Bermuda? Obama Ends the Uighur Drama
Every time I’ve ever seen Glenn Reynolds begin a post with the words “Hope and Change,” he is being sarcastic. (Try a quick search — you’ll see what I mean.) So I am a bit confused by this post:
HOPE AND CHANGE: Freed From Guantanamo, Uighur Muslims Bask in Bermuda . “We have ended up in such a beautiful place. We don’t want to look back and we don’t have any hard feelings toward the United States.”
Am I missing something? Isn’t this good news? Admittedly, there are a few Fox News personalities who are now afraid to order vacation cocktails at Muslim staffed Mexican restaurants in Bermuda, but other than that this seems like a win-win.
No. You’re not missing anything. They’re as dumb as you think they are.
— Mike P · Jun 15, 05:33 AM · #
Maybe if Glenn Reynolds ran more posts comparing Obama to Ahmadinejad, he would be more the kind of commentator and Oakshottian political thinker that Mr. Friedersdorf admires.
— y81 · Jun 15, 12:24 PM · #
Huh?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 15, 01:12 PM · #
Huh, part deux. I know he doesn’t like any of you, but the mix seems all wrong.
— HA! · Jun 15, 03:24 PM · #
I have no idea about y81.
But when anyone says Oakeshott on a website, they are talking about the biggest blogger on the block, Sullivan. And Sullivan compared Karl Rove to Ahmadinejad, at length, last week.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-rovian-islamist.html
So y81 must have expected that you would police Sullivan’s tone as you police [other?] libertarians and conservatives. (I won’t try to classify Sullivan, who is the platypus of bloggers. But he is the biggest blogger, and he is one of the most willing to demonize others.)
Conor, my question is what’s your goal? To go after true libertarian Glenn Reynolds and libertarianish Drudge/Breitbart rather than [maybe libertarian?] Sullivan, and rightist Mark Levin instead of leftist Keith Olbermann, suggests to me that you have undertaken to examine and police only those who do not support Obama.
My complaint with your focus on the anti-Obama crowd is that I think a lack of civility and willingness to demonize and slander the opposition has worked pretty well for Sullivan, Olbermann and many other Obama supporters. So I can’t see what you expect to show. It works for them, but not for us?
And I don’t know that you are doing this intentionally. I get a weird sense that you are not ignoring what pro-Democrat and pro-Obama blogs did over the past few years. Instead, I think that you are just ignorant of that recent history. You didn’t know that Hilzoy has been a strident partisan, you don’t seem to have watched Olbermann’s show (or MSNBC) much over the past few years, and you don’t seem to know that Sullivan had an absolutely bizarre obsession with Sarah Palin’s womb and its products. I also don’t think you’ve listed to Rush much (and like me, you haven’t listened to Levin much.) I think that you don’t know much about the sea you are swimming in.
Am I right about that, or have you read and seen all of the pro-Obama incivility but decided that’s not important or is somehow categorically different?
— tom · Jun 15, 05:26 PM · #
Wait, before we all change the subject, could someone just explain what Reynolds meant here? Is he being sarcastic, or not? I don’t mean this in some kind of rhetorical sense, I’m genuinely confused here. This is a very strange thing for a “true libertarian” to be ambiguous about.
— Consumatopia · Jun 15, 05:46 PM · #
Tom,
I’m not really sure why some commenters are obsessed with me criticizing Andrew, especially since I’ve addressed his blogging several times. Once again, however, I regard him as a pioneer in the blogosphere, along with Mickey Kaus, Instapundit and a few others; though I share his judgment that Sarah Palin is a flawed politician, I very much disagree with his previous assessment that her pregnancy was an act; and despite disagreeing with him, I admire the fact that he regularly airs dissent on his blog, presents his readers with different sides of arguments irrespective of his own views, and links even to people who’ve attacked him in the past. Put another way, insofar as I am interested in policing the blogosphere, the fact that Andrew has so many vocal critics and that he policies himself basically means that I focus my disagreements with him on substance. That isn’t to say that I always agree with his tone, but I think he tries to keep things civil, and usually acknowledges his own failure when he doesn’t.
I started reading Hilzoy relatively recently (though I had her as a professor in college, I connection I didn’t realize until last month). She seems to be a really smart, liberal blogger. I think her analysis is wrong sometimes, and I say so when I do.
As for the post above, my purpose is that I just don’t understand the post. Is Glenn being sarcastic or not? If so, why? I really don’t understand. Seems like a pretty typical blog post to me.
I do not watch Keith Olbermann. Please don’t make me start.
