Fraywatch

Southern Strategy

A debate on Hillary Clinton’s red-state accent.

Torie Bosch’s latest documented case of Hillary Clinton’s “drawl on demand”—her curious reversion to a Southern accent in campaign speeches and appearances, presumably from the years spent in Arkansas—provided easy fodder for those who already consider the candidate inauthentic and opportunistic, while others admitted to being themselves guilty as charged of the occasional linguistic “code shift.” Such attention has not been heaped upon a dialect change perhaps since Madonna’s assumption of a faux British accent prompted criticism that the Material Girl was somehow repudiating “ her gritty family past in lower-middle-class metropolitan Detroit.”For JEN-10, Hillary’s multiple accents are no big deal: “I have lived in a lot of different places from Europe to Hawaii and Alaska…….and I notice my accent subtly shifting depending upon who I am talking to. And I’m not doing it on purpose, it just happens.” candoxx agrees.landmine sees the shift as political pandering at its most blatant. Defending Ms. Clinton, Borboleta says it’s natural for displaced Southerners to lapse back into their accent of origin: “Hillary may be using this accented speech to her advantage, but in my mind there is little doubt that it’s the real deal.”Boasting an international background, necoharbour considers himself further proof that accents do change over time:

I’ve seen this happen frequently with friends who have moved and worked elsewhere and after a year have picked up the local accent (but not the dialect). They will revert back to their original accent if you talk to them for a while. Those who actually do master a dialect are able to switch immediately depending on who they are talking too.
EarlyBird confesses to being “a natural mimic … since I was a little kid” and does a rather amusing riff on Hillary’s “nauseatingly pandering, and embarrassing” performance in front of black audiences. TheRanger acts as flamethrower in the debate, criticizing the “ absolutely bogus” rationale for Hillary’s “code shift,” given her upbringing “in the Chicago area” and college years in New England during the most critical period of her accent formation.vasinger detects a subtle undercurrent of anti-Southern bias in our fixation on Hillary’s chameleon-like speech patterns. Indeed, far from being the mark of “ hick” provincialism, certain Southern accents “are so refined they rival that of the English Aristocracy (most of southern planters were cousins of them). The upper crust speech of 18th century London and the African slaves probably influenced southern speech more than anything else.”More can be found in The Explainer. AC12:09pm PST

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Motivated by her own history with anorexia, Kate Taylor’s fascinating foray into the world of CRONies—practitioners of a fringe dietary movement to restrict caloric intake—brought forth a spate of self-revealing testimonials in the Fray. (Full disclosure: Taylor was a classmate of mine at Harvard whose previous writings on the subject I admire and have discussed with her in the past.)

San discusses the defining traits of male anorexia as “someone who eats about 1,400-1,500 calories a day while my age/activity rate should have me eat about 2,200.” gdmedia defends the CR movement with her own testimonial, and accuses Taylor of ignoring the regime’s emphasis on “optimal nutrition.” A self-described writer and poet, Zonemind-PDX contributes this intimate account of self-starvation:

I’m 6’4” or so. I am male. When I was in my early twenties I weighed one hundred twenty pounds, or thereabouts (it fluctuated a bit). I ate only occasionally. I didn’t like to eat in the first place (the sensation of fullness was uncomfortable to me), but I also had little wish to live.

The bit in the CR article about having a narrower focus brought a sharp jolt of recognition.

My life when I was not eating was a twelve by twelve room, spotlessly cleaned an ordered, the walls entirely bare. I had a desk with a lamp, a collection of pens, a few reams of graph paper, and a large picture window I kept curtained. My only interest was in the meticulous ordering of syllables. I wrote poetry. Mostly I wrote sonnets, because they were so difficult.

One night I was writing in my journal, and I noted that if there was true love in the world, I wanted to find it. Shortly after that, also at night, I put all my possessions in the trunk of my car, and drove away from my room. In retrospect, that was irresponsible. Although I don’t think many people noticed, and fewer cared, I left behind no indication that I had not simply gone off and completed abruptly the job of killing myself that I had been doing so slowly up until then.

But while it was irresponsible, it also had a certain beauty to it. Its finality was undeniable. Likewise, I am sometimes disturbed by the beauty of the things I wrote then. Things were so much CLEARER then. Hopeless, but clear. The walls were spotless white. The bed could double as a an engineer’s square. The lines on the paper went just so, in an unbroken rhythm of pale green, all the way down and all the way across the page.

