Emba, Loofbourow get it right!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2019

No pointless event left behind:
For our money, Christine Emba does a decent job with a certain recent random event in today's Washington Post.

Emba plays the Rashomon card as she discusses the recent interactions between the MAGA hat-wearing high school kids, the group of slur-slinging obvious crackpots and the Native American elder with the drum who, as the novelized matter turned out, isn't a Vietnam vet.

Because they tend to be simple-minded and tribal, our journalistic elites had big fun with this peculiar random event. We think Emba basically gets it right as she ends today's column:
EMBA (1/25/19): By the end of Kurosawa’s film, only two things are certain: A samurai is dead, and truth can be elusive. The same is true of the moment on the Mall: An ugly confrontation occurred, and for all our camera angles and polarizing debate, it will be impossible to truly know who, exactly, was most at fault.

Our time would be better spent turning the lens on ourselves.
For ourselves, we wouldn't call that peculiar random event an ugly event. It seems to us that the impulse to do so is part of the overwrought novelization which has come to dominate the way we now routinely hijack our failing American discourse.

We'd also advise against instantly trying to determine which people are "most at fault," especially if the people in question are a bunch of teenagers. Maddow wants everyone thrown in jail. It isn't an admirable instinct.

That said, in the end, Emba gets it right! The next time an unusual event like this occurs, our time would be well spent trying to figure out why we rush to build novelized narratives in which Our Own Tribe turns out to be morally good and flawless, with The Other Tribe evil and bad.

The impulse is everywhere at this point. It's also deeply childish.

Over Here, in our own liberal world, we've been playing this game for years now. We manufacture morality tales in which we've almost always invented a bogus fact; disappeared a relevant fact; or emphasized a fact which is totally irrelevant to the matter at hand. In these ways, we improve the story, in which Our Side is flawless.

This tribal impulse, which dates to prehistory, is presumably bred in the bone. Liker many instincts bred in the bone, it's also destructive and stupid. Over at Slate, we think Lili Loofbourow pretty much gets it right:
LOOFBOUROW (1/24/19): This is just the latest instance of a phenomenon you could call “event politics”—that familiar flurry of knee-jerk responses sparked by a single image or clip that a little too perfectly illustrates one side’s worldview. There was the notorious Melania jacket that launched a feverish outrage cycle as soon as she appeared in it. There was the photograph of the little girl crying at the border that went viral and ended up on the cover of Time because it put a face and a feeling to the cruelty of Trump’s family separations. The problem: She herself wasn’t separated from her mother.

[...]

This is motivated reasoning, the kind everyone uses when an image that seemingly proved something—whether it’s that antifa is a danger to society or that Kavanaugh-lite teens are entitled and racist—collapses into irresolution. To the people circulating it, that the image doesn’t portray exactly what they thought it did matters little. They knew the truth it demonstrated before and still know it after the image is debunked.
We could suggest better examples than the ones Loofbourow presents in that passage. That said, she's willing to complain about "motivated reasoning" (in the form of dimwitted novelization} by players from various political tribes, including her own.

In this passage, she comes back to the most recent event, and she floats a sagacious one-word critique:
LOOFBOUROW: This is where event politics always seem to wind up: A ton of energy gets spent, but there’s no cognitively satisfying conclusion—no understanding, resolution, or shared meaning that helps the country progress in its conversations with itself. “It’s a jacket” might be the White House equivalent of the “it’s just a hat” defense of the Covington Catholic teens’ MAGA caps. It’s not true, and everyone knows it, but it seems dumb to overlegislate such petty terrain.
In our view, Loofbourow tends to overthink a bit, but something she floats in that passage is right. It's dumb to beat up on a bunch of high school kids because thy're wearing MAGA hats. And yes, it's tremendously petty terrain—the only kind the tribal mind wants to stampede upon.

Dumb and petty is what we do. Increasingly, it's what we are. This is the tribal mind in action, and as Aristotle forgot to say, "Man [sic] is the tribal animal."