At the moment, I am more interested in and concerned about the tone on the right half of the political spectrum. I think there are a lot of blowhards who are harming both the future of conservatism and public discourse generally. I am sure that there are folks who are degrading discourse on the left too, but the future of liberalism is a lot less interesting right now — and a lot less urgent of a project — than the future of conservatism, at least by my lights.
So yeah, I suppose I am focusing my attention on people who oppose Obama, though not for that reason. Then again, I am focusing attention on Obama himself, especially his fiscal policies.
I suppose all of this is hard to understand if you conceive of public discourse as an enterprise where there are coherent, all encompassing sides called red and blue, and you pick one, and you systematically dedicate yourself to criticizing the other.
That doesn’t sound very fun, and there are enough people doing it already that I see no need to join that party.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 15, 07:11 PM · #
I refuse to watch Olberman, and if I’d ever heard Levin I’m sure I’d refuse to listen to him. Life is short.
I have no idea what Glenn Reynolds meant. He’s always—by design—easily digested, but not this time.
My worry is that I get the feeling you and the American Scenesters are so uncomfortable with non-liberals generally that I can’t see how you guys represent anything other than a dead-end (cul-de-sac?) for conservatives. I feel like you are all Pauline Kael and Limbaugh is your Nixon, and I can’t see how that can be a big part of any future conservative success.
Separately, I’m not sure that the tone really matters. Liberals have embraced their weird and sometimes ugly advocates, and conservatives have successfully managed to do the same in the recent past, so I’m not sure why that’s different now.
— tom · Jun 15, 07:52 PM · #
Tom,
I’ll tell you what’s a dead end cul-de-sac — constantly speculating about the motives of every writer who criticizes anyone on Team Red, or certain writers that criticize special people on the do not criticize list, or whatever it is that makes you a heretic these days.
And please don’t assume that folks who are uncomfortable with Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and their ilk are signaling discomfort with any sort of ideology. Those folks do not represent the average American, or the average American conservative. The average conservative is not a right-wing political junkie who spends all day listening to talk radio.
As for liberals, if you mean the broad left side of the American political spectrum, then they haven’t embraced weird and ugly advocates in very big numbers. Americans tend not to like hateful blowhards of any ideology. What do you think Michael Moore’s positive-negative numbers are?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 15, 08:31 PM · #
Isn’t Michael Moore a perfect example, Conor? It certainly seemed to me that his documentaries have been cheered on by a large proportion of mainstream liberals.
— John Schwenkler · Jun 15, 08:47 PM · #
Conor, I think that Rush Limbaugh does represent a huge group of conservatives who are average Americans. And I really don’t get why you are skipping over the fact that the angry left was real and big and didn’t hurt Obama. (Michael Moore is neither a positive nor a negative today because he isn’t a player today, but I don’t think the Dems circa-2004 paid any price for embracing him—they just had a terrible candidate.) MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Andrew Sullivan and many others on the left are huge, and significant, and were viciously anti-conservative during the most recent campaign.
Yet somehow Obama got love from these angry left public figures without having to be identified as one of them or taking on their ‘negatives’. That—not civility—is the trick. How can, say, Romney or Daniels get endorsed by Rush and still do okay in in Northern Virgina? They’ll need to do both.
So I’m not attacking you as a heretic; I just think you are wrong to believe that there is anything unusual or damaging about famously angry rightists compared to famously angry leftists. And I think you need to know more about Rush Limbaugh and the people who listen to him. (I’d say Ann Althouse is the only non-right person who listens to him and understands him.)
I always got the feeling that Ross Douthat didn’t understand Rush because he probably only listened to the show when someone on the left complained about something Rush said. I think the same thing about you and Reihan and a lot of others trying to create a new conservatism. That’s why I say Limbaugh is Nixon (albeit funnier and happier) and you’re all Pauline. You don’t get Rush, you don’t get his supporters. But you can’t read them out.
Obama understands his angry left and has a very good idea how to keep them and use them while not being one of them. That’s what a new conservative candidate will need to do.
And I left motives out of all my above comments: no book deal mentions, no accusations about Ezra Klein approval-seeking. I just cannot see how you come to the conclusion that ugly righty anger is damaging conservatives, when ugly lefty anger did not damage Obama.
— tom · Jun 15, 09:21 PM · #
And please don’t assume that folks who are uncomfortable with Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and their ilk are signaling discomfort with any sort of ideology.
If that’s true, then they are signaling discomfort with a pretty insignificant part of the material presented by Limbaugh and his ilk.
Those folks do not represent the average American, or the average American conservative.
