HAPPILY ANCHORED: In taking offense!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2015

Part 1—Finally, Drum sounds off:
How dumb—how monumentally dumb—is our emerging pseudo-liberal world?

You can get the answer each day at the new Salon. This morning, the pitifully reinvented site published a pitiful, three-day-old screed under this package of headlines:
TUESDAY, AUG 25, 2015 04:00 AM EDT
Donald Trump keeps lying about his crowd numbers—and the media keeps letting him
On Saturday, The Donald spoke to 12,000 supporters in Mobile. The press would have you believe there were "30-40K"
ZAID JILANI, ALTERNET
Alternet had run the piece on Saturday, when it was at least current.

At Salon, they ran the piece three days later. We were struck by the claims we saw in Salon's package of headlines.

For the record, Candidate Trump spoke in Mobile last Friday night, not on Saturday. But that’s a tiny type of mistake, derived from an original bungle by Alternet itself.

The statement which caught our eye concerned the size of the Mobile crowd. Had Candidate Trump really spoken to just 12,000 supporters? Not to the roughly 20,000 news orgs claimed in real time?

We decided to check the Salon report. Inevitably, we found ourselves looking at this:
JILANI (8/25/15): As it turned out, the rally ended up featuring around 20,000 people—around half the capacity of the 40,000-person stadium. A decent rally, sure, for a billionaire with very high name identification in a conservative part of the country. But it was nowhere near what was touted by Trump’s own campaign, which was parroted by the media.
In his report, Jilani specifically said that the Trump crowd was roughly 20,000. In its headline, the new Salon dumbed the crowd size down, reducing it to 12,000.

As you can see if you read his piece, Jilani’s report was D-minus work from the start. Three days later, a headline writer at Salon made things that much dumber.

It has long been clear—the new Salon is one of the places where liberal brain cells go to expire. As commenters at the site frequently note, its headlines routinely misstate the actual contents of its reports. That said, this reinvention was especially dumb, even for Salon.

The pitiful, reinvented Salon is just one site, of course. That said, the dumbing down of the liberal world has been quite striking in recent years. Unfortunately, so is the love many liberals feel for this tribal dumbness.

At one time, we liberals enjoyed the fun of calling conservatives dumb. We’d hear the ditto-heads call in to Rush. We gained a false impression.

Alas! We gained the impression that their tribe was dumb while our tribe was “nuanced” and smart. In recent years, the new Salon has helped destroy that picture.

So have comment threads.

This weekend, it finally happened! Saturday afternoon, even the mild-mannered Kevin Drum threw his commenters under the bus.

Annoyed with their low IQs and their arrogance, he referred to them as “tribal hacks.” Quantifying his remarks, he said that 95 percent of their comments were basically worthless.

Normally, Drum is mild-mannered, perhaps to a tiny bit of a fault. At long last, though, he’d plainly had enough:
DRUM (8/22/15): Finally, I get why some lefties find this whole conversation amusing. Privileged middle-class white guy just doesn't get it, and has to write a thousand words of argle-bargle to understand something that’s obvious to anyone with a clue. Sure. But look: you have to interrogate this stuff or you just end up as a tribal hack. And since this is a blog, and I'm an analytical kind of person, what you get is a brain dump translated into English and organized to try to make sense. It can seem naive to see it put down in words like this, but the truth is that we all think this way to some degree or another.

POSTSCRIPT: On Twitter, Frank Koughan good-naturedly suggests that it should be a rule of blogging that if you ask readers a question, you post an update so that everyone doesn't have to wade through 300 comments. Fair enough. But this post is an example of why I don't always do this: it can turn into a lot of work! Sometimes there's a simple answer in comments, but that's rare. Usually about 95 percent of the comments are off topic and the other 5 percent all disagree with each other. So it's not as easy as it sounds.
Uh-oh! Finally, Drum had had enough. Here’s the background:

As we noted on Saturday,
Drum had asked his readers to explain a point he didn’t seem to understand. He’d asked his readers to explain why the term “anchor babies” is offensive.

