency policy. But you can't just tell people to break up their countries.
As a political matter, I think the Democrats are better off saying that the Iraq War is a noble cause but we're running out of time to get it right (while pressing the president in private to pursue partition). On the other hand, I'm happy that the dailykos exists and is talking back from the left of the mainstream.
Just like, surely, I would never find any liberal attacking Lynne Cheney for writing a lesbian sex novel.
Lynn Cheney is a shameless hypocrite and moral scold who now makes lots of money writing revisionist history to be forced upon children, and just yesterday blatantly lied about the content of her lesbian potboiler. She thinks that she has a free pass when she's sent out on the attack, but you can't simultaneously deliver the snarling Cheney party line, then retire to the nearest fainting couch in tears. She's Dick in a dress.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/3/30/05036/4578
Even you, Al, if you're into actual conservatism instead of just being a Republican troll, Webb is a better classical conservative than Allen as well.
I'm not a "classical conservative". I'm more of a neoconservative. I find paleoconservatives often to be just as bad as liberals. I don't know much about Webb other than his Iraq policy. But since his Iraq policy is so bad, I really don't need to know much else.
You're just more of an asshole, Al. Even dead.
If Al's link points to the source for his original contention about liberals attacking Lynn Cheney for her lesbian work, his memory is a weak sister. If Al thinks that the work does criticize Cheney for the reasons that Webb was attacked, he's an ijut.
than kyou
thank you
thank you
thank you
Santé XML
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thanks..
sex
porno
adult
izle
89
hikayeler
hikaye
erotik
seks
Thanks
Best regards
mirc
mirç
mırc
mırç
mircturk
turkmirc
mirc indir
mirc yukle
mirch
mırch
mirc turk
turk mirc
mırcturk
turkmırc
mırc turk
turk mırc
turkiyemirc
türkiyemirc
turkiye mirc
türkiye mirc
mircturkiye
mirctürkiye
mirc turkiye
mircturk
turkmırc
muhabbet
mirc sohbet
mırc sohbet
mirc chat
mırc chat
mırc ındır
mirc ındır
Türkçe mirc
Türkce mirc
Turkçe mirc
Türkce mirc
Türkçe mırc
Türkce mırc
Turkçe mırc
Turkce mırc
mirc
mirc
forum
forum
turkforum
turkiyeforum
mirc
turkmirc
toplist
site ekle
pagerank
turkmirc
turkforum
sohbet
chat
sohbet odaları
bedava sohbet
bedava chat
türk
karar
thanks...
perde
temizlik
stor perde
ip perde
jaluzi perde
dikey perde
ofis temizliği
ilaçlama
açılış organizasyon
perdeci
perde modelleri
organizasyon
http://www.ekmekmusafcarpsin.com/
Thanks Best Regards
mirc
mırc
mırç
mircturk
mirctürk
turkmirc
mirc indir
mırc indir
mirç indir
mirc yükle
mırc yükle
mirc yukle
mırc yukle
mirch
mırch
mirc turk
turk mirc
mırc turk
mircada
mircturkiye
muhabbet
mirc sohbet
mırc sohbet
mirc chat
mırc chat
mırc ındır
mirc ındır
türkçe mirc
turkce mirc
turkçe mırc
turkce mırc
oper mirc
sohbet
forum
chat
online sinema
catlak
türk forum
turk forum
kafkas
kafkasya
ders
siyaset
izmir
karşiyaka
karsiyaka
forum
karsıyaka
sohbet
harbiarkadas.com
harbiarkadas.net
harbiarkadas.org
itirafet.org
ebedava.net
elektronikmarket.net
ameribress.com
clitoriacream.net
superspenisbuyutucu.com
megabress.com
rednightperformans.com
performansartirici.com
penisplus.tv
penispluspenisbuyutucu.com
penispluspenisbuyutucu.net
cinselmerkez.com
aseks.net
erotikcamasirlar.com
vajinatr.com
bakirevajina.com
cinselkozmetik.com
kozmetikmedikel.com
eturknet.com
tecavuz.net
yutuvideo.com
ponotubesex.com
laraperuk.com
sackanagimerkezi.com
peruksa.com
perukmarket.com
aseks.com
aloveshop.com
erotikgiyim.com
geciktiricispreyler.com
geciktiricihap.com
geciktiriciler.com
azdirici.com
bayanuyarici.com
fntazialemi.com
fantaziservisi.om
cinselmazemeler.com
cinselfantaziurunleri.com
erotikdakikalar.com
erotikmarketiniz.com
seksmarketiniz.com
sekshatlari.com
erotikdergiler.com
erotikderginiz.com
penisbuyutucuviprx.com
penisbuyutucuvigrx.com
penisbuyutuculer.com
vigrxpenisbuyutucu.com
sismebebekler.com
sismebebekshop.com
yemekeviniz.com
sanalmarketiniz.com
elektronikmarket.net
ebedava.net
kontortr.com
elaydin23.com
turkcellkontorcu.com
aveakontoral.com
vodafonekontoral.com
toptankontorcu.com
cinselkozmetik.com
bayanpartnerler.com
erkekpartnerler.com
kizarkadaslar.com
yonjaarkadas.com
siberalem-siberalem.com
sexpartnerler.com
sekspartnerler.com
erotikpartnerler.com
gencyuz.com
erkekarkadaslar.com
bayanarkadaslar.com
yemekeviniz.com
sanalmarketiniz.com
baskahaber.com
medikalkozmetik.net
kozmetikmedikal.com
zayiflamavediyet.net
zayiflamahapii.com
zayiflamabandii.com
kilovertr.com
zayiflamatr.net
diyettr.com
toksinbandi.net
botoxtr.com
botokstr.com
selulittedavii.com
selulitgiderici.net
selulitkremii.com
catlaktedavisii.com
catlakgiderici.net
catlakkremii.com
penis büyütücü
Post A Comment