In Defense of Lesbian Studies Majors
Right on cue, Andrew Brietbart provides the perfect counterargument to the notion that the right helps itself by going off on profane, ill-conceived rants that vilify liberals. I defy any commenter to persuasively argue that the effect of this outburst aids the conservative cause. It also takes a special kind of gall to work at The Drudge Report and heap sanctimonious scorn on others for using sensationalized tragedy to score ideological points. Dude, do you read The Drudge Report?
Oh great. I’m letting down the conservative cause every time I leave an angry drunken voicemail on a prominent bloggers’ machine? Why does nobody tell me anything?
— Joe Marier · Jun 12, 10:41 PM · #
Why does nobody tell me anything?
We were going to. But we forgot. Sorry.
— Keljeck · Jun 12, 10:52 PM · #
Conor,
I thought you guys had finally let Tony Comstock start blogging when I quickly read the blog post title I thought it said “In Defense of Lesbian Movies”. My bad.
— Jeff Singer · Jun 12, 11:12 PM · #
Okay, Conor, I don’t have time to listen to Breitbart’s rant at the moment, but I’ll certainly take your word for it that it doesn’t aid the conservative cause, especially since I’ve agreed with everything you’ve said about Levin, et al.
But the second half of your post seems to violate the spirit of your recent comments about tu quoque arguments and constant accusations of hypocrisy. Here’s what you said in the comments thread of your recent post:
“I haven’t ready Obsidian Wings regularly for long enough to know the answer to your questions, but let’s imagine for a moment that Hilzoy herself is utterly inconsistent about holding her own side to account. Would that have any bearing on the point that she’s made — one that is either right or wrong, independent of Hilzoy’s own behavior?
I grow so tired of every blog argument devolving into a discussion of the author’s motives, or hypocrisy, or consistency. What’s the point?”
If Breitbart condemns the exploitation of sensationalized tragedy to score ideological points, “… would that have any bearing on the point that [Breitbart’s] made — one that is either right or wrong, independent of [Breitbart’s] own behavior?”
Just sayin’, is all.
— Kate Marie · Jun 12, 11:15 PM · #
But referring to people who disagree with you as “Insta-Hack,” now that’s persuasive! In fact, I’ve become an Oakeshottian conservative.
— y81 · Jun 13, 01:54 AM · #
Kate,
You’re right — Breitbart’s rant would be wrong irrespective of whether he is being hypocritical.
I’m not sure I understand why I’ve contradicted myself, but I definitely concede that it’s possible! I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I make mistakes in my blogging, and if you’ve got the patience, I’d appreciate if you’d have another go at explaining your gripe here, whether you turn out to be right or I do.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 13, 02:22 AM · #
Conor, I questioned your motives back in an early anti-Levin post. But to follow Kate, this time I just want to ask where you stand on the issue that Breitbart raises.
Breitbart sounds honestly upset on the voicemail. He is calling because Cook at Gawker has just accused Drudge of intentionally downplaying the museum shooting because the killer was a ‘right wing extremsit’. Breitbart says that he thinks that it is ridiculous for people to consider this Holocaust Museum guy a right-winger, and says that if anything the guy’s ‘group rights’ ideas are more similar to multiculturalists than to liberto-conservatives like Breitbart.
Questions I don’t think you’ll answer:
1. Do you agree with Cook that we can call this shooter a right-winger? Why? Is the anti-semitism? The anti-blackism? Hating the neocons at Fox and the Weekly Standard?
2. Do you think Breitbart’s argument—that ‘white group think’ is at least as similar to left-wing thought as right-wing thought (especially libertarianish thought—is more or less objectionable than Cook’s statement that the shoort was a right-winger?
3. Breitbart called and left a voice mail, and he sounded genuinely angry at Cook’s personal attack on him. Maybe it was foreseeable that Gawker would post the voicemail, and that it would focus on the ‘lesbian studies’ angle. Dickish, but foreseeable. But then why are you piling on after Cook’s dick move in posting it?
I think you are the one playing Cook’s demonizing game, rather than engaging the real argument about whether there is any reason to call a guy like the museum shooter a ‘right-wing’ extremist.
— tom · Jun 13, 03:33 AM · #
“You’re right — Breitbart’s rant would be wrong irrespective of whether he is being hypocritical.”