Should that term be seen as offensive? If so, how offensive is it? In our reading, Drum didn’t seem sure about these points. So he invited his readers to explain—and ended up saying that 95 percent of their comments were just useless crap.

Needless to say, Drum also ended up deciding that the term “anchor babies” really is offensive. For ourselves, we don’t have a giant opinion concerning that question—and no, we don’t sign on to some proposition just because our corporate-paid, millionaire tribal leaders tell us that we should.

For our money, we thought Drum’s logic was a bit soft as he drew his conclusion. That said, we think his three posts on this topic are extremely instructive.

We think his posts help us see the way our liberal world now reasons. Increasingly, we’re happily anchored in taking offense—and display few other skills.

At one time, we liberals got to imagine that the other tribe was dumb.

We were the brilliant, nuanced tribe. The new Salon, and other orgs, have blown that picture to shreds.

Tomorrow, we’ll consider the hundreds of comments which provoked the wrath of Drum. We think they display the general lack of sophistication and skill which make our tribe so ineffective as we try to advance our ideas.

We’re dumb and unpleasant and nobody likes us. Other than that, we rule!

Tomorrow: Drum’s readers “explain

88 comments:

  1. Trump originally planned that Alabama event in a forum that held only 2,000 people. He moved it to a college stadium because 20,000 people showed up, according to Salon. CNN said the turnout was 30,000!

    The New York Times, in a parody of itself, found a way to put a negative spin the huge turnout:

    Donald Trump Fails to Fill Alabama Stadium, but Fans’ Zeal Is Undiminished

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    1. This is a bit naïve. If 20,000 people showed up unexpectedly, they would have all gone to the old venue and be milling about outside it, unable to get in. That isn't what happened. If you have a venue that is too big for you to fill up, like a football stadium, the best way to deal with that is to claim that the original venue was too small and you had to move to the football stadium at the last minute, to accommodate the overflow. All the attendees knew where to show up. That means the intended venue was the football stadium, not some other smaller place.

      Everyone knows that if you want a party to look successful, you deliberately hold it in a too-small room. If you hold it in a too-big room, it will look like you intended more people to come but they didn't. No matter how many people show up.

      So, this is illustrating that Trump is an amateur. He deserves whatever the Times says about him, because that is how politics works. These petty numbers games are stupid except people use them, like polls, as a measure of candidate popularity. If you cannot draw the crowds you planned to attract (based on the size of the venue), it is a sign your campaign may be on the skids. Trump thinks the rules don't apply to him. It would be nice for him to discover otherwise.

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    2. It is only the press and the partisan hacks (like you?) who make a big deal about how many people turn out for a rally. Most people want to know what he said.

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    3. Exactly. I only responded to this because David said something wrong, again. But, Sanders has been following a strategy of ballyhooing his large rallies in order to show that he is not a marginal candidate with limited appeal. He is trying to counteract the image people had of him prior to becoming a candidate. HRC doesn't have that same image and thus doesn't need to use that strategy. Trump seems to be setting up events with large crowds because he is a narcissist and campaigning isn't fun for him unless he is the center of a whole bunch of attention, the more the better.

      Why exactly did Sanders say at his last rally?

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  2. Of course the switch in venue wasn't made at the very last moment. But, apparently the event really had been originally planned at a smaller venue.

    Interest in the candidate forced organizers to move a planned rally from the Mobile Civic Center, which holds about 2,000 people, to Ladd-Peebles Stadium, a 40,000-seat football stadium.

    That same article also said this was the largest crowd of the Presidential campaign. Given those facts, IMHO it's deceptive or spin to minimize the size of the turnout.

