The Only Winning Move

Just in case you were wondering, this story-of-the-day is spin. When Obama said the following:

I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick.

he was led. I saw the interview on TV this morning, and the interviewer asked him something along the lines of people wanting to know why he wasn’t spending more time ‘kicking butt.’ All Obama was doing was repeating the reporter’s phrasing; this wasn’t something that he came up with off the cuff. I have yet, however, to read a story about this that notes that. The one I’ve linked, for example, is called “Obama has strong words as Gulf spill spreads.”

Look, I’m NOT an Obama fan. But is it too much to ask that the press just report the actual news without sexing it up all the time?

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m basically* pro-Israel, and while I don’t generally think people should be fired for distasteful off-the-cuff remarks, there’s certainly nothing unexpected about the calls to fire Helen Thomas. OK, so you probably wouldn’t get fired for suggesting that China “get the hell out of Tibet,” but I’ll bet there’d be trouble for telling America to “get the hell out of North Mexico” or Japan to “get the hell out of Okinawa.” So it depends a bit on who you’re talking about: it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that people will get touchy about Israel.

Just how touchy is nevertheless amusing. In particular, I’m tired of this line (quote from one of Michelle Malkin’s sub writers, but you can find this stuff just about anywhere Google can bring you):

Helen Thomas’s comments that Jews should leave Israel and go back to Poland and Germany were especially weighty for me, as I’ve spent the last couple of weeks reading and watching documentaries about WWII and the Holocaust. I guess she forgot that Jews fled Poland and Germany to escape Nazi death camps, and suggesting they “go back” invoked Holocaust images.

Huh? How? And even if it did, since when is “invoking images” a crime punishable by summary termination? Lots of things evoke images. But that is neither here nor there: the point is surely that nothing about suffering an attrocity - be it as catastrophic as it may - licenses a people to leave one country and set up shop in some arbitrary other country if this involves excluding the natives en masse from the political process. Therefore, suggesting that they go back where they came from is not tantamount to condoning the attrocity, much less wishing it to happen again. And as to that - does any sane person honestly believe that the Germans are just sitting there warming the barbecue coals ready to give it a second go? It’s not that it’s categorically impossible for the Jews to suffer a Second Holocaust - it’s just that if there’s going to be one, it seems almost infinitely more likely to happen in the Middle East than in Germany. So if preventing the Second Holocaust is really La Shawn Barber’s main concern, I think she’s doing it wrong.

Here’s another:

Note also that Thomas is not concerned with occupation in such places as Tibet, Cyprus, or Ossetia; such human-rights violations as Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds; such violence on the high seas as the North Korean attack, Iran’s hijacking of a British ship, or the pirates off Somalia. All these are mere abstractions — unless they involve the Jews.

Huh? In the version I read, Thomas was responding to a question - specifically asking her views on Israel. Only if someone specifically asks her views on, say, Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds will we really be in a position to say whether she’s singling out the Jews. This is truly a Noam Chomsky strategy. You know, take one thing someone said out of context, note that they didn’t say some other thing that would have mitigated it, even though they can’t reasonably have been expected to say that thing in this context, and conclude from this faux juxtapositon that this person is irredeemably evil while you are Awesomeness Personified. (OK, I’m being too hard on him. Chomsky’s version of this occasionally comes with references.)

Now, none of this is to say I agree with Helen Thomas because I don’t. But here’s the REAL REASON what she said was wrong: Israel is now over 60 years old, and many of its current citizens (and their families) have been living there a good deal longer than that. If arbitrarily uprooting people is wrong - as it surely is - then arbitrarily uprooting All Those Israelis who have lived their whole lives there and had nothing to do with any controversial decisions regarding the founding of Israel - which is surely the overwhelming majority - is wrong too. This “solution” to the Palenstinians’ plight is therefore off the table to any person of conscience, I should think.

So why can’t Israel’s defenders just say that? Why all the crap about the Holocaust? Why all the Chomsky arguments? Why, in short, is it necessary to bring up all this irrelevant stuff every time someone ruffles their feathers about Israel? Yes, Helen Thomas … say bad thing. Sure - I think we all agree on that. What, then, does the bluster accomplish? Out of line is out of line. Helen Thomas was out of line. What about that means that everyone else has to be as well?

