Feeling rough today, thanks to throbbing temples, a temperature and fits of explosive sneezing. But this is too good to miss.
Jeff Goldstein on Juan Cole on Sarah Palin:
Rhetorically, Cole’s trick is to ascribe to Palin motives that he knows his readership, who’ve been conditioned to believe that Christian boogymen are out to replace the Constitution with the New Testament, will believe uncritically; from there, it is but a small step to suggesting a sinister cause/effect relationship – the suggestion being all that matters, else the facts would have received a place of prominence in Cole’s “investigation”. But then, because the facts undercut the suggestion, and because the suggestion is what Cole hopes will have lasting power, Cole merely omits the facts. Academic rigor at its finest!
What Cole also fails to acknowledge is that, when it comes to book banning or bowdlerization, the real problem lies with PC progressives, who have, in recent years, had problems with the “ageist” Old Man and the Sea, the “racist” works of Faulkner and Twain, the “insensitive to the differently abled” title, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and on and on and on – to the point where textbooks themselves are being “cleaned” of anything that might give “offense” or be construed as “hate speech” – foregoing historical context and intent for a more sanitized and “diversity-friendly” world of literature and learning.
Update: Anna points out that Cole is no stranger to censorious urges himself. From the Detroit Metro Times, February 2006:
I think it is outrageous that Fox Cable News is allowed to run that operation the way it runs it. It is a highly ideological, explicitly ideological operation, and it is polluting the information environment… Frankly, I think in the 1960s the FCC would have closed it down. It’s an index of how corrupt our governmental institutions have become, that the FCC lets this go on.
“Polluting the information environment”? Not at all like our esteemed academic, whose disregard for facts is a much loftier endeavour.
Update 2: The academic language police have issued new euphemisms. “Civilised” and “immigrant” are now racist words. And “seminal” is sexist. Please update your records and comply.
“What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.”
Someone should lock Juan Cole in cave with one of our jihadi friends, just to check his theory.
Palin is so evil she managed to “ban” books that weren’t even published when she did it.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/08/mccain-palin-fires-back-over-book-ban-rumor/
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html
“fits of explosive sneezing.” Eew.
Don’t belittle my suffering. The houseboy’s left for the day and I’m reduced to peeling my own grapes. Cough.
The houseboy gets time off? We may have to rescind your “Valiant Oppressor of the People” award.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/uselections2008.barackobama
When you’re on your feet again and you’re not too busy, please do me the favor of kicking this twit in the nads. I’ll reimburse you for your train fare there and back.
thx
David,
Seen this-? http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008282 Fox is evil, says Cole. It must be shut down!
Anna,
Bless you, good woman. See update.
bgc,
“The houseboy gets time off? We may have to rescind your ‘Valiant Oppressor of the People’ award.”
Oh, the indignity. When my strength has returned you’ll pay dearly for those words. Cough. Sniffle.
Cole is a disgrace. He can’t even get dates and basic facts right. How does he get away with it?
I suspect he gets away with being wrong, and gets away with it so often, because he’s wrong in the approved and fashionable way. Cole’s politics and prejudices are shared by a great many of his peers, and provided he arrives at conclusions they like, it doesn’t seem to matter *how* he arrives at them. So one has to wonder what’s happened to the academic environment in which he operates. As a commenter at Protein Widsom points out:
“In an academic world where an actual spectrum of ideology existed, where people actually had to exert some concern over how their peers might view their veracity, Juan Cole might not have so much to say.”
It is, though, a kind of scandal that he meets with so little opposition from within his own circle. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of material to work with. Cole’s fatuous and ahistorical objection to the term “Islamic terrorism” is addressed in the links above, as is his freewheeling approach to particulars and evidence. (See also links below.) Cole claims, based on nothing much, that “humiliation causes terrorism” – a grossly selective and tendentious claim that begs the question of how “humiliation” is being defined by self-declared religious supremacists. (Is it, for instance, caused by infidels’ refusal to submit to the tender mercies of Islam, a submission which is supposedly preordained and a matter of cosmic importance? I doubt Cole would entertain that idea, though it’s frequently stated as a motive by Islamic terrorists themselves.)
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F06751AC-57FB-47DB-8AC2-843DC4B64014
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16241
http://beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/search?q=juan+cole
Even setting aside Cole’s grotesque moral equivalences and repeated apologia for jihadist atrocities, his disregard for facts and accuracy makes him unreliable. For instance, he exaggerated MEMRI’s funding by a factor of 30 in order to insinuate some conspiratorial intent. Again, note that Cole readily insinuates what he cannot actually prove. And those who dare to correct him, even on such basic points of fact, are frequently denounced as “rightwing warmongers” or puppets of Mossad, etc.
“The Quran does not preach violence against Christians.” Juan Cole.
Has he, like, read it? Ever?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/uselections2008.barackobama
Is it my twisted imagination or does the title of this article demonstrate a profound contempt for the principle democracy?In any event what does the U.S. care whether we give a damn? Not sure I would in their position…
Let’s also not forget Juan Cole’s contortions in his attempt to explain away the notorious ‘wiped off the map’ remark –
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/03/11/wont-somebody-tell-juan-cole/
Mark T,
Indeed. But then, according to Cole, Israel is “the most dangerous regime in the Middle East.”
