January 12, 2010
...and then let us never speak of it again
I was asked to comment on the Stacy McCain/Patterico/Jeff Goldstein clusterfuck. Wanted to stay out of the whole thing this time around given how nasty it got last time around, and it got even nastier this time, but you know how that goes,
Let's frame this thing up, mid 90's, Stacy McCain's working as a reporter in Georgia, he did some reporting on the Southern League (now League of the South), which is a whacko neoconfederate group. McCain had written favorably about a member of the League named Kalas. Kalas was working to keep the organization from being taken over by assorted racists and white supremacists. A white supremacist and separatist neoconfederate whacko named Wheeler was attempting to undermine Kalas in an online push to make the Southern League into a white supremacist group. Kalas and his whacko neoconfederate supporters and eventually McCain got sucked into the argument with the white supremacist separatist neoconfederate whacko Wheeler, and a few of the things McCain posted have resulted in him being called a racist, in particular, this,
And now, say what you're thinking...
I love that pic.
So, assorted leftists have calling him racist for eons, and he's been pretty dismissive of them. He definitely has danced and evaded addressing his involvement with this intarwebs group, but more recently he was called out by Patterico and a few other conservative sites (needless to say, a bunch of lefty sites too, but nobody here gives a fuck what they think) on some quotes that were from the white supremacist neoconfederate whacko.
Patterico offered a comparison between quotes between black columnists bitching about Tiger Woods' love of skanky white women and McCain's quote, then revealed that the quote, which the majority of readers agreed was racist, was from McCain.
Patterico said McCain should renounce the quoted statement because it's racist, but does not go so far as to call McCain a racist. McCain doesn't, and offers several posts in defense of himself. Meanwhile, Jeff has this to say,
I actually disagree with this statement from Jeff, and for a reason that he later touches on somewhat later in the post. Let's look at the quote again,
The THIS IS NOT RACISM is the relevant quote. McCain says the following about the statement,
That makes no sense, what does THIS IS NOT RACISM, referring to aversion to your hypothetical brother marrying a hypothetical black chick have to do with dismissing the PC Police and having the right to your opinion? There's way too big a fucking disconnect there. This is him being evasive, or McCain really FUBAR'd what the hell he was trying to say in 1996.
Jeff puts up a hypothetical in which he acts as strongly pro-life arguing against a strongly pro-choice person, and pretends to be pro-choice with regulation in order to draw some concessions out of the pro-choice person. Hypothetical Pro-Life Jeff still made pro-choice statements, or affirmed pro-choice beliefs, even in the context of Hypothetical Pro-Life Jeff trying to draw some concessions out of Hypothetical Pro-Choice dude by pandering, which invalidates Jeff's argument that you can't make a racist statement without the person having racist intent. You can make a racist statement without being racist, if you are being dishonest by pandering to your audience in order to clear or bypass obstacles or, for lack of a better term, distractions, in the course of the discussion, which is what exactly what Stacy McCain was doing.
What was McCain doing in this discussion? What was McCain's goal, his intent in the discussion? To isolate a white supremacist neoconfederate whacko from neoconfederate whackos with some racist tendencies, in order to stop the white supremacist neoconfederate whacko from establishing a base of support to undermine leaders in the Southern League who were working to keep white supremacists from seizing control of the organization.
It was McCain's intent to make a statement affirming or giving a pass to his audience's personal racist behavior, because clearing that distraction allowed McCain to separate personal racism from political racism to isolate and defeat whacko supremacist dude, which was McCain's broader intent in the discussion. Even if McCain felt that their racism was abhorrent, and I feel confident in saying he did and does because I think he's a good guy, he lied by pandering to their racist inclinations and affirmed their behavior. Which makes Patterico's assertion that you can make a racist statement and not be racist correct. This is unlike the Rush situation, where Rush was being 100% honest with his audience, McCain was being deceptive with his audience in order to secure another objective.
When taken into account with McCain's broader intent in his discussion with whacko supremacist neoconfederate, it's not a big deal, but that doesn't change that he was pandering to racists. Do I think McCain should apologize or renounce the statement? I don't think it really matters, it's really a minor thing, especially when taken in the broader context of what he was doing. And really, at the end of the day, McCain was playing political grabass with a bunch of neoconfederate goofballs on teh intarwebs. If messing around and doing dumb shit on the intarwebs is now a high crime, half of humanity may as well report to their nearest detention center immediately.