*Well, what do you think it means? It’s a hugely complicated issue; such issues come with reservations, whichever angle you take.

What I am annoyed about today:

All the naive people who think that Bill Clinton personally saved those two freed journalists in North Korea by showing up to have his picture taken.

Honestly, people - here’s the way this works. The State Department has a list of things it wants, and its slightly-more-evil twin in Pyongyang has a similar list, and wonks from one side plot strategy and wonks from the other side plot strategy, and then they get on “the Horn” (or whatever it’s called now that it’s the internet) and play what amounts to poker over the course of several months, and they send really super-subtle signals about what would be acceptable. And in the case of super-corrupt pseudo-theocracies like North Korea where the entire political structure depends on just how impressed everyone is with Kim Jong Il at every ticking tock, usually what it takes to get an about-face from the Big Guy is some celebrity - say, a former president - going over there to ink what’s already been agreed to. This is done to give cover for Kim Jong Il - to save face for all the bluster he has to take back. Bill Clinton’s stellar negotiating skills had, in all probability, less than nothing to do with this because Mr. Clinton himself, in all probability, did precious little negotiating.

At least, that is how I understand these things to work. And that is how I understand anyone with half a brain to understand these things to work. So why do some of my friends on Facebook - one of whom is a journalist, no less - actually buy this crap? Everyone talks a good talk about not trusting politicians, but it’s downright scary how few people behave as though they mean it.

Check it out - Yahoo! news runs a story with the headline Gay Group Remains Oblivious to Small Population Effects in Statistical Inference. Well, OK, not really - the actual words are “Group: Gay bias killings highest since 1999″ - but that’s what it means at LF.

Check out the hillarity:

The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people killed in bias-motivated incidents increased by 28 percent in 2008 compared to a year ago, according to a national coalition of advocacy groups.

And how many were there this year?

29.

So, a “28% increase” means that there were 22.7 - aka 23 - the year before. Interestingly, the group in question’s own pdf report claims 21 LGBT-related hate-slayings in 2007, which, by my admittedly hetero-normative white male math, is actually a 38% increase over the year before. GODS’ WOUNDS that’s a jump!

So what accounts for this rash outbreak of anti-gay hateful slayings? Why the sudden spike in object-of-affection-freedom-practitioner martyrdom? The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (where “Violence” means “violence against LGBT persons”) reckons it’s backlash against increased discussion of gay rights issues during the presidential campaign:

[New York City Anti-Violence Coordinator Sharon] Stapel theorized that at least some of last year’s violence was backlash against issues that arose during the during the presidential campaign. She cited debates about same-sex marriage, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and federal legislation that would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as possible flash points.

But the actual cause is, of course, bad statistics. As their report’s own math error indicates, really. See, if there were 23 people brutally slain for being gay in 2007 compared with 29 this year, 6 additionals this year only represents a 28% increase. But if there were merely 21, then 8 additionals is a 39% increase. You get the idea. If I give you one Jolly Rancher and I only have two, you’ve got 50% of my stash. If I happened to have 4, 25% - ETC. Small population sizes mean even the slightest change spawns percentage drama. But the truth is that 29 people probably got killed for wearing red completely by accident in the wrong neighborhood last year. Or for resisting an armed robbery. Or making fun of someone’s truck mods. Or any other number of hugely unlikely scenarios. There are 300million people living in the United States. If 4% of them are gay, then 29 out of 12million got killed for their orientation. In percentage drama that implies that your chances of being targeted in a murder on account of your gayness in any given year are less than 0.000002%. Statistically speaking, it’s a virtual impossibility.

Statistically speaking, therefore, it is time for groups like the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs to stop getting media attention. The numbers are clear: there is no epidemic of anti-gay killings in this country. In statistical terms, they don’t even exist. They are on a par with my answering your question “what time is it?” with “but I’m not selling pink doorknobs this week!”

Some comedy from the report:

One of the most frightening aspects of hate violence is that it feels very personal and difficult to avoid.

You know, as opposed to all those other types of violence that don’t feel at all “personal and difficult to avoid.”