    See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/22/donald-trump-addresses-largest-crowd-presidential-campaign-yet-while-in-alabama/

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    1. See my comment above. His campaign staff can say anything they want -- "The event was originally planned for Trump's living room, organizers said." Such statements are self-serving. If you are going to hold a rally at a football stadium, you need to fill it up. The same rules apply to Trump as any other candidate. If he speaks to a half-full stadium, it is going to look bad. Amateur hour. Don't blame the NY Times for not spinning a half-empty stadium to Trump's advantage.

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    2. Anon 11:10 AM-- If the event never was planned for the Mobile Civic Center, and if the Trump team lied and claimed that it had been so planned, then you have a good point. Do you have evidence that such is the case?

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    3. I have no evidence they didn't lie. Isn't that how it works with candidates -- assume they are lying until proven otherwise?

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  3. Oh the irony of Somerby complaining that an article was three days late and not timely.

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    1. Undouched Howler FanAugust 25, 2015 at 11:20 AM

      Someday: We'll call you a troll.

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    2. So many people don't seem to understand what the word "irony" means.

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  4. There is no danger of under estimating an HRC crowd.

    July, 2015

    HRC event at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Turnout: 850

    Sanders event in Madison, Wisconsin. Turnout: 10,000

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    1. You mean the grassroots organizing event that was originally scheduled for a private home that was moved to a bigger venue because so many volunteers showed up to work in her campaign?

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    2. Oranges = 1 for pleasing orange color
      Apples = 0 for lack of pleasing orange color

      Sanders has something to prove. HRC not so much.

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    3. HRC is dumb and unpleasant and nobody likes her.

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    4. Sanders has proven something:

      http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/08/25/bernie-sanders-gets-stamp-of-approval-from-cornel-west/?ref=politics&_r=0

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    5. Cornel West endorsed Clinton against Obama in 2008 but it didn't help her attract black voters. Why do you think his endorsement will matter now? It kind of makes Sanders look desperate for black approval, any approval.

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    6. You mean the all-important Cornel West endorsement has already been made?

      I guess game, set, match.

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    7. Bill Richardson endorsed Hillary. In my view that doesn't make it for his failure to endorse her in 2008 and, of course, his failure to get Monica a job and whisk her out of sight, a key failure which enabled the War on Gore.

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    8. Wolf in sheep's clothing. What is the name for this kind of trolling?

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    9. "Cornel West endorsed Clinton against Obama in 2008 but it didn't help her attract black voters."

      That's so wrong, it's hilarious. Cornel West made 63 appearances for Obama during that election.

      Cornel West, Nov 29th 2007 "introducing" Obama to Harlem at the Apollo theater:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7H5irpvrjY

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    10. Maybe he spoke for Obama after Obama won the nomination, but West supported Clinton in the primaries. West has been very critical of Obama lately.

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    11. Nov 29th 2007...you are wrong. Being critical of Obama now doesn't negate what happened in late 2007-2008. Please show me where Cornel West endorsed Clinton during the primaries?

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    12. I am having trouble finding anything from that time period. West clearly doesn't support Hillary now, calling her an extension of Obama, but given his dislike of Obama and especially Larry Summers, I'm not inclined to yield the point. West was notable among African Americans in defending Bill Clinton from charges of racism, as I recall from living through the time period. If you can find where West endorsed Obama before 6/08, have at it.

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    13. http://thegrio.com/2012/11/12/cornel-west-calls-obama-a-republican-in-blackface/

      http://www.vice.com/read/cornel-west-plans-to-vote-for-obama-in-november-and-protest-his-policies-in-february

      Not only did he endorse Obama in 2008, he did so again in 2012. Despite "disliking" him.

      And if you think the Clintons exhibited racism during the 2008 campaign, you have it backwards. Of course the Obama campaign relied upon heavy editing and selective hearing when using the "fairy tale" clip as evidence of Bill Clinton's "racism". As just one example. Now, when Obama was asked about the "race memo" by George Stephanopoulos he feigned ignorance and put it all on a "low level staffer".

