Guilt By Association
Pretty much everybody who links to Steve Sailer gets asked (repeatedly) “why do you link to that guy?”
Well, maybe because Sailer predicted this – that Rev. Wright would actively try to sabotage Obama’s campaign by grabbing the microphone and shouting the most outrageous things he could think of into it – back in mid-2007. Here’s the best summary of his armchair psychologizing about Wright, which is much more recent. Is Sailer’s armchair psychologizing right? Well, armchair psychologizing is a questionable activity generally, but I’ve engaged in it more than a little bit myself. But I’ll say this much: he’s gotten the trajectory of this story more right than, say, Andrew Sullivan who has now belatedly jumped on the “he must be denounced” bandwagon.
I think Sullivan’s giving bad advice. I’m just not that worried about the Wright connection, for the reasons I articulated here. I read a little bit about Wright back at the beginning of the year, and it was pretty clear what he was, and I understood as well what Obama saw in him and got from him. That’s part of the package you get if you elect Obama – it’s not the whole package by any means, but it’s part of it.
I do wish that months ago Obama had said something like the following: “with all due respect to my pastor, I think some of the things he says are not just extreme or provocative, they are dangerous and wrong. At a time when fantastic conspiracy theories about AIDS have cost millions of lives in Africa, for an African-American minister – who, I should stress, has put his heart and soul into helping people infected with HIV – to stoke those kinds of fears is unconscionable. And I do hope that, to some degree, my candidacy and my Presidency will lead to a greater degree of trust, and that conspiracy theories like these get a little less traction in the next generation.” Yeah, that would have been nice. But I wouldn’t expect more than that in terms of distancing. And I’m not sure I’d want to hear it. The man is who he is. He doesn’t become somebody else if he throws his pastor under a bus. If Obama’s attachment to Wright is a dealbreaker for you, you shouldn’t vote for him – and that shouldn’t change if he denounces him today because he’s become politically “toxic.”
As it also happens, I don’t intend to stop linking to Sailer when he writes things that I think are interesting and insightful. That’s part of the package you get from me – by no means the whole package, and Sailer’s obsessions are his, not mine. But it’s part of the package.
steve sailer is evil!
— razib · Apr 28, 11:36 PM · #
Read an article that explains how the psychological theory of “cross-race recognition deficit” may be exacerbating the indelible linkage of Jeremiah Wright’s views to Barack Obama…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com/2008/04/crossrace_recognition_deficit_why_linking_obama_to.php
— Daniel DiRito · Apr 28, 11:36 PM · #
LOL What about the grandma he threw under the bus?
— lindenen · Apr 29, 01:01 AM · #
So you’ve been linking to Sailer for years, and your justification is that in mid-2007, he said something that has supposedly been confirmed in 2008?
Me confused.
— Freddie · Apr 29, 02:13 AM · #
Sailer is smarter and more insightful than any of his critics. Notice how they don’t tend to engage his arguments, but instead they project their own sense of superiority? Read and learn, disagree or not.
— Jay · Apr 29, 02:27 AM · #
Who knew the nicest thing you can say about Mr. Sailer is to compare him to Rev. Wright? That’s some heavy stuff right there.
— Other Ezra · Apr 29, 02:54 AM · #
Whatever else is true, this is true: Reverend Wright is an issue because Obama is black. Have you heard a single word about Hilary Clinton’s pastor? Does she have one? Does McCain have one? How would you know?
I try very hard to listen to my political opponents. But when I hear again and again that Wright practices the politics of aggrievement, I want to explode. Conservatives have less standing to complain about the politics of aggrievement than anyone on this earth. The entire history of 20th century conservatism is one long extended whine, a laundry list of perceived slights, complaints about bias and unfairness and exclusion. Conservatives vocally deplore minority politics while never ceasing to remind everyone that they are a deeply aggrieved minority. This is the way conservatives play identity politics, by asserting that everyone else is.
