Debating Dan Riehl -- Bottom of the First Inning
Dan responds to my opening salvo here. He also solicits a guest post from Mark Levin, who sure isn’t helping himself by venturing into print. I’m due to fly east tonight, so I may not have time to rebut immediately, but this exchange is going to afford an opportunity to make some salient points, so stay tuned — I shall respond!
i don’t follow partisan political weblogs much (left or right), so i appreciate this “window” into their zeitgeist as an anthropological exercise….
— razib · May 26, 03:03 AM · #
That guest-post by Levin is mind-numbing and breathtaking at the same time. At least with Rush, you can read him and mark the moments where his audience would probably laugh. He makes that much use of his outrageousness, anyway. Levin’s post is so far from funny, while obviously straining for humor, it makes you almost totally confident that this is a man who’s never been funny. Once
— Matt Feeney · May 26, 03:25 AM · #
what’s up with some of his fans being unable to spell his name? that was weird.
— razib · May 26, 04:00 AM · #
a man who’s never been funny
I was struck by that too, Matt. Absolutely zero sense of self-deprecating humor.
It’s all OUTRAGE! all the time. Apparently conservatism is serious business.
— matoko_chan · May 26, 04:43 AM · #
Dan bringing up Wanda Sykes is a good caution to those who imagine bad manners are unique to the Right, but it’s irrelevant to the point under discussion. Why does Wanda Sykes’ behavior justify Mark Levin’s? If the guy on the other team is a jerk, that doesn’t give the guy on your team license to be a jerk, especially if the first guy was under heavy criticism for being a jerk.
— Blar · May 26, 12:36 PM · #
When did we get so fragile about humor? Sykes’ comment about Rush is well within a particular comic style. I thought it was a good crack. I laughed. Neither of us actually wants Rush’s kidneys to fail. God help us if we’re going to start vetting stand-up comedy in this way.
— Matt Feeney · May 26, 01:42 PM · #
Kyle said it best.
Either its all ok to make fun of or none of it is.
The right’s OUTRAGE! about Sykes sounds exactly like muslim OUTRAGE! over the Muhammed cartoons.
Bo had the laserguided insight…..like in gansta rap, the right is powerless, but even more, they are disrespected. The mockery of Sarah Palin still rankles. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are universally despised for making fun of the right.
Glenn Beck is a insane clown, he bills his tour as comedy tour. Red Eye is a flop. Both are crude attempts at mocking the left like the left effortlessly mocks the right.
The problem is….you need intellectual substrate to both get and make clever satire…..I think it is party affiliation by IQ gradient again.
— matoko_chan · May 26, 02:11 PM · #
Well, there’s a lot to be said here, and nobody looks very good. Levin DOES have a point about the reformist conservatives like Frum, Douthat, and Dreher needing to play less of that superior “spitballs from the backseat” role. But by and large this “my-rep-and-importance-in American-conservatism-is-bigger-than-yours” game that SO many conservative media types seem compelled to get into is so utterly tiresome and pathetic, and this is largely what we get from Levin here. He has some real points to make against Dreher, but, no charity or gentlemanly-ness to go with them, and so, well, his critique becomes not merely tiresome, but truly poisonous. Yeah, let’s kick Rod Dreher, one of the most interesting voices of the early NRO days, outta the conservative tent and subject him to biting mockery. Just wonderful, Mr. Levin, you’re really helping us all out here!
Yes, much we could say about the medium that is talk radio, and the legitimate style and audience appeal that Levin has developed and what it may require in terms of candor and rough criticism.
Yes, Conor does need to heed voices like Jessica’s in earlier thread…
…but all this is secondary to the BASICS:
1) Conor is absolutely right about what Mark Levin said to that caller, and absolutely right to make a fuss over it.
2) Mark Levin should apologize for that incident. Everyone screws up from time to time, goes overboard, but that sort of thing cannot be defended as a regular feature of Levin’s style. Mr. Levin is on the air, and he cannot talk the way he would in a bar.
— Carl Scott · May 26, 03:42 PM · #
@Matt, re Sykes: Two things.
1.) The venue mattered.
2.) I’m sure Mark Levin didn’t actually want his caller’s husband to commit suicide either. That’s hardly exculpatory.
— Blar · May 26, 05:12 PM · #
Re Sykes:
I don’t think it’s comparable at all. Sykes was making a joke about Limbaugh’s overblown rhetoric. I.e. you say you hope Obama fails, well I hope your kidneys fail. She’s turning his own tactic back on him and turning it up to 11 to show how absurd it is.
— bailey · May 26, 05:26 PM · #