Professor Harari explores that terrain in the early chapters of his widely-praised best-seller, Sapiens. When the new year finally starts at this site, we'll be reviewing Harari's presentation.

According to Harari, our species runs on "gossip" and "fiction." Such conduct tends to be petty and dumb, but dear lord, how good it can feel!

Also this, of course:

In the age of "cable news" and the Net, petty and dumb are big business. People are selling you petty and dumb. It's up to you to just say no—to resist, to step back, to move on.

56 comments:

  1. "Our time would be better spent turning the lens on ourselves."

    Why? I wasn't there and if I were there, I wouldn't have done what people in any of those groups did.

    Somerby argues that we shouldn't beat up on kids for wearing MAGA hats. He again minimizes what those kids did. They not only wore hats but they climbed on a bus in order to visit the mall in order to express their support for forced birth. When they arrived, they engaged in obnoxious behavior that was just as ugly as the slurs and provocation issued by the Hebrew Israelite members and they loudly mocked the Native American man who was engaging in a traditional song, refusing to give ground as he tried to advance down the mall. None of that behavior requires interpretation of any sort. It was obvious and those young men are responsible for engaging in it. Further, their parents had to have known they got on that bus for that purpose, so they condoned what they did and let them out of the house wearing those hats. So, I see no basis for dismissing anything they did on the grounds of youth.

    Do they have the right to express themselves? Of course they do. And they have the right to experience the backlash when they express themselves, because other people have the right to express their views too.

    Somerby would like to suppress liberal criticism of these sorts of conservative demonstrations. Somerby ignores the rising number of young white men who are adopting the MAGA hat as a symbol of white supremacy. Somerby looks away as the alt-right organizes online and recruits these young people to its cause. Somerby doesn't care about the targeting of minorities by these young men and he especially doesn't care that the anti-abortion cause they were demonstrating for is yet another attack on women's reproductive rights, their autonomy over their own bodies and their assertion of the right to make their own decisions and not have them be made by the government, especially a government of old white men. And here come the young white men to defend the right of men to control women. But Somerby doesn't care about that issue either. He never raises the question of why those boys were even there in the first place.

    I am happy to just say no, as Somerby suggests, but my "no" is to Somerby's suggestion that we ignore the alt-right, ignore wayward youth, ignore the ugliness of entitlement when it plays out in public spaces, and just let young white men do what they want, including showing disrespect to adults engaged in their own demonstrations.

    When did Somerby forget what democracy is about? When did he decide that practicing democracy is dumb or petty? It is time to resist what Somerby is selling -- because it benefits the wrong people and does nothing to preserve the things we care about (and he apparently does not).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Apparently to you, democracy is NOT about

      going to a protest for an issue that you disagree with.
      wearing a hat to promote a candidate that you do not like

      Also, to you, entitlement means that somebody fails to move out of somebody else's way.

      The guy who expects other people to move for him does not have a sense of entitlement?

      Seems to me that the Covington kids were practicing democracy, and a lot of their detractors are trying to stir up three minutes of hate.

      Delete
    2. And Somerby keeps stirring the pot...

      Delete
    3. Dr T, I specifically said they have the right to demonstrate. No one civil stands in front of someone moving down a walkway and grins. It was a dick move. Kids who treat adults with disrespect are displaying entitlement because most kids from lower SES are taught explicitly and expected to respect elders.

      Delete
    4. Sandmann wasn't blocking Phillips.

      Phillips lied. He said that he was trying to go up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, when the kids swarmed him and Sandmann wouldn't let him pass. He said that they chanted about building the wall.

      The longer video showed Phillips maneuvering through the crowd into the center of the Catholic school students. He has clear access to the stars of the Lincoln Memorial.

      Instead of climbing the stairs, Phillips stands directly in front of Sandmann while banging his drum and chanting. No chants about the wall are audible on the video.

