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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
sysprog:
Greg Sargent & Media Matters - Kurtz Promotes Michelle Malkin While Supposedly Disclaiming Malkinism
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Kurtz may be predictable, but he is certainly well skilled in his craft. He knows that most people will only see how he promoted Malkinism, not how he pretended to disclaim it. And if anybody objects, he'll point to his implausible disclaimer and he'll deny that he was promoting Malkinism.
What you're pointing to is something a bit more sophisticated than projection. It's another form of ego defense, known as "dissociation," in which different parts of one's consciousness are walled off from one another.
Thus, one part of Kurtz enthusiastically promotes Malkinism, while another part disowns it--though without letting the reader in on it, with the end result that Malkin herself is promoted as what she is not.
A classic example of dissociation is a ruthless, cut-throat businessman who goes to church, tithes and sings in the choir on Sunday. John D. Rockefeller, I presume.
But the separation doesn't have to be that well-defined by different social roles. The example you cite shows how dissociation can appear between two different stances in the same piece, stances which those not in the know cannot even tell apart.
I think that the study of ego defenses is very helpful in understanding how the right wing works, as well as how it coopts the clueless. Projection is the ego defense that folks on the left have been talking about the longest. Ego defenses function primarily to protect the ego (self) from annihilation due to conflicts between the id (drives/impulses) and superego (conscience, internalization of social rules)--although defenses can also handle conflicting drives or conflicts between the id and external reality. Wikipedia has a pretty good intro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism
It's been my observation over time that defense mechanisms are used in political discourse to protect the the political self--either an individual or shared group construct--in much the same way that they are used in everyday life to protect the actual, personal self. because projection is such a common example, it serves as a good starting point. When one person engages in it, the difference between the political and personal self is difficult to distinguish. But when they do it while gorup identifying themselves--as conservative vs. liberal, say, or Christian vs. atheist, straight vs. gay--then there is a clear divergence, since they are appealing to all others who share their group identity to enter into the same ego defense process, which doesn't happen in everyday life. There is an imaginative fantasy of group identification happening, which makes the political self distinctly different from the personal self.
As the wikipedia entry notes, there is a whole spectrum of ego defenses from primative to advanced.
Another ego defense that's readily recognizable in the political realm is "rationalization," which wikipedia describes as "The process of constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental process." For example, justifying the invasion of Iraq because of non-existent WMDs, when the original decision was made because of a plan for world dominance.
I think it's a good idea to become more familiar with these mechanisms, in the same way that it pays to be familiar with the classic forms of fallacies. In everyday life, ego defense mechanisms are not bad, per se--in fact inadequate defenses can lead to personality disorders. But the balance of when they're harmful or beneficial would seem very different in the case of the political vs. the personal self.
Have these people ever SEEN the internet before? Has all that time as TV/newspaper "pundits" shielded them from the way the World Wide Web works? If these idiots have ever visted a website (ANY website) that allows comments, they know that messgae boards and blogs are habitually infested with this phenomenon called "trolls." These folks love to get attention with shrill, vitolic and often hateful rants designed simply to be contrary or to cause an uproar (gee, if they had a six-figure salary, they could be right-wing pundits!) Many of these trolls (assuming they aren't just pawns of the right-wing spin machine of course) post those type of messages on EVERY board they come in contact with, political or not. (We know it's common because, for instance, ex-Edwards blogger, Amanda Marcotte, just shared her own experiences with trolls and their death treats. Ooops, I guess the Malkin/Hannity/Paterico brigade forgot about that. After all, it was only a few weeks ago.) Because of this, these sites usually have this thing we young online whippersnappers call "moderators" Which Huffingtonpost has and who have (brace yourselves for this shocker) done there jobs. There were offending posts and then they were removed. Last time I checked that means this story is over! and the site took care of the problem itself, like a blog is supposed to. That's the part that really gets me. Obviously you'd think that was proof that the site DOESN'T in fact share the opinions of the trolls. There hands must be really raw at this point beating that dead horse!
And just to add to the fact that, like Tara Reid's plastic surgeon, psuedo-intellectuals are making mountains out of molehills (in the crudest, ugliest way possible!):
How is what was written a big deal in any case? Aren't these cretins constantly taking notice of everything "liberal Hollywood" does? If so, they'd realize that when you are in the public eye, and you do "questionable things" (putting it VERY mildly here)people are going to say not-nice things about you. To use a silly example, last year gossip site TMZ.com read several messages that people left on their website about how they feel about Paris Hilton. These included several "I wish she was dead" type of comments. And our least-favorite heiress hasn't even been responsible for anyone's death (yet.) Even she found better things to do with her time whip up outrage over it. And we all remember that time that Hannity pointed The Finger of Self-Righteous Indignation at the all the death treats and ill-wished that the Dixie Chicks were getting about 4 years back, right? (cue chirping crickets.) It's par for the course for famous people with big mouths. If Cheney is really some delicate hothouse flower that can't even handle something that even dimbulbs like Paris can deal with then he really needs to get the Hell out of office now!
In other words don't cry for him, Argentina (or Malkin.)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