— Just got back, Conor. I suppose I’ll have to listen to the rant, which I haven’t done yet. All I meant was that, if part of his point was to condemn the use of tragedy to score ideological points, I would agree with him regardless of whether he was a hypocrite. Your post seemed to imply that you would also agree that it’s wrong to use tragedy to score ideological points, but that it took a special kind of gall for a hypocrite like Breitbart to point it out.
— Kate Marie · Jun 13, 05:04 AM · #
Okay, Andrew Breitbart said, “It’s deeply offensive that you would use this for political gain.” To the extent that the tragedy is being used for political gain, is Breitbart not correct that it’s deeply offensive — regardless of whether it’s hypocrtical of him to say so?
— Kate Marie · Jun 13, 05:26 AM · #
Kate,
I agree that if the tragedy were being used for political gain that would be wrong, but I disagree that calling the guy right wing is necessarily using the tragedy for political gain — I think reasonable people of goodwill are disagreeing in good faith about whether or not he is a right wing extremist. And I think on the whole, the people arguing that he is have it right.
Note that I don’t think that reflects poorly on the mainstream right, or that Fox News is to blame for this, or any such nonsense. In fact, I don’t think I’ve thought this particular aspect of the controversy through enough to really feel as if I want to comment. But since someone asked, this is the post I’ve found most persuasive: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/linker/archive/2009/06/11/who-s-right-what-s-left.aspx
Anyhow, what I find unhelpful and absurd about the Breitbart quote is his comparing murderous lunatics to lesbian studies majors. I’ll not get into it here, but I assume that everyone understands — even though they get what Brietbart was saying — why it is absurd and unhelpful to pretend as though the things that motivates those to groups are the same.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 13, 05:43 AM · #
Tom,
Sorry, just re-reading your comment now — to add to the above, my objection isn’t that Breitbart thinks the guy isn’t a right wing extremist. I think this is as much about semantics as anything. Breitbart and I presumably agree that the guy doesn’t have anything in common with conservatives.
What I object to is his line about ethnic studies and “lesbian studies” majors. It is triply unhelpful — it misunderstands reality in a way that seems pretty obvious; it makes him look foolish; and it vilifies leftists multiculturalists, a group I have lots of disagreements with, in a really inaccurate way, detracting from the ability of conservatives to hone in on the real problems with multiculturalism.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 13, 05:56 AM · #
Y81,
I don’t refer to Andrew Breitbart as an Instahack because he disagrees with me — rather, I cite one of his comments as evidence that conservatives aren’t well served by angry outbursts, contra those who argue that political discourse is a tit-for-tat contest in which whoever is willing to “fight harder” wins.
I’ve also spent a lot of time recently thinking about Andrew Breitbart’s schtick.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 13, 06:05 AM · #
If we take Breitbart at face value, and suppose that he truly does believe that white supremacists are actually multiculturalists, why would he believe such a thing? Tolerance is inimical to one and essential to the other. I think a possibility is that it is result of a dualistic worldview taken to extremes.
Breitbart disagrees with both views, so they must somehow agree with each other. All his enemies must be allies of each other. (I wonder if something similar isn’t going on with Liberal Fascism.) The truth is, of course, that while it might sometimes seem as if everyone in the world has teamed up and is out to get you, that doesn’t make it so.
— Xelgaex · Jun 13, 11:12 AM · #
Conor, if you are trying to show that conservatives are ill-served by outbursts, you are picking a very weird example. Breitbart was responding privately to a public slur, and he might have even be accurate in what he said. Some ass at the hackiest of all sites decided to publish Breitbart’s private voicemail.
But you are trying to stay meta on this and avoid engaging on the issue of the slur to which Breitbard was responding: the widespread left-wing tactic of forcing pushing this guy onto the right wing because that’s where the racists are. And you have zero sympathy for Breitbart, who is as a libertarianish conservative is probably more against group rights and group identity (of any kind) than other conversatives. Instead, you adopt the Gawker ‘Lesbian Rights’ headline as your own, and pretend that Breitbard was doing something more than giving an example of how the ‘group identity’ beliefs of the museum shooter could be left-wing. You just want to deal with how his words on this voicemail could make conservatives look.
At the same time your meta approach is very high above the dispute at hand, it is strangely limited in focus. You seem uninterested in the enormous range of very angry liberal TV talking heads.
You may say that you want to make sure that the your side is policing itself so that a conservative renewal can succeed. But (Motives!) I am guessing that you have a book offer—or maybe just a magazine piece—or a guest spot on the Daily Dish—on What Is Wrong With These Angry, Bitter Conservatives, or Why we Must Destroy This Village In Order to Save It. Because why would anyone have ‘been spending a lot of time thinking about Andrew Breitbart’s shtick’?
