Letters to the Editor
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There's no need, Rowan
I understand well enough that mental processes aren't exclusively verbal, and that they're vulnerable to the sort of shocks which you and Lacan describe, but I believe that theories of the primal influence of such shocks have been oversold. It would be nonsense, for example, to ascribe what happened in Europe between 1933 and 1941 to Leni Riefenstahl alone, even in the sense of catalysis.
I just don't think you give the human animal enough credit, or the complexities which led to the catastrophic cultural breaks of the 20th century enough respect. The Enlightenment definitely needed some updating when it came to its quasi-religious reliance on the rational, but the fear of the propagandist, with his meaty and very well-informed hands on all the motivational levers, presumes every bit as much as the Enlightenment did that cause and effect can be systematized to a degree of precision which will very likely always escape us.
So...I think that the small inferences you draw from your study are correct, but not the larger ones. We don't need to carry this any further, of course. It isn't as off topic as many probably suppose, but it can get awfully abstract. Like you, I'll leave it for now.
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Thanks, Glenn!
For taking on that column. When I read it yesterday, I almost gagged at what a foul-smelling pile o' poo it was. But knowing how wrong Kristol has been about everything else he's ever said made me feel good. If Kristol says McCain is exceptional and Obama is limited and thus vulnerable in November, then bet the house on an Obama landslide.
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Rosenthal doesn't even know how to cover his own ass, much less Kristol's
“People who don’t want to hear what their ideological opponents have to say are making a gigantic mistake,” Rosenthal said.
That is what Rosenthal was quoted to have said to Politico about the hiring, and the objections to the hiring, of Kristol by the New York Times. Kristol is not a voice in the wilderness. He has been an 'in your face' SOB for years on television and print. For Rosenthal to make the absurd statement that the New York Times needed to hire him so he could be heard and read by his "ideological opponents" would be an insult to our intelligence if it weren't such a blatantly transparent excuse by Rosenthal for having hired Kristol. How stupid do you think the readers of the NYTimes are, Rosenthal?
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sloppy conjecture
I'm not sure that's anything other than a semantic objection
Mr Rosenthal is pointing out exactly what I warned you about yesterday - that your assertion that they were friends was pure conjecture. And so it turned out to be.
And it's a more than a 'semantic objection', since you wrote this:
Andy and Bill followed in their dad's footsteps by becoming good friends (and in every other sense), and Andy then hired his friend, Bill,
Aside from being extremely juvenile, it's also not true.
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A Todd
Aside from being extremely juvenile, it's also not true.
-- Andrew Todd
And you think his statement that he hired Kristol because it would be a big mistake for people to not hear diverse opinions - in the 'voice from the Wilderness' Speaker, Bill Kristol - was an honest explanation for why he hired Kristol? It had nothing to do with his decades of knowing Kristol, however intimately?
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I had an argument with the "LA Times" "ombudsperson" about exactly this issue --
"fact-checking".
"Glenn ...
". . . . Do the Op-ed'ers like Friedman .. Dowd and Kristol .. ever have their columns fact checked? .. or do they always get them printed as is .. no matter the drivel they write? ... is fact checking just for bloggers these days?
"-- Joe Klein's conscience Monday, May 19, 2008 10:33 AM"
The ultimate outcome -- score one for the "LA Times": an op-ed is "opinion," therefore facts are whatever the opinionator says they are, even when they are absolutely opposite the actual news -- facts -- on the very same point. So a smear, a lie -- whatever -- is legitimate "opinion" equal to the actual facts which refute same. Fair and balanced: we can't have a candidate -- Bushit -- be damaged by being found to have actually lost the election, and we can't have the feelings of an ideological wingnut and liar hurt by fact-checking of his excreta.
So, no: Kristol's editor, as Glenn shows, doesn't fact-check Kristol's cra -- er, opinions -- he merely endeavors to distance himself from the stench, which he does so swiftly as to fan the (hold your nose) flames of the stench.
Will Glenn get a second response from Kristol's editor? Not unless he can come up with another fact-free -- dishonest --avoidance of the issue. Why should he fact-check Kristol when he doesn't fact-check himself?
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The "NY Times" is actually doing us a service --
"They're both all about the myths of the stifling liberal hegemony and the need to 'balance it out'.
"-- Kryptik Monday, May 19, 2008 10:55 AM"
As the majority of the electorate is not only liberal but also about truth, the NY Times wants to be sure we don't forget what lying looks like.
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Idjit --
"Frightening Liberals
"Is it so frightening to Liberals that one of their own-The NYT-should have an espoused conservative on staff? Even a conservative who is 2nd tier? The NYT picked a 2nd string conservative so he would be less a threat and Salon still feels it must have a column condemning the very idea of opposing views. The irony of Liberalism is its need to not hear disagreement.
"-- siempre Monday, May 19, 2008 12:27 PM"
The irony of idjits who can spell "conservative" is that they can't see what's in front of their faces:
1. No "conservative" publication would have any Liberal, or liberal, or "liberal," on its staff, regardless whethr first, second, or worst-tier. Period. Ideological purity is the absolute rule, exactly as is true of any authoritarian "movement".
2. Liberal publications have the graciousness to include "conservatives" on their staffs. The "Boston Globe," as example, includes Carter briefing-book thief George Will (wasn't he also busted for plagiarism?). And includes another "conservative" wingnut who was found guilty of plagiarism -- and not fired.
The latter "conservative" plagiarist is especially fun when he rants against "liberal elite journalists," even as he, a plagiarist, isn't fired because a well-paid member of that very same elite.
I guess that means Liberals "coddle" criminals.
And Liberal publications don't deliberately choose "second tier" "conservatives": they choose that which exists: "conservative" ideologues who are all at best second tier, which is why they are "conservatives" in the first place.