— Freddie · Apr 29, 04:02 AM · #
Do you really think that what Wright is saying is so outrageous? The AIDs thing I will grant you, but that is one wrong belief. It is also a common belief in the balck community and not particuarly irrational when you consider the whole of US government history re african americans. Tuskeegee ended in 1972. But the rest of it… you may not agree with it, but none of it is “outrageous.” Do you deny that a rational person might believe that US meddling in the middle east has something to do with 9/11. That chicken coming home to roost line was a quote from a US ambassador. And do you think that believing that america is reaping what it sowed is outrageous for a christian pastor? The american government has done all kinds of thing that that can be veiwed as abhorent in the eyes of god. And wrights not talking about harboring gay people like Gerrry Fallwell. He’s talking about things like slavery and the treatment of the indians and hiroshima. Events that can be reasonably considered abhorant.
I notice that you link to a column in the Post that gives a one sided view of what wright said. Did you read the actual transcript of seen the Bill Moyers interview?
And Sailer does occasionally say something interesting, but he is one person I can confidently call a racist, with an special fixation on black people, so it’s kind of weird that you would choose him to listen to on an issue like this.
— cw · Apr 29, 05:05 AM · #
I wonder if you’d link to an “interesting” anti-Semite the way you defend linking to Sailer. Hey, David Irving was a hell of a historian, you know.
— tequila · Apr 29, 08:51 AM · #
Freddie #1: I guess Sailer must have had other interesting things to say over the years, not just this one thing. Still confused?
Other Ezra: Well, maybe that’s kind of my point: both of these guys are kind of extreme and intemperate, flaunt their resentments and enjoy making enemies. But neither deserves to be thrown under a bus.
Freddie #2: In large part I agree. I think there’s a lot more to the conservative movement than that, just as I think there’s a lot more to the old establishment liberalism than the “New Class” critique suggests. But it’s still a fair criticism, and I think the rise of right-wing political correctness is deplorable.
cw: I’m not sure with whom you are arguing. I believe I wrote a post on this site defending Wright’s admonition of America in the wake of 9/11. Have you read it? And I don’t see anything in the post above saying that Wright is somehow uniquely awful. I don’t even think he’s particularly racial in his outlook; his church is part of a predominantly white denomination, and he is not preaching separatism. He’s a radical, but a left-wing radical, a liberation theologian not a black nationalist like Marcus Garvey, though obviously he’s on good terms with latter-day Garveites. Maybe you’re arguing with the conservative media line on Wright, but I can’t see how you’re engaging with me. As for Sailer: precisely because he’s a racial obsessive he’s more likely to have interesting things to say about Wright than about most other topics.
tequila: Well, since Sailer is also widely denounced for being an anti-Semite, I guess the answer is, yes. Then again, left-wing Jews like Matt Yglesias also get denounced as anti-Semites, so maybe that’s not a good way to tell who’s an anti-Semite and who isn’t. Would I link to something by David Irving? No.
— Noah Millman · Apr 29, 12:21 PM · #
Freddie writes:
Reverend Wright is an issue because Obama is black. Have you heard a single word about Hilary Clinton’s pastor? Does she have one?
More generally, can you imagine if someone closely associated with Hillary Clinton said or did something that she thought was really awful? Wow, what a political hot potato that would be. It’s hard to imagine we’d ever stop talking about it.
— alkali · Apr 29, 01:42 PM · #
Whatever else is true, this is true: Reverend Wright is an issue because Obama is black. Have you heard a single word about Hilary Clinton’s pastor?
No, but I heard an awful lot about Mitt Romney’s church. Was that racist too?
Closely aligning yourself with non-mainstream religious organizations is fair game in politics. It happened to Kennedy when he ran, to Lieberman when he ran, to Romney when he ran. This is why you don’t see Obama’s people decrying it as somehow out of bounds.
— right · Apr 29, 02:06 PM · #
Well, I know that many Mormons, like many people of other faiths, don’t understand their doctrines, or how to explain the thought behind their doctrines, but come on! I can’t vote for someone who most likely believes he’s going to be in charge of his own planet someday! Hello, Mr. President, how are all the dead relatives you found and had baptized posthumously?
