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• Friday, February 16, 2007 01:17 PM

  "Reality Check" -- part 2

  I wrote a message here last night, now on page 10, titled "Let's have a reality check!"

  Don't ask me why, but I just read through all the letters written since. I read Salon regularly, and the number of letters here is at least 3 times more than usual. Undoubtedly Pandagon readers have flocked to Salon.

  The messages here confirm this. Many seem to have been written by members of the Amanda Fan Club. I Googled Amanda, and read a few of her posts on Pandagon (which is new to me). It seems like a decent enough blog, and Amanda's photos suggest an attractive literary-type young woman. My guess is some of the people defending Amanda (I'm talking to you, Matthew) have a blog-crush on her.

  Okay, so.... After reading through the hundreds of posts written in the last 9 hours, I want to add a few things to my "Reality Check" post from before.

  -- A few people have gone very off-topic. A number have attempted to justify Amanda's "hot, sticky" comment by launching into treatises about new scholarship on the Virgin birth, discussing various Catholic and Christian social abuses, and so on. While agree with some of those ideas, I don't think any of them are an adequate defense for what Amanda wrote. Apples are not oranges. Being against organized religious abuses does not give you a carte blanche justification for anything you write.

  -- Others have claimed this is a free-speech issue. That's absurd. "Free speech" refers to government refraining from interference in the communication of ideas that some might object to. It doesn't mean "consequence-free speech." You say something offensive, people will react (whether or not you feel the offensiveness is justified). For comparison, imagine if a right-wing blogger who worked for a Republican presidential campaign made a "satirical" comment about Mohammed's hot, sticky sperm and Islamic miogynists. I would not expect that to go over well. So why does anybody see any justification for Amanda's phrase? Even if it were one small misjudgment in a sea of high-quality blog comments, let's still be honest about it. (Honesty allows us to work through a problem; denial just exacerbates it.)

  -- There is a lot of nastiness being thrown around in here. One writer in particular, who flatters him/herself with the name "art guerilla," was especially mean-spirited, saying "f---" this, calling people wimps, or something like that. Somebody else responded to a pretty inoffensive post by calling the person a "knuckle-dragger," etc. Those are two examples out of several dozen. I bring this up because I think it's rather sad to see leftists behaving this way, especially when it is done in lieu of actual reasoned arguments. I expect such nastiness from right-wingers. You don't have to descend to that level to fight back. You can still be a liberal with teeth, but use those teeth to tear into people's bad arguments, not to be generically abusive.

  -- Another poster seemed to be jumping through logistical hoops to justify Amanda's writing about the Duke lacross rape case. He said something to the effect of, "The media were assuming that the white guys must be telling the truth and the black stripper must by lying." This is one out of several examples I noticed where people used straw-man arguments to justify Amanda's side. (A straw-man argument is where you willfully misrepresent your opposition to make them look ridiculous and to make it easier for you to shoot them down.) There is a good deal of creativity to such straw-man arguments, but in my opinion it is a misapplication of creativity. Creativity is a positive force that should never be used at the service of an inherently dishonest or negative effort. As for the Duke lacrosse case, from what I noticed, much of the national media seemed to initially assume the players were guilty.

  -- Somebody keeps repeating statements about how Amanda was threatened with rape and other violence, and how somebody banged on her door. I agree, this is utterly sick behavior. What I disagree with is pointing to this behavior as if it invalidates ALL people who were offended by Amanda's comments. The violent, bullying people are probably only a percentage of people who were offended (whether the percentage is 5% or 50% is unclear). As for people coming to her house or doing other overtly threatening things, that justifies calling the police and taking other steps to maintain your personal security. Sadly, this seems to be standard for public figures who use inciteful rhetoric. That doesn't justify it, of course. Just don't use those death-threat morons if they represent EVERYBODY who disagrees.

  There were a few other things I wanted to respond to, but can't remember them now. I encourage everybody to try to stay level-headed about this. You don't have to take it to extreme levels, like calling Amanda a "hero," or calling her a "pathetic whiner." In fact, how about holding back from calling people names, at least some of the time?

  In summary, I think what Amanda wrote was a lapse in judgment/taste, she was not prepared for the overwhelming vicious response by a bunch of right-wing bullies, and she probably did the best thing by resigning from her post. I think Amanda should maintain her principles but consider easing up on the feminist extremism ("patriarchal" this, "misogynist" that). I also think she, and her Pandagon fans, would do themselves a favor by admitting that being against religious abuses (which I am against too -- I'm a very firm atheist) doesn't mean you get to trash-talk religion without angering people.

  Again, I wish Amanda the best. If this experience is good for anything, Amanda it is so you can sharpen your game, and enhance the quality of your wit. There are a lot of ways to write exactly what you think without semen references and such.

  —Juniper Flesco
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