Because he keeps accusing me of not reading them.
I certainly think it’s probable that Patrick‘s intentions were good in posting about that oddball quote from Stacy regarding interracial marriage, and one must weigh that against the fact that it looked at the time like an attempt to publicly embarrass someone.
Certainly, it had the practical effect of motivating Stacy to stop tapdancing around the issue of whether/how/why he had written what he wrote.
But I still thought I caught a vague whiff of defensiveness in there, a vague suggestion that on some level The Party of Lincoln and the Civil Rights Act has apologies to make on the issue of race.
Perhaps I am reading into Patrick’s entries, though, a meaning he did not intend. The fact is, I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of comments on this subject, but I have yet to see Patrick give an actual explanation of his motivations in writing those posts. Given that Patrick maintains that someone is not a racist for only one racist act, writing, or utterance—only for a pattern thereof—I’m not sure what the point was. He still hasn’t answered the “so what?” question originally posed by Jeff.
I’m off to get coffee, and read more about Gladstone and Disraeli.
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I looked at that whole kerfuffle and the only things I could see was
1) Paterico is caught in the trap of “I’m wrong but I can’t get out or back out so I’ll dig in deeper and deeper and assert more and more assertions.”
2) Paterico is building a gigantic ball of horse manure and expects everyone to chew through it or else. Sort of a Johnsonian bit of business without the outright banning. (I decline this menu.)
3) Patrico believes he can read minds. Sorry, Pat, but not sold.
Someone in the first four or so posts (that’s how ridiculous this has become….have we hit ten yet?) at P’s Ponts commented that P was miffed that RSM had stepped into the middle of an argument and had the temerity to question (or, even worse, take the wrong side).
I’ve seen no link to such but it’s clear from this past week that some of the skins of persons I thought were fairly level-headed and common sense blog heroes are a lot thinner than I would have thought possible. It’s pure junior high.
In-fighting between conservatives is bread and butter to the moonbats and I wouldn’t blame them if they were sitting and reading with a tub of popcorn.
Right up front, I’ll say I haven’t read every word of every thread on this subject. However, I have to throw in with dicentra (another academic who left the system) who said it looks more like Pat realized somewhere that he was wrong in this argument (his “animated by racist thoughts” is another way of saying “intent”) and is too embarrassed to admit it.
Pat is personable over a restaurant table, a good conversationalist, and wry enough in the humor department to make one chuckle. But online he has yet to take off his DDA hat and listen to what people expert in their fields are saying.
JeffG had no dog in the fight of whether RSM was a “racist” or not. His concern was, and has been even long before the Rush “fail” kerfuffle, about language — how it works and how ideologically motivated people can manipulate it for their own ends.
Anyone older than 30 has seen this at work — look at the whole “illegal alien” = “undocumented alien” = “undocumented immigrant” narrative.
We can look forward to Patterico dredging up the claim you called him anti Semetic.
Oh Baby Jesus.
Since I was there, I remember when Patterico accused you of money grubbing and you accused him of making anti Semetic memes. It was an off hand bitch slap of a comment. I even defended Patterico when he feined outrage over it at the time. Shit that happens in the moment of a late night argument. It was nothing. A real man ignores and forgets about shit like that the next day. And Jeff to his credit deleted the comment right away.
But now Patterico is going to try to use that minor, minor slight as some justification for what? For having a week long lecture series on the racism of Robert Stacy McCain? Wow. I wonder if Patterico will have the honesty to say he explored this “racism” issue with RSM so he could boost his own credibility of being one of the “good” conservatives out there.
This is why Patterico has joined the troika of Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan. Oh I know, in terms of policy positions Patterico still supports the conservative line (Sullivan and Johnson are clearly now part of the left on policy issues). In a way, however, that makes what Patterico is doing even worse. I am sure the vultures of the left are enjoying watching Gunga Patterico carry water for them.
Well, I don’t know if Patterico is a purge-conductor. Certainly, he conducted purges. But whether he should be characterized as a purger for all time is not clear.
I’m not saying he’s a purger, but I’m comfortable that he attempted a purge.
“How did we come to this” is the typical dénouement of interparty scrapes like this.