Enough already. There are plenty of actual problems that actually need solving in this country to deal with without inventing new ones. I’m sorry people get killed because they’re gay. I’m also sorry people get killed by dogs. I’m sorry all sorts of unpreventable things happen. Being sorry is about the extent of what I can do about it.

In fact, in 2007 - the same year that only 21 people got killed for being gay - 33 people were killed by dogs (source). 75million dogs killed 33 people, while it took 282million straights to kill 21 gays. From the same source, the number for 2008 was only 23. WOW. So there was a dramatic 31% DECREASE in dog-on-human murder over the same time period that there was a 28% (or 38% - depending on whether you use straight or gay math) increase in ’cause-they’re-gay murder. Whatever the National Coaltion of anti-(Dog-on-Human)-Violence Programs is doing, maybe the National Coaltion of anti-(Straight-on-LGBT)-Violence Programs could take a page from their plaype..playbook! End violent death!

Point being - violence happens. And it’s going to keep happening. And OK, it’s a free(-ish) country, and people can dedicate their lives to chasing statistical noise if they want to - but you’d think after years at this they’d pull out a calculator, run the obvious numbers, come to the obvious conclusion … and then go find something to do where they can actually make a difference.

It happened again. Sometimes you stumble across an idea, or even a particular way of phrasing something, that seems completely obvious in retrospect, and it seems like something you should’ve been hip to for a long time, but for whatever reason you just never got around to thinking of it yourself. That happened to me today with a neat explanation of why people are more forgiving of plot inconsistincies in movies than they are in novels.

It’s in the comments section of this post about Star Trek on Nancy Kress’ blog - this one by “Daniel” (who has his own blog, in which he does cool things like shoot up old C++ books). Kress wonders why film producers are so sure they can get away with the kind of chracter silliness that that movie apparently features, and more or less draws the standard conclusion that it’s anti-science ficiton prejudice (it’s not clear whether this is from the audience or the producers, actually). Thrillers and mysteries don’t indulge in the same kind of lame setups.

There’s a whole can of worms waiting to be opened here, so let’s just cut to the chase. Daniel has a different idea - and that idea is that people are more forgiving of movies in general because they don’t require much of a time commitment.

Wow.

I mean, it’s obvious, right? Which is why it’s sort of frustrating that I have to hear about it from random gun nut named Daniel on the internets (nothing against gun nuts, of course; I’d like to be one but lack the funds). But I think he’s on to something. Call it the Economist’s View of Movie Suckitude. Here it is in more techical terms.

If you want to appreciate a work of art or entertainment, there’s a kind of fixed-cost investment in terms of time and attention and, for lack of a better term, active world construction before you can get any benefit out of it. I’m fudging a bit here, of course, because you don’t necessarily have to watch a movie or read a book through to the end to start getting something out of it - but you do have to at least get immersed in it. Rarely do you enjoy a movie/book from frame/page one - and more rarely still do you enjoy a movie/book less the further into it you get. So there’s a payment: you gotta pay attention and get the world and story going in your head before you get to the toy surprise.

With movies, obviously, that fixed cost is much lower. The money price is about the same - but a movie is over in two hours, and a lot of the hard work of imagining the details is done for you. Since your cost is lower going in, your expectations are also lower, and you’re more apt to feel like the payoff was worth the payment. Note that this is contrary to the standard cognitive dissonance lines - in which a higher fixed cost will prejudice you in favor of voicing approval, because you don’t want to admit that you put a lot of effort into something that didn’t really pay off - which is why it’s the Economist’s View of Movie Suckitude and not the Psychologist’s. Probably also playing a role is the fact that the timeframe is fixed. Going to a movie involves a bit of planning: you have to clear your schedule for the two hours that you’re gonna sit there. Consequently, your opportunity cost is artificially low for watching movies. Not because there aren’t better things you could be doing, but because you’ve taken care to minimize the availability of viable substitutions. Getting up and walking out is an option, but you still have to shift mental gears and drive somewhere else, etc. The opportunity cost of reading a book is usually a bit higher - not just because of the greater time investment, but also because of the relatively friction-free transition to other activities. You just put it down, go over to the computer, and get back to programming … or whatever.

