Comment Elsewhere: Humorless

In comments at Grant Jones' blog I responded to Mr. Jones comment

Jack, I agree that Breitbart will have to be careful of doctored video being submitted as "proof." I wouldn't put such attempts past Progressives who believe that our means justify their ends.

with a well-deserved

ROFLMAO

Breitbart, after all, is the employer/sponsor of the infamous James O'Keefe, whose heavily doctored, fraudulent ACORN videos caused so much ruckus.

Mr. Jones has deleted my comment. To my knowledge, it's the first time he's done this, and he's certainly within his rights to do so. But it stinks.

(Also, as an aside, I'm not sure what "our means justify their ends" actually means...)

Comment Elsewhere: Fighting Fire with Laughter

In response to concern about whether Alan Grayson's tone versus Sarah Palin was too caustic to be helpful, I said:

I’m ambivalent about this, honestly. There are times when a bully has to be stopped, and stopped hard. Palin’s been rude, borderline racist, divisive, evasive and manipulative; she got lucky in her career, but she’s abused her position at every opportunity. She should never have been a national political figure, and she’s neither newsworthy nor noteworthy, but the press has no idea how to report on issues, so her attacks get transmitted through the media, repeated endlessly, forcing Democrats to finally respond or look feckless. It’s classic abuser behavior: pushing and pushing, then whining about ‘fairness’ when someone stands up to them.

The only way to get the press to stop taking her seriously, to defang her politically, is for Democrats to stop taking her seriously, and to make the press look foolish for bothering to follow, quote and enable her. Grayson’s rhetoric has a hard edge on it, to be sure, but it’s pretty mild compared to Santorum or Steve King, or Issa, or McConnell, or a half dozen other Republican Congressional flamethrowers I could name. And, unlike most of their incendiary allegations, Grayson’s comments are based on verifiable facts and reasonable inferences.

Comment Elsewhere: Chronology and consistency

In response to an interesting article about political philosophy and civility post-9/11, I raised the following concern:

I have a—typical of an historian, perhaps—chronological problem with the set-up. It’s interesting, to be sure, to measure someone’s actions against their stated principles, but it’s much more convincing if the actions in question come after they’ve stated those principles.

Perhaps I should have added that there's virtue in changing one's mind; not all inconsistencies are hypocrisies. But I want to see if there's any reply (and what sort) before I get too involved in a discussion over there.

Ahistoricality Alert: "Where are the skinheads when you need them?"

That's a quote from a popular right-wing author [via] fulminating about the "Gandhi-like passivity" being shown by Republicans and other so-called conservatives in the face of Democratic agression and social tolerance. Aside from the incredibly tasteless and frightening call to reclaim masculinity through violence, Gandhi was not passive: he was an advocate of in-your-face pacificism and mass political action. He was good at it, too.

Another member of the "I miss Father Coughlin" club spoke out about the Ahmadinejad letter, saying -- and this was so predictable I almost don't think his forebrain was involved --

Once again, it's the Democratic talking points, other than Israel, and even there -- yeah, it's [anti-war activist] Cindy Sheehan talking -- it is, you're right. It's Cindy. It's even some liberal Hollywood Jewish people talking point.

[via] After the smear and the schmeer (those rootless cosmopolitans: over a century of fearmongering, and going strong!), he then goes on to cite historical train wreck Shelby "Who's Man Enough To Make the Trains Run On Time" Steele.

Anyone who spots a conservative commentator or major blogger disavowing these people (not the statements: that's too easy. These are people with long track records of race-baiting, incitement-to-violence, civility-obliterating, discourse-lowering "shock-jock" quality rhetoric.) is invited to leave a comment or drop me a line. Why? Because I want to know which conservatives I can trust and which ones are just fine with slouching towards fascism.

Civil Discourse

[via wood s lot]

There is an unfortunate tendency to assume that civil discourse has occurred whenever two or more people are nice to each other, say something, and don’t get into an argument. That is misleading on all three counts.
...civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries have not been crossed.
...civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries that define spaces of sound and spaces of silence have not been recognized and honored.
...Where there is no argument, there is no civil discourse.

We must openly disagree if we are to discover what binds us together and what we can accomplish. We must talk to each other in order to disagree. We must speak honestly as well as decently, which means that we may sometimes need to say unpleasant things about each other. And about ourselves.

UPDATE: In an odd flash of relevancy, our President has called for "civility" in the Supreme Court nomination process. He's called for Senators to "ignore interest groups", which makes no sense: why would you ignore the people with the greatest expertise and stake in the matter at hand, particularly when they represent substantial portions of the electorate which our, ahem, elected officials are pledged to represent as well? Oh, he means "the fringes," that neatly defined subset of interest groups which don't really have anything interesting to say....

Quotations #022

"Art is whatever makes you proud to be human" -- Leroi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka)

"Ghosts are just history. That's what you feel in a place like this. Ghosts are what you feel when you realize how much bigger and older everything is." -- Alex Irvine, "Vandoise and the Bone Monster"

"Perhaps the chief carriers of Western culture today are those who within its midst most criticize it and demand that it justify itself." -- Kagan, Ozment, Turner, The Western Heritage.

"A bashful person cannot learn, nor can an impatient one teach." -- Hillel

"...The most profound organizational principles of a functional society: manners, ettiquette, social protocol, and civility. Perhaps the real revolution won't happen in the courts or on the streets, but in the society pages, the columns of Dear Abby and Miss Manners, and the newest edition of Emily Post's ettiquette." -- Michael Bronski, "Wedding Bell Blues: The Struggle for Gay Nuptial Notices," Z Magazine, Nov 2002, p. 51.