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  5. "We think his posts help us see the way our liberal world now reasons. Increasingly, we’re happily anchored in taking offense—and display few other skills."

    "Needless to say, Drum also ended up deciding that the term “anchor babies” really is offensive. For ourselves, we don’t have a giant opinion concerning that question—and no, we don’t sign on to some proposition just because our corporate-paid, millionaire tribal leaders tell us that we should."

    "Tomorrow, we’ll consider the hundreds of comments which provoked the wrath of Drum. We think they display the general lack of sophistication and skill which make our tribe so ineffective as we try to advance our ideas."


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  6. We’re dumb and unpleasant and nobody likes us.

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  7. I read the entire passage you quoted, twice, and I don't see where it says anything like what you said.

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  8. You’re dumb and unpleasant and nobody likes you.

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  9. @11:26 -- Speak for yourself.

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  10. Tomorrow: BOB INFORMS HIS READERS BY QUOTING COMMENTS FROM A BLOG WITH MORE THAN A DOZEN READERS!

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    1. And artfully cherry-picking among them.

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    2. I think there's some place else you'd rather be.

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    3. Nah, it's a great source of amusement to watch Somerby make an ass out of himself and his four or five remaining fans attempt to defend him.

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    4. People can say the same about you, except I don't see any friends defending you.

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    5. Wow. The old "rubber/glue" comeback.

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    6. anon 11:46, I can't tel hw many anons there are who, in spite of detesting the site, read it every day and offer their (his?/hers?) generally obnoxiously stupid snarky observations. I've been driven, foolishly perhaps, to ask why go this route/ I'll give you credit - you explain that you find the site to be a "great source of amusement to watch Somerby make an ass out f himself and his four or five remaining fans attempt to defend himself." On the other hand, you are pathetic.

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    7. Our day is complete. AC/MA has weighed in with his usual "why are you here?' whine.

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  11. Of course, you don't 11:28. Somerby has spoken. And anyone who finds Trump's blatantly racist campaign that includes (but hardly limited to) the use of his term "anchor babies" to be offensive is merely a tribal dummy parroting what corporate shills have said.

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  12. Should read "his use of the term 'anchor babies'".

    Anchor babies is hardly Trump's term, but he is sure blowing that dog whistle loud.

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  13. "Anchor babies" isn't Somerby's term. If you find that term offensive without being able to explain why, it is fair to suggest you may be behaving in a tribal manner. Your response is to say that "anchor babies" reflects Trump's entire bigoted stance on immigration. That is a misuse of language, but that kind of shorthand thinking is legitimately considered "lazy" and "stupid" by people who still believe words mean something. Somerby never asked about Trump's campaign. He asked about that specific term and you are no more responsive than most of Drum's commenters, who I did read. Most of the comments on that blog, on any topic, are off-topic, much like the comments here.

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  14. Right. It's up to me to explain the offensiveness of carving out a segment of U.S. citizens with a derogatory term in order to revoke their citizenship and deport them to the country of their parents birth.

    After all, that's what Trump is proposing.

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  15. Yes, and isn't funny how Somerby throws the rest of Trump's proposed immigration stand down the memory hole and tries to focus on the one tiny part of it Somerby thinks he can defend Trump on.

    And even then, Somerby loses badly.

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  16. Somerby assumes that liberals will find that offensive. Also, it wasn't what Kevin Drum (the topic of Somerby's post, remember?) was asking about. Drum wanted to know why "anchor baby" was offensive. You seem to have transferred his question over to Somerby, who was mostly complaining that the liberals responding at Drum's site didn't know how to explain why THAT SPECIFIC TERM was offensive and, like you, went off on immigration in general. When Trump's statement are so obviously offensive and need no explanation, why should Somerby spend any time at all discussing them.

    Kevin Drum asked the question -- not Somerby. Somerby discusses Drum's commenters and their responses. If you want to get all upset, aim your rancor at Kevin Drum. Somerby has not defended Trump at all. Trump's garbage is so awful we don't need to sit around talking about how awful it is.