The end result is that movie makers can get away with a lot more than novel writers - just because they have a less demanding audience.

This is a satisfying explanation for me for a number of reasons - but the main one is that it lets us sidestep a lot of standard nonsense on the subject. I’ve never found the typical explanations for the shallowness of TV and movies from cultural critics very convincing. They tend to like to blame the medium itself - because this allows them to conclude that there’s some critical danger to society lurking in television and movies, either from our apparent diminished ability to separate fantasy from reality when presented with primarily visual input, or because it passivizes the audience, discouraging independent thought and transmitting condensed content. The first criticism may have been more true when written - but I think time has laid it to rest. The more realistic-looking movies get, the more ironic detachment audiences seem to approach them with. The second isn’t entirely incompatible with the Economist’s View of Movie Suckitude, actually - but I think it misses the point all the same in confusing the prevelance of mass-market entertainment in general with its particular instantiation in television and movies. The percentage of trash novels is probably roughly the same as the percentage of trash movies, actually (certainly it is if Sturgeon’s Law is to be believed). TV, sadly, still isn’t really an artist’s medium - but we’re getting intimations that it can be (by my book, Space: 1999’s first season is what established this - though most people would probably feel more comfortable with my tracing it to Twin Peaks 15 years later). In any case, what most cultural critics like to do is reach melodramatic conclusions to the effect that that visual media are actually *gasp* changing the way we approach the world. But probably the truth is as Daniel has it: we appraoch the world the way we always have. Homo Economicus isn’t the whole story on human nature, but it’s part of it, and the realtive shallowness of television and movies compared with books is just one example of it in action.

Of course, as insightful as it is, Daniel’s speculation doesn’t really get at the heart of what Kress was complaining about - which isn’t so much why movies in general are dumbed down compared to books, but why science fiction films in particular are. Sadly - I think she’s right. There are plenty of truly complex movies - but I can think of few that are also science fiction. My own thought here is that it’s the same thing that killed Disco - namely why spend all that money on slick production and lush instrumentals when Punk sells just as well and can be made in some douchebag’s garage practically for free? It’s no big secret that the record comapnies - even if they didn’t exactly start the “Disco Sucks” movement - certainly weren’t about to stand in its way once it got started. Why bother finding ways to slash your fixed costs when an army of conformists, clueless to their own conformity and complicity, are happy to do it for you? Something like that probably goes on with science fiction films too. Movie production companies are happy to put up the kind of money that it takes to make a really convincing one in the case of things like Star Wars, which are blockbusters and make staggering amounts of money. But if you’re aiming at a more serious - and therefore smaller - audience, it gets harder to justify the budget. The record company rule holds here too: if you have two niche formats, prefer the one that’s less expensive. It’s good business, and you can hardly blame them.

Best news of the week: the incomparable RightWingTrash.com WILL CONTINUE!

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know about it. I only learned of its existence about a month and a half ago - via Todd Seavey’s excellent (but now somewhat emasculated) blog. And so it was with much massiveness of chagrin that I realized that as soon as I started reading regularly it was closing shop.

Only now it’s not going away at all, merely being reformatted. Mind you, I’m not too keen on the new format. I preferred the old way of doing reviews of completely obscure B-movies That Happened to not be Leftist, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Just wanted to say to J. R. Taylor and crew - glad to have you back on (almost) any terms! (And I will watch Gnome 2 … someday …)

A double helping of Political Correctness from the IDS.

First up, Wildermuth name change to be tabled after questioning. “Wilbermuth?” you may be asking yourself. Yes, it turns out the HPER is actually named after someone. Someone from Gary who might once maybe have advocated segregation back in the 40s. You know, like pretty much everyone in the 40s. The “controversy” arises because a school administrator pointed out that segregation was a normal view to hold in the 1940s, and that Wilbermuth, who did all kinds of great things for the university, shouldn’t be held responsible for being mainstream. This didn’t stop people from bloviating in the Jordan River Forum about it being equivalent to having a KKK monument on campus. But since I’m sure no one is ever going to point out to them that Abraham Lincoln himself was a segregationist (abolitionist, but also segregationist), they can continue to imagine this other past where average joes had … pretty much the views everyone has now, save for an evil cabal of white males who forced them to act otherwise.