      When asked by media about this decrepancy, Phillips changed his story and said that we went into the middle of the students because they were threatening the Black Hebrew Israel nuts and he was trying to effect peace.

      The video belies that entirely. BHL crudely insulted the kids for over an hour. The students resorted to drowning them via school spirit chants.

      Later, Phillips and his fellow protesters tried to disrupt evening Mass with chants and drumming by entering the DC Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

      They were kept out and had to settle for denouncing the Catholic Church from the sidewalk.

      Delete
    5. You make this sound like Phillips and his group harassed the Catholic boys for no reason. You have to ask why the Indian group went to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to demonstrate, if the Catholic boys did nothing wrong. For example, if the Indians regularly disrupted Catholic services, you might have a point, but their visit to that Shrine after encountering the boys suggests the Indians were upset with them. Why would they be upset if the boys did nothing to block their way?

      You suggested narrative doesn't make sense.

      It also makes no sense that these boys would chant "school spirit chants" in response to the black Hebrew insults. I can see them trying to drown out the insults, but "school spirit"? That doesn't sound like high school boys at all. If they were there to demonstrate, why not use the chants that represented their point of view on abortion? They weren't there to represent their school, and they weren't at a sporting event. I find it entirely plausible that they would have used chants related to their political views, which were expressed visibly as MAGA and Trump supporting. Now Trump people want to distance themselves from the event, but I don't believe the boys just innocently chanted school spirit chants. And I saw them do the Tomahawk gesture toward Phillips while Sandmann was standing there smiling (or smirking) at him in his childish power pose (hands on hips).

      Notice how no one is blaming the black men who instigated this by taunting the kids. Why is that? Maybe the kids were afraid to engage them and displaced their aggression onto the Indian man, who was obviously peaceful and not going to fight back. That isn't particularly admirable behavior.

      I agree with those who have suggested that the adults were MIA and should have defused this by pointing out the difference between demonstrating and hooliganism. Demonstrations are not opportunities to engage in bad behavior, as these young men didn't learn before their field trip. The examples set for them in Charlottesville were unfortunate. Now, instead of using this as a teachable moment, the adults seem to be encouraging them by blaming others, instead of encouraging them to take responsibility for their actions. That is bad for the kids involved.

      The Indians have the right to denounce the church, since they seemed to be the sponsors of the anti-abortion demonstration that these kids attended, and they didn't control their mob.

      Delete
    6. I didn't offer up a narrative. However, you have come up with one.

      Your narrative is that Phillips would put himself into the middle of this group of Catholic kids and then based upon that exchange, come that evening into a Catholic Church during evening Mass to denounce the history of the church.

      And this based upon that one exchange with a group of kids. In an exchange he pejoratively mischaracterized to the media later and had to revise when confronted with new evidence.

      Alright.

      Phillips is not a vet as he has claimed before. His name (he's used two different last names) is not on the Omaha Tribe's list of Elders.

      It's clear you have not watched the video. The students did do school spirit chants. There's no evidence that they chanted about a wall.

      These Catholic kids are teenagers. No one thinks high schoolers are angels. None of us are.

      They also aren't grifters. That designation belongs to Nathan Phillips.

      https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must-learn-covington-catholic-story/581035/

      Delete
    7. Cecelia, You are just full of right wing disinformation.

      1. Phillips was a veteran but not a Vietnam vet as the media (not him) originally claimed and later corrected. He was a marine.

      2. Phillips was trying to go to the Lincoln Memorial. The kids were in the way. Regardless of whether he "sought them out" or not, they were clearly mocking him, especially the boy who stood right in front of him smiling (to express what?).

      3. Regardless of the kids' intentions, the Indians were upset by what they did. That is why they went to the church later -- not the desire to "denounce the history of the church" as you put it. And that is definitely not MY narrative. I don't believe they would have been motivated to go to the church that evening if they hadn't felt mocked by the kids.