That would suppose then that there is someone out there who is saying things that DOES represent the average American conservative. Does YOUR thinking represent the average American conservative? I think that if you’re not outraged by what our government has become, then you are not the average American. In all seriousness, I think you are just plain wrong on this one.
The average conservative is not a right-wing political junkie who spends all day listening to talk radio.
Yeah, I’ll give you that one. Except for those 20 million who actually do listen
— jd · Jun 15, 09:34 PM · #
Tom,
I do think that the “angry left” did damage to the Democrats in 2004, when the Democrats were far out of power. That time frame seems like a closer but still imperfect analogy to where the Republicans are today. But that is actually beside the point.
You seem to think my argument is that the angry right damages conservatives by embarrassing them, or by turning off moderates or people who dislike angry or pompous rhetoric. Although I think that is true to some extent — how many female listeners does Rush have? — the bigger problem is that the substance of the angry rhetoric (demonizing all liberals, imagining that the left isn’t just wrong on certain issues but nefarious and even evil, trafficking in paranoia, hyperbole, and conspiracy theories) gives lots of rank and file conservatives who listen to talk radio an insulated, inaccurate, overly dogmatic, paranoid view of the world.
A prerequisite for effectively opposing one’s political opponents is understanding them, and understanding reality. That goal is furthered by civil discourse, testing one’s one ideas via criticism from ideologically aligned fellows, and training rank and file conservatives to argue politely and effectively, rather than approaching public discourse as though it is a war.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 15, 10:38 PM · #
“A prerequisite for effectively opposing one’s political opponents is understanding them, and understanding reality.”
That’s a very nice idea, but does it have any empirical support? Is it really the case that Andrew Sullivan, breeder-hating P-towner, understands Sarah Palin better than Glenn Reynolds understands his fellow Yalie, Hillary Clinton? Does Al Sharpton understand reality better than Rush Limbaugh? I just don’t see the evidence that superior understanding correlates with gaining political power.
— y81 · Jun 16, 02:37 AM · #
No post about the Uighurs, whose plight is a fucking outrage and who should by now be long since comfortably settled in America, can be considered technically complete unless the author, at every use of the word “Uighurs,” (by which I mean the people whose plight is a fucking outrage and who should be now be long since comfortably settled in America), point out as an aside that their plight is a fucking outrage and they should by now be long since comfortably settled in America.
— Sanjay · Jun 16, 02:52 AM · #
Conor,
It is pleasure itself to read through your exchanges with Tom, and I have little further to offer either of you, except to comment that given the dominance of liberal ideology in the media, and perhaps more importantly in the culture, it is unlikely that rank and file conservatives would be unfamiliar with the left’s stated positions. The results of hearing the comments of the people that concern you may result in an excessively cynical outlook, and may cause one to be quick to challenge the motives of our public leaders, but cynicism and its faults are a lesser evil in comparison to naivety.
— nicholas · Jun 16, 04:15 AM · #
I want to double down on everything Sanjay said.
Oh, and Nicholas. Said the Big Aristotle, how does Conor’s ass taste?
I promise to entertain a more sober commentary from now on.
— Sargent · Jun 16, 04:58 AM · #
Y81,
If you think that Rush Limbaugh or Al Sharpton behave in order to maximize their effect on politics you are sorely mistaken. In their own ways, each of them does whatever he can to ensure that there is as large an audience possible to hear them speak. Their strategies resemble one another most when Limbaugh makes himself out to be a spokesman for the aggrieved. I’m not even sure what you mean when you compare Andrew and Glenn, or why you seem so obsessed with Andrew. Is my post best viewed through the lens of whatever bothers you must about Andrew Sullivan? Seems like you think so…
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 16, 05:26 AM · #
Conor, I disagree.
1. Your idea that the conservative base is ill-served by the conservative media is similar to Mickey Kaus’ oft-flogged ‘liberal coccoon’ idea. But you have a big greasy Limbaugh wrapped around the conservative base, and he had the national news & entertainment media wrapped around the liberal elite. I think your idea is less useful than Kaus’ because his does describe something unique to the liberal elite—its close relationship with the extremely large liberal media, while I don’t think you describe anything unique about the conservative base. Your idea depends on the liberal base being conversant in conservative thought, while the conservative base is ignrorant of liberal thought. If anything, I would guess that base conservatives know more about what liberals think than vice-versa, because they’ve seen liberal movies, shows, newspapers, etc…
2. Do you think the liberal base is better exposed to conservative thought than the conservative base is to liberal thought? Do you think you can make a categorical distinction between the two levels of ignorance?