— tom · Jun 13, 01:40 PM · #
very well said, Tom. I have long felt that Conor can get an awful lot of attention from the very people he purports to oppose (i.e., liberals, I guess, since he is a conservative) by vilifying the very people he supposedly aligns with.
John McCain rode that kind of thinking to the presidential nomination. It’s a sure way to get instant attention.
It’s hard to believe that Conor actually thinks like that. But in order to give him the benefit of the doubt, I have to believe that he is almost incapacitated by his love for the conservative movement. Why? Because he beats up on someone like Breitbart while missing the much larger point Breitbart is making. He seems to take Jesus’ words and invert them. That is: “Why be concerned about the log in your enemy’s eye, when you have a speck in your own?”
— jd · Jun 13, 02:28 PM · #
I agree that if the tragedy were being used for political gain that would be wrong, but I disagree that calling the guy right wing is necessarily using the tragedy for political gain — I think reasonable people of goodwill are disagreeing in good faith about whether or not he is a right wing extremist. And I think on the whole, the people arguing that he is have it right.
You are so wrong about this Von Brunn guy being a right-winger, at least from what I’ve seen about him.
— jd · Jun 13, 02:33 PM · #
Tom and JD,
I haven’t restrict myself to meta-criticism — in the comments you were responding to, I said very clearly that Breitbart is wrong on the substance of whether or not the Holocaust museum killer is motivated by the same kind of thinking as lesbian studies majors.
The main point isn’t that conservatives are ill-served when liberals here that and laugh — it is that they are ill-served when they hear that and believe that it reflects reality. Like Andrew Breitbart, I think that campus multiculturalism has its excesses. Unlike him, I don’t think those excesses have much similarities with paranoid anti-Semitism.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 13, 02:48 PM · #
“I am guessing that you have a book offer—or maybe just a magazine piece—or a guest spot on the Daily Dish—on What Is Wrong With These Angry, Bitter Conservatives, or Why we Must Destroy This Village In Order to Save It. Because why would anyone have ‘been spending a lot of time thinking about Andrew Breitbart’s shtick’?”
Actually, because I did a panel discussion with him in Los Angeles, and wrote a piece on a related subject awhile back for a right-of-center magazine. Stay tuned for its publication.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 13, 02:54 PM · #
JD, don’t be stupid. If “right” and “left” mean anything at all, then Weathermen-era Bill Ayers and Von Brunn are the extremes on either side.
“Right” doesn’t simply mean “all that is good in the world.” “Left” is not a synonym for “reprehensible.” Von Brunn was an extremist of the right – certainly outside the mainstream – and only someone ignorant of what politics means in this country could try to deny it. After all, this guy didn’t shoot up the Heritage Foundation at the height of the Bush adminstration.
— Chet · Jun 13, 05:23 PM · #
Chet,
I was with you right up until your last sentence: “After all, this guy didn’t shoot up the Heritage Foundation at the height of the Bush adminstration.”
The Holocaust Museum is not the liberal counterpart of the Heritage Foundation; it was not a target of Von Brunn because of any association with liberalism, but because of its association with Jews and their history. Acknowledging Von Brunn as a fringe right wing extremist does not require “owning” him in the way that Cook apparently wanted Breitbart and Drudge to “own” Von Brunn, and in that sense I do think Breitbart was correct that Cook was using the tragedy to score ideological points.
— Kate Marie · Jun 13, 07:37 PM · #
Well, there is certainly more to take issue with than simply the last sentence. Take for example, the opening sentence:
“JD don’t be stupid.”
I have rarely seen Conor or Kate open a comment in that fashion. Rather, I should say never. Seems common on this blog though. It is a tone of discourse that Conor is attempting to confront, though he has rather larger targets in mind.
Chet goes on to point out that “Right” doesn’t simply mean “all that is good in the world”, which would be a rather simplistic view of someone else’s viewpoint. Same with his characterization of JD’s opinion of “Left”. He then flatly states that Von Brunn is an extremist of the right, as though his asserting it is proof positive. Sorry, that position is in question. If Chet wants to advance it he would do better to bring some information that would buttress his statement. The final sentence needs no further comment.
