Hopefully we’ll get a header up sometime this evening in time to open the PW Pub tomorrow.
Those of you interested in posting over there, email me.
Meantime, continue to marvel at those who can’t seem to grasp that it wasn’t me — but rather one of their fellow travelers — who came up with the idea of “Scott Thomas” as a semiotic construct.
And then try not to chuckle as these same careful readers continue to insist that the real story here is that right wingers should be eating crow because “Scott Thomas” is, in fact, a soldier. Which, I guess, gives him the absolute moral authority to try to pass off error-riddled fiction as fact, or excuses TNR for editorial sloppiness and / or perfidy.
Funny how it’s never the pro-war soldiers who assume that kind of absolute moral authority, isn’t it? Instead, they’re just hicks and oppressed minorities too stupid to get a living wage in some other way.
Which is why it’s so important that astute warrior poets like Scott Beauchamp get to speak. So we can get the real story of combat.
Even if the “real” story is only imagined.
Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, to those of a certain political and ideological stripe, an anti-war soldier with a clear and self-serving agenda is worth a thousand traditional jingoistic jarheads — particularly when the agenda of the sensitive warrior poet aligns so perfectly with that of his abettors.
Is there nothing unsavory for which these twits won’t act as intellectual apologists? Is there not a “progressive” around who can bring himself to say, “you know, Beauchamp is certainly entitled to write such things, not least because they may prove instructive, and because they represent one soldier’s view of war (in advance of actually seeing combat). But trying to pass it off as factual is problematic at best and little more than fraud at worst — and it has the practical effect of undermining an already eroding trust in the media. In fact, by any definition, when it fails to disclose its fictional nature, it leaves the realm of the deliberative and enters the realm of the propagandistic — particularly when it’s peddled as truth by a journal that has taken an anti-war stance.”
I’m often stunned by just how baldly illiberal progressives are willing to show themselves to be these days.
But when truths appealing to shared philosophical assumptions have been eradicated (it is not a stretch to say that, for some, this was the primary goal of an ongoing project to deconstruct Enlightenment thinking), and consensus becomes the new ground for determining meaning, it is not surprising that “truthiness” gains currency, and the will to (rhetorical) power takes to place of observed or empirically “provable” truths.
Manufactured consent.
It’s the (rhetorical) Great Leap Forward of progressivism — though it, like most of what today constitutes “progressive” dogma, is hardly new. In fact, it’s Stalinist to its very core.
But, you know — it’s for the greater good. So stop your bitching, you reactionary twats, and just be happy they’re looking out for you rather excising you like some cancer.
Because they could, you know. If they weren’t so compassionate.
****
update: Well, it looks like we screwed something up with the code and can’t seem to figure it out. In fact, we can’t even log in as admin right now.
So it could take us longer to go live than we anticipated. Sorry for getting your hopes up. We’ll keep working on it.
update 2: Ignore previous update. Looks like we’re good to go.
Off to workout. Back in a bit. Meantime, bask in the reflected hatred you lay claim to just by being near my words.
I’m the Devil. Only more “prolix.”
I’m glad you used the phrase “for the greater good” there, Jeff. Because anyone who has read the final HP tome knows that such a phrase takes quite a drubbing therein. And if it’s in HP, it’s TRUE.
Is there nothing unsavory for which these twits won’t act as intellectual apologists?
No, there isn’t. Because this whole concept of “unsavory” comes from the benighted bourgeoisie masses who merely react to stuff that is “different” as bad. Like all of those sci-fi movies where a noble, benign entity comes to earth in peace, but the hillbilly with the shootin’ arn charges out and shoots first, barely intending to ask questions later. And before you can say “Jed Clampitt,” humanity’s only chance for enlightenment lies bleeding whatever color of fluid its alien entrails bleed, and The Hero is forced go underground and find a way for the alien to Phone Home.
So if something is conventionally considered to be “unsavory,” Our Betters can bet the farm that it actually isn’t unsavory, and in fact is as savory as [insert latest fad delicacy]. But of course those ignernt red-staters will continue to call it “unsavory” and shoot it down.
So it’s no wonder they condemn you for providing intellectual cover for That Which Only Appears To Be Unsavory You Idiot Wingers. You’re ruining everything!!
TW: sagacity Drama. Oh yeah.
Jonah Goldberg sez:
I think that’s really kind of dumb. What Frankie has shown is precisely that he is not particularly honorable or serious. He may have been at one point, but who cares? This bald attempt to humanize a journalist is absolutely, transparently ridiculous. I say Jonah can find it sad if he wants, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from crucifying Frankie in as painful and humiliating a fashion as possible.
I think Jonah knows the guy personally to some extent, or at least professionally; this changes the game. The trouble with being a bigger wig is you tend to sympathize with those of the same wig size reflexively.
My opinion of TNR is (and has been) that they are unusually naive. I don’t know that they ever were really that good. Maybe on a good day, when the lighting is right, the old memories just look so warm.