3. I don’t think Rush can be fairly compared to Al Sharpton. Sharpton has a history of racial/religious incitements to violence that very few others today (left or right) do. Unless you are thinking of some extreme Limbaugh incidents that I don’t remember, I think it is fair to compare Rush to Olbermann and his ilk, not Sharpton.
4. You don’t really address the depth of the hatred that the Obamanaut media has for anti-Obama forces, or how it resembles or exceeds the kind of conduct you are examining from Limbaugh/Levin/Drudge/Insptapundit. (I will let Sullivan’s obsession with Palin’s womb and its fruits go, but not before saying that his many many posts are not simply something to disgree with, as you do above. They are something to marvel at in their complete insanity, and they threaten to single-handedly revive Freudian analysis.)
5. As less fraught examples of how even your site’s elite pro-Obama friends joyfully demonize the right, we have the Iran elections. First, Sullivan (who is, again, the most powerful single blogger) compares Ahmadinejad to Karl Rove. y81’s reference to that is what started this thread of comments. Second, we have Yglesias comparing Ahmadinejad to….Palin! (“Ahmadinejad is in most ways a classic right-winger, a demagogic nationalist and cultural conservative. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of a Sarah Palin, however, he clothes this right-wing politics in a language of class resentment, painting his more pragmatic and reformist opponents as decadent elites out of touch with ordinary people.”) I don’t think I need to argue too much that these comparisons are comically inapt. Would anyone on the right say that Sarah Palin was a representative of US cultural conservatism in any way other than her family’s decisions not to end their pregnancies, much less in a way that is comparable to Ahmadinejad in Iran?) And it is great to see that “class resentment” of “elites” is such a righty tactic, rather than a neither right nor left populist tactic.
6. I would guess that you would agree that these analogies by Yglesias and Sullivan are foolish. But, really, will liberal thought be impoverished when, as often happens, Keith Olbermann reads Sullivan and Yglesias and makes these same foolish comparisons on his show, and the liberal base drinks them in? No. Will Obama and the left somehow be weakened by their failure to understand the right? No. They’re fine. This is not a problem on the left, and it is not the problem on the right.
7. So I disagree with you. I disagree that the conservative base is demonstrably more ignorant about liberal ideas and policies than the liberal base is about conservative ones. I disagree that you can compare Rush to Sharpton, and I think it justifies my comparison of the Scenesters to Pauline Kael, with Rush as Nixon. And I think you fail to see that the liberal elite media and liberal base media are happy warriors who not only irrationally demonize the right but enjoy it, and that they may even be helping their President when they do it.
— tom · Jun 16, 03:39 PM · #
Tom,
I didn’t say that a general comparison to Rush Limbaugh and Al Sharpton holds true — rather, I compared a specific quality that they both share. (Both are mostly trying to maximize their audience, not to advance a political agenda.) It is mistaken to conclude from that narrow comparison that I am asserting a general sameness between the two men in all matters.
This is, I think, a variation on the moral equivalence canard. It is possible, and sometimes useful, to compare one quality in common between two people who are very different. “Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods excel largely because they are the hardest working men in their respective sports.” I am comparing the two athletes. This doesn’t mean I think that Tiger Woods is a philandering egomaniac.
As for the conservative base, I have no idea whether it is better or worse informed than the liberal base. Why does the relative measure matter? The important thing is whether it is misinformed. If so, it’s probably a good idea to criticize the folks spreading the misinformation, so that rank and files conservatives can view reality more clearly. Consuming most of your media inside the conservative cocoon (or the liberal cocoon) doesn’t help this process.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 16, 04:54 PM · #
Also, I hope someone other than me is reading the title of this post to the tune of the Beach Boys’ Kokomo.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 16, 04:55 PM · #
Fucker! You’ve got me doing a GWB here. I’m choking on a pretzel!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 16, 05:02 PM · #
”As for the conservative base, I have no idea whether it is better or worse informed than the liberal base. Why does the relative measure matter?”
Certainly it matters. It is very possible to have one’s opinions formed on the left and never have those assumptions challenged by one’s exposure to conservative thought. The opposite cannot be said, because not only the major news media, but the entire culture has a decidedly liberal lean to it.
The broader question of whether it does well to expend energy and effort criticizing conservatives in the media would rest on what the results would bring. The political efforts of John McCain come to mind. He has been very quick to part company with the Republican Party and openly criticize the Party leadership. This translated into his gaining a great deal of popular support from the media, as they are always quick to buttress their own criticisms by citing prominent Republicans that would agree with them. This made Senator McCain useful to the left, but did not result in his being persuasive as a leader of the right. The analogy does not hold on any grounds other than the feel of it. Nevertheless, there are so many things worthy of critiquing, it would seem critiquing conservatives would be an unlikely place to hang one’s hat.