Second and twice as ridiculous is this bit on new Kelley Business School Poling Chair Gen. Peter Pace called Controversy sparked over Pace’s remarks. Apparently, Gen. Pace said some controversial things about gays, but you’ll have to take IDS’ word on that as they never say what these remarks might have been, why people find them offensive, or even quote Gen. Pace in any way. Rest assured that they were pretty awful, whatever they were, though, because we get quotes from all the relevant campus gay leaders telling us so. They might as well have called the article “Gay People Offended for Secret Gay Reasons.”

But the best part of today’s IDS, as usual, was the Heroic Proletarian Staff Editorial. Apparently, some prof. in California (which is why it’s relevant to IU - just nod) is in trouble for having found better things to do than attend a required sexual harrassment training seminar.

McPherson believes that the training session is a waste of his time and that it casts suspicion on his character. We think McPherson’s logic is backward. By not attending the sessions, he only makes himself appear to be more of a creeper, and by taking such a public stance against something so simple and straightforward, he is wasting everyone’s time.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they actually pulled a “when did you stop beating your wife?”. One of McPherson’s complaints is that the training session casts undue suspicion on his character, which the IDS says makes him “appear more of a creeper” … than he already is? And how do you know? Is it maybe because being forced to attend a sexual harrassment seminar casts undue suspicion on people’s character?

Another red-letter day for IU journalism. Keep it commin’, fellas!

Heartfelt thanks to Noah for putting me on to last Thursday’s Fresh Air interview with Robert Kuttner on his book about how Obama is gonna be the jizz. It’s truly astonishing just how many crappy ideas the sound engineers over at NPR were able to cram into a 40minute radio session. Here’s a taste - but I wanna go ahead and stress that to get the fully effect you really gotta just listen to the original and … marvel.

So here goes.

- Lincoln was a uniter. Yes, THAT Lincoln. The one who tossed out all the compromises of the day and plunged the nation into its only-ever Civil War, the one that remains, proportionally, the bloddiest war in its history. The one who had to suspend habeus corpus and declare martial law in New York City because he was such a “uniter” that people took to the streets to call for his overthrow. I mean, think what you will about the merits of the Civil War and President Lincoln … a uniter?

- Lyndon Johnson was a uniter too. Yes, THAT Johnson. The one who couldn’t run for reelection because his party was so united behind him that he dropped out for fear of losing the primary, whom they STILL rioted against at the convention, and who enabled the Republican to win because a third party actually split the Dems’ vote that year in the formerly-solid Democrat South in opposition to his stand-in Humphrey. This one is even too much for Terri Gross who says “surely you don’t mean the Vietnam Johnson?” No worries, folks. It turns out there were TWO Lyndon Johnsons, and Kuttner’s only talking about the “good” one. Not, you know, that other imposter who is also coincidentally named Lyndon Johnson.

- Larry Summers in unfit to be Treasury Secretary because way back the last time he was Secretary he might have deregulated a thing or two. Now we all know that Larry Summers is hugely intelligent, but it just can’t be that in the 10 years he’s been out of office that his perspective could’ve changed, or that he could’ve adapted to new conditions, or anything like that. You know, what with him being so intelligent and all.

- The problem with the economy is that housing prices were too high and lost value. So, what we have to do is artificially prop up all those housing prices that we know are wrong.

- While we’re at it, we could take some of those excess houses and convert them into tenament blocks - because, you know, what with there being such a glut of houses that he thinks the government needs to artificially raise their prices, now is clearly the time to save as much on housing space as we possibly can by cramming people into just a few of this vast supply of houses that are out there and available for cheap.

- He happens to know off the top of his head that the debt is $5.6trillion (which Terri Gross think is 5.6 “billion billions” - at which point he interrupts to correct her, but not about the meaning of “trillion”), fully 1/5th of which was accrued in the past year, but now is the time to start spending even more money, and on things like training programs for people who are already employed so that they can continue being employed in their current capacity, only now with more education, which will force their employers to … probably continue to pay them what they currently earn, but hell, it’s only tax money! OH, and maybe put some of them to work building bridges, because that way their jobs can’t be outsourced - and that’s what America wants to be - a nation of bridgebuilders! That’ll teach them Chinese to make clothes for us! Yes sir!

