« If Europe Turns | Home | Student Editors Suspended for Printing Dreaded Cartoons »

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Glenn Greenwald: Rethink Your Crusade

Let me spin you a yarn. Out there in the wilds of the Internet is a man called Glenn Greenwald. This blogger purports to be a thoughtful liberal. By which is meant his comedy is less about railing against ‘McBushitlerburton’s AmeriKKKa’ and more about throwing periodic accusations of something called ‘intellectual dishonesty’ at anyone who disagrees with him. Those are followed by hearty guffaws and a sip of caramel macchiato, which if you’ve not yet been introduced is a nine dollar milkshake with the word ‘Coffee’ on the front.

Look, be very careful of anyone who uses the phrase ‘intellectual dishonesty’ in an argument. First, it means that he doesn’t have a retort to what you’ve just said. Second, it means that he thinks he’s engaged in something special, where the usual definition of ‘lying’ doesn’t apply. Steer clear of any debater who wants to stipulate a new meaning for ‘false’ in the ground rules.

Greenwald has embarked on a terribly misguided and sophomoric crusade, and recent events have proved it so. It begins with the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, where Ann Coulter used the word ‘raghead’ to describe terrorists who threaten the United States. Specifically, she advocated a foreign policy called: “Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.” Boom. Some attendees thought they had to support Coulter, either because they wanted to give the political correctness lobby a good nails-on-the-chalkboard moment or because they were the epithet-uttering type. The rest thought what Coulter said was just idiotic. Jeff Harrell, conservative, wrote, “standing up in front of a microphone and calling people ‘ragheads’ isn’t helping anybody.” Michelle Malkin, conservative, wrote that the comment “was spectacularly ill-chosen and ill-timed,” and addressed herself to Muslims, saying she wanted them “to know that not everyone uses that kind of epithet.” Jonah Goldberg, conservative, said of her shtick: “I don’t think she should do it.” Sean Hackbarth, conservative, wrote, “Ann, thanks for nothing.” Tom Bridge, conservative, wrote that he was “going to be ill.” Glenn Reynolds, who was not at the speech, simply linked to someone who had caught the explosive comment and reported that it played badly.

The rest of the conservative blogosphere? All dust balls, howling wind, and crickets. Including Dartblog.

Glenn Greenwald doesn’t quite understand this, because he sees people who disagree with him as simplex cartoons, but the reason behind the silence was apathy. Everyone recognizes Ann Coulter’s calculated shtick as such, and basically ignores it. She isn’t “one of the most influential pro-Bush pundits” that he builds her up to be, and there is no case to be made that anyone expects Coulter to be unoffensive and decent, whether at CPAC or any other venue. A quick search of Glenn Reynolds’ 29,000 posts or so finds only a handful that mention Coulter. Way back in June of 2002, he wrote on Egypt’s nuclear prospects, saying, “I shudder to think that things may come to such a pass that Ann Coulter will be looked upon as prophetic, rather than deranged.”

But Greenwald wasn’t happy with Ann Coulter’s comments, and rather than write about something entertaining or informative or considerate, he decided to cry out to the wilderness about why other people weren’t also denouncing what he doesn’t like. Pursuant to the usual lefty action plan, he decided to tell his readers to e-mail, fax, or call the targets over and over. Then, surely, revolution would be nigh. (Read enough far-left blogs and you’ll realize that revolution is nigh surprisingly often.) Greenwald was particuarly upset with Glenn Reynolds’ lack of a “I hereby condemn the comments of Ann Coulter” post, so he sicced his e-mail battalion on Reynolds’ e-mail Inbox. They obeyed. Today he pats himself on the back for “forcing” conservatives to “acknowledge” Coulter’s dearth of profundity, rather than meeting her silliness with the customary This Just Ain’t Worth It silence. In congratulating himself, Greenwald, evidently aware that his e-mail bomb incitement was childish, unnecessary, and lame, reassures himself and his followers that they were right:

Instead, [Instpundit’s] silence is so deafening and inexcusable because he frequently and self-righteously demands that Democrats step up and condemn wholly irrelevant “fringe leftists,” even when (as is not the case for Reynolds and Coulter here) the Democrats in questions have nothing to do with such figures and have no connection to them.