Or, whatever.
tw: pray conception?
happyfeet, that was quite lucid. And I agree that no one should be going around humanizing journalists.
Did you get that A/C fixed or something?
Here is the pattern I have been seeing in blog discussions about this story elsewhere: The TNR defenders will prattle on for a bit in a bemused tone about how the right-wing chickenhawk wingnuts are working themselves into a frenzy about a non-issue. After all, even if the anecdotes are more fictional than fact, TNR’s integrity is not compromised, because TNR presented them as one soldier’s subjective, impressionistic view of the war, rather than as straight journalism or as policy arguments. And if they turn out to be true, then they are not telling us anything that we didn’t already know about war, right?
It is as if they are trying to reassure us that they never had any intention of seizing on Beauchamp’s work as agit-prop in support of their own policy positions. Then they proceed to slip in a little comment about how the piece really could be valuable to the debate over Iraq policy, because the chickenhawks who support the mission really do need to be educated as to the nasty reality of war.
To me, it seems strange that an opinion journal should decide, for purely non-ideological reasons, to run an essay about one man’s impressionistic experience of the war, when the man in question had no particular writing chops, journalistic cred, or combat experience outside the wire. Heightening my suspicions are the fact that the author happens to be a doctrinaire liberal who has some kind of nepotism-ish connections to TNR, and the fact that TNR’s new editor seems to be on a mission to steer the publication away from the smypathetic view of the war promoted by the previous editor, and toward a more anti-war stance.
My personal guess is that the piece was intended to provide fodder for anti-war agit-prop all along. The editors assumed that they didn’t need to check facts as thoroughly as a journalistic article, since this one was published under the cover of subjectivity, and the author never imagined that his work would receive this level of scrutinty, so he felt free to wildly embellish.
Thanks Jim – at work today – my office is really really cold.
Jeff, What SPF should I use for basking in reflected hatred? 30 good enough, or do I need 45?
Those of you interested in posting over there, email me.
I did a quick search, but does anyone know the url for pw pub? Thanks in advance – I missed the inital post about pw pub and all it’s details so I don’t know if “post” means to just be able to comment etc. etc.
TSK9–I don’t think it’s live yet, or if it is, the URL hasn’t been posted yet.
Aldo, if memory serves, Ace worked with some other individual to blow the Beauchamp debacle open, with regards to nepotism, Ace’s source being fired, etc etc.
it’s kind of hereish. All the cool kids already have comments there.
“… who has some kind of nepotism-ish connections to TNR,…”
It ain’t nepotism if it’s your nep.
-Lucianne Goldberg.
Jeff, reading is hard
What Frankie has shown is precisely that he is not particularly honorable or serious.
TNR has 2 problems.
I would have far more respect for Frank and TNR as a whole if Frank Foer had treated the situation seriously instead of defaulting into a typical defensive PRICK casting about snark in place of facts…which leads to their true first problem…they have (and is typical of leftist media as a whole) NO military knowledge!
Weekly Standard didn’t allege TNR made up a story, they read a story with some working knowledge of the military and saw obvious GLARING problems and asked others with knowledge to weigh in.
TNR’s weigh in came from other equally military ignorant and biased journalists.
Get what you pay for, kinda thing.
Thanks Kim in KC.
Well put, Aldo.
And sadly, at the end of the day, Jonah Goldberg would rather have go to a Georgetown happy hour and swap stories of chasing college tail with Foer than he would sit down to sup with the Captain Eds of the world.
At least, that’s the impression I often get from him.
Mark Levin? Different story maybe.
ack — JIM in KC
Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have linked that. It doesn’t open until tomorrow. So here is web site from the happyfeet’s bookmarks that you can click on for today. The happyfeet he gets lost for hours there.
Will there be munchables?
[…] after the 2006 midterm elections. (Others have written more eloquently than I on the subject– witness any of Jeff Goldstein’s posts over at Protein Wisdom). Reading this piece in The Nation, however, makes it all the more important to examine and […]
Apologies in advance for not being able to get the link thingie to render properly, but there’s an interesting Beauchamp-related comment thread at http://crookedtimber.org/2007/07/29/one-endless-rathergate/. Most of it is, as expected, all too predictably precious, but do take note of the remarks of one Joel Turnipseed and how they’re received. Leastways, I found it rather instructive.
The whole STB episode is pathetic and bizarre. TNR got caught with its editorial pants down. No modestly intelligent reader with a speck of common sense could read Shock Troops without calling bullshit. It is simply indefensible.
Yet we see it being defended–absurdly–from both the left and the right. Before willy nilly politicizing everything, it seems that our intellectual elites ought to do a cursory analysis and ask themselves a simple question–is there a snowball’s chance in hell that this story might be true? In the case of Shock Troops, the answer is obviously no.
