Thursday, May 15, 2008

Barbarous indeed! (Added note)

As a habit, I don't reveal both sides of an email exchange without the explicit permission of the correspondent. A week ago, said correspondent received warning of my intention to reveal the gist of what he said. He didn't object.

Our subject today is Professor Jeffrey Feldman, author of the book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. A few words about this volume, from Amazon:
Since September 11, 2001, most attempts at reasoned political debate in America have been severely limited by the violent language of the Right. In books and on television, it has become a regular ritual for conservative pundits and intellectuals to infuse violence—particularly against Democrats or liberals—into discussions of the major issues of the day, such as terrorism, immigration and gun violence.
The advertising for this book includes high praise from Arianna Huffington.

Feldman writes for the Daily Kos.

You know what is happening on those sites.

Nevertheless, Feldman pretends that intemperate dialog is entirely a conservative phenomenon, and he deliberately refuses to acknowledge the odious words now peppering all "progressive" discourse, particularly on Kos, a forum he calls his cyber-home.

The man is, in short, a hypocrite.

Previous writers (Krugman, John Dean, Al Franken, etc.) have exposed the right's ferocious language. If you re-read those works, you'll find that their examples of "outrageous" conservative speech -- quotes from Savage, Coulter, the Freepers, and all the other usual suspects -- no longer have any power to outrage.

The left, in aping the right, has lost its moral authority.

Here is the letter I wrote to Professor Feldman:
I have not read your book yet, but I've been able to get an idea of its contents.

Your hypocrisy makes me laugh, professor. You write for the Daily Kos, and you carry an endorsement from Arianna Huffington. And you dare to accuse anyone else of barbarity?

Recent Kos diary title: “Senator Obama please take your foot and step on her throat!”

Although irreligious, I've always admired the practical advice in Matthew 7:3-5. That's the splinter-in-the-eye bit. You may want to look it up.

I'm a lifelong Democrat, as was my father before me. But I've quit the party, since it now belongs to the Greek Libertarians whom you seem to admire so much.

Even since I turned against Obama on my own humble blog, I've been on the receiving end of the most thuggish insults imaginable. Most of these comments remain unprinted, but I can assure you that they were as bad as anything you decry in your book or on your site.

Death threats have come my way. I don't take them seriously. Still, I have received my share -- ALWAYS from those on the left, and never from right-wingers.

Lately, I've been comparing the language on the Free Republic to the language on Kos and Democratic Underground. I'm sorry, but the Freepers are now far more gentlemanly.

When Kos spread The Big Lie -- and it was just that -- that the Clintons are racists, he committed the single most barbaric act ever to sully a Democratic primary campaign. This smear tactic was a party-rending miscalculation on the scale of the decision to invade Iraq. Since you are tied in with Kos, you probably believe that nonsense about "racist dog whistles," even though David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, admitted that this smear has no foundation. I did not notice you decrying Kos when he spread (for example) the "darkened video" hoax.

The progressive movement has turned into a mafia. At least one former friend in blogworld -- someone who makes his living from his writings -- refuses to decry in public the violent language against Hillary, even though he has registered his disgust in private. He knows that if he angers the mob, they'll go after him as they went after me.

You dare not mention the left's recent aping of the right's barbarity. You don't want to impair book sales.

I'm sure you can rationalize the left's descent into thuggishness. Rationalization springs enternal. Nevertheless, the examples of rightist uncivilization mentioned on Frameshop no longer have any power to move or to outrage. A Kossack speaking out against Ann Coulter? That's like Jesse James speaking out against Billy the Kid.

-- Joseph Cannon
His reply astonished me. After giving me the standard cheerful thanks, he told me that any problems I had with Daily Kos or the Huffington Post should be discussed with Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington.

And that was that.

So. It seems that Professor Feldman does not consider himself responsible for his own associations. His abdication of accountability reminds me of Tom Lehrer's famous song:

"I just send zem up,
Don't care where zey come down.
Zat's not my department,"
Says Werner Von Braun.

Those who theorize that Jack the Ripper had an assistant don't consider the aide innocent simply because he drove the coach instead of wielding the knife.