I couldn’t go back. For one thing, I found true love. But there is a part of me that wants to go back, that remembers the perfect order, the lack of distraction, the sense of self-satisfaction that came with zealous self-denial. That part scares me.

Mara5525 detects a possible gender bias in our attitudes toward calorie restriction:

I can’t help wondering if the fact that most (but not all) Anorexia sufferers are female, [and] many who practice Calorie Restriction are male (but not all), might not impact on how these two are treated by doctors and researchers.

The Anorexic clearly has an illness and that is not something I would question. Yet there is favorable press about how “scientific” Calorie Restriction is even as the similarities between Calorie Restriction and Anorexia are obvious to anyone who has taken the time to observe both…Since male bias is still very prevalent in this world, I would venture to guess that, unconsciously, doctors and researchers automatically put much more trust in what Calorie Restriction purports to do.

After all, how laudable to want to extend life (and/or improve quality of life) through diet. We have a long history of such dietary “miracles” being practiced by zealouts who are sure they have the proverbial “key to life”.

noisette7 points out the religious precedent in practices of self-starvation: “people in the middle ages (primarily women, but not exclusively) used extreme calorie restriction as part of constructing a holy identity. In other words, starving yourself was a good first step (or marker) in becoming a saint.”

You too can aspire to Slate sainthood (or at least a checkmark) in Medical Examiner Fray. AC7:00pm PDT

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Witold Rybczynski’s photo essay on the ranch house as an American architectural icon struck a nostalgic chord. Sarja reminisces about her parents’ abode in Southern California and the convenience of a “one-story house with large windows and dutch doors.” sugar_k considers the structure “a reminder of a vanished era of mid-20th-century egalitarianism” in contrast to “the whole neo-Victorian architecture movement” of the 1980s that has “gone along with a depressing return to the income inequality and harsh morality of the Victorian period.”

Offering a historical perspective to the current trend in housing, sanstelos is “surprised to see that W.R. didn’t mention the Jeffersonian prejudice against cities and towards an agrarian deomocracy of folks who live in their own houses on their own parcels of cultivated land.”

From an environmental standpoint, Dittosbane endorses “the idea of efficiency in energy use leading to smaller houses.”

In addition to praise, the ranch house also provided fodder for the usual diatribe against suburbia. Anse criticizes the anti-communal environment fostered by the design of the ranch house, which

… lacks a front porch. The plots are too big, and the neighborhoods that result are too often lacking in a real sense of community …When you drive into these suburbs, the first thing I always notice is how dead they often are. People don’t visit, at least not in the front yard. All the action happens in the back of the castle, so to speak, out of sight. The front-porch culture of the past is canceled out by air conditioning and a dedication to privacy. You may see kids riding their bikes or the occasional jogger, but for the most part, suburban families live behind closed doors.

messyONE admires the original architectural style but ultimately confesses a preference for urban living:

If you look at older design books of ranches, the entryways are lovely.

We lived in a suburb of Dallas. The houses were all two storey monsters with garages next to the front doors and tiny, enclosed, two step entryways. They were ugly and unwelcoming. They had mingy, nasty little rooms with a thousand doors and seemed to be dark all the time.

There were no side yards, no alleys and no sidewalks. The division between front and back was deliberate and complete. The fences were all a mandatory seven feet tall and solid - no spaces allowed, which made the air flow just awful.

No one wanted to walk in the neighborhood, no kids played in the front yards (even though they were plenty big) and the lack of sidewalks was designed to sent the message that if you don’t have a car, you aren’t welcome. It was hideous.

I can say that after 5 years in the ‘burbs, we not only didn’t know our neighbors, we hadn’t even seen most of them. The garages are entered via the laundry room, so we did get to know their cars. If that’s the fantasy life in the suburbs, they can just keep it. I’ll take a nice, noisy city any day.

mojo2501 suggests that car culture in America may in part be responsible for the demise of the traditional ranch house:

How big our garages have become! How the front door has taken a back seat to the entrance from the garage for ease of entry…not welcoming to guests but great for getting those groceries in the house. More a “false face” to show off with instead of having a function…and a lot of those garages are probably bigger and nicer than my entire 3 bedroom ranch house.