      3. I have watched several videos. I didn't say they chanted about a wall. I said that it made no sense for them to chant "school spirit" chants. I said I witnessed them using tomahawk throwing motions at the Indians. I also said that there was no reason for them to be doing school spirit chants at a demonstration and that they were being political, since they were there for a political cause and were wearing MAGA hats. Who cares if they chanted about the wall?

      4. I didn't say anyone was a grifter. You have, though. I said their parents aren't raising them very well. I think the Black Hebrew Israelites and Phillips both have a screw loose, but so do the folks who organized this activity for those boys. Normal people don't get on a bus and use their time to mock those who have loose screws. Even someone like Phillips deserve respect from younger people, especially since he wasn't yelling insults, the way the Black Hebrew group was. Those boys turned from the scarier assailant in order to mock a harmless old man and that is cowardly, at best.

      And you defend them! This is bad behavior. You should know better.

      Delete
    8. 1. Here a video of Phillips expressly stating to be a Vietnam Vet.
      https://www.google.com/amp/s/taskandpurpose.com/nathan-phillips-vietnam-2626902566.amp.html

      2. Interesting to see you go with Phillips’ first version that he was mobbed while seeking to go up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial and was aggressively and intentionally blocked, rather than his revised one that he had waded into the group of boys on a peacekeeping mission of trying to descalate them.

      Suit yourself, but the first version is disputed by the video. Maybe you can email Phillips and let him know he’s wrong.

      3. Alright.

      3. (Following your numbering) You know who cares about the wall chant? Nathan Phillips. It was he who informed the media of it. In all the videos that have surfaced, no one can hear the chant, but Phillips understood that since it would have been chanted in the context of the boys implying that they wanted a fellow American behind a wall, it would be attributed to white supremacy.

      Again, feel free to let Phillips know that he shouldn't have been worried about wall chants.

      Since you say you watched the long video, you don't have to believe your lying ears that the boys were doing school spirit cheers to drown out BHI, but that was widely heard by journalists who have reported it.

      4. Phillips was a stranger wading into a group of high school boys. They didn’t know what he wanted just that he was chanting, dancing and drumming and they danced and chanted with him and clowned. One of them made the tomahawk chop seen at baseball games.

      The boys had suffered the insults of Black Israel for over an hour and at one point some of their group even tried to engage them in a friendly exchange and only booed loudly when the men started talking about lesbians and "faggots".

      Phillips reported a story to the media that literally upended the lives of these boys. That has garnered them death threats, doxing on the internet, a school bomb threat, and media/celebrity twitter frenzy that designated them as racists. It had one Disney honcho tweeting for them to be put into a wood-chipper, and several journos tweeting their desire to see them punched. They were the fodder of lofty talking heads blithely calling they and their school bulwarks of white privilege and racism.

      You be disappointed in the behavior of the boys for me. You tsk-tsk them. They paid a hell of a price for their teenage clowning as meted about by Phillips’s lie, celebrities, and prominent tv and print journos who wished to destroy them. Adults, every one of them.

      Get some sense of proportion here, and some perspective.

      Delete
    9. Bullies always say they were just clowning around, just having fun, it was all just a joke. Everyone, including the target (e.g. Phillips) needs to think its fun. Not just the white boys doing the school chants. But you know that. This is a political argument for you.

      Delete
    10. When you're suggesting someone else is arguing on a purely political basis, best not to make an issue of pointing out the race of those you're saying behaved badly.

      I've argued that the teenagers have paid an extraordinary price for their thoughtless antics. The adultts; they were far worse.



      Delete
    11. The "Vietnam vet" shit is weird. Is it supposed to be an appeal for sympathy?

      Participating (willingly or not) in a colonial genocidal enterprise, it certainly isn't something to be proud of.

      But I guess for those in the lib-zombie death cult, it is...

      Delete
    12. Time to say No to your unwholesome mercury-sniffing habit, dembot.

      Delete
    13. "I've argued that the teenagers have paid an extraordinary price for their thoughtless antics."