Foer is either lying or delusonal when he suggests that the story was rigorously fact checked. It could not have been. And TNR’s alleged re-reporting is also a sham. If the Bradley and DFAC stories are true, there must be dozens and probably hundreds of eye witnesses. How hard could it be to find one?
Possibly they’re all waiting until they’re comfortably sat under the live-oaks with a mint julep or a grasshopper or some such foppish drink, before reading and commenting in full. Patience, all.
Or, more typically, they’re just pulling a Thersites and declaring it stupid and hence unworthy of thought. Still worthy of mentioning, though, although the utility of posting one admits one hasn’t applied any thought to kind of escapes me. Not that I haven’t used the same device, but I haven’t ever fashioned myself as a serious writer.
Good catch AP – this goes straight to Turnipguy’s main critique. I was impressed. Maybe some journalists IS people.
Thanks, Happyfeet. I especially liked the unconscious irony of Quiggin using the TAG memo as a framing device for his post.
This is all a natural extension of “fake but accurate”, an argument repeatedly advance at the various Leftist sites I have visted on this lovely day.
I just read the Crooked Timber thread. I’m still wondering how people can still stand by the meme that (1) there were typewriters in that day that typed EXACTLY LIKE MS WORD DEFAULT SETTINGS and (2) even if the memo is a fraud, the bad behavior was still well-documented.
Um, where? Which documents are we talking about? Or does blogosphere buzz still count as documentation?
Exactly. The first argument is that the stories are basically non-ideological. Since they just illustrate the universally understood idea that war is nasty, TNR could not possibly have had any ideological motive or blindspots that led them to rush the stories into print without proper fact-checking. It must have been an innocent mistake!
The second argument, which seems to contradict the first, is that the stories would be valuable if they turn out to be true, since the war needs to be “de-mythologized,” especially among the chickenhawks who support it.
Both arguments miss the mark IMO. Even if there are a bunch of us chickenhawks running around out here who need a good dose of de-mythologizing medicine to cure our misconception that war is all about fairies and unicorns, these stories don’t really work that way. The stories are not so much in the “war is hell” category, as they are about fratboy-like bad behavior.
I think this is exactly what TNR liked about the anecdotes: The image of soldiers running amok like out of control frat boys confirms the anti-war perception that the war is still badly run, with no adults in charge, and this angle is the one that seems to ring most untrue to the stories’ critics on the milblogs.
So “Scott Thomas” is a soldier. So were Benedict Arnold and Vidkun Quisling.
Beauregard is an enlisted man. “Soldier” is a bit too much credit for this puke.
“The stories are not so much in the “war is hell†category, as they are about fratboy-like bad behavior.
I think this is exactly what TNR liked about the anecdotes: The image of soldiers running amok like out of control frat boys confirms the anti-war perception that the war is still badly run, with no adults in charge, and this angle is the one that seems to ring most untrue to the stories’ critics on the milblogs.”
That is exactly what has been subconsciously bugging me about these tales, I couldn’t put my finger on it! Beauchump is describing obnoxious, spoiled-brat high school jocks and frat boys, not soldiers in a war zone.
I’m still wondering how people can still stand by the meme that (1) there were typewriters in that day that typed EXACTLY LIKE MS WORD DEFAULT SETTINGS
It’s pretty simple, actually.
If progressives were to saythat, they’d be wrong (yet again). Military personnel do not have unlimited free speech or any other rights. As a matter of fact, the rights of person are significant curtailed when one *voluntarily* signs that enlistment/commissioning contract. This fact is what many commenters on the subject–both right and left–leave out.
About the other JG, I get that impression as well.
TW: atmosphere 1917
After reading that thread, and some of the follow-on links, I can only wonder yet again when, precisely, will the modern-day left finally scrape the bottom of the barrel.
I probably shouldn’t get so irritated by this, but one of the founding principles I was always taught by the instructors I admired most was to always spend more time listening to the side that disagrees with you instead of the ones who do, because you will learn so much more, if for nothing more than finding out how to make your arguments stronger. For at *least* the past seven years, that advice has been worthless.
any other rights=any other unabridged rights
I think there’s an easy way to explain why STB’s comments are reprehensible, regardless of whether he exists or not (and the fact that he exists fulfills only the most basic expectations one has of journalists).
Imagine “Saving Private Ryan,” told from Upham’s POV.
“So, here’s this squad of guys, they’re all a**holes. Full of themselves, making fun of me, the guy who actually speaks German and writes for a living, keeping me from joining the group as a full-fledged member with that stupid FUBAR thing.
“Guys who follow this Captain, a TEACHER for Chrissake!, not even a real soldier, who, for no good reason, decides to take a stupid DEAD radar station and get one of their own guys killed. Who gets his entire squad blown away in order to follow stupid orders that make no sense.
“Greatest Generation? Yeah, more like most moronic generation.”
Upham was a soldier—doesn’t make what he did right or heroic. Same for STB.