Comments on: De te fabular narratur

By: rxb

rxb — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 22:26:34 +0000

Why do we care about the political opinions of someone who thinks ‘assert on’ is English?

By: nick

nick — Mon, 31 May 2004 01:39:40 +0000

Oh, Goldberg has posted a response to this thread in best 'cover-your-ass' fashion, first blaming his copyeditor, and trying to pin the blame back on MY: Saying I'm a hypocrite for attacking motives while criticizing others who do the same doesn't excuse Yglesias for doing it and it doesn't rebut my charge either. It's a non-defense defense. Um, Jonah, we're glad that you admit your hypocrisy, but are you really that dense? I don't think so. I don't say that Zinni is anti-Semitic... But you do say, Jonah, that '[i]t is time to blame the Jews.' That seems rather like a super-set of what you're denying, masked only by a rather sneaky use of the passive voice. More importantly, anti-Semitism pro se is irrelevant to the substantive argument of MY's original piece -- in spite of Goldberg's best attempts to make it so. But it's his -- granted, novel -- invocation of the "our enemies are Nazis" nonsense that is so disappointing and perhaps revealing. No, Jonah, that's your own invocation, and by itself it's disappointing and definitely revealing. For the right-wing punditocracy to single out the press for blame in an attempt to divert attention from the fuckups in Iraq -- a press corps that was at best passive, at worst encouraging in the run-up to war -- is bad enough; for hacks such as Goldberg to fall back on the old reliable of 'anti-Semitism!' as some kind of defence is dishonest in the extreme.

By: roger

roger — Sun, 30 May 2004 06:43:40 +0000

Oops, that last sentence should read “the tendency to degrade…” Sorry.

By: roger

roger — Sun, 30 May 2004 06:38:43 +0000

Goldberg’s problem seems to be that he doesn’t know enough about Weimar Germany. It wasn’t only Nazis that ascribed to some version of the “stab in the back” thesis—it was a standard, conservative nationalist platitude. It wasn’t only the Jews that were the ‘stabbers in the backers’—although in most versions, there was a strong anti-semitic tinge, if nothing else. It was the communists, the socialists, the left in general, and so on. Similarly, after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian war, there was a strong current in the French right that thought France was stabbed in the back by: decadents, socialists, the working class, and, eventually, Jews. Jews, thank God, have been eliminated from the candidate pool of potential stabbers in the back by the American right, but otherwise the pool is about the same: liberals instead of socialists, the press instead of novelists, Hollywood, et al. The pschyo-drama that links the right to fascism is played out around a virile body that is mysteriously weakened by some vampirically caused degeneration. However, the American right has always been self-limited by its fundamentally democratic orientation, and these images are slightly foreign to it. Even peak periods of paranoia—the McCarthy era comes to mind—the tendency to make degrading one’s opponent through a rhetoric of extremism created doubt even in the right’s own constituency.

By: Marco

Marco — Sun, 30 May 2004 04:35:16 +0000

“assert on”? Bzzzzt! Next!

By: Sandals

Sandals — Sun, 30 May 2004 03:11:41 +0000

MY is OK but JG is FUBAR and IP/PGR is SNAFU.

By: q

Sun, 30 May 2004 00:24:07 +0000

JG: But it’s his — granted, novel — invocation of the “our enemies are Nazis” nonsense Just in case it is not clear, MY made no reference to Nazis and did not invoke or use the phrase “our enemies are Nazis”. JG misrepresents MY.

By: No Preference

No Preference — Sat, 29 May 2004 23:42:25 +0000

Possibly an “innocent mistake” but I think it also says something about the culture at the guardian that this slipped through. Did you bother to read the omsbudman’s explantion, giles? The header was a first draft written by a sub-editor, and was published in a single edition of the Guardian by accident. This is a silly puffed-up controversy.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 29 May 2004 20:27:11 +0000

Jonah’s little hissy fit might be a bit easier to take if professional ex-Leftist David Horowitz hadn’t made precisely this “stab in the back” charge, using precisely that phrase, a few months ago in a column about Iraq. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12157

By: norbizness

norbizness — Sat, 29 May 2004 20:21:36 +0000

Looking to Jonah for consistency is like looking to “Manos: The Hands of Fate” or “Plan 9 From Outer Space” for seamless continuity.

By: q

Sat, 29 May 2004 19:42:53 +0000

Possibly an “innocent mistake” but I think it also says something about the culture at the guardian that this slipped through. What do you think it says?

By: Giles

Giles — Sat, 29 May 2004 19:31:09 +0000

Matt I’d be interested on your take on this story about a Guradian story headed “Hungary foils ‘Jewish’ terror plot.” which turned out ot be about “On April 13, the Hungarian police arrested three Arabs suspected of planning to attack a Jewish museum in Budapest….. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1227171,00.html Possibly an “innocent mistake” but I think it also says something about the culture at the guardian that this slipped through.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Sat, 29 May 2004 17:26:19 +0000

MY compares conservatives to Nazis in Weimar Germany. Except, of course, he didn’t. That’s just Goldberg’s spin on Yglesias, just as “blame the Jews” is Goldberg’s spin on Zinni (not to mention the Guardian and Le Monde).

By: fyreflye

fyreflye — Sat, 29 May 2004 16:07:36 +0000

Yglesias, for the benefit of those who don’t know, is himself Jewish. Jonah will have to switch over to the “self-hating Jew” argument.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 29 May 2004 16:03:44 +0000

Let’s see: MY compares conservatives to Nazis in Weimar Germany. Goldberg objects. Senator Hollings and others suggest that the war was fought because Jews in the US wanted the war fought. Goldberg objects. Yep, he’s a hypocrite all right.