— nicholas · Jun 13, 08:44 PM · #
Kids, there is no question the Holocaust Museum shooter was a man of the very very far right. He was a white supremacist, an adherent of the British National Party, a frequent defender of the Third Reich, an advocate for the conspiracy theory regarding Obama’s U.S. citizenship, etc. etc. That doesn’t make the Republican party or the conservative movement responsible for his sins, but it does place him squarely on the right side of the political spectrum.
Just because Jonah Goldberg wrote a crappy book does not mean that right is left, down is up, Joanie doesn’t care for Chachi, and cats and dogs are living together in harmony and peace. Words have agreed upon meanings, and the term “right wing extremist” quite simply includes neo-nazi white supremacists who shoot up holocaust museums.
— southpaw · Jun 14, 05:44 AM · #
In fact it’s not in any sort of question.
— Chet · Jun 14, 11:18 PM · #
Speaking of the BNP...
(Scroll down to the second-to-last paragraph. I think this is the follow-up Yglesias post Moynihan mentions.)
— Blar · Jun 15, 02:04 PM · #
“He then flatly states that Von Brunn is an extremist of the right, as though his asserting it is proof positive. Sorry, that position is in question.”
Not only did Von Brunn post on right-wing websites but there are plenty of instances that have come out in public of him self-identifying as being on the right. Anyone who spent two minutes with The Google would discover that. The fact that some folks clearly haven’t done so would seem to demonstrate they are not arguing this point in good faith.
Mike
— MBunge · Jun 15, 02:52 PM · #
You need to broaden your interests.
— Art Deco · Jun 16, 01:40 AM · #
This is the same disturbing tendency we saw exhibited by Malkin after the Poplawski shooting, where the right tried very hard to scrape him off their shoes after he posted a video clip of Beck ranting about Obama to the Stormfront website.
Breibart is a sort of cultural stormtrooper himself, and his “schitck” is taking back Hollywood from the godless liberals. Sad day for Breibart, the children of the higher reproduction religious right that pass either the IQ or pulchitrude gradient become cultural elites…..aka liberals.
ALLAHPUNDIT: Your children will be atheists.
ME: Just the smart ones…..and the good looking ones.
— matoko_chan · Jun 16, 03:43 AM · #
Well boys, James von Brunn is a right wing extremist in much the same way as Ted Kaczynski should be considered a left wing extremist.
The targets that Mr. von Brunn had picked out for assault included the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Washington Post, and a FOX News location.
“A frustrated artist and an angry man, the suspect in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board.”
This does not make for a consistent ideological pattern.
“In a recent blog post, Von Brunn wrote that Hitler’s ‘worst mistake’ was that ‘he didn’t gas the Jews.’”
The man actually lived through the events that he denies ever occured. He therefore should be properly recognized as a person disconnected from reality.
Likewise, Mr. Kaczynski wrote extensively about the disempowerment of the left, as can be seen here.
“In his opening and closing sections, Kaczynski addresses leftism as a movement and analyzes the psychology of leftists, arguing that they are ‘True Believers in Eric Hoffer’s sense’ who participate in a powerful social movement to compensate for their lack of personal power.”
The conclusion to be drawn is that these men are not representative of a particular political ideology, but rather are disconnected from reality. Thus it is in fact meaningless to attempt to ascribe a political ideology to their actions. Doing so is merely a base attempt to discredit the referenced ideology.
I do not believe it is useful to refer to people that have lost there connection with reality in terms of an ascribed political ideology. It is more correct to refer to them simply as mentally ill.
Regarding my greater point about the tone of Chet’s response and his willingness to denegrate people that simply disagree with him, it would appear that aspect of my comment was completely lost upon you.
— nicholas · Jun 17, 03:19 AM · #
Looking at it another way:
Charles Manson would be another historical figure that may be of some use to you fellows. His writings demonstrated he felt blacks in the United States were an oppressed people whom he thought he would lead to independence through a violent uprising. He felt essential to this task, as the blacks themselves lacked the intellectual capacity to lead themselves. Was he aligned with the civil rights movement, or was he a racist?
The most helpful conclusion that should come to your mind when you think of Charles Manson was that he was mentally ill.
The most helpful conclusion that should come to your mind when you think of Ted Kaczynski was that he was mentally ill.
The most helpful conclusion that should come to your mind when you think of James von Brunn was that he was mentally ill.
This is essentially what jd was saying in his comment.
I agree with him, and I have not found your response to be compelling.
— nicholas · Jun 17, 04:18 AM · #