more meta
The topic of the day seems to be tone — how people are speaking and writing about one another, including (especially?) here on the Scene. A worthwhile topic. My own tone lately has been determined by my frustration with the way the sites and papers and magazines I read are approaching the Palin nomination and associated themes. Commenters like Freddie think that I’m way too one-sided, which could be: it’s true that I haven’t said anything about how right-wing outlets are treating the issue. But that’s because I don’t know how they’re treating the issue, because I’m not a reader of right-wing blogs or political blogs in general. Ross Douthat and Rod Dreher pretty much exhaust my right-wing reading list, and a lot of people who call themselves conservatives wouldn’t even agree that Ross and Rod belong in that company. So I comment on what I read. Maybe I should rework my RSS feeds, but that sounds like work.
On the other hand, maybe I should take it in the other direction and stop reading as much from the left. Hanna Rosin has a piece in Slate on why Christian conservatives like Sarah Palin that has a major factual or interpretive error in almost every sentence. It could not possibly be more wrong-headed. The whole damned piece calls for a massive fisking.
But nah. It’s too much trouble. Like the little Dutch boy, I’ve run out of fingers to plug the holes in the dike that holds back the ocean of ignorance. Maybe I should just cut all the political stuff from my RSS reader. . . .
Hey, and on the subject on discussion tone but sadly also on politics — Shoot, Obama sat down secretly with Murdoch and Ailes to negotiate how he’d be covered by Fox News? Seriously? They can do that?
— Sanjay · Sep 4, 07:03 PM · #
Not sure what Freddie’s problem is—I perceive TAS as slightly right of center, and I perceive you as not primarily a political blogger. The idea of ripping all the political news out of my reader lingers in my mind from time to time, but I never have. The need to be informed outweighs the need for sanity, I suppose.
It’s tough being in the center: instead of everyone seeing you as a possible ally, everyone sees you as an enemy. See: Derek Webb’s “Name”
— AndrewN · Sep 4, 07:10 PM · #
rosin should have brought her regressions.
— razib · Sep 4, 07:25 PM · #
Wow, Rosin’s piece is bad. What I found damning about it was her surprise (disappointment) at the way the Christian right embraced Palin’s “uh, domestic irregularities” rather than denouncing them as sins. This is, of course, why Bristol’s story was jumped on with so much glee: those doing the jumping assume they got those bible-thumbers figured out; trusting the accuracy of their vicarious outrage, they spread a chum line they themselves have no particular interest in.
Both sides do this, but I have to say: the least sophisticated efforts are spawned on the Left. I say this as an objective observer, of course (truly! — I’m an irreligious culture-war layabout).
— JA · Sep 4, 11:41 PM · #
I cut the political blogs on my feeder after I went into two grocery stores this afternoon and launched complaints upward toward the management when I sighted the US covers of Sarah and Trig Palin by the checkout lines (Lies! Scandals!). This an innocent infant with Down syndrome.
I’ll spend the next two months shopping at the crunchy stores if I run into something like that again—but I can’t focus on it.
— Julana · Sep 5, 12:44 AM · #
That ol’ fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, eh? It’s a killer. Didn’t anyone warn you?
— felix culpa · Sep 5, 02:55 AM · #
Sounds vaguely familiar, felix . . . but I got distracted by all that pretty fruit. And the talking snake.
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 5, 12:08 PM · #