I just enjoy seeing how internet princes (and their minions) behave outside their comfy, sycophantic kingdoms.
At least they were polite to the scullery maid–if not to each other.
Since you’ve read my posts on this, Joy, you have already read my answer to your “So what?” question. I answered it.
McCain has posted about Charles Johnson’s accusations at length — yet always remained coy about whether he wrote this particular quote that you and Goldstein now defend as non-racist. The one about how the media “force” interracial images on an apparently unwilling public which reacts with a “natural revulsion.”
When I read Ebonie Johnson Cooper’s racist remarks about interracial marriage, and how she might not have voted for Obama if he had married a white woman, I was reminded of McCain’s statement.
Then I found evidence that he had made the remark — when I had previously been led to believe from his denial to Alan Colmes that he had not.
But you knew this, because you read my posts.
So why did you ask?
I read both of your “non-accusation accusation” posts. I didn’t realize I was supposed to go back one more generation–to the post that inspired the first of the NAA posts.
I got the impression that that had to do with celebrity marriages and stuff, so it didn’t sound like it would interest me.
Probably because none of that answers the question “So what?”
Dear Lord, “So what?” could be applied to the entire blogosphere…
Some of that might have been in comments of mine.
But you should read my comments before declaring that I haven’t explained this.
Imagine:
A prominent liberal blogger has been accused of a history of racism. Another formerly liberal, now conservative blogger accuses the liberal of having made several racist comments. The liberal blogger issues several contradictory statements about whether he is the author of one of those statements, which is racist.
So what?
That’s what liberal bloggers would say in that circumstances.
Y’all? You would be howling.
“I read both of your “non-accusation accusation” posts. I didn’t realize I was supposed to go back one more generation–to the post that inspired the first of the NAA posts.”
You could ask. Now that you have, I told you.
Before you make these declarations in your posts.
Oh. You did ask. And I answered your question. With a reference to Ebonie Johnson Cooper. Two days ago. Here.
I know you don’t have to read all your comments, but if you ask me a question, and I spend the time to answer you, you should have the courtesy to read my answer before declaring in a post that I have not addressed the question.
I was distracted by all that additional fiddle-faddle about this woman, Cooper, whom I don’t even know (or know about).
So, as I understand it, this is your answer?–
“Answer: someone said something stupid in public and I criticized them.”
Because it seems to me that somebody said that a decade and a half ago on a limited-circulation newsgroup of Old South-New South people who shared a fascination with the Confederacy. Is that “in public”? It is public in the same way that your NAA post was?
“Y’all”? That’s a racist contraction.
I have addressed virtually everything I think worth addressing on this topic in a new post. And that post links an even longer page where I discuss at length my views of language, and how Goldstein misrepresents them.
The second link is a page and not a post because it really gets down in the weeds. It’s worth reading, however, for anyone interested in how I feel about how language works.
Writing that post and page took a long time. I don’t want to repeat myself. So I refer people to those two links, and I won’t discuss this topic for the rest of the day with anyone who hasn’t bothered to read them. I have other things to do and don’t intend to forego them to speak with people who won’t bother to read the most comprehensive responses and explanations I have made on the topics at hand.
The page even answers Joy’s question, at greater length. It’s all there.
Please approve my latest comment, Joy. It has two links that contain everything I intend to say on this subject today.
Until it’s approved, just go to my blog, patterico.com, and look at the top post.
All of which, again, doesn’t answer the question, which is not a flip dismissal, but an actual, honest to goodness question. So, spare us the hypotheticals and answer it, if you don’t mind. What was your point? What was your intent?
As for your linked answer, someone said something during a listserv discussion 14 years ago, not in public and not contemporaneously. Shouldn’t you be dissecting “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” with the same vigor?
Who the fuck is Many, and how many of them live in your head? Because, well, they’re wrong.
Last I checked, there were many different branches of the Conservatives and Republicans both in and outside the Blogosphere.
I do not remeber any of these branches (save for the Moderate to Liberals i.e. Frum) promoting themselves as the newest Wm Buckley whose job it is to throw everyone off the Right.
What is going on is neither a policy discussion or a tactrical one, but one that seeks to draw blood.