In his latest edition of Frameshop, Feldman (correctly) castigates the violent political language of Ted Nugent. But what about the threats and violent language I receive nearly every day -- from "progressives"? What about the violent and sexist language directed against Hillary Clinton? What about the lies, the smears, the ceaseless low insults? What about the incessant false accusations of murder and drug running -- claims once relegated to the right, but which are now leveled by leftists?

The phenomenon cannot be minimized. I will never allow Feldman or any other hypocritical rationalizer to pretend that this language comes from "some" online Obama supporters. The vast majority are guilty.

What about the ghastly language recently used to denigrate Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame -- "The Wilsons are just disgusting CESSPOOL dwellers" -- simply because they endorsed Clinton?

I took some interest in the words of this reviewer:
Second, Feldman doesn't just lay out the evils of the right-wing pundits he discusses in his book, he also lays out "six suggestions to resolve the problem of violent language in the American political media." Finally, as Feldman writes at the end of his book, "[w]e cannot, as Orwell warned, 'change this all in a moment'" but "we can change one political debate at a time with the simple act of making new choices about how to write and speak."
Ah yes. Let us indeed re-read Orwell -- a man of the left who nevertheless refused to be gulled by the left, an intellectual hero who condemned Socialist hypocrisy and Communist barbarity just as readily as he condemned Bourgeois hypocrisy and Fascist barbarity. Unlike Feldman, Orwell did not adopt a "Right eye open, left eye blind" attitude, especially when discussing the misuse of language.

Orwell had courage, insight and talent. These qualities made him the greatest political essayist ever to write in English. Feldman, by contrast, is a coward and a hypocrite. For him, as for all small men, the enemy must always be The Eternal Other -- never an ideological comrade, and certainly never the fellow in the mirror.

UPDATE: Fledman's response is in the comments section below. I think my little "No Duck Dodgers" cartoon applies to him. Perhaps, if the prof cares to visit these pages again, he can find some way to duck and dodge any obligation to deal with the material cataloged here:
I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan “Bros before Hos.” The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker

I won’t miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a “big [expletive] whore”…

I won’t miss [nice use of anaphora!] Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

I won’t miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie “Fatal Attraction.”

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a “she-devil” (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns).
In Feldman-vision, none of that stuff is a problem. Instead, the real issue is the language used by Ted Nugent, esteemed author of Kill it and Grill It.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joe, You use nasty language to describe those you disagree with. What of your own hypocrisy?

Anonymous said...

Thank for writing. Coming to this site is a balm for the soul. sometimes i wonder how so many people can be so ignorant at the same time. It is amazing that you don't have a larger megaphone, and Kos is a publishing phenom...Awful, just awful.

Anonymous said...

I appreciate the critique. Violent language is a huge topic and worthy of expanding far beyond the limits of my book. If my book falls short of covering the entire topic,I accept that criticism.

Nonetheless, the first thing readers of Outright Barbarous will notice is that I begin with a discussion of the Left-wing origins of some of the core violent metaphors and frames that not dominate right-wing pundits. I credit many of my key insights to another book by Hannah Arendt--On Violence--a critique of Left wing political violence. And I direct readers interested in the topic of violence on the left to that masterful work by Arendt.

In other words, the idea that I ignore the Left in my book is quickly put to rest by the simple act of reading my book.

In terms of responding to critiques sent to me via email, the fault is also mine. I rarely have time to respond to the great many emails that I receive. The purpose of my blog and my posts on blogs with public, open comment threads is to give readers a chance to respond and have their responses read by the same members of the public who read my posts--the better to include those views in the debate. When a concern is brought to my attention by email about one of the group blogs where I post, I direct readers to the editors of those blogs.

Thanks for the healthy debate on Cannonfire. American politics and government thrives on the kind of engaged and respectful debate that we see here on this site.

See you online,

Jeffrey Feldman

CognitiveDissonance said...

Wow, Joseph, I salute your courage and your insight! Your posts of late exposing the thuggery and hypocrisy on the left and the supposed A-List blogs is right on the money. I know it's not PC to ever mention anything related to fascists or Hitler on a blog. But how can one observe these people and not think "brownshirt?" Any Clinton supporter who has been to a caucus knows exactly what Obama supporters are about.

I've been so astonished this election cycle to see the party I respected degenerate into what you call barbarism. Particularly in an election year when we should almost have a slam dunk in November. If things go as the Obama brownshirts are pushing, we are going to see another 48 state debacle.