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  17. Feel the Bern:

    http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/08/25/bernie-sanders-gets-stamp-of-approval-from-cornel-west/?ref=politics&_r=0

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    1. Have you ever heard Cornel West talk?

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    2. Articulate for a black guy?

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    3. Not articulate for any kind of guy. He is generally unintelligible.

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    4. Don't guess we'll ever run out of examples for the maxim there are none so blind as those who will not see. [LINK]

      Therein, West and Hedges refer to this Richard Hofstadler essay [LINK] which, while dated, is interesting in part because it demonstrates the usefulness of thinking about even the most emotional of subjects in a systematic way- a skill you'd like to see today's liberals and lefties working with but don't.

      (And for any lefties out there, here are West and Hedges again, but with others this time, taking a look back at a giant of our tradition. [LINK].)

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    5. Yikes! That should be Hofstadter. (How did I do that?)

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    6. I will stipulate that he has done good work as a scholar and he gave a good presentation of his book's ideas to Chris Hedges (date unknown). But I've seen him interviewed many times recently where he has been unable to express a coherent thought in an intelligible manner. Sometimes he offers a string of buzzwords in place of sentences.

      It does make sense that someone who thinks individual financial progress is an obstacle to racial fire, prophetic progress, would wind up supporting Bernie. But it reminds me too much of the anecdote about the crabs who pull each other back into the barrel.

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    7. Paul Street writes [LINK]:

      [QUOTE]>>> I am glad that the left intellectual and activist Chris Hedges does not support the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. As Hedges explained in a recent interview on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Sanders’ candidacy lends undeserved credibility to the thoroughly corporatized Democratic Party.

      Sanders has pledged that he will support the corporatist military hawk Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general presidential election. Sanders stirs up legitimate progressive energy and popular anger and then “funnels it back into a dead political system,” Hedges observes. Sanders fails to confront the American Empire and military state, and, Hedges adds, has unforgivably “abandoned the Palestinians and given carte blanche to Israel.”
      <<<[END QUOTE]

      My own rule is that if you're the only Democrat running who unequivocally supports maintaining or expanding the current Social Security benefits schedule and you unequivocally support a universal single payer health insurance plan I'll vote for you in a primary and then in the general election if you make it onto the ballot. Otherwise, in a general election I'll vote for the strongest opponent of any Democratic candidate who can't pass my litmus tests in order to keep that DINO from being elected to office where they will be credentialed as a leader in my party.

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    8. I think you should read Hillary Clinton's biography before deciding that she is a corporatist hawk. First, she has devoted too many years to serving the interests of poor people, especially women and children, to deserve to be called corporatist. Her voting record as a senator is closely similar to Bernie Sanders. Secondly, she is not a hawk in any meaningful sense of the word. I will not rehash her Iraq vote, but I will again point out that ALL of her subsequent votes on the war were identical to Obama's. Beyond that, in 2008, her statements on ending both wars are closing Gitmo were stronger than Obama's and I believe she would have been more successful in accomplishing those goals. Third, she is NOT in favor of today's surveillance state and giving NSA free rein to spy on people, not in favor of use of drones as Obama has used them, not in favor of using war instead of diplomacy as the way to achieve goals. Her diplomatic efforts during her term as Secretary of State, resulted in 4 years of relative peace, especially compared to Kerry's term, which has seen the rise of ISIS and increased tensions in many areas of the world. Her participation in the Clinton Global Initiative is aimed at solving global health and nutrition problems that are at the heart of wars worldwide. They are going to the primary cause and addressing that with their efforts. If none of this impresses you, I suggest that you are defining corporatist and hawk in odd ways that do not match the realities on the ground and need to read a bit more about why the world is the way it is.