      What price? That little shit will be a GOP Senator in 10 years, if that.

      Delete



    14. No matter how old you are, family history is important. While you might not think so at the time, as you get older there will be things you and your grandchildren will want to know. Most of us don't realize it until the older generations are gone and you can't replace first hand comments. Don't just put in about the good times, add in the harder times and how you overcame those trials. Another thing to remember is what caused the deaths of those you loved. There are many things that have been found to continue into future generations that knowing it runs in the family can be helped with now or possible in the future. prevention starts with knowing where to start. I wish someone had taken the time to write these things down for mew to be able to go back to. My Grandmother and my mother told us many stories of what things happened in their lives and about the people in their lives. I now wish someone had written those things down since both have passed now. But I never thought at that busy point in my life that I would one day want to remember all those things. So much family history is lost when the older generations are gone. Please pass it on to your family while you can. You can even just do it digitally so it can be accessed by family later on.Family pictures are something to cherish also. Just be sure to write down who is pictured in them, where they are taken and when. I have found family pictures that no one now even knows who is in them.

      AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
      or
      call/whatsapp:+2349057261346




      No matter how old you are, family history is important. While you might not think so at the time, as you get older there will be things you and your grandchildren will want to know. Most of us don't realize it until the older generations are gone and you can't replace first hand comments. Don't just put in about the good times, add in the harder times and how you overcame those trials. Another thing to remember is what caused the deaths of those you loved. There are many things that have been found to continue into future generations that knowing it runs in the family can be helped with now or possible in the future. prevention starts with knowing where to start. I wish someone had taken the time to write these things down for mew to be able to go back to. My Grandmother and my mother told us many stories of what things happened in their lives and about the people in their lives. I now wish someone had written those things down since both have passed now. But I never thought at that busy point in my life that I would one day want to remember all those things. So much family history is lost when the older generations are gone. Please pass it on to your family while you can. You can even just do it digitally so it can be accessed by family later on.Family pictures are something to cherish also. Just be sure to write down who is pictured in them, where they are taken and when. I have found family pictures that no one now even knows who is in them.

      AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
      or
      call/whatsapp:+2349057261346

      Delete
  2. "Dumb and petty is what we do. Increasingly, it's what we are."

    With all due respect, you are zombies, Bob. Zombies.

    People wearing MAGA hats are 'deplorables', aka live human beings of the working class.

    Zombies hate live human beings, especially of the working class.

    End of story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The deplorables need to step-up and die from mercury poisoning thanks to Trump's EPA. Then, and only then, will they have made the proper sacrifice for the greatest country in the history of mankind.

      Delete
    2. I thought zombies liked live human beings, at least from the dietary perspective? I am confused now.

      Delete
    3. Of course you are; I'm glad we agree on something.

      Anyhow: yeah, they like to eat them, their brains. To kill them, to eat their brains, to turn them into zombies. I'm sure you're familiar with the story...

      Delete
    4. At 1:25 PM: so, was it mercury that made you what you are, dembot?

      Delete
    5. Bombshell! The Walls Are Closing In! Tipping Point! This Is The Beginning Of The End! Trump is finished!!

      Delete
    6. 3:50,
      Nah. Not until the establishment elites he works for says he's finished.

      Delete
  3. "According to Harari, our species runs on "gossip" and "fiction." Such conduct tends to be petty and dumb, but dear lord, how good it can feel!"

    Harari doesn't say that such conduct is petty or dumb. He says it provided our species with advantages that permitted it to win out over competing species. Harari doesn't equate gossip with negative behavior. He considers it to be the sharing of information important to survival. Harari doesn't equate narrative fictions with our own movies and novels either. He equates it with creating stories about important events that can be shared to generate cohesiveness within a group and to explain facts of existence. Explanatory theories and religious beliefs fall under that term, not today's TV shows or fake news. Creation myths served important functions that today's entertainment does not.