Which almost makes me suspect some Rovian thuggery going on. It seems oh so suspicious to me that the owners of just about all the large high-traffic blogs are ex-republicans who have let their sites become sewer pits. The wingnut party looks like it is falling apart and is on track for massive congressional losses. What would they have to lose by infiltrating the left and tearing our party apart at the seams at the same time? It has been evident to me for some time that a battle for the Democratic Party is going on. I just have to wonder if Republicans like Rove weren't the originators of the battle.

Joseph Cannon said...

No, Prof, that won't do.

Hannah Arendt died 30 years ago. You're allowing your left-wing readers a pleasant mental escape: "That was then, this is now." On what page of your book do you hold anyone on the left accountable for what is going on today? Where is the blog post in which you do so?

You still have not addressed the issue of your own associations.

What I am trying to shame you into doing is the sort of courageous act that Orwell might have done.

Dissociate yourself from Kos.

Loudly.

Recognise, and apologise for, the hypocrisy inherent in your situation. Someone responsible for a book against brutish language cannot be part of that site.

Until you do so, you deserve that "Hypocrite" label plastered in red across your face.

Scott: How am I a hypocrite? When did I write a book akin ro Professor Feldman's?

I treat as I am treated. A French writer, when asked if he opposed capital punishment, said "je veux bien que messieurs les assassins commencent." A similar sentiment applies here.

CD: Much more about caucus thuggery soon. If you or anyone you know has a first-hand account, please contact me.

Anonymous said...

I think it's disingenuous for Jeffrey Feldman to defend himself by pointing to his book's references to Arendt's 40-year-old work on Left-wing political violence while he continues to associate with today's worst purveyors of the same.

An aside regarding Feldman's pal Arianna Huffington: I regret that the woman is so hopelessly amoral and self-serving because she's really quite brilliant and charismatic, and I say that as a former HuffPo staffer. If only she had used her powers for good, she might have truly been an influential person!

After a short tenure with the HuffPo in its early days, I beat a hasty retreat from the stuffy attic office in Arianna's library. It had quickly become clear to me that she was deeply lost in megalomania and that she had no firm commitment to a progressive agenda; for her it is all about Arianna's agenda. And true to her one and only agenda, she viewed the people around her not as colleagues, but as disposable tools to be manipulated and exhausted.

Like Kos, she is constitutionally incapable of dedicating herself to a shared cause or platform, because she is at heart an opportunist and turncoat.

Joseph Cannon said...

Igor, I probably shouldn't say this in public, but yours is not the first statement of that sort I've heard about Arianna. Others have told me -- at third hand, alas -- that, in conversation, her mind-set and references habitually go to right-wing thinkers and authors. It's almost as if, in her "Liberal" mode, she knows that she is just playing a part, and has to remind herself from time to time that she's supposed to be in character.

That's what I've heard. Just scuttlebutt? Well, yeah, but it was also "just third-hand stuff" when Repulicans in Santa Barbara told me in 1994 that Michael was often scoping out the guys.

I'd love to receive more first-hand accounts...

Anonymous said...

Regarding the caucus disasters:

kimfrederi (I think her full name's Kim Frederick) has posted some videos on YouTube documenting what happened in Texas. Here's the url: http://www.youtube.com/user/kimfrederi

Kyre

Anonymous said...

This issue reminds me that intelligent analysis is much more important than loyalty.

Once Kos and Huffington committed to unfairly deride Senator Clinton, they had placed themselves in a corner . . . basically that they had to support Obama.

They had to maintain some sort of credibility, so they jumped on the unvetted Obama train and now they have to take all the roaches that hopped on.

In the end, when the Obama camp welcomes Clinton into his tent and makes her Secretary of State or VP or whatever (cuz' if he doesn't he can't win), what will Kos and Huffington do?

I can't wait to see the worms squirming.

You make so much sense Mr. Cannon. I look forward to reading you every day.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Joseph? Never mind. You were right, I was wrong.

Woah. The responses to this post have been illuminating.

todd said...

Wasn't Orwell's Animal Farm funded to be distributed by the CIA, what did he do then but function as an apologist for the criminal right wing that has usurped power in the US?