      Clinton does take money from Wall Street and many others, just as their Foundation takes money from pretty much anyone who offers it. I have never seen any evidence that any of that money has ever influenced a decision or brokered power. These are not corrupt people. They are pragmatic, persuasive people who have convinced others to follow their lead in fixing world problems. If you cannot recognize that, it goes a long way toward explaining your current fascination with Sanders -- who is a local guy with small achievements masquerading in big talk that is pleasing to naïve and hopeful idealists. Sanders is as old as Clinton. Why does he have so much less to show for his life? Why would anyone think he is a better choice to lead this country?

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    9. In contrast, Biden's acceptance of money from people like MBNA resulted in passage of the anti-bankruptcy bill that made it much harder for poor people to dissolve their debts via bankruptcy, something that greatly benefitted the banks and finance companies. Yay Biden!

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  18. Proof We Are In HellAugust 25, 2015 at 12:27 PM

    "Somerby thinks he can defend Trump"

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  19. But Somerby saw the opportunity to limit the discussion of Trump's proposed immigration policy to that one term, and he jumped on it.

    Now I apparently have a higher opinion of Somerby than you do. I think he is fully capable of controlling what he writes about and why.

    You seem to think he is obliged to follow the lead of Uncle Drum.

    To me, they are both a couple of over-privileged white baby boomers who love to lecture others on what they should and should not be offended by.

    Hence, their question, "Why is 'anchor babies' so offensive?" wouldn't need to be asked -- and especially isolated from the context of Trump seeking the end to birthright citizenship.

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  20. No, Somerby didn't limit the question -- Kevin Drum did. Somerby has been discussing the various commenters at Drum's website and he has been discussing Salon.com. Somerby has not been defending Trump or saying that any of the Republicans nativist policies are not offensive. He is saying that when someone finds something offensive they should be able to say why, coherently. He is observing that Drum's commenters don't seem to be able to explain why the term is offensive.

    Most of the Republicans are seeking to end birthright citizenship, and this is not a new issue -- it didn't start with Trump. They have been proposing this for a long time. It has been off liberal radar until Trump said stupid things about Hispanic immigrants. Trump is offensive. He says very offensive things. No one is defending him.

    Calling Somerby (or Drum) a derogatory name (over-privileged white baby boomer) doesn't help anything. I find that kind of name-calling offensive and gratuitous. If you cannot deal with the substance of what Somerby says, please find some other blog to spew your hate.

    I think it is worth asking whether it might be better to challenge the term "anchor baby" on the grounds that the situation it describes is so infrequent as to be imaginary (like individual voter fraud), instead of saying the term is offensive and giving the Republicans a chance to claim they are being attacked by the PC police.

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  21. Next on Drum: "Why is 'bastard' such an offensive term for babies born outside of wedlock?"

    Followed by: "Someone explain to me why "retard" is offensive when describing a person with Down syndrome."

    Just two more examples of PC gone wild.



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  22. I submit that you would be offended by *any* words Trump used to describe the situation Trump is talking about. Bob is simply asking why liberals feel obliged to be offended by the particular language that is used, rather than the policies of the speaker. Why waste your time shouting about the language?

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  23. I submit that your mind-reading abilities are way off.

    I am deeply offended by Trump's racist immigration policies as he tries to describe a situation that exists only in his mind.

    And I am further offended by people following Trump's lead who try to turn this into a debate over "political correctness" of the use of a single offensive term.

    And I am quite saddened to see both Jeb Bush and Kevin Drum take the bait, but not so surprised that Somerby would rush to the defense of yet another right-winger by pretending that this is a debate about one phrase, while feigning ignorance of why that phrase could ever be considered to be offensive.

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  24. Of course, Jeb has backed off, saying he meant Asians and not Mexicans when he said, "anchor babies."

    That makes it all better.

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  25. Here's a newsflash for both Drum and his boy, Bob.

    Ever since Al Gore took the initiative, internet comboxes have always been an ungodly mess. Sure, you get some thoughtful, well-reasoned and well-written commentary out there, but given the safety and anonymity of the internet, you also attract a lot of yahoos.

