“Glenn Reynolds”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/015804.php responds to criticism from “Matt Yglesias”:http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=83795:
bq. Instead of blaming the messenger, perhaps a bit of soul-searching would be in order.
You said it, mate.
{ 16 comments }
Physh 05.29.04 at 4:58 am
Your quote from Glenn Reynolds would lead readers to believe that he is the one who should be doing the soul-searching, whereas a reading of his post causes me to believe he is referring to himself as the messenger and the press as needing that inward look.
fyreflye 05.29.04 at 5:34 am
Yes, Glenn does thrive on self-delusion.
wcw 05.29.04 at 5:35 am
That’s the joke.
I found it came across quite easily without clicking through or even knowing a bit of background.
Kip Manley 05.29.04 at 5:49 am
That is one of the most clearly simple and singularly beautiful examples of projection I think I have ever seen. Breathtaking.
bad Jim 05.29.04 at 6:23 am
Indeed.
neil 05.29.04 at 6:31 am
That guy is really a piece of work. The hypocrisy isn’t even out of context, for those of you who didn’t click through — Matt is criticizing him for scapegoating the Times and encouraging vandalism against their property.
bryan 05.29.04 at 7:01 am
This is the problem with instapundit links, I really want to avoid clicking through to his site, giving him advertising money and increasing his pagehits by one for the next time he does one of those “5 trillion hits this month!” posts.
robbo 05.29.04 at 7:55 am
I do believe that’ll be my last hit on Instapundit. Not that I’ve visited him often before, but there’s just never any intellectual payoff. Just a lawyer playing with rhetoric, badly, pathetically trying to project brilliance and insight that are MIA. Who needs that bullshit?
DCharles 05.29.04 at 8:56 am
Isn’t Instapundit the guy who was worried that overuse of Free Speech might endanger its use?
I would nominate him for an ILA (intellectual Laziness Award).
Jack 05.29.04 at 9:46 am
I bellieve that I read here of a name for the problem caused by assuming that one is right.
Since most arguments are incomplete there is usually some description of the world that in which one remains right even in the face of the strongest evidence.
It seems to me that bloggers are extremely prone to this. For example Steven den Beste arguing that the war was a Bush masterstroke that would cure the deficit problem by bringing oil down to $20 a barrel.
Even more open minded souls suffer. Read Tacitus who has the rigour to see that you can’t really describe the war as going well still find ways to argue that not invading would have been worse.
I believe the name was something like Buggin’s paradox where Buggin is a relatively recent and possibly British philosopher. If I am deluded in this I propose calling it the Sherlock Holmes fallacy. If you eliminate the apparently impossible and what remains is extremely improbable, it’s really worth checking if the alternatives really were impossible. cf Daniel’s latest post at d-squareddigest .
Mr Ripley 05.29.04 at 11:12 pm
Heh.
(I can’t believe I just wrote that)
Backword Dave 05.29.04 at 11:46 pm
Indeed.
Tacitus 05.30.04 at 2:06 am
Read Tacitus who has the rigour to see that you can’t really describe the war as going well still find ways to argue that not invading would have been worse.
On the contrary: I said precisely the opposite here.
Insta_Irony 05.30.04 at 7:34 am
Dos Reynold read his own blog?
You have to wonder.
But boy, does he ever have a capacity for irony.
Chrisper 05.31.04 at 8:44 am
I drop in to Crooked timber to get some alternative world-view comments. Being from Australia I am used to very homogeneous attitudes in my media commentators. It is terrific to get some diversity, in quality comments from places like Crooked timber, Oxblog – and Instapundit.
Drop over to PC Watch or the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler if you want something to bitch about.
q 06.01.04 at 5:28 pm
Jack/Sherlock-
Do you run your own blog?
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