(An almost uneradicable habit for your snark to sound like a Jane Austen character is also a liability.)

I thought we were ready for a breakthrough here, Kathleen. If I understand your sarcasm correctly, you’re approving of this otherwise-offensive use of “tribalism” because it’s used to accuse the clubby white dudes of racism. But that’s roughly how I understood Scott’s use of the “pop a cap” expression (as several commenters have already argued): it was Summers’ white dude offensiveness being sent up. Clearly, Scott could have made this connection clearer—like others here, I re-read it a few times before moving on—but I don’t see any reason to take Kaveh’s view that the expression referred to the whole interaction.

More generally, what Dr. Slack said in response to the Kathleen criticism that you find compelling in 446 (and Greg in 435 and 449):

Again, though, I think you’re mistaken. Henry said nothing about “symmetrically” attacking anyone. He said:

if I, or Scott, had used the word ‘tribalism’ to describe some of our commenters, do you think that it would have been treated as an innocent and neutral term, given the standards of reading that have been applied by Scott’s critics?. . . The point is straightforward – it is hard to avoid writing in a way that cannot be tendentiously misread by someone who is eager to find evidence of bad intent, and your prose in this thread could be easily subjected to the same unpleasant kinds of systematic misreading as Scott’s have been.

The conduct of some parties to this thread bears out this prediction rather well… including that you actually do segue (with some degree of creativity, it must be said, but also with depressing predictability) within a few dozen words into trying to turn “tribalism” into an implication of unsavory racial politics on Henry’s part. Had Henry been the one to make a direct allusion to the “tribalism” of the commentariat, this makes quite clear how you would’ve reacted—since quite obviously “tribalism” is in fact an insulting signifier of the non-white from a position of white privilege, as I expect you know perfectly well. The only difference would have been that you’d have needed to put less English on your shot, as it were.

You appear to be endorsing Kathleen’s line of argument here – but it is an example of precisely the “interpretative free-for-all or anything goes” that you declare out-of-bounds. Or do you think that my response on “tribalism” provides resounding and irrefutable evidence that I am obsessed with “darkies?” Is this a plausible reading in your view? I do not think that you are as uncharitable as Kathleen. I certainly do not think that you are as stupid (for academic values of stupid). But I also don’t think that you have come to this discussion with any particular charity (charity here being defined as an assumption of goodwill on the part of your interlocutor barring decisive evidence to the contrary). You have stated outright that Scott’s prejudices shine through, and that they are somewhere on the unpleasant gamut between racial insensitivity and actual flat-out racism. You have done so, on the reading of one paragraph, which you seem yourself to admit is ambiguous. I would suggest that if you want to make a strong accusation (and yes – I think you are trying to make that accusation), you should really have much stronger evidence than this before you proceed. One doesn’t declare someone to plausibly be a racist, merely because one is irritated with a particular piece that doesn’t (you do not seem to disagree on this) present clear evidence of racism. One useful place to find such evidence is the person’s other writings. Scott’s work on CLR James is obviously an excellent place to start if one wants to disentangle his views on race, activism etc.

By the way, I should make something clear to Kathleen. You are permitted to continue posting on this thread, as long as you don’t make any comments that are more offensive and unhinged than those you have already shared with us (a task that would be difficult, but, I think, possible). I don’t want to have to deal with you shouting censorship!, CENSORSHIP! After that, you are barred from commenting on my threads. Specious accusations that your hosts are racists will do that for you.

… campaign lyricist, LOL

When I am elected President of the United States, my first executive order will be to change the name of the White House! To the Blues House.

Income tax must be abolished, and we plan to legalize ‘numbers’ – you know, the same way they brought jazz into the concert halls and made it respectable. We refuse to be influenced by the warnings of one NAACP official who claims that making this particular aspect of big business legal would upset the nation’s economy disastrously.

One of the ways we can cut down governmental expenditures is to disband the FBI and have the Senate Internal Security Committee investigate everything under white sheets for un-American activities. Understand, we won’t take no ‘sheet’ off anybody!

All U.S. Attorneys and judges in the South will be our people so we can get some redress. ‘One Man-One Vote’ – that’s our motto. We might even disenfranchise women and let them run the country. They’ll do it anyhow.

The Army and Navy will be combined so no promoter can take too big a cut off the top of the ‘double-gig’ setup they have now.

The National Labor Relations Board will rule that people applying for jobs have to wear sheets over their heads so bosses won’t know what they are until after they’ve been hired. The sheets, of course, will all be colored!

We’re going to recall every U.S. ambassador except Chester Bowles and give the assignments to jazz musicians because they really ‘know where it is.’

The title of ‘Secretary’ will be replaced by the more appropriately dignified ‘Minister.’ Miles Davis has offered to serve as Minister of the Treasury, but I’ve persuaded him to head the CIA instead. Mrs. Jeannie Gleason, whose husband Ralph writes a lot, will be Ministress of the Treasury. Max Roach argued for the position of Minister of War. He said he wanted to declare it. But since we’re not going to have any, I gave him some books by C. Wright Mills and convinced him to be Minister of Defense. I have Charles Mingus lined up for Minister of Peace because he’ll take a piece of your head faster than anybody I know.

