Letters to the Editor
marfrks
Published Letters: 5
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destructive dishonesty
[Read the article: Camille's back!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have always found Camille Paglia tiresome and silly. She has no insight into how she perpetuates the foolishness she pretends to denounce. Like all academics, whose lives are consequence-free, she enjoys throwing petty, clever nastiness at nearby targets, ignoring the real work that needs to be done to make the world better.
When I saw the teaser that she was back, I decided to set up a personal test. I wanted to see if she had learned anything from the horrifying disaster that she has helped to bring about by throwing petty, clever nastiness at Democrats while ignoring the real work of getting the immoral and incompetent Republicans out of office. If she over-analyzes and complains about the behavior of Hillary Clinton while never mentioning George W. Bush, I told myself, I will relieve myself of the task of ever reading her, and will also lower my opinion of Salon.
She flunked the test.
In the face of our dying soldiers and our crumbling liberties, not to mention our warming planet, nobody should waste time on this sort of self-indulgent, undermining junk. Give the space to someone who has something to say.
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objectivity and honesty
[Read the article: Why is Brit Hume treated like a real journalist and news anchor?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with William Timberlake that objectivity is too elusive a goal to be useful in public debate. When we use the word "objectivity" or the word "neutrality" I think we are really talking about honesty. We want people to be honest and fair in assessing those with whom they disagree. When all they offer is insults it seems obvious that they are not being honest and fair.
But the human truths behind the standards of "honest" and "fair" makes the problem a very tough nut to crack. For myself, at this point, I don't see how a well-informed person can, with honesty, support this administration, believe in its competence or truthfulness, or support this war. When I hear people doing so, I try to be charitable and assume first that they have not been following the news. If they display that they have some knowledge of what's going on, I move on to the assumption that they are pursuing some agenda of power, money or psychological need. I look to expose their dishonesty.
I'm wrong to do this, I think. There is a genuine gap between personal honesty and facts. People have a huge capacity for sincerely believing in things that are quite obviously false. Perhaps Hume actually thinks he is being honest. Who knows what complex of employment goals, personal hurts, fear of self-examination, etc. makes it feel impossible to him to revisit the opinions in which he has poured his career, ego and self-image? His dishonesty cannot be exposed, because--maybe, I don't know--he is not, by his own lights, actually being dishonest. Right wing rage is a lot like drunkenness--it looks like it should be possible to hold people responsible at least for choosing to get drunk, but if you try, all you end up doing is arguing with a drunk. That's the kind of conversation I have had over and over with right wing people in the last few years. It's not useful.
The only thing that can be exposed is the failure to abide by facts. And that is why I am a liberal and a believer in the hopes and truths of the Enlightenment. Everybody, left and right, is susceptible to the kind of intellectual drunkenness that has overtaken conservatism in this country, but it is the Enlightenment position that facts are the cure for it. People should be as partisan as they want, but facts must be checked. So, thanks Glenn, for including facts, citations and links in all of your posts.
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Right wing strategy
[Read the article: Is "Howard Kurtz" a software program?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the most remarkable things about the rise of the conservative media is the success of the strategy of attacking strength, despite the obvious, staggering hypocrisy of such attacks. John Kerry is a war hero, so right-wingers attack him by calling him a coward, ignoring the contrast between Kerry's career and Bush's (or Cheney's or Wolfowitz', or . . .) Most recently, Al Gore got attacked for not caring enough about the environment in his electrical usage. This is amazing when the comparison is made between his work and the planet-destroying oil obsessions of Bush and Cheney, et al.
Malkin and Kurtz' attack is on this same pattern, I believe, and the strength that they are trying to neutralize is precisely the fact that a core value of liberalism is reasoned and civil discourse. Obviously liberals blow it sometimes, but as a matter of principle that is our commitment. That's what the possibility of an open, liberal society requires. Straussian neoconservatism, by contrast (which has taken over the conservative movement in this country), has no principled commitment to civil discourse. Quite the reverse. As the Bush White House so graphically illustrates, neoconservatives are happy with the idea that real decisions are made behind closed doors and then sold to the public, of whom nothing is required but silence, loyalty, and continuing support for war.
The great strength of the liberal dream of an open society is civil, public discourse. The right wing strategy for neutralizing that liberal value is the same strategy they used against Kerry and Gore. The venues where civil public discourse is taking place must be attacked, belittled, lied about and made to look like they are accomplishing the opposite of what they are in fact achieving.
The ratcheting up of the right wings complaints proves to me what I have long, quietly dared to hope was true--the internet is the best thing to happen to the hope of the open society since the invention of the printing press.