Attracting less attention but just as noteworthy was Rybczynski’s documentation of New Daleville’s evolution from cornfields to exurban fringe town, the subject of his new book. More can be found in the Architecture Fray.  AC6:50pm PDT

Sunday, April 8, 2007

For a large chunk of this country, the last seven years have been a political nightmare. The Dear Prudence Fray seems an unlikely place to search for parables describing the feelings of patriotic Blue Staters. But, there it is—a response to this week’s letters describing the state of MadNotAngry’s domestic discord:

My liberal son married a gal whose parents are screamingly Conservative. At each and every gathering, her parents seem to go out of their way to turn any statements or feelings expressed into political arguments. In the past, I’ve welcomed a spirited political debate, but with these two, there is no compromise. Its 0-60, and a blood bath. If I or anyone suggest to them that there might be another point of view, I’m instantly labeled as a traitor, unAmerican, and worse. My son has asked me to just not discuss politics with them in his presence, and I’ve agreed, yet her parents take this as a sign of weakness, and yammer on and on, thinking they are educating all those within earshot.

At my grandbaby’s Christening, they couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful the war in Iraq was going, and how their hero Bush will soon attack Iran. I put my foot down. I reminded them they were in a church, and about to witness a solemn ceremony. They responded with surprise that “a liberal would even be in a church.” I’ve been a member of this church for 35 years! After that, I’ve told my son that his in-laws are no longer welcome to my home unless they can keep a civil tongue in their mouths.

Now, my daughter in law has said if her parents aren’t allowed over, neither is my grandchild. […] So now, I’m faced with listening to these two braying asses if I wish to see my grandbaby.

Sad stuff. Shouldn’t disaffected Bush detractors at least be thrilled at the coming change of Administration? Not if you think Bush’s election in 2004 was more than a fluke. As nerdnam sees it:

Bush is on his long slow slide into irrelevance. America is going to forget about him after 2008, hoping to hell he was just an aberration. Amnesia is after all the American way.

Unfortunately Bush may not be an aberration. He may just be a pure reflection of a lazy and declining country driven by pundit logic and spite politics. It wasn’t just Bush who failed to think through the implications of invading Iraq, it was America that failed. And it isn’t just Bush who can’t figure how to win or get out of Iraq, it’s America that can’t figure it out.

If I don’t sound too optimistic about life after Bush, it’s because I’m not.

Nerdnam actually has rose-petals for eyelids by the standards of Eigenvector’s dismal thought game:

The US is primed to become the next 4th Reich. Not because of the president, but from grass-roots movements.

US industry is removing any and all manufacturing to other countries, leaving us nothing but scraps and service jobs. Whereas in the past we bought foreign material and produced it into products here, now we grow the material and ship it elsewhere to be manufactured. The tables have turned on us.

I can see a time when people, recently outsourced, will rise up and demand that our country adopt the same Weimar Germany attitude that turned that country into the 3rd Reich. It won’t be a straight conversion. We aren’t in similar circumstances that they were in. But, at the core the issues are the same. Poverty, lack of jobs, poor economic situation - all it takes is a sense of national pride to push us in that direction.

Corporations are a plague on mankind, they infect society and drain all the resources before moving on to another location. National Socialism can be a cure for that plague (or a salve for it). But I’m not totally sure that in this case the cure is better than the disease as it were.

Scary thoughts, for sure. But that’s all taking it too far, isn’t it? The_slasher14?

Those on the right who are inclined to wag their fingers at “socialism” or “Marxism” or “leftists” are advised to remind themselves that they spend much of their time these days defending torture of prisoners, and that they tolerate in their political bailiwick fascists like Ann Coulter who consider mass murder to be perfectly acceptable in defense of…whatever it is that Ann Coulter defends. “The end justifies the means” produced Stalin – true – but it also produced Hitler and it did so with the tacit approval of a German capitalist class which made a lot of money in the process. Let him who hath not sinned cast the first stone.

When one lacks hope in hope itself, what is left? Naked fear, according to Degsme:

What the GOP has realized, […] was that hope doesn’t really sell well. Anger, Fear, Disgust, those are things that motivate us to get off our duffs. Sure we all ADMIRE that Olympic Athlete who kept his Dream Alive through years of painful training, the inner city kid who’s dream of becoming one of a limited number of black female judges overcame all the bigotry that was thrown her way. But most of us aren’t really willing to do the work that Hope calls us to.