Ray Charles will be in charge of the Library of Congress, and we have found a place for Ross Barnett – U.S. Information Officer in the Congo. We will also recommend a special act of Congress to revoke the citizenship of Governor George Wallace and deport him to Vietnam.

Since integration will be so complete under my administration, the Muslims will be out of business, and even Malcolm X’s group won’t have anything to do, so rather than let all that talent go to waste, Malcolm be appointed U.S. Attorney General, immediately. He’s one cat we want on our side.

Although Bo Diddley applied first, I told him my choice is the great Duke Ellington for Minister of State. He’s a natural and can con anybody. Louis Armstrong is set for Minister of Agriculture. He knows all about raising those crops. Mary Lou Williams has already agreed to be Ambassadress to the Vatican. And, after considering the qualifications and potential of a great many candidates, I have decided that the Rabbi of Modern Jazz . . . the Maharajah of Contemporary Music . . . one of the most creative and gifted and avant-garde young men I know – Thelonious Sphere Monk – will be booked for a four-year tour as Roving Ambassador Plenipotentiary.

There will be places in the cabinet for Peggy Lee (Ministress of Labor), Ella Fitzgerald (HEW), Carmen McRae, Benny Carter, Woody Herman, and Count Basie. They are collaborating now on the jazz curriculum to be taught to kids in every school in the country.

The distinguished post of National Poet Laureate, a paid position, will go to Jon Hendricks, who has been donating his services to our movement as a campaign lyricist.

As Vice-President, I would like Ramona Crowell, a leader of the John Birks Society and a registered Sioux Indian.

As far as condescension is concerned, you are hard to beat – but hey, I try. Your insistence on a type of logic suited maybe to some forms of philosophical discussion, but not so much to hermeneutics, as well as your refusal to truly engage with the multiple layers of a text, reveals that, while you might have consumed some amount of literary theory, you haven’t really learned much in the course of that.

to know that the “only one definition of the word makes any sense in the context in which I have used it” claim is nonsense.

As Kathleen has pointed out, this is an utterly ridiculous last ditch attempt at a “back at ya”. I have made it very clear what I meant by “tribalism”, when I wrote the following:

give me a better word [than “tribalism”] then for what’s been going on in this thread. Lemee actually made some valid points, but went way over the top and let his own prejudices shine through. Henry came to the rescue of a friend and fellow CT poster and in the course of that lost all objectivity, which is crystal clear when you read both his update and the blog post it’s referring to, the latter pointing out some shortcomings of Lemee’s post which are immediately obvious to any neutral observer. The rest is mudslinging and one-upmanship.

How this leaves open the possibility, that I could have alluded to “the customs, life, and organization of a tribal society” rather than “strong in-group loyalty” is beyond me and implying any racist motives on my part for using the word makes even less sense in the context. The fact that text may have multi-layered levels of meaning and that analyzing texts can be a complex business dose not entail an interpretative free-for-all or anything goes – this is one of the first things a good introductory course in literary theory will teach students.

And as for the McLemee on love and passion thing – since you haven’t yet provided any arguments, or indeed interpretations which would allow me to decode what precisely you find so objectionable about that bit of the article (…)

Again, I am puzzled as to what you would consider a valid argument or interpretation. It is quite clear that McLemee dismisses West’s approach towards love and relationships and considers him to be a failure in this regard. By bringing his wife, and thereby his presumably happy and stable marriage as opposed to West’s four divorces, into the mix, he parades his own lifestyle choices as being more valid and successful than West’s and by extension anybody else’s, who might choose to approach these matters differently. To me this is incredibly narrow-minded, offensive and below the belt – I don’t know what else to say about that.

476 I didn’t like McLemee’s use of the phrase “popping a cap in a fellow faculty member’s ass” in the original review; I think his use of the phrase in comment #75 above indicates he thinks it’s an inherently funny phrase. That’s a little immature,1 perhaps, and possibly a little insensitive: at absolute worst, and I feel this is being uncharitable to McLemee, it’s equivalent to using “gay” as an epithet.

It would be one thing if McLemee threw in the “pop a cap” line out of nowhere – a la the Salon film critic’s “pimpin’”. But it is not McLemee, but West himself (apparently) who attributes gangsta phraseology (“Help me f___ him up”) “to the white president of Harvard in a conversation with a black scholar.” However poorly or offensively Summers may (or may not) have treated West, West, not McLemee, is responsible for any comic potential inherent in his portrayal of this encounter.

I suppose it’s true in general that the language of young male machismo culture, like the language of academia, should never be used as an excuse or occasion for mirth. This is my attitude towards”Jersey Shore” from now on.

So I should have used scare quotes like you?