The Case for Unauthorized Edits
When a blogger disagrees with a piece of writing, the usual approach is to excerpt the piece, react against its argument, and score various debating points. The process is adversarial.
This is a perfectly good way to operate, but I wonder if there aren’t times when an alternative approach would be useful. What if sometimes bloggers approached pieces as a skeptical editor? That posture still involves pointing out the weakest parts of a piece, but the critique is less adversarial — perhaps so much so that folks who’d otherwise dismiss dissent wind up seeing how the weaknesses in their arguments undermine even what they’re trying to accomplish.
Perhaps this is merely a reflection of my own impulse to edit stuff, and I’m not even sure I’ve executed the concept particularly well here (see the second link, a PDF). Despite those risks, I’d be curious to hear what TAS readers think.
Well, for one thing, it’s incredibly difficult to read your comments. Blame Acrobat Reader, I guess. And your remarks seem no less adversarial – what’s the difference, really, between commanding someone as an “editor” to flesh out an argument, and telling them as an “opponent” that they didn’t flesh out the argument?
Frankly, striking the lordly tone that an editor uses with one of his or her writers doesn’t strike me as the way to get yourself on Breitbart’s good side, or anybody else’s. I mean, at least as an opponent, you conceive of yourselves as equals, met in battle. To style yourself as his “editor” is to put on an air of superiority, or delusions of grandeur, and that strikes me as even less conducive to a meeting of the minds as the adversarial approach.
— Chet · Dec 24, 03:06 AM · #
I agree with Chet. It’s an interesting idea, but I think at bottom the practical difference between being adversary and editor is pretty small. Also, I think hearing someone who wasn’t my editor criticize my writing as though they were would come across as rather condescending.
— pc · Dec 24, 03:15 AM · #
I think this was an interesting experiment, but like previous commenters, I think someone would find this mostly condescending. That being said, you did have some good comments on the author’s unexamined assumptions and leaps of logic.
— Aaron · Dec 24, 03:27 AM · #
Interestingly, the author of the piece says he appreciated this format, though of course that doesn’t necessarily mean anything about how the average person would respond.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Dec 24, 03:36 AM · #
I think this proposition is perhaps confusing medium and message — seems to me that it’s the content and tone of the comments themselves that will determine the author’s reaction, rather than their formatting. An editorial vs. adversarial vs. conversational approach will come through from your words regardless of whether there are icons and graphics and yellow backgrounds attached.
— kenB · Dec 24, 04:29 AM · #
Yeah but was he convinced by your comments? That’s the relevant question. Did the meeting of minds occur, or not?
— Chet · Dec 24, 04:59 AM · #
I think the most important problem in the “editor” format (like fisking, although probably less) is that there’s no agreement between the so-called adversaries about what the other is actually saying. So the argument follows the “He says I said this, but what I actually meant was this” arc. If there was some way we could get our authors to agree with what the other claims he said — achieve some sort of baseline agreement — the argument is free to move on from there. It could get richer, otherwise the authors are merely talking past each other. I’m not sure what format would work for this – but the editor-mode would probably work better at it than fisking.
— scritic · Dec 24, 05:11 AM · #
Great thought. The advantage to editor approach is that it helps to identify a more specific point of disagreement. You will probably leave with a better idea of where the divergence occurs and what is worth arguing. Otherwise you end up in a line-item barrage that goes nowhere.
But I disagree with pc — I think it is a different type of exercise. One is about about finding cracks in a wall and one is about building a whole new house. You can be the most critical editor, factually endorse a argument, and still just disagree with it. In other words, you can completely fix the cracks in the wall but still just not like the house. And at that point there is little argumentative recourse to convince someone that one house is better than another.
— wfrost · Dec 24, 03:34 PM · #
I agree with the earlier commentors that this was an interesting idea, but not substantively different than the politer kind of fisking. One question I’d add is, how is the author supposed to respond? Publish a revised piece? Isn’t that embarrassing?
— Tom Meyer · Dec 24, 03:57 PM · #
While I don’t think the kinks are worked out, what I think some people are missing is the change in stance you’re proposing. The point of fisking is to really rip someone a good one and show how completely and utterly wrong they are. The point of editing is to bring out a stronger argument.
That said, people are right that “editing” is going to be an off-putting way to framing what you’re doing. I look forward to your next iteration of Friedersdorfing.
— allen c · Dec 24, 06:09 PM · #
I’m all for opponents grappling with each other’s strongest representative argument, but in a lot of cases – I’d venture to say most – its in an opponents interest to repeatedly define his “strongest argument” as one of the weaker arguments his opponents didn’t address. The prime example of this, of course, is the myriad of responses to “The God Delusion” insisting that Dawkins ignored a panoply of weaker, less defensible (or even articulable) theologies.