I do think that had he been a less evasive and pissy about the whole thing, it wouldn't have erupted into the shitstorm that it turned into, and his defense might have been a bit better...or not, who the fuck knows, I think his evasiveness and defensiveness makes it seem much worse than it really was. Liberals are going to call McCain racist and pretend that he rides around on a horse wearing bedsheets no matter what, because it's an effective bludgeon to shut him up. Short of Stacy McCain slobbing Al Sharpton's knob and becoming a liberal hack, thus earning the sacred Strange New RespectTM talisman, they're gonna call the guy racist, so I don't care what they think about McCain.
Actually, I did want to say this too, there was a lot of "Who the fuck made you Grand Inquisitor, Patterico?!?" flying around, not just at PW and McCain's place. Well, it's the blogosphere, questioning shit is what we do, I think Patterico was well within his right to ask about it and grill McCain, and I think his line of questioning was fair. I do however think Jeff makes a fair point here,
Grilling McCain might have been something that would have been better to try and do behind the scenes in email. Of course, it might have been good if Jeff had tried to work things out with Patterico in email before things between them got so nasty too, especially during this go-around, which got really nasty, and I wasn't even paying much attention until asked to comment on it. McCain might have been much less defensive about the whole thing on top of it all. I said might, yes, I know most bloggers have egos that'd make a fighter pilot look modest.
When I got into my scrap with the MN GOP Vicechair (who thankfully is no longer a Vicechair, but he plagiarized myself, a commenter/guest poster at Anklebiting Pundits, and a paragraph or two from Slublog, technically plagiarized Malkin and Redstate too, but at least gave them attribute, he just stole our stuff), I tried to resolve it quietly through email, even though the Vicechair left no direct way to email/contact him, no comments on his site or any of the others he wrote at. I only posted my very public beatdown of the guy after I received no response for close to a week. It might have been a good idea to apply pressure to McCain behind the scenes, and encourage others to question him on the statements and encourage him to address it behind the scenes as well, then go public if he didn't.
Patterico didn't do anything wrong in questioning McCain, and who knows, he could have even tried to resolve this via email as suggested, he did try and leave a comment at McCain's. I have no way of knowing if he emailed without Stacy or Patterico confirming that to be the case, but I think when questioning/criticizing/grilling your own side, sometimes doing it quietly is the best way to do it if possible.
There have been times where, in retrospect, I probably should have resolved disputes with other conservatives, or at least GOP, bloggers quietly instead of a public beatdown or grilling, even though that can be fun as hell. So, I don't know what the ground rules should be, but I think amongst conservatives, classical liberals, libertarians, whatever, I think it'd be best that we try and resolve things behind email, unless someone does something so egregious, they need a public smackdown, like, oh, say, posting Michelle Malkin's personal address, or saying horrible things about the wife a husband lost in a motorcycle accident. I think it's probably something we could all try to do a little better on. No, liberals, Chuck Adkins(Hint: Go back two sentences) and David Frum don't deserve a courtesy call, fuck 'em.
Admittedly, I didn't follow the whole thing, probably missed a bunch of details, and I have zero, ZERO desire to get involved with the slapfight between Patterico and Jeff again, or the he did this, yeah, well he did this! neverending clusterfuck. With all that said, Stacy McCain, Patterico and Jeff Goldstein are all excellent bloggers and writers, and I recommend everyone follow all three.
And, just to piss in the neoconfederate set's Cheerios, this made me laugh in an evil, maniacal manner, like the cold-hearted, bitter, clingy Yankee wingnut I am,
Was looking for something with Sherman, hoping for something a little more traditional, or even a documentary clip, but then I heard the music they chose for their picture montage and laughed. Perfect.
PS, if the comments turn into a nasty shitstorm or a he did this, he did that! contest, I'm locking the thread, not interested in the drama, am however interested in serious discussion of the McCain/Patterico/Goldstein clusterfuck, if I'm reading things wrong or missing something.
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So, here goes, after the jump,
Let's frame this thing up, mid 90's, Stacy McCain's working as a reporter in Georgia, he did some reporting on the Southern League (now League of the South), which is a whacko neoconfederate group. McCain had written favorably about a member of the League named Kalas. Kalas was working to keep the organization from being taken over by assorted racists and white supremacists. A white supremacist and separatist neoconfederate whacko named Wheeler was attempting to undermine Kalas in an online push to make the Southern League into a white supremacist group. Kalas and his whacko neoconfederate supporters and eventually McCain got sucked into the argument with the white supremacist separatist neoconfederate whacko Wheeler, and a few of the things McCain posted have resulted in him being called a racist, in particular, this,
As Steffgen predicted, the media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sisterinlaw, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.