— Joules · Apr 29, 03:02 PM · #
I keyed off this sentence: “Well, maybe because Sailer predicted this – that Rev. Wright would actively try to sabotage Obama’s campaign by grabbing the microphone and shouting the most outrageous things he could think of into it – back in mid-2007.”
I misread the “outrageous” as your word. You also seem to be endorsing Sailer’s point which I thouhgt included Wright being a hateful racist monster. So I was confused about what you were saying. I didn’t see you defense Wright.
I have been really depressed about the right-wing line on this and the fact that either no one has actually listened to the man at length or they don’t care what he is actually saying. This whole campaign started out so prominsing (for us liberals), but it just keeps getting uglier and uglier, dumber and dumber. It’s like a whole industry that makes it’s money by dulling the wits of the general public.
And Sailer…. you link to Sailer you just encourage and enable him. He’s someone who’s made a career out of arguing that black people are mentally inferior. This is from one of his Katrina posts:
“What you won’t hear, except from me, is that “Let the good times roll” is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.”
What he is doing is actively harmful. It’s not passive, sit on the couch and complain racism. It’s the Steve Sailer Evangelical Chruch of I Must Convince Everyone In The World How Black People Are Dumber Than White People. He’s no different that some skin head or Idaho nazi. He’s just better educated. They might have interesting things to say too, but they also have really harmful stuff to say. If you link tho their interesting stuff you are also enabling them to get the harmful stuff said.
— cw · Apr 29, 03:03 PM · #
cw-
If you had some interesting, if occasionally crackpot, observations to make about Idaho nazis, I’d probably read your blog, too. But I’ll continue to “encourage and enable” Steve Sailer instead.
— Matt Frost · Apr 29, 03:09 PM · #
The thing about Steve Sailer is that he isn’t a normal member of the right wing blogosphere. You link to other righties—say, Ross Douthat, or the Corner people, or Rod Dreher—as part of a running internet conversation, which is to say, you engage their body of work. Not that you respond to every post or everything, but you say when you agree with them, and why, and when you disagree with them, and why.
Steve Sailer, for you and a lot of other rightie bloggers, is just sort of there. You don’t engage him as part of the conversation. Why not?
— Brendan · Apr 29, 03:13 PM · #
Brendan:
I’m really not sure what you mean. You mean I don’t argue with him enough?
I looked quickly over the history of my posting on this site (78 posts since the site was ported over to its current location). I linked to Sailer once in November of 2007, to engage in his perpetual obsession of race and IQ. This post contains the second link. So I’ve linked twice: once to engage directly with his primary obsession, and the other time to point out that, whatever else you might say about him, he’s got enough insight to have been able to make a useful prediction about how Wright would play out in the campaign.
The people I engage in debates with most commonly are other posters and commenters here, plus some of the Atlantic bloggers (Ross Douthat and Matt Yglesias most commonly, but also Andrew Sullivan).
My impression of the way the righty blogosphere “deals” with Sailer is that there are basically four camps.
There are the mainstream bloggers who consider him an abomination. John Podhoretz is a good example.
There are the “racialist right” bloggers who consider him an ally (I’m never 100% sure if he agrees with that characterization, by the way). Randall Parker is a good example.
There are the bloggers who are specifically interested in the science of human differences, who consider him a colleagial interlocutor. (Sailer certainly agrees with that characterization.) razib is a good example.
And there are the mainstream bloggers who consider him interesting but somewhat unsavory. Ross Douthat is a good example.
I’m not sure which of the above count as not “engaging” him. I think all of those are different kinds of engagement.
— Noah Millman · Apr 29, 04:22 PM · #
That’s about right. Rev. Steve Sailer, the white Reverend Wright. A desperate attention-seeker. Outside-the-box. Has a cult (following). Occasionally insightful. Sometimes repugnant. Always pompous. Insecure. Racist. Thin-skinned. Entertaining.
One key difference between Sailer and Wright — Wirght is a millionaire living a comfortable retirement. Sailer is begging for money on the internet.