Put a Vampire in the castle on the nearby hill and even your most sedentary peasant will be out with a pitchfork. And so the GOP “success” of the last 30 years has been built on

- Economic Fears (Reagan amplifying the fears of Carter’s inflation)
- Fear of being a crime victim (Bush “hortonizing” Dukakis)
- Disgust with corruption (Gingrich vs. Tip Oneill)
- Fear of Socialism and Gays (Gingrich vs. Clinton in 92)
- Fear of changing horses “mid stream” (Bush v Kerry)

This sort of “Fear Based Spectacle” works well. Frankly its part of what turned out the Anti-Nuclear march the author refers to: Fear of nuclear annihilation. […] I don’t see “ethical spectacles” ever really working. They lack the emotional punch to the audience’s reptilian brain that the GOP’s fear based spectacles engender.

Is there no option but to “get terrorized” and join the zeitgeist of national panic? AModerate can’t defend such a program:

I find it pathetic that populists both left and right feel the need to pander to the lowest common denominator in their pursuit of a following. Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh and the rest of their gang basically trade on distortion of truth. Thinking people should know better than to place too much stock in anything they say, or imply that their braying somehow qualifies them as figureheads for a civic movement.

This article is not without some truth, but peel back the gilded language and you’ll find the suggestion that we eschew objectivity and serious debate for dumb spectacle and misdirection. In my mind that’s not a responsible way to participate in a democracy.

Surely, however, there must be some roadmap back to hope? If EMStoveken knows the way out of the wilderness, then:

Only when the public can drag the candidates naked through a wall of flame can we feel that the people are in control of the process.

Hmm. That seems like a tall order. Aren’t Democrats currently  campaigning on the issues? Fat lot of good it’s doing them, if Greatbear451 is to be believed:

It’s ironic, given that for years, the democrats were derided in the media for having no new ideas or plans and for offering up only criticism of Bush, now people like Dickerson are questioning why they are talking about ideas and plans instead of just criticizing Bush.

And what does the GOP have to offer now? Criticism of Nancy Pelosi for leading a bipartisan congressional commission to a foreign country. Something members of Congress have done hundreds of times before. Meanwhile, John McCain ties up a hundred troops, a dozen armored humvees, 3 Apache helicopters, and 2 gunships in order to do a photo op about how safe it is in Baghdad.

Well, then… what can we count on? Cerulean_Mutt has at least one point right:

One thing for sure, it’s going to be an interesting election.

Rumor has it, a lot of folks have good news on the mind today. If you’re feeling some joy, there are spirits in need of revival in the Fraywatch FrayGA4:20am PST

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Daniel Gross writes in Moneybox about the surprising resilience and profitability of compact disc makers, given the creeping obsolescence of this audio format in an age of downloadable music.

RMLReturns points to the perils of perishability, as “the record and the VHS…may not have been as light and certainly took up a lot more space, but it had physical presence and was independent of its player.” rundeep, from whom I stole the title of my column,  talks about the “tactile connection with our music – the ability to hold the case and see the words and review the credits – that is a genuine need (or at least preference) for a shocking number of people.”

Planetary_Eulogy is distinctly devoid of any nostalgia: “The compact disc was never an artform - it’s a format for distribution, nothing more.” Nor is serious_fun about to lament the technology’s demise:

The heyday of the CD - 1983-now - was about as long as the heyday of the LP record. As much as I loved records (and still buy them occasionally), their time has passed. They are a lossy, degradable, inefficient music delivery mechanism. When people vote so clearly and loudly with their practice and their dollars that they want to download music, it is simply the entrenched music industry’s error that they are a decade late to the party.

This is an industry that releases 25% fewer titles than they did in 1998, yet complains that they are selling 25% less product!

This is an industry that sues its best customers!

This is an industry that refuses to acknowlege that more people are listening to (and making) music in a wider variety of ways, and is too incompetent to capitalize on it.

This is an industry that buys the favor of our federal Congress through its lobbying organization the RIAA and we as consumers are too ignorant or complacent to raise a stink.

yggy shares her outlook on the future business model of the music industry:

Business-wise, the CD isn’t dying so much as the concept of an extended release. Most artists, producers and marketers instinctively think in terms of singles now. There’s little interest in the industry to put resources into a 16-song project when one song will net you the same profit (or more). The one thing longer-play discs can still sell well is the compilation (because it requires little new investment). That’s probably why Starbucks had so much success with their Ray Charles release.