And now, say what you're thinking...
I love that pic.
So, assorted leftists have calling him racist for eons, and he's been pretty dismissive of them. He definitely has danced and evaded addressing his involvement with this intarwebs group, but more recently he was called out by Patterico and a few other conservative sites (needless to say, a bunch of lefty sites too, but nobody here gives a fuck what they think) on some quotes that were from the white supremacist neoconfederate whacko.
Patterico offered a comparison between quotes between black columnists bitching about Tiger Woods' love of skanky white women and McCain's quote, then revealed that the quote, which the majority of readers agreed was racist, was from McCain.
Patterico said McCain should renounce the quoted statement because it's racist, but does not go so far as to call McCain a racist. McCain doesn't, and offers several posts in defense of himself. Meanwhile, Jeff has this to say,
The fact of the matter is, and pace the assertion made by Frey (Patterico-ed.), calling a statement racist and calling the speaker racist ARE the same thing, because language cannot exist in the absence of intent, and a statement can’t be racist if the intent behind it was not; which means if there’s no racist intent, there’s no racist statement. Conversely, if a statement is deemed racist, one must commit to the idea that it sprung from racist intent, and having racist intent is the very definition of being a racist. It simply makes no sense to call a statement “racist†without first attaching it to some locus of racism. And where that locus lies is at the heart of this ongoing “debate†over how language actually functions vs. how it can be made to function.
I actually disagree with this statement from Jeff, and for a reason that he later touches on somewhat later in the post. Let's look at the quote again,
As Steffgen predicted, the media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sisterinlaw, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.
The THIS IS NOT RACISM is the relevant quote. McCain says the following about the statement,
What I was telling the readers of that e-mail list-server with the all-caps "THIS IS NOT RACISM" was to reject the guilt-trip that is constantly being laid on them by the agents of political correctness. Believe it or not, even in 2009, America is still a free country and you still have the right to your own opinion -- even unpopular opinions, and even opinions with which I may disagree.
That makes no sense, what does THIS IS NOT RACISM, referring to aversion to your hypothetical brother marrying a hypothetical black chick have to do with dismissing the PC Police and having the right to your opinion? There's way too big a fucking disconnect there. This is him being evasive, or McCain really FUBAR'd what the hell he was trying to say in 1996.
Jeff puts up a hypothetical in which he acts as strongly pro-life arguing against a strongly pro-choice person, and pretends to be pro-choice with regulation in order to draw some concessions out of the pro-choice person. Hypothetical Pro-Life Jeff still made pro-choice statements, or affirmed pro-choice beliefs, even in the context of Hypothetical Pro-Life Jeff trying to draw some concessions out of Hypothetical Pro-Choice dude by pandering, which invalidates Jeff's argument that you can't make a racist statement without the person having racist intent. You can make a racist statement without being racist, if you are being dishonest by pandering to your audience in order to clear or bypass obstacles or, for lack of a better term, distractions, in the course of the discussion, which is what exactly what Stacy McCain was doing.
What was McCain doing in this discussion? What was McCain's goal, his intent in the discussion? To isolate a white supremacist neoconfederate whacko from neoconfederate whackos with some racist tendencies, in order to stop the white supremacist neoconfederate whacko from establishing a base of support to undermine leaders in the Southern League who were working to keep white supremacists from seizing control of the organization.
It was McCain's intent to make a statement affirming or giving a pass to his audience's personal racist behavior, because clearing that distraction allowed McCain to separate personal racism from political racism to isolate and defeat whacko supremacist dude, which was McCain's broader intent in the discussion. Even if McCain felt that their racism was abhorrent, and I feel confident in saying he did and does because I think he's a good guy, he lied by pandering to their racist inclinations and affirmed their behavior. Which makes Patterico's assertion that you can make a racist statement and not be racist correct. This is unlike the Rush situation, where Rush was being 100% honest with his audience, McCain was being deceptive with his audience in order to secure another objective.