    And I would challenge both of them to identify the combox that isn't tightly moderated and regulated 24/7 that doesn't stray off-topic, or doesn't contain a heck of a lot of inane blathering.

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    1. How do we get 24/7 moderation? I vote for that!

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    2. Be careful what you wish for. Yes, it would be nice to read nothing but opinions we already agree with, but this blog is on life support now. Bob doesn't need new ways to drive people off.

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    3. I don't have to read things I agree with. It would be nice to get rid of the comments that have nothing to do with the posts and the ones that are just here to call Somerby names (in various ways that are never as clever as the trolls think they are).

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    4. Yes, we all know how everybody is forced to read everything in every combox.

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  26. Somerby didn't race to anyone's defense. He pointed out that not many people in Drum's commentary could explain why the term was offensive. I also don't consider Kevin Drum to be a right-winger -- middle of the road liberal. Somerby didn't feign ignorance about why the phrase would be considered offensive. He expressed dismay that commenters couldn't seem to explain why they found the word offensive.

    Somerby has long argued that we need to be effective in explaining our positions if we are to win others to our point of view. That includes being able to explain why terms like "anchor baby" are offensive without getting rabid about the fact that the question was asked.

    No one has said that Jeb isn't a tool either.

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  27. On the contrary, if you took the time to read Drum's comboxes (both of them), you'll find that quite a few people expressed themselves quite eloquently about why the term "anchor babies" is offensive, and Drum even acknowledges that.

    Then Drum chose to go off on the off-topic flame wars that seem to crop up in every active combox, and Somerby uses that as the excuse to say that none of them adequately explained why the term is offensive.

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  28. He said the few who did explain, contradicted each other. For myself, I don't think that people who express different reasons are necessarily contradictory. I see them as emphasizing different aspects of the situation, having different understandings of it.

    I don't agree with Somerby about this. I think it is OK to find that term offensive, for whatever reason one wants, without claiming everyone is just following the leader and not thinking. I do agree that calling people names for using the term is a flawed strategy. We should instead be attacking the ideas directly. For one thing, there is no evidence so-called anchor babies are being born in any great numbers sufficient to justify a change in the constitution. Conservatives are whipping up public concern over a situation that doesn't exist. We need to point that out, not call everyone a bunch of names (racist, bigot) for using a particular term. It is the idea of anchor babies that is wrong, just as it is the idea that immigrants are criminals or rapists that is wrong. Call people out on that!

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  29. Here's the most disturbing thing I found in Drum's second post. I will paraphrase and concede to those who think I have misread:

    "IF [my emphasis] it describes a problem that doesn't exist, then it is racist and offensive. But IF it describes a problem that does exist, then it's a perfectly acceptable term."

    If?

    Well, Uncle Drum, how about doing some good old-fashioned homework and finding out if there really is an issue here, then informing your readers.

    While you are at it, you might look up immigration law as it now stands and find out how well that U.S.-born baby is "anchoring" his/her undocumented parents.

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  30. Let us step back: Who even cares if "anchor baby" is a "slur"? What is the significance? Well, realize, like a lot of words these people use, there is the plain dictionary definition of "slur" and the ideological meaning of "slur" which is something much more. So for example, "xeno(-phobic/-phobe)" is a slur by the dictionary by not by our ruling ideology. Now, once a term has been pretextually assigned slur-quality, the ruling ideologues can press the button to start yet another PC word-police action. The media, academia, and corporations all come together to yell SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! All politicians of every party bow down and promise never to use the word, and if they did in the past they make a tearful apology and beg forgiveness. Whew! Nipped that in the bud! Except Trump said, "No, I'll keep using 'anchor baby'." and here they are in the aftermath blathering about Mexicans not meeting some ultra-strict definition of the term so RACIST but the jig is up.

    And so the answer to "Who cares if "anchor baby" is a "slur"?" will become, in the post-Trump world: no one.