This week, with the launch of Fix the Fray, we have seen a plethora of helpful suggestions and criticisms on the current set-up, a testament to our collective desire that the Fray adapt with the times and avoid the fate of the compact disc! Thank you to everyone, old and new, for sharing your thoughts. AC5:30pm PST

Friday, March 30, 2007

At the conclusion of Memoir Week on Slate, it seems that “everyone has a story to tell” in the words of FireStarCat, with the Fray becoming at times a promotional showcase for fledging writers who believe they too have a book in them.

First, let’s hear it from a published professional. SamuelPablo gives us this glimpse into his memoir-writing experience:

I was so physically exhausted after finishing Why I Committed Suicide that I tried to avoid telling anyone in my family about the book at all.
It was only when Why I Committed Suicide started to receive media attention because it is the first book ever posted on MySpace that the content became an issue. Suddenly I went from obscure writer to unpublished author champion and internet marketing guru. I wasn’t prepared for my family finding out about the novel and the backlash from my them was pretty severe. Nobody ever remembers the details of situations the way your personal emotions are attached to it.

FireStarCat attributes the increasing prevalence of the memoir to today’s confessional, tell-all culture in which “everyone’s ego trip seems to warrant a long diatribe, which would be better written as fiction”:

Long ago, say in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, most famous writers wrote their first novels as autobiographies, mainly disguised, but sometimes like Tom Wolf, they would admit to it. Then they became famous, (Hemingway never wrote an autobiography, his life was in his books) and a very few would deign to write a memoir or autobiography…
Almost everyone has a story to tell, as any interviewer knows. Currently, people like to drag the proverbial skeletons out of the closet for the same reasons that we are inundated with media hype-shock value. And we surely don’t need a How I wrote this book on top of it…If one attempts, and (groan) publishes a memoir I hope it changes the reader in an uplifting way, presenting the truth as a positive experience.

Situated somewhere between the genres of autobiography, fiction, and perhaps journalism, memoirs have a curious literary and epistemological status, as many of our readers were quick to point out.

Glee faults memoirs for claiming to be factual accounts while being based on memories inherently “fraught with distortions and inaccuracies.” The problem with memoirs, responds MaryAnn, is their tendency to blur “that line between fact and fiction.” A better way to measure their “truthiness” is along “a continuum, not just an either/or thing. At one end of the continuum is downright lies or made up stuff (see, e.g. James Frey). At the other end is total veracity or total recall…” She also reminds us here not to “assume that confessional poetry means telling facts and that the speaker ‘I’ equates with the writer.”

The emergence of blogs, defined by LuxLawyer as “an ill-defined middle between public writing (intended to be published) and something truly private (a diary),” represents something of a grey area for writers and their reading public. In her own blog, topazz struggles with “holding myself back from getting in too deep, when getting in too deep is exactly what I need to do. At some point you have to stop straddling the fence and jump it, you have to write your life as you really live it, write the people in your life as they truly are, warts and all. Anything else is just glossing, and without depth.”

Which puts topazz in good company, as 81% of Americans polled share the same irrepressible desire to tell their life stories, according to this lament by Joseph Epstein. AC12:50pm PST

Saturday, March 24, 2007

“You don’t read the conversations closely enough.” There are recurring themes among the symphony of complaints the Fray Editors hear each day. One fair objection, if a tad perfectionist, is that we often neglect the give-and-take of hard conversations in favor of the well-polished opening essay. Though we may not make much mention of it, one of the Fray’s greatest strengths is the quality of discussion which routinely happens there. So, in honor of our critics, we will be dedicating this space today to a close reading of an unusual Fray conversation.

Our discussion begins in Chatterbox, in response to Timothy Noah’s aggressive report on publishing delays for Jonah Goldberg’s forthcoming book, Liberal Fascism. First-time Frayster and evident Goldberg fan, SCP (aka, “Not Jonah Goldberg!”) sticks up for the coming book:

As someone who had a chance to talk to Jonah Goldberg about his book, I would advise Noah to reserve comments on how “stupid” Goldberg’s argument is until he actually […] learns what Goldberg is saying. […] Owing to the fact that this conversation occurred several months ago and I did not take notes, I won’t risk mischaracterizing Goldberg’s book by going on further, but at least my characterization has the advantage of being based on more that just the title, unlike, apparently, Noah’s.

Is the title provocative? Sure. Is it accurate? Based on what I was able to glean, pretty much. As for its release date, while I find myself disappointed to have to wait so long, I am not surprised; from what Goldberg had to say, I gathered it was a massive undertaking. […]

Indeed, the most perturbing thing about Goldberg’s book is that it undercuts me personally. You see, I’m a political scientist and I’ve been toying with the idea writing a paper that would be titled “Theodore Roosevelt: Protofascist?” I now have to wait to see how Goldberg’s book might impact on my own research.