When taken into account with McCain's broader intent in his discussion with whacko supremacist neoconfederate, it's not a big deal, but that doesn't change that he was pandering to racists. Do I think McCain should apologize or renounce the statement? I don't think it really matters, it's really a minor thing, especially when taken in the broader context of what he was doing. And really, at the end of the day, McCain was playing political grabass with a bunch of neoconfederate goofballs on teh intarwebs. If messing around and doing dumb shit on the intarwebs is now a high crime, half of humanity may as well report to their nearest detention center immediately.
I do think that had he been a less evasive and pissy about the whole thing, it wouldn't have erupted into the shitstorm that it turned into, and his defense might have been a bit better...or not, who the fuck knows, I think his evasiveness and defensiveness makes it seem much worse than it really was. Liberals are going to call McCain racist and pretend that he rides around on a horse wearing bedsheets no matter what, because it's an effective bludgeon to shut him up. Short of Stacy McCain slobbing Al Sharpton's knob and becoming a liberal hack, thus earning the sacred Strange New RespectTM talisman, they're gonna call the guy racist, so I don't care what they think about McCain.
Actually, I did want to say this too, there was a lot of "Who the fuck made you Grand Inquisitor, Patterico?!?" flying around, not just at PW and McCain's place. Well, it's the blogosphere, questioning shit is what we do, I think Patterico was well within his right to ask about it and grill McCain, and I think his line of questioning was fair. I do however think Jeff makes a fair point here,
But — and here’s the rub — at what point is one justified in opening up a public examination on high profile websites — and what should the ground rules for such a case be?
Grilling McCain might have been something that would have been better to try and do behind the scenes in email. Of course, it might have been good if Jeff had tried to work things out with Patterico in email before things between them got so nasty too, especially during this go-around, which got really nasty, and I wasn't even paying much attention until asked to comment on it. McCain might have been much less defensive about the whole thing on top of it all. I said might, yes, I know most bloggers have egos that'd make a fighter pilot look modest.
When I got into my scrap with the MN GOP Vicechair (who thankfully is no longer a Vicechair, but he plagiarized myself, a commenter/guest poster at Anklebiting Pundits, and a paragraph or two from Slublog, technically plagiarized Malkin and Redstate too, but at least gave them attribute, he just stole our stuff), I tried to resolve it quietly through email, even though the Vicechair left no direct way to email/contact him, no comments on his site or any of the others he wrote at. I only posted my very public beatdown of the guy after I received no response for close to a week. It might have been a good idea to apply pressure to McCain behind the scenes, and encourage others to question him on the statements and encourage him to address it behind the scenes as well, then go public if he didn't.
Patterico didn't do anything wrong in questioning McCain, and who knows, he could have even tried to resolve this via email as suggested, he did try and leave a comment at McCain's. I have no way of knowing if he emailed without Stacy or Patterico confirming that to be the case, but I think when questioning/criticizing/grilling your own side, sometimes doing it quietly is the best way to do it if possible.
There have been times where, in retrospect, I probably should have resolved disputes with other conservatives, or at least GOP, bloggers quietly instead of a public beatdown or grilling, even though that can be fun as hell. So, I don't know what the ground rules should be, but I think amongst conservatives, classical liberals, libertarians, whatever, I think it'd be best that we try and resolve things behind email, unless someone does something so egregious, they need a public smackdown, like, oh, say, posting Michelle Malkin's personal address, or saying horrible things about the wife a husband lost in a motorcycle accident. I think it's probably something we could all try to do a little better on. No, liberals, Chuck Adkins(Hint: Go back two sentences) and David Frum don't deserve a courtesy call, fuck 'em.
Admittedly, I didn't follow the whole thing, probably missed a bunch of details, and I have zero, ZERO desire to get involved with the slapfight between Patterico and Jeff again, or the he did this, yeah, well he did this! neverending clusterfuck. With all that said, Stacy McCain, Patterico and Jeff Goldstein are all excellent bloggers and writers, and I recommend everyone follow all three.
And, just to piss in the neoconfederate set's Cheerios, this made me laugh in an evil, maniacal manner, like the cold-hearted, bitter, clingy Yankee wingnut I am,
Was looking for something with Sherman, hoping for something a little more traditional, or even a documentary clip, but then I heard the music they chose for their picture montage and laughed. Perfect.
PS, if the comments turn into a nasty shitstorm or a he did this, he did that! contest, I'm locking the thread, not interested in the drama, am however interested in serious discussion of the McCain/Patterico/Goldstein clusterfuck, if I'm reading things wrong or missing something.
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