Here, for instance, is Reynolds sermonizing to Democrats on their obligation to condemn the obscure and inconsequential Ward Churchill:

Here is where part two of Greenwald’s hapless crusade enters the fold. (Part one was where a First Amendment lawyer thought it’d be a productive use of his and others’ time to spam a fellow blogger for not having posted something he thought was important.) Greenwald is outraged that talking head Ann Coulter gave a dim speech at a private political action conference paid for by attendees, on the bases that she is 1) Connected in some operative way to the Republican National Committee, 2) Mainstream, and 3) Consequential. Let’s brush aside for a moment that he strikes out in describing Ms. Coulter.

How about Al Gore, Glenn Greenwald? You’ve conjured a river in your front yard because a shticky conservative speaker used a racial epithet which most conservative bloggers either ignored per usual or actively condemned. You’ve attempted, but failed, to make the case that this is some way alters the winds which billow the sails of our ship of state. No one expected your outrage to be proved righteous, after all—you were talking about Ann Coulter at CPAC. So how about former Vice President Al Gore going to Saudi Arabia and denouncing America, her cause, the war that pursues it, the soldiers fighting that war, and the decency and goodness of the American people? How about Al Gore fighting for the enemy—does that sit well with you? If Glenn Greenwald is concerned about the reckless speech of someone who is connected to a political party, who is relevant and unobscure, he need look no further than an enemy of America on her very shores. Until he orders his legions to set upon Gore, he’ll have a hard time convincing anyone that he cares about decency.

UPDATE: Glenn (of the House of Greenwald, not Reynolds) responds to this post in an update, claiming that I have not addressed his two salient assertions.

I did not argue that Reynolds has an obligation to denounce Coulter’s comments on the ground that I think that everyone in the world has the obligation to jump up and denounce every repugnant comment. I argued that Reynolds has this obligation here because Reynolds himself has previously argued for that standard and applied it to Democrats…

Glenn gives the example of Ward Churchill, but there is a world of difference. As nearly every conservative commenting on the Coulter issue has noted, she used the slur for shock value. It was a superficial epithet, akin to the ‘n’ word. It would be nice if the world cooperated on systemic denunciation each time someone waxed racist, but it mostly would be a waste of time. Ward Churchill, on the other hand, was engaged in a calculated regime of indoctrination that aimed to convince students that America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, all under the cloak of higher learning. That Churchill became a major story in the national press (and Coulter did not) speaks volumes about the relative import of each.

Glenn’s second point is that Ann Coulter cannot be fringe and irrelevant because her books sell. Of course, the same can be said of any number of prominent liberal commentators who have once said outrageous things and proceeded to sell books anyway. But Glenn is lowering his own standard here. He argued that Coulter’s speech must be shouted down because she has something to do with the GOP, is mainstream, and is relevant. Now all a speaker must be in order to require denunciation is have some uncertain number of “followers.”

None of this, however, seems as important as the central fact that Glenn misses in his Ward/Ann comparison: The left-winger in question went overboard in advocating for the enemies of the United States of America and the right-winger in question went overboard in advocating against the enemies of the United States of America. (It is a fair criticism, and one in which I join, that she defines ‘enemy’ too broadly.) I don’t endorse the comments of either Churchill or Coulter, but whether Glenn likes it or not the American people give more leeway to people who support America in a fringe way than to people who oppose it in a fringe way.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Conservative bloggers sometimes complain of the Atrios Effect: When a rare link is posted to a right-of-center blog from a left-of-center blog and the latter’s trolls repeatedly volley fiery e-mail to the conservative. Generally liberal use of the word ‘fascist’ is involved. Glenn’s reader base, however, has been civil for the most part. It was encouraging.

Posted on February 14, 2006 09:46 AM. Permalink