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Audacity of Truth
Big Government- Hot Air
- Michelle Malkin
- Wheeling & dealing: Snowe pow-wows with Obama; Landrieu, Schumer, Daschle behind the scenes
- Saturday in the Senate: Cash for Cloture; Reid gets 60; Update: 8:15pm Eastern cloture vote – 60-39; Voinovich absent; Dems invoke Teddy Kennedy; Reid: “Ted would be happy.”
- Another day, another Berkeley tantrum
- Jake Tapper
- Lynn Sweet
Criticizing on the basis of sex, etc
… and I don’t mean whether or not you’re having it!
David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy takes on a lefty blogger who posted a ‘critique’ of ten top right wing bloggers and notes a particularly vicious attack in that blogger’s ‘critique’ about Michelle Malkin (which you can read there in Bernstein’s post). He writes:
It doesn’t trouble me (much) that Mithras, whoever that is, would crudely and stupidly insult Malkin. There’s one in every crowd, as they say. But when so many other folks on the left, including Brian Leiter, jump in to endorse his post, one wonders what is going on. Indeed, not a single one of the 465 Atrios readers who commented on his link to Mithras post complained about the Malkin crack; in fact, several of them praised it, and added their own prejudiced elaborations [...]
Is it suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly, if I recall the attacks on figures ranging from Thomas Sowell to Condi Rice) okay to denigrate someone based on their race and sex if they happen to be conservative? And to use especially offensive language while doing so? Attacking Malkin in this way comes with especially poor grace from the left blogger community, which–dare I note–includes, as far as I’m aware, no female, nonwhite blogger nearly as prominent as Malkin.
Anyway, a whole bunch of people, including Atrios, owe Malkin an apology
Absolutely. In fact, if you read that ‘critique’ (I won’t post the link to it here, but you can get to it via Bernstein’s post), I’d say that blogger owes apologies to everyone on that list. If you’re going to do a serious (not intended to be humorous) critique of a fellow blogger, fine, but to do so via the ad hominem route is a credibility killer and as a result no one is going to take that kind of critique seriously – except, perhaps, the choir you’re already preaching to.
Update: Also slamming this vicious attack: Jeff Goldstein, David Schraub at The Moderate Voice (read more of David’s comments here at his own blog), Sue Bob’s Diary.
Linking up with Mudville Gazette’s open post.
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11 Responses to “Criticizing on the basis of sex, etc”
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Just found your terrific site, and I have put you on my links. Re; the use of the insult about Malkin. You know it always says more about the sayer than the sayee. The Left (or at least the establishment Democrats) seem to be trying to clean up the Left sites (Soros pulled his money, and many others seem to be off line) but there are always more to take up the slack. Some of us on the right are just as fast and loose with language describing liberals we don’t like.
“Some of us on the right are just as fast and loose with language describing liberals we don’t like.”
As I said before: If you’re going to do a serious (not intended to be humorous) critique of a fellow blogger, fine, but to do so via the ad hominem route is a credibility killer and as a result no one is going to take that kind of critique seriously – except, perhaps, the choir you’re already preaching to.
Thanks for bookmarking me
My actually “slam” of the anti-Malkin comments is located here (and now again here). The Moderate Voice post was just a pointer.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for the heads up, David. I’ll update my post to note that
“no one is going to take that kind of critique seriously – except, perhaps, the choir you’re already preaching to”…increasingly, it seems that many–perhaps most–on the left have little interest in converting others to their point of view. It certainly won’t be done with insults and giant puppets.
To sell someone else on something requires a certain level of control of one’s own emotions, and I think this kind of emotional control is increasingly rare among today’s left.
“Is it suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly, if I recall the attacks on figures ranging from Thomas Sowell to Condi Rice) okay to denigrate someone based on their race and sex if they happen to be conservative?”
Malkin was denigrated based on her sex? Rather, I think it was her ability that was denigrated.
Awww! Don’t you know the rules? Of course it’s okay to make rude sexual comments about conservative women, as long as you are doing it because you favor women’s rights.:!:
David: Yes, I do sense a loss of control in emotions amongst a certain segment of the Democratic party. It’s been happening for a while now, and has escalated since they lost control of Congress back in 1994 and then the WH in 2000.
John: O’ course! How could I forget?