Jones & Squid,
Yes, it’s wonderfully smug and incoherent. On the one hand, the alleged popular will, as divined by Mr Freedland, should prevail (albeit in a fantasy scenario):
“If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama. The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world’s population, opposed the Iraq war.”
But on the other hand, what the *actual* electorate wants must be sneered at as vulgar and selfish:
“Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves.”
How *dare* the American electorate vote for their preferred candidate, one they perceive to best represent their interests? How *dare* they not see, as all good-hearted people must, through the eyes of an egalitarian-yet-superior Guardianista? And if the American electorate don’t do as we, the enlightened class, demand, then our vengeance will be righteous. It’s pure essence of Guardian, really.
P.S.
The disdain for democracy isn’t exactly uncommon in the pages of the Guardian. See, for instance, the reactions to the election of Boris Johnson:
“Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don’t vote for Ken.”
Ms Vivienne Westwood, quoted above, appears to have difficulty grasping the concept of democracy, which generally entails the possibility that other people – perhaps a great many of them – will have preferences that differ from one’s own. Still, there’s an almost charming megalomania to the implication that a system which allows people to vote on those preferences must be a “sham” when the people doing the voting disagree with Vivienne Westwood.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2008/05/the-horror.html
With the US election campaign warming up, the next 60 days is going to be High Season for connoisseurs of patrician progressive patronizing. I cannot wait.
Could we get Vivienne Westwood all over the US TV coverage of the US election? She’d be worth half a million votes to McCain before she even opened her mouth. Five minutes of patronising anti-American leftist crap and the election will be over.
“She’d be worth half a million votes to McCain before she even opened her mouth.”
I don’t mean to be, like, a total bitch or anything, but… for overseas readers, here’s the lovely Ms Westwood, champion of the proletariat:
http://images.teamsugar.com/files/upl1/20/202478/22_2008/VivienneW_Shirl_55012644_600.xlarger.jpg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/images/2008/05/29/westwood_orange_365x470.jpg
God, David, you’re, like, *such* a total bitch. 🙂
Oh, don’t judge me, woman. I’m feverish and unwell. Cough.
Regarding the Jonathan Freedland article: Freedland is usually far better than this. I don’t quite know why he has now decided to emulate Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
His remarks about how the rest of the world will perceive the US in the event of a McCain victory are peculiar to say the least. It seems pretty likely that the Presidential contest will be very close (as it was on the last two occasions). Freedland seems to think that if 51% of people vote McCain and 49% Obama then the rest of the world will deem American society selfish, warmongering and racist. Reverse that result and all of a sudden the yanks are decent, smart and enlightened.
I wonder if the Guardian will run another letter-writing campaign as it did at the last election when hundreds of stuck-up Holland Park socialists wrote to Americans to tell them which way they should vote.
And we remember how well *that* turned out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3981823.stm
What’s the Robert Burns quote? “O, would some power the gift to give us, to see ourselves as others see us.”
Interesting that the BBC should refer to Americans voting Republican in disgust at English socialists urging them not to is “a xenophobic reaction”. Methinks they have no idea what the word means.
As for the Freedland article, the whole progressive media set is going into meltdown over Palin, for several reasons: one, their Messiah is behind in the polls; two, Palin is a successful woman who is successful in spite of the Feminista programme. She is, effectively, an apostate (or more accurately, a heretic, as I don’t know of any evidence that she once was a feminist) and we all know what fundamentalist groups think of them.
The marvellous thing about someone like Palin is that she forces the progressives to betray their true thoughts and prejudices. Faux concern is stripped away and what is left is a deeply unpleasant bigotry and completely unfounded sense of superiority.
With respect to the ever so ‘fragrant’ Westwood apparition, Mr Thompson sir you are a f******g genius…Thats EXACTLY what I expect my conceptual piece to look like, fragrance an all.I’m working on it as I type.Apologies for going ‘off-topic’.
To get back ‘on’-topic and I’m just flying a kite here but it occurs to me that an election result that keeps producing such even percentage results in such a large population of voters is statistically little better than flicking a coin.Almost as if thats (cognitively) whats happening? Gives the perception of choice I suppose.
This case study in condescension might interest you – http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
It’s actually interesting in its way, but the tone is incredibly grating.
“We long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.”
In terms of tendentiousness and condescension that’s hard to top. I wonder, though, how such an explanation would account for those who, as teenagers or students, shared many leftist assumptions but in later life rejected them, often with embarrassment, as foolish vanities. Generally speaking, people tend to become less leftwing with age, not more so. Do these people become more insecure and neurotic with age, or just wiser?
Wiser and more experienced. Also anyone who imagines that with our current technology and understanding we can “map [the] brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes” of anyone is seriously deluding themselves. They certainly aren’t doing good, or even barely adequate, science.
Watch Obama shoot himself in the foot with a “lipstick” gag: http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/10/mccain-ad-lipstick/ Ouch.
It’s hard to be sure how the comment was meant. “Lipstick on a pig” is a common enough phrase and, arguably, may not have been intended as an overt reference to Palin. Perhaps it was just a gaffe. Though, obviously, the timing of that particular remark is suspicious. And one could argue that the audience picked up on a reference to Palin, intended or otherwise. Either way, Obama does seem to have shot himself in the foot. And his delivery is terrible.