Patterico, I’ve asked this before on your blog (and mine), what is endgame you want from both RS and JG?
What if your attacks are used to discredit Conservative and Republican candidates next year?
And finally, who gets to appoint themselves the next Wm Buckley? I don’t want it, but there are many branches and many people who should have a say in that. Frum is not considered relevent, why should you take that mantle?
“What if your attacks are used to discredit Conservative and Republican candidates next year?”
The academics over at SEK’s blog seem to believe it’s JeffGs phony theories that discredit the right: “The bit I emphasized burns with stupidity…”
Harkin: I agree with you. This infighting does nothing but to serve the left with fodder and ammunition to discredit conservatives – as JSF said above. I haven’t read everything on this subject either. I quit reading after about the sixth post between Patterico/Little Miss Attila/Robert Stacy McCain as it became too laborious over what amounts to an over-agonized argument.
Little Miss Attila: Why would you think that “Y’all” is a racist contraction? Is it simply because it’s mainly used in the South?
I get that I’m supposed to know and remember who SEK is, and know what his blog is. But if you want people outside the Protein Pontifications clique to follow this, you might want to actually spell both those things out.
And I’m not sure why I—or my readers—are supposed to infer from remarks on some blog somewhere that accusations of “racist writing” directed toward a right-wing reporter from another right-wing writer will not become a problem in 2010 or 2012.
I’m not saying that they will. But the idea of truth-by-majority vote is silly enough without making it truth-by-majority vote among a set of blog-commenters.
Sorry again, Little Miss Attila, SEK’s post is here: http://tinyurl.com/ydkz5j6
As I said before, what matters is which party America’s minorities believe harbors racists.
I believe that’s true, but I’m not sure we change perceptions by slinging the word racist at each other. I mean, I understand the urge to “make sure our own hands are clean,” but if we keep washing our hands over and over and over to remove imaginary racism, they will dry out, crack, bleed, and start oozing plasma all over our paperwork.
Not productive.
Eric Lee: That was a joke.
LOL I was thinking it was, just wasn’t sure. I’m new here (obviously) 😉 and I’m just trying to get used to everyone’s style of writing and comments.
And I agree with you. Racist seems to get used too much recently, and I think this country needs to move past all this. (I thought Obama was going to be a post-racial President? Hmm..)
I get that I’m supposed to know and remember who SEK is…
If you want to know why I’ll be remembered as a great figure of significant historical importance two hundred years from now, read this. That said, there’s nothing quite like getting a bunch of emails that amount to “Hey, why don’t you tell this person who you are!”
Gah.
For the record—of which the post linked above is a part of—I’m someone who’s sympathetic to Jeff’s theoretical orientation (so much so I even guest-posted at his place a few times), but who thinks that Jeff’s pushed a sound theory to such incredible extremes that despite my predisposition to agreeing with him, I can’t in good conscience do so, as it would amount to dismissing the nagging doubts that I might could be fallible as “unimportant.”
I’m also the guy everyone thinks calls people racist at the drop of the hat, even though the examples they use of people I called racist are Ed Morrissey and Darleen … which is odd, as I didn’t call either of them racist. I said, and I quote, that Darleen “merely advocates creating and maintaining structural inequalities that disproportionately affect people who just happen to not be white,” which is a far cry from calling someone racist … not that that didn’t stop her from saying I called her that, mind you. (You can oppose affirmative action on intellectual grounds, after all.) The worst I accused Ed Morrissey of was “race-baiting,” as Patrick will attest, and I made a point of showing that he only did so because (by his own admission) no matter what he wrote, one subsect of his commentariat would take whatever it was as an excuse to start making racist comments.
The only person I outright called racist is the one no one ever mentions: Dan Riehl. Why did I call him a racist? Because he sat on the same bus with a group of “pretty young, not that big” black kids and, despite their being, in his own words, “no confrontation,” he still referred to them as “technically thugs.” I’m sticking by that one: if you encounter a group of 10-year-old kids who are black and they ignore you, if your response to their indifference is to pee your pants and declare that they’re thugs-in-training, you’re a racist no ifs, ans, or buts.