- We’ve spent $700billion on the bailout so far, and that’s just the beginning. We should do that every year from now on - just keep putting the market correction off by another year by throwing an ever-increasing pile of government debt at it. Maybe, just maybe, we can avoid reality until the current generation dies off - and then shit, who cares, right?

- Worried about debt? Never fear! The debt-to-GDP ratio is only at about 40% right now - whereas after WWII it was up to 128%. So - that means we’ve got TONS of room to spend money we don’t have! Yay! Never mind that WWII was, you know, a global war, or that there was a huge and punishing worldwide recession after that war, the sky’s the limit on debt spending!

Oh man, oh man, you have to hear it to believe it. Even Dick Vitale doesn’t have enough energy to properly convey just how spectacular the whole thing is. Where the hell does NPR find these people? I mean - just when I start to think that maybe I’ma bit too hard on the left, that maybe they’re more sensible than I give them credit for - out of the wordwork pops the walking leftist stereotype from Economics la-la land to say “nope, you’ve got it just right. Keep on keepin’ on!”

Unbelievable. Truly astounding.

The final chapter in Kerr/Greenwald drama is up. Point, set, and match to Kerr.

I’ve been rather enjoying the recent bits about Glenn Greenwald over at Volokh. It’s been gratifying on a number of levels.

First, of course, because I can’t abide Greenwald. It isn’t so much that I disagree with his politics. I do, of course, disagree with them, but there’s plenty of room for common ground. Greenwald was one of the early troopers pointing out some of the abuses of presidential authority of the Bush administration, so he can’t be all bad. No, what annoys me about Greenwald is that he’s a shrieker. He’s one of those people who can’t argue without massive helpings of hyperbole and opprobrium, and it just gets tiring after a while. Even worse, I think he’s often guilty of the partisan fallacy - whereby transgressions by people who broadly share your political opinions get softer treatment than those by political opponents. I can’t be bothered to dig up the link now, but I wrote a post on this some time back with regard to his about-face on Memogate. Any evenhanded look at the evidence forces one to the conclusion that Dan Rather abused his position for political reasons. You may well agree with the “truthiness” of George Bush’s spotty national service record - I know I do - but that doesn’t give Dan Rather a free pass to simply make up evidence. Greenwald started out really good - presenting the story as it actually was. But all it took was a single email from one of the co-conspirators - an email which contained numberous and obvious logical problems in its argumentation, no less - to get him to sing another tune. In short, Greenwald had just never felt comfortable calling the story as it was because Dan Rather is “one of the good guys.” Well.

This argument from emotion bent is actually at the heart of the current controversy too. Greenwald apparently has been taking Orin Kerr to task for being “a leading apologist for radical and lawless Bush policies.” Only - as it turns out - Kerr never actually supported any of the (four) policies Greenwald cites as evidence. Never mind, says Greenwald, he offered rational arguments against them, thus dignifying them with a response. So, for example, Kerr notes that the structure of the Protect America Act of 2007 was basically sound, even though he disagrees with the actual content of the law. This, as far as Greenwald is concerned, amounts to being a “leading apologist for radical and lawless policies.”

Ahem.

That said - Greenwald’s little temper tantrum does raise an interesting question. Surely there are some things that are so far beyond the pale that there’s no point in arguing about them. Sorta like if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night, you shoot first and ask questions later. (Or, if you’re a Democrat, you hand him a bunch of cash, tell him you love him, and then spend the rest of the evening thinking up convoluted ways to explain how it’s none of it his fault.) What you don’t do is offer him coffee and try to talk him into respecting your property rights! So it’s interesting really. There are some cases where I don’t think anyone would hesitate to join Greenwald in one of his temper tantrums. How is it that we know this isn’t one of those cases?