And Noah — I suppose you could no more disown Sailer, part of your “package”, than you could disown your own grandmother? I hope that turns out better for you than it has for Obama.
— Ikram · Apr 29, 04:22 PM · #
I find Sailer to be distasteful and occasionally crude. He’s self-referential, self-congratulatory to the extreme and a hero in his own mind.
Nevertheless, Sailer occasionally says interesting things that you can’t find elsewhere. That’s why I read him, although I think that deep down, he’s probably not as good as an intellectual as he thinks and he does not have pure motives.
That’s actually the hardest thing to deal with: intentions. Why is Wright doing this? Why is Sailer doing this? We’ll never know. Insofar as I think Wright is irrelevant to Obama, then Wright’s intentions don’t matter to me.
Sailer’s motives, though, are relevant. Is he truly a brave intellectual, using the scientific method to confront areas of science that others are too afraid to engage? Or is he a crackpot that uses science to run down his least favorite race? Occasionally, I think I’ve seen the mask slip — I could be wrong. Sadly, we’ll never know.
— Klug · Apr 29, 04:25 PM · #
As an aside: I’m very interested to see how Sailer votes. I think that if he voted strictly on the merits, he should vote for Obama.
Sailer disagrees with McCain about just about everything, and he disagrees with him most strongly about two things McCain cares most about: the Iraq War and Immigration. Moreover, McCain’s style of argumentation is pretty much exactly the style that Sailer hates most. Plus Sailer doesn’t think really old guys make good leaders (with a partial exception for Reagan).
Obama is not going to be advocating immigration restriction, obviously, which is Sailer’s top issue. But he’ll be a lot easier for Republicans to oppose on that topic than McCain will be. And Obama will try to pass national health insurance (which Sailer favors), and will try to tilt the playing field a little further in favor of unions (which Sailer also favors). Moreover, Sailer clearly thinks Obama is smart (which he thinks is important in a leader), and respects Obama’s temperament.
Sailer’s main “worry” about Obama is that he’ll be too much of a “race man” to really be the leader of all of the United States of America. Whether or not Sailer’s armchair psychologizing is right, I think he should ask himself where, precisely, the rubber meets the road on this point. What is Obama going to do because of his purported racial “hangups” that Sailer would oppose? Or, more to the point, what is he going to do that McCain would not also do? McCain, after all, is a supporter of open immigration, bilingual education, racial preferences, etc. So why not vote on other issues?
I’m viewing this as something of a test of how hung up Sailer himself is. Will he actually vote for McCain, given how completely they disagree? Or will he vote for an impossible third-party candidacy? Or could he bring himself to vote for Obama, with whom he disagrees about many things, but whom he sees some potential in and whom he does agree with on a couple of important matters? And, in any of the above cases, how will he justify his vote? I’m genuinely curious.
— Noah Millman · Apr 29, 04:41 PM · #
Ikram: No.
Klug: That’s a good question, but I don’t think it’s the key question for a guy like Sailer who is, after all, just a journalist. You really can take from him what you need and leave the rest. As for his motives: I think what drives him most is neither personal animus towards racial minorities nor disinterested pursuit of science but the desire for personal vindication, and the related desire to see those who, by his lights, have profited by promulgating untruths (and denouncing him) suffer.
— Noah Millman · Apr 29, 04:47 PM · #
It occurs to me that aside from our shared revulsion towards Sailer’s theories of racial difference, no one here is really debating the central controversy of his findings. I think this reveals an important truth about engaging people like Sailer. I would rather air out the Internet’s dirty laundry than let it fester in some dark corner of the blogosphere while we congratulate ourselves on having exorcised the demon from our midst.
This is particularly true in the context of his claims about race. For my own part, I think that racial differences are the result of adverse circumstances, but I’m hardly qualified to confidently pronounce an opinion on genetic variations. That’s why I appreciate it when mainstream blogs actively engage with controversial theories, especially when the debate is grounded in somewhat obscure or esoteric scientific findings. In fact, I wouldn’t complain if The American Scene posse decided to write a series of blog posts on why Sailer is wrong . . .