    When Somerby says it "feels good" to engage in gossip or story-telling, he refers to the Catholic church's ban again spreading hurtful falsehoods about others, to the assumed motives of shadenfreude or outright social sabotage of rivals. None of that is encompassed by Harari's use of the term gossip. It does feel better to exert control over life's uncertainties by building theories about how and why things happen. But that isn't what Somerby means either. Somerby makes a normal human function into something wicked by assuming Catholic restrictions on telling tales about others, as if any human society could exist without such sharing. The evil is in Somerby's mind, his interpretation. He apparently never took a social science course at Harvard, so he doesn't understand how anthropologists and sociologists use their terms and he apparently is totally unaware of the distortions he introduces here by imposing his Catholic attitudes on other people's writing.

    Somerby needs to read more and post less. If he took a year off and devoted it to reading about human behavior, he might come back with something to say. As it stands, he has become a shill for conservative views, promoting Trump and his minions, looking steadfastly away from important issues every day, and making a huge ass of himself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Harari's thesis seems to be a regurgitation of Dawkins' memetics.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    3. “When Somerby says it ‘feels good’ to engage in gossip or story-telling, he refers to the Catholic church's ban again spreading hurtful falsehoods about others, to the assumed motives of shadenfreude or outright social sabotage of rivals.”

      I disagree to the extent that you make any sense at all. But then, you’re mind-reader, and mind-readers tend to be disagreeable.

      I think it’s most likely that Somerby used the terms that Harari uses, in this instance, as terms used in the current vernacular, which of course do have negative connotations. But that’s because gossip has gone beyond being just an evolutionary advantage to the species, although it still is. All groups must communicate, and some of it may be “gossipy,” but hell, we love gossip! Proof enough that it’s a part of our evolutionary heritage.

      Gossip, besides being a group advantage, has come also to confer relative advantage within society, and I’m sure it always has, from our very beginnings as a species. But gossip can be bogus. The relative advantage, as far as gossip and storytelling of course, goes to those who make profit from it, monetary or otherwise. The millionaire pundits, and the bastards who write their checks, have relative advantage locked up. This latest ‘viral’ occurrence being a case in point, as they distract us from more pressing matters.

      They seem to have come close to mastering Bernay’s initial understanding of the means to mind control. Certainly in the case Somerby examines here, our tribalism has become inflamed. Distract, divide and conquer. That’s how the MSM works, and it’s no accident.


      “Somerby makes a normal human function into something wicked by assuming Catholic restrictions on telling tales about others.” Is telling lies about someone else a “normal human function? “By normative standards, do you really believe that? Do you have to be a Catholic to believe it?

      I suggest that you TAFFAARD.

      Leroy

      Delete
    4. Goodness gracious, I can’t even finish a rant properly. I meant to write, “By normative standards, do you have to be a Catholic to not believe that?”

      But I did get the acronym right…

      Leroy

      Delete
    5. And hell, I'll throw this in

      https://harpers.org/archive/2014/09/on-free-will/

      Leroy

      Delete
    6. Leroy, put the words gossip and Catholic and sin into google. If you are unaware of Somerby's Catholic hangups, you haven't been reading this blog, just farting in the comments. Your most annoying trait is that you admit to not understanding, then blather on. Other people ask questions when they don't get it.

      Delete
  4. It is silly beating up on HS students. Teenagers behaving badly is not exactly 'man bites dog' news. Having said that, here're a few other observations:
    1) If this was a school trip, they should not have been wearing MAGA hats.
    2) Where were their chaperons?

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, and I think the other big issue was the way the media was played later on. The kids were clearly culpable of bad behavior -- not blameless -- but I wouldn't beat up on them. The media counterreaction though was scary. I think that's where much of the criticism was going.

      Delete
    2. @anon 1:44pm
      I might agree with you, except that I haven’t seen enough of the media reaction to really judge how “the media” reacted. What “media” are you talking about exactly? What was Fox News reaction, for example? Or other right wing sources? From what