A post like this sets off klaxons in the head of any seasoned Frayster. Can he possibly be for real? Is this some kind of sprezzatura? The post purports to refute Noah’s argument, but it rests upon the basis of a personal experience conveniently beyond challenge. Does this putative academic, beavering away at exposing TR’s inner-Hitler, not realize what he’s doing? Citing personal authority on an anonymous chatboard is like citing to an “As-Yet Undiscovered Manuscript” in an academic journal.

Is it odd that this poster anticipates the substance of Goldberg’s eventual response by several hours? If you spend too much time reading chatboards—as I certainly have—”odd” loses all referents. But I can safely describe this as unusual.

MojoMojo, cartoon villain, clearly senses chum in the waters, and takes a lazy bite:

You must not be much of a political “scientist” if are intimidated by a hack bloggers’ book. And are you really defending Jonah Goldberg?????? That is quite sad. Let the hack defend himself.

Reading this entry, one could forgive SCP for concluding he’s speaking with an idiot. Note the missing pronoun and the over-use of question marks. But, despite appearing to dodge any substantive question, the reply draws a circle around the new poster’s greatest rhetorical liability—his unverifiable credentials.

In reply, SCP cloaks his own authority with the same veil of potential he’s draped over Goldberg’s upcoming book:

Hmm. Engaging in ad hominem attacks on a person you know jack about […]. The creators of this forum must be so proud at the high level of intellectual rigor you’ve brought to this site. [We take it where we find it – ed.]

As for being “intimidated” by Goldberg’s book, not at all, but I also don’t want to merely recapitulate Goldberg’s work. You see, as anyone involved in scholarly endeavors can tell you, the point of any sort of research is to add to the sum total of knowledge and understanding of a subject, not to merely repeat what others have done. That would be pointlessly redundant.

At this point, MojoMojo appears to realize he’s not speaking with an ordinary online hack. Dropping the snark (if not the profanity), he makes himself more clear:

Indeed it is ad hominem (and ad hoc, but who really cares), but come on, are you really stalled in the face of Jonah Goldberg? And political “scientists” should not be worried about the ventures of journalists, much lest politico bloggers. Real “scientists” do not care about the Coulters, D’Souza, or Goldbergs. You’ve not read the book either, yet you are intimidated by it. As for scholarly works? You think that Goldberg is peer-reviewed?

It’s not like any friendships are forming, but conversation is finally beginning to happen here. After prefacing his remarks with some rookie flames, SCP sticks to his guns while shrewdly kicking the topic up a level of generality:

I have to wonder why you persist in thinking that I am “intimidated” by Goldberg. I merely stated that I now feel I need to wait to see what Goldberg has had to say on a subject that I may wish to discuss. As I have some inkling about what the book covers, I can say that from what I’ve heard, it sounds as if Goldberg is engaged in a fairly serious scholarly endeavor and not simply a partisan hit piece.[…]

Actually, I do have some idea as to why you persist in using the word “intimidated,” as well as your insistence on using quotes for “scientist.” You appear to subscribe to a rather snobbish conception of scholarship, in which an elite few with the letters “PhD” after their names gaze down from their ivory towers, a contemptuous sneer upon their lips, at the endeavors of everyone else. As I refuse to dismiss Goldberg out of hand, you seem to think that a) I’m not really a political scientist and b) I must be intimidated by Goldberg.

Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but having been in academia for the last twenty years and having interacted with hundreds of academics running the gamut from tiny liberal arts colleges to the Ivy League to gigantic state schools, I can say that your worldview is pretty much 180 degrees the opposite of reality. Most of the social scientists I’ve known will accept well-reasoned, well-researched arguments from just about anyone. In fact, the close-minded attitude you exhibit is the very opposite of what scientific inquiry is supposed to be about. Science is about evidence and the strength of your argument, not pedigree.