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    Replies
    1. Well, this is the problem here. Trump (and now Jeb Bush) have managed to turn the debate over immigration policy into yet another PC debate that plays right into Trump's hand.

      "By golly, I going to speak the truth no matter who it offends, and if you don't like it, you can stick your "political correctness' where the sun don't shine."

      So here we are, called to explain why we find "anchor baby" offensive, rather than calling Trump out on labeling Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers, and demanding him to explain how he is going to build a foolproof 2,000-mile wall, while he is in the process of rounding up and deporting 11 million people, including U.S. citizens for whom he has magically erased their birthright cititzenship.

      And the silliness has reached such a point that instead of calling out the media to have a real debate about immigration policy, and to dig out the facts that might help us frame that debate, we instead have Drum asking "What's so offensive about 'anchor babies'?" and Somerby taking it even one step further: "For ourselves, we don’t have a giant opinion concerning that question—and no, we don’t sign on to some proposition just because our corporate-paid, millionaire tribal leaders tell us that we should."

      And no discussion whatsoever about Trump's wall, his plan to deport millions, and his plan to nullify the 14th Amendement by his fiat, outside the process set in the Constitution.

      Delete
    2. You think Trump's silliness should be dignified by taking it seriously? I don't think that's the best approach. He should be treated like a kook.

      Delete
    3. Trump didn't make this about PC, the ruling ideologues did. And their weaksauce attempt at word-policing would have worked on anyone except Trump. Habe! is an open-borders extremist who originally tried to word-police fellow republicans on "anchor babies" before deciding now it was OK, but only for Chinese babies.

      There won't ever be a real debate about immigration policy. There wasn't a debate when the Mexican government, the US government and corporate interests colluded to allow 40 million of Mexicans into the US. The mexification of America was an illegal and ugly process, and the demexification of America will be an ugly and illegal process. But Trump can and will do it, because this is the post-Trump age of collapsing narratives. Get used to it.

      Delete
    4. I think Trump's racism should be taken seriously, especially as he is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

      Has history taught us nothing?

      Delete
    5. @5:05 -- you do realize that the American Southwest was part of Mexico throughout much of our history, don't you? Many of those considered Mexican-American or Hispanic have Hispanic ancestors in America going back 500 years. People have been coming and going across the recent U.S.-Mexico border ever since it was established. Those same people have been essential to our economy for just as long. The so-called Mexification (an ugly term) could more properly be considered an Amerification (after the mid-1800's), and you're right, there was a great deal that was illegal and ugly in the taking of the Southwest from Spain and then Mexico (including land grabs, lynching and mistreatment of Hispanic ranchers and farmers). Speaking of demexification is not only ignorant, but impossible given our intertwined heritages. Trump is silly and is playing a major race card to even suggest it. In the meantime, should you visit LA, Phoenix, Las Cruces, or any large Texas town, people there will be happy to help you learn to pronounce the street names. If you are seriously unhappy about this situation, I suggest moving to Idaho.

      Delete
    6. It's unfortuante that so much of the political discourse has devolved into zeroing in on gaffes, and comments that are deemed racist, or otherwise offensive instead of actual issues. Personally, I think any controversy over the term "anchor baby" is manufactured and trivial. One example out of many - if the republicans take control of the white House and both houses of congress, they would abolish the estate tax, costing hundreds of billions in revenue, and transferring those billions into the pockets of the very richest, who are already are gobbling up more and more wealth and power. It's totally ignored by the media. (the only defense to this happening would be a Senate filibuster by democrats).

      Delete
  31. Are liberals "evolving" towards an "open borders" immigration policy?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's a huge territory between open borders and ship everyone back.

      Delete
  32. Just a quick thought: part of any definition is the intended use of the word. Bush and Trump both used "anchor babies" in a pejorative way and meant the words as an insult. Why don't we call these children what the Constitution calls them: citizens.

    ReplyDelete
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