— nicholas · Jun 16, 06:40 PM · #
Conor,
1. AS Nicholas mentions, you ask why it matters what liberals are doing. It matters because the left is not following any of your ideas on respect for others and education of the base, and still the left is thriving.
2. You claimed that a the following is key for the right: “civil discourse, testing one’s one ideas via criticism from ideologically aligned fellows, and training rank and file conservatives to argue politely and effectively, rather than approaching public discourse as though it is a war.” Please say if you think that approach has anything to do with how the left has risen, or how the left elite acts publicly, or how it talks to the left rank and file.
2. You say you want civil discourse, and that this isn’t a war. So I’m asking you to identify the prominent people on the left who have put down their weapons or never raised them. Who are your examples? Will you be asking Sullivan and Yglesias (respectively, the king and a former prince of your new home) to stop their constant demonizing of the right?
3. If you agree that the rise of the left has happened without following your civility program, how can you claim that the right needs to do something the left did not need to do?
— tom · Jun 16, 06:49 PM · #
Tom,
1) Actually, lots of outlets on the left are a model of civil discourse. NPR, The New York Times, the CBS Evening News — they aren’t always unbiased, but they are seldom if ever as bombastic or hateful as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et. al.
2) “The rise of the left” is due to two things: the largely self-inflicted collapse of the right, and the popularity of Barack Obama. The right’s collapse was partly due to an intra-right discourse that prized loyalty over logic and gradually lost touch with reality, but is largely irrelevant to our conversatio. The popularity of Barack Obama is due largely to his approach to rhetoric.
2B) I’ve already explain at length why I think that Andrew Sullivan’s approach to public discourse is wildly better than Rush Limbaugh’s approach. When the latter starts airing multiple “Dissents of the Day” on his program, correcting factual errors, providing links on his Web site to smart people who disagree with him, and apologizing after the fact when he gets carried away with himself, I’ll reconsider my assessment.
Matt does unfairly demonize the right sometimes with below the belt jabs, and insofar as he does so and convinces readers of certain things that aren’t true, I think he does them a disservice, but on the whole Matt is so much more intellectually honest than the average talk radio host that the comparison is almost ridiculous. I say that as someone who disagrees with Matt most of the time. Take a look at Mr. Yglesias doing a Bloggingheads against Ross Douthat or James Poulos. Does he ever start shouting, or insulting his ideological opponent? Does he grapple with their arguments? Can you cite any instance in which a conservative talk radio host I’ve complained about has handled himself as well?
3) If the left self-destructs, then the right doesn’t need to do anything to regain power except wait. Of course, it would be nice if once it did regain power it had some good ideas, and it didn’t fall for bad ideas. How exactly is that going to happen if there isn’t any intra-right criticism?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 16, 07:54 PM · #
Conor,
You have just listed as outlets of the left NPR, The New York Times and CBS Evening News, three news agencies that are ostensibly apolitical and unbiased in their presentation of the news. This is hardly the correct comparison to Rush Limbaugh, who is openly conservative and unapologetic in saying so. The pretense of objectivity for these news agencies necessarily moderates their tone.
Certainly you are free to go about critiquing whomever you wish. I just have the sense of a certain naivety in its undertaking. I am afraid it may not work out as you intend. However, you are quite a talented and prolific writer.
We shall see.
— nicholas · Jun 16, 09:17 PM · #
I’ll second Nicholas and add that you went appley-orangey when you compared Rush to Matt Yglesias. I agree that a “comparison [between Limbaugh and Yglesias] is almost ridiculous”; I didn’t compare them. That would be like comparing Ponnuru or Lowry to Olbermann or Randi Rhodes.
I compared Rush to Keith. I think you’re not doing the same because you haven’t really followed either of them. I understand why you might not; life is short. But you can’t make big think arguments about the miseducation of the conservative base without really knowing Rush, and you can’t understand the significance of any miseducation on the right by people like Rush (and, to be fair, O’Reilly, who I cannot watch) without without comparing it to someone like Keith on the left. I think you don’t really know either side’s base stokers.
— tom · Jun 16, 10:19 PM · #
Keith and Rush are comparable in unreasonableness. They are not remotely comparable in stature—either measured in Nielsen ratings or in deference paid to them by other members of their own party.
To find something equivalent in stature on the left, you really do have to look at mainstream center-left news publications.
— Consumatopia · Jun 17, 07:54 PM · #