It’s a tactically effective response. SCP has managed to simultaneously bolster his credibility as an academic, while downplaying its relevance. The topic has subtly shifted to the basis upon which claims of credibility rest. MojoMojo engages the issue:

Okay, fair enough. With the caveat that I have been slumming in The Fray, let me say that I was out of line. […] Yes, you are right on Noah jumping the gun, but I still do question your openness to Goldberg. As an academic I still wonder about why anyone would be receptive to any of the shock schlocks. Yes, ideas can come from a variety of places, but Goldberg? Really? I can’t imagine that you are worried about Sean Penn, Ted Nugent, or Pam Anderson’s new books. […] If you have original ideas, write your book! But if your ideas require amassing tropes that serve a political-trade book market, then surely you can do better than Goldberg (and D’Souza, Coulter, et al), no?

SCP climbs on up to the proffered common ground:

Okay, I understand your point, and if this were Ann Coulter or Al Franken or a host of others I’d be inclined to agree. My point was and remains that having had the opportunity to talk to Goldberg, this book sounds as if it is a serious scholarly work and not just a partisan hit piece. One of Goldberg’s colleagues at National Review, Richard Brookhiser, has written some excellent books on the Founders, and another of his colleagues, John O’Sullivan, wrote a very good book on Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II. Given that his colleagues have done some good, solid work, and what I’ve heard from Goldberg’s own mouth, I’m inclined to give Goldberg the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. […] If Goldberg’s book lives up to the promise of what I’ve heard so far, it will be a wide-ranging, comprehensive treatment that very well may hit all the points I planned to address. If so, there would be little point in my continuing further as I currently plan. If his take is different than mine or if he doesn’t hit the points I wanted to or if he does just put out a hit piece, then I’ll proceed.

At this point, MojoMojo winds the conversation down with some closing introspection and unsolicited advice:

As an historian, I take particular offense to polysci encroachment […] because of the general shoddiness of the work. Way too many political scientists venture into historical topics solely to mine for answers to contemporary issues. There is far too little analysis of context and processes. In the pop world of the Goldbergs, the little nuggets of the past get polished into perfect stones of truth. “Liberal Fascism” seems to be just another one of those fallacies. So that might explain more on my general animosity.

And if you are writing a book, the Goldberg thing shouldn’t stop you.

Which brings us to the closing argh:

Are you reading my posts? To repeat myself one more time, I’m not writing a book. At most, I suspect that what I’d end up with would be a journal article, and I’m not inclined to put the effort in if Goldberg is going to come out with a more extensive work that would supersede what I was going to say.

As something like a writer myself, I’m still upset with Dave Eggers for beating me to the title of my own unreasonably delayed magnum opus. I have to admit the truth here. I’m green with envy that the mere anticipation of Goldberg’s scholarly tome on Liberal Fascism is throwing a pall over the academic press. It may defy belief, but it’d be churlish not to acknowledge the point. The Fray clearly shows Jonah Goldberg has the greatest fans any writer could ask for.  GA 4:05pm PDT

Friday, March 23, 2007

Thursday’s headlines here on Slate featured a story, beneath Barack Obama’s image, described as “Why Obama is Like a Serial Killer.” The featured article, by Jacob Weisberg, was entitled “Candidates and Killers.”Generously, we could say it was a light-hearted piece sending up the vapidity of childhood clichés. Somewhat more awkwardly, we could acknowledge that its tentative concluding note about Obama’s lonely childhood, in tandem with our promotional headline, struck some readers as downright racist.

I should probably point out that I’m conflicted up the wazoo on this particular topic. I make regular donations to Barack Obama’s campaign and Jacob Weisberg is my boss. I’m a scrawny white guy, so I can’t speak from a black perspective (I’ll leave that to BLACKMOSES). But, aside from the guys talking about God knows what, I can say we created a pretty grumpy mood in The Big Idea Fray.

Clark_maxwell most eloquently expresses the theme of several complaints:

If Weisberg was trying to be cute and clever with this article, he failed miserably. Likening presidential candidates to serial killers in this most juvenile and idiotic of ways should be beneath Slate and the Post.

But why single out Obama, the only black candidate in the race, to put in the headline like that? Why not say, “Why Presidential Candidates Are like Serial Killers”? That would have been more reflective of the gist of the article.

The editors at Slate and the Post understand the impact a headline can have, especially one like this. It’s as if this entire waste of page space was undertaken just so as to have an excuse to take this sick, ugly shot at Obama. […]

If the Post had any decency, it would apologize to Obama and its readers for befouling the internet with this offensive exercise in character assassination.

Strong words, but a fair point. It deserves a fair say.

Your thoughts are welcome in our introspection chamber.

Relatedwise, Rrhain has a pretty good point, too, about Al Gore and the internet. GA 12:30am PDT