— Will · Apr 29, 05:46 PM · #
Sailer is probably an undiagnosed Aspie! (We autism moms like to trot out our cool developmental disability slang now and then.) Don’t HATE him: mediCATE him!
— Joules · Apr 29, 08:27 PM · #
“I’m very interested to see how Sailer votes. I think that if he voted strictly on the merits, he should vote for Obama.”
Sailer seemed pretty enraged about Obama in the couple things I’ve read by him. Obama is a big con-man, al Sharpton 2.0, ect… No way he votes for Obama, except to promote his “I am a brave truth-teller, not a racist” cover.
“It occurs to me that aside from our shared revulsion towards Sailer’s theories of racial difference, no one here is really debating the central controversy of his findings.”
If you want to up your page count that one sure-fire method.
— cw · Apr 29, 10:33 PM · #
What secret (but no doubt malign) motives drive me to come up with predictions and insights that elude other pundits?
A fascinating question!
Unfortunately, the answer is boring. I merely like writing things that are both true and new.
Why?
- I enjoy it. I have no taste for making up fantasies, I hate being wrong about how the world works, and I bore easily.
- And I think the truth is better for humanity than lies, ignorance, and wishful thinking.
I’m no Renaissance genius, so to come up with discoveries that are both true and new and important, I have to specialize in a niche, a subject in which data are abundant but there’s little analytical competition due to ideology and careerism. Thus, I specialize in analyzing the influence of family ties.
Am I obsessed? No more than most people. Certainly, no more than Senator Barack Obama, who wrote a bestselling 442-page autobiography that he rightfully subtitled “A Story of Race and Inheritance” since there is almost nothing else in it other than race and inheritance. Nor am I more obsessed than the millions of Obama supporters who have made up little fantasies about how Obama’s background, what he called today his “DNA,” will automatically make him a post-racial reconcilliator.
Have I focused more on Obama than on Hillary Clinton and McCain? Certainly.
Why? I doubt that I can come up with much to say about Hillary or Yosemite Sam that is true and new — they’ve been picked over for many years by analysts with better access than me.
In contrast, Obama is new to the scene, he’s at heart a writer (a quite talented one whose prose interests me), we are both interested in the same subject of “race and inheritance,” and race makes lots of people turn their brains off when it comes to him so there has been little competition until recently from other pundits. Thus I’ve been able to point out many things that are true and new about this man who wants to be President.
Am I sitting here in my pajamas manipulating who becomes the next President? Yeah, right … Look, everything about Obama would have come out eventually. It should have come out in 2007. The only thing I can marginally influence is how early it comes out. The earlier it comes out, the better for America because the better informed the electorate will be.
Am I secretly plotting to make one of these candidates President. Hardly. I haven’t made up my mind who I’d vote for, if I’d vote for any of them. In 2004, for example, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Bush or Kerry, so I wrote in my friend Ward Connerly’s name on the ballot. At this point, the important thing is not to choose one politician, it’s to make the system work better by raising the level of knowledge.
So, there we get to the awful truth about my twisted motives — I’m a really tedious public-spirited good-government type who wants American voters to better understand the people who want to lead them.
— Steve Sailer · Apr 30, 01:36 AM · #
Steve, do you still believe that black people posses poorer native judgement (genetically dumb) and need stricter moral guidence from society?
— cw · Apr 30, 04:02 AM · #
I think this thread sums Sailer up nicely.
On the one hand, he’s a self-obsessed egoist who fancies himself a bold truth-teller, and who cherry-picks and massages data to promote scientifically-discredited theories of racial essentialism.
On the other hand, he really is one of the few intelligent writers willing to discuss racial issues, and he really does have an interesting insight into Jeremiah Wright’s personality… given that Wright is also a self-obsessed egoist who fancies himself a bold truth-teller and promotes scientifically-discredited theories.
— LaFollette Progressive · Apr 30, 02:15 PM · #