And, look, Breitbart might actually be wrong. His argument may be faulty, or he may not be able to supply examples of things he’s alluded to because there are no examples. He may be defending conclusions that are simply counterfactual. How does the “editor” stance respond to that kind of thing? At what point is the editor able to say “you know, I think you’re just wrong about that.” The editor’s function, as I understand it, is not just the improvement of a piece of work, but as the arbiter of it – the gateway it must pass before it sees the light of day. But you have no such authority over Breitbart’s work. If he prefers this format, might that be because it presents no obstacle to the dissemination of his own work, while at the same time obscuring your cogent rebuttal in a hard-to-read PDF that almost no one will see?
— Chet · Dec 24, 08:17 PM · #
Great idea. Now start applying it to Limbaugh and Beck. I suppose they will be less than happy to be so patronized by a no-account teenage upstart like you. Which will be a pleasure to watch.
— nb · Dec 25, 04:17 AM · #
Part of the problem here was your choice of material: if Schlichter were interested in convincing anyone of anything they didn’t already believe, he would have written something more substantive than a string of half-baked assertions and chest-pounding bravado.
The article is nothing more than red meat for ideologues looking to have their biases confirmed, but you responded to it as if it’s a serious and/or honest attempt to make an argument. It’s not.
I’d like to see you edit an article that actually might be convincing to someone outside whatever cocoon the writer inhabits. One whose author betrays the slightest hint of familiarity with arguments on the other side of the debate (not their caricatures).
I’d also suggest taking any of Breitbart’s recommendations with a huge grain of salt. If that’s what he calls “exemplary”….
— Decline and Fall · Dec 26, 01:04 AM · #
Conor, are you ever going to be more than a pinched sphincter?
I have an idea. Instead of the critical wallflower act, why don’t you drop the schoolmarm exasperation and the sophomoric tinkering and come up with a provocative opinion and an interesting way to articulate it?
— Yeshua · Dec 26, 11:37 PM · #
I love that we’re talking about editing and centaurs instead of, say, how the ACORN “expose” has hilariously blown up in conservative’s faces. TAS is such a joke these days. I wouldn’t mind it being the Conor Show if he’d actually, you know, talk about some politics. Are Manzi, Jacobs, and the rest simply contributing their good stuff to other blogs? If so, can I be directed to that one, please?
— Chet · Dec 27, 06:11 AM · #
Yeshua:
I couldn’t agree more. This guy has nothing to say! It’s the same peanut gallery sniping day after day. Never and opinion. Never an analysis of a substantive idea. All Conor can do is shake his head in Sophmoric condescension. Conor, you are a kid. You need to have an idea in order to be interesting. Until then, you are just the class dick.
— Lasorda · Dec 27, 07:43 PM · #
My oh my are you a dainty little flower, Mr. Friedersdorf, or should I say Ms. Friedersdorf. For Godsakes man, eat some red meat or something.
Your perpetual pursuit of the non-adversarial is not only tiresome but it is completely useless. Even the most learned of academics find something to believe in, stick by, and even (Gasp!) fight for on occasion. Your form of conservatism is best described as the Richard Simmons approach to political and cultural thought. Utterly childish, full of rainbows, and skin crawling.
— Mike · Dec 27, 10:31 PM · #
Wouldn’t that just be wikipedia?
— TW Andrews · Dec 27, 11:56 PM · #
I’m sure I’m speaking for many here who would gladly direct Chet somewhere else. I’m also reasonably certain that if Manzi, Jacobs and the rest have moved on, they are entirely opposed to anyone directing Chet anywhere near wherever it is they’ve skedaddled.
Unfortunately, even if they did follow, they would eventually find their way back. Proverbs 26:11
— jd · Dec 28, 07:44 PM · #
As much as you complain, you’re never able to actually address my arguments. I’m sure there’s a large number of people who are aggravated by my frequent correctness. But I’ll stack any of my contributions up to yours, jd, you idiot troll. You’ve never put two words together that weren’t stupendously wrong.
— Chet · Dec 28, 08:54 PM · #
Typical Chet “argument.”
— jd · Dec 28, 10:46 PM · #
Don’t you mean “more useful” here? Or are you implying a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘useful’? If so, are you appealing to a metaphysical good? Mightn’t you be discounting the possibility that your readers are instrumentalists?
Is it possible that others might see condescension as worse than adversarial jousting? If so, couldn’t it be the case that condescension works against your goal of universal limpness by raising the dander of those you are ostensibly trying to put to sleep?
And if you are embracing dialogical flaccidity as your ideal, isn’t using a phrase like “weakest parts of a piece” unnecessarily arousing?
Are you implying that the author is not average? Is that a good or a bad thing? Or are you disparaging average people as being less charitable, or less discerning, or slow because they haven’t responded yet?
And are you not yourself exceptionally average in everything but manner?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 28, 11:16 PM · #
When did TAS commenters become so rude? I go away for a little while and come back to this?
— Joules · Dec 29, 04:37 AM · #
No, actually, that was an insult. You’ll know when I make an argument to you, jd – it’ll be that part of my post that you rather conspicuously ignore.
— Chet · Dec 29, 05:36 AM · #