Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Last Word on the Tuscon Shooting Blame Game

Megan McArdle of the The Atlantic has a solid and level-headed post on the blame game which immediately sprang up in the wake of the Tuscon shootings. Seriously worth reading.
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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Megan McArdle: "I agree that Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are net detractors from American civil society."

Mission accomplished.

Joel

1/21/2011 10:41 AM
Darwin said...

Mission accomplished.

I'm confused. McArdle held that opinion long before the Tuscon shootings. All the hysteria on the left attempting to blame people like Palin for the shootings accomplished was to cause sane people in the libertarian, right and center camps to have to defend Palin and Limbaugh from their irrational detractors.

This is a plus?

1/21/2011 10:51 AM
Anonymous said...

The sane "defenses" of Palin and Limbaugh that I read were pretty much like McArdle's: noting that Palin and Limbaugh are evil, obnoxious people, but not actually murders. It will be a glorious day for Republicans when not only prominent bloggers but also John Boehner and Mitch McConnell find the courage to publicly acknowledge this.

Joel

1/21/2011 12:17 PM
Darwin said...

Somehow I missed the incidence of sane commentators feeling it necessary to label Palin and Limbaugh as 'evil' because they don't like their style of discourse or politics. Indeed, mark me down as one of those who thinks it would be a good idea if people could manage to believe that most of their political opponents aren't 'evil'. It might be a good first step to not going around accusing people of being responsible for crimes they in fact had nothing to do with.

1/21/2011 12:51 PM
Anonymous said...

I do not habitually label people as evil, particularly not in politics since I know that a great deal of compromise is absolutely necessary in that realm, including compromise on issues that some folks regard as non-negotiable moral absolutes. Someone has to run the country, and it is helpful to have two opposing philosophies represented in government so as to provide a vibrant idea incubator. John Boehner and Barack Obama are worthy foils for each other and I have real hope that our government might actually do some sensible things this term.

That said, I stand by my labelling of Palin and Limbaugh as evil. They accomplish nothing more than injecting poison into our public discourse, and their motives for doing so are purely selfish. FWIW, I put Michael Moore in the same category, and I am thankful that he is far less influential than the first two.

Joel

1/21/2011 5:30 PM
Darwin said...

That said, I stand by my labelling of Palin and Limbaugh as evil. They accomplish nothing more than injecting poison into our public discourse, and their motives for doing so are purely selfish. FWIW, I put Michael Moore in the same category

I'm not clear how one determines that someone achieves nothing other than injecting poison into public discourse, nor that a person is motivated primarily by selfishness.

I think that Limbaugh and Palin say a number of true things -- and others that aren't -- though both have a tendency to simplification and populism that I don't share. I think Moore says a few true things -- and if I were progressive I would probably think that more of the things he says are true -- and similarly tends towards simplification and populism.

But I strongly suspect that all three believe that they are doing their best to bring to the country a message that, if listened to, would do it good. In this sense, they are acting no differently from Andrew Sullivan, whom you admire, or President Obama, etc. That their style is different (actually, I'm not sure Sullivan's style is different other than that he tends towards a certain school-girl hysteria) may cause you to like them less, but it doesn't indicate that their intentions are necessarily worse.

Perhaps there is a special charism of mind-reading which I lack, which allows one to tell who in the political arena knows that they are being destructive but does so anyway out of desire to cause trouble, but being sadly lacking in this ability, I can only assume that people are what they seem.

As for the prominence of Limbaugh and such in the GOP right now -- it's no different from under Clinton, when there was a similar round of breast-beating over how low Republican discourse had become. And, of course, it was while the Democrats were out of power and winding themselves of to new heights of rhetorical hysteria that Moore was the single biggest figure on the left. Extreme rhetoric is always more appealing to a party out of power. One may dislike it, but one can hardly act surprised about it.

1/22/2011 11:02 PM
Anonymous said...

OK, one last point: It may interest you to know that I do not put Glenn Beck in the same category as Limbaugh and Palin. Beck is highly susceptible to half-baked political ideas and paranoid conspiracy theories, but when I listen to him (which admittedly isn't often) I do not sense anything like the sheer malice and bile that the other two produce on a continuous basis. Politically Beck is very close to Limbaugh and Palin, but morally he is in a completely different league.

And a last-last point, regarding my mindreading: I know Limbaugh's motives are purely selfish because he has said so. He acknowledged a few years ago that his primary goal for his show was to attract a large enough audience that he can charge confiscatory rates for ads. (His income is north of $20M/yr.) That he actually said this to a reporter is revealing: he has reached the stage of excessive wealth and greed where he begins to think it is normal.

Joel

1/24/2011 5:00 PM
Darwin said...

Well, I'm not sure that having a goal of hitting a specific size audience necessarily means that a radio host isn't saying what he thinks is true or beneficial. Most people have business or career goals that involve some kind of growth, but that doesn't mean that they are intentionally selling out or producing a product they think is bad. I'm sure Steve Jobs would love it if half a billion people owned iPods, but he does that through building better iPods, not worse ones.

That said, if it helps frame this up a bit:

- I've never heard or seen Glen Beck except for a few clips people have linked to.

- I haven't listened to Rush at all in the last seven years. Seven to ten years ago I used to hear a fair amount of him because Jose the warehouse manager at the company I worked at had talk radio on all day. My impression at the time was that Limbaugh (for all the people love to flip out about him) tended a bit toward hyperbole in his monologues but actually tended to listen to people and be more polite to them than many of the other radio personalities on that particular AM station.

My overall objection in all this is to the "people who disagree with me or use a different style are evil" approach to politics. And in particular, to the insistence that one's own opponents are far more dangerous that the crazies on one's own side. The "Sure, there are some crazy lefties, but the mainstream GOP is like the Taliban!!!!!" approach to politics. Because that basically comes down to saying that you can't negotiate or work with the opposition, you can just hate them and wish they'd magically vanish (or that "something" be done about them.)

1/25/2011 11:34 AM

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