I guess it comes down to whether or not you think the Bush policies really are so “radical and lawless” that they’re on the level of ordering the Holocaust. I mean, the way Greenwald talks, all people of conscience, faced with one of these Bush policies, should’ve just, on hearing the bill read, immediately pulled out a gun and shot Cheney or something, since all of this is apparently so obviously wrong that reasonable people can’t talk about it.

Yeah - probably not, right? And the reason we think “probably not” isn’t just because no one actually did this, but also because we strongly suspect that Greenwald’s playing partisan here too. I haven’t, for example, ever read anything on Greenwald’s blog to the effect that FDR was a crook, even though the court-packing scheme and the NRA administration certainly count as far greater abuses of presidential power than anything Bush or Cheney dreamed up. Nor have I read much in the way of criticism of LBJ - who, along with Nixon, laid all the groudwork for the modern “imperial presidency.” More to the point, neither have a I read much criticism of the Clinton Administration, itself not such a stickler for ethical rules. Quite the contrary, when Maureen Dowd suggested recently that Obama would be liberating the White House from 16 years of indecency, Greenwald flew off the handle at her for drawing equivalences. I hate to defend Maureen Dowd, but come now. Pointing out that the Clinton Administration has sins of its own is not tantamount to saying that Bush was no worse. Anyone who regularly reads Maureen Dowd can point to several columns where she says quite explicitly that Bush was worse. But the punchline is that Greenwald apparently thinks that because Bush was worse, Clinton is completely off the hook. Yeah - THAT’s a recipe for healthy government. Screw up in office? No problem - just be sure to leave the media with the impression that your successor was worse and you’ll be fine.

No, I’m with Kerr on this one. There may well be some situations where the appropriate response to a bill is to pull out a gun and shoot, but this just isn’t one of them. I’m right with Greenwald in thinking that Bush did a couple of things that deserved impeachment and even imprisonment, but Kerr’s willingness to state his case calmly doesn’t make him an apologist for the Bush Administration. None of Bush’s “offenses” were so blindingly obvious that we’re past the point of having to make a case against them.

I think public discourse is very much a situation where Kant’s “categorical imperative” applies - which is a fancy way of saying “use the Golden Rule.” We should speak respectfully and back up our claims with rational arguments NOT because we necessarily think the opposing opinion is correct or even reasonable. Rather, we should speak respectfully and back up our claims with rational arguments because this is how we want our own assertions treated. Because it’s fairly easy to see that if everyone behaved like Greenwald behaves - calling even people who largely agree with them names if those people aren’t appropriately shrill - it would simply be impossible to discuss issues with anyone.

Since the rules of this probably obligate me to show a left-wing example of someone who argues reasonably, let me point to this Matt Yglesias post, in which he calls out Thomas Friedman for hypocrisy on Obama’s muslim connection. Choice quote:

I mean, look. Obama’s not a Muslim. He’s not a Muslim when people are trying to smear him by suggesting he is, and he’s also not a Muslim when people are trying to suggest that he shares a secret connection with the Islamic world in a good way.

Right. Yglesias had no obligation to publish this since I think no one doubts his integrity on the issue. The point is that he saw someone making a silly argument, and it didn’t matter that that person happens to be broadly “on his side.” A silly argument is a silly argument no matter who makes it. Right.

For my own part, this is a case of “it takes one to know one” for me. I’m an ideologue myself. I have strong opinions about politics, and I don’t mind expressing them. And so sure, I’ve had to fight a lot of the tendencies I see in Greenwald in myself over the years. And I haven’t completely won the battle, I’ll be the first to admit. I have a lot of trouble, for example, taking people seriously who support (a) the War on Drugs or (b) the Kyoto Protocol. These are issues where it seems to me that there are simply no rational arguments in favor of them, and so quite frankly I don’t have a lot of respect for people defending them. However, it gets me nowhere to just say so and go home. The point is, we all have our faults, and the appropriate thing to do about them is - well, exactly what all the 12-step programs say. First admit you have one, then stop making excuses for it, and then do something about it. Greenwald has been spitting venom for - oh, about 5 years now with no respite. I think you get some consideration for intelligence - but after a while, no matter what your IQ, if you can’t make arguments without drama, you’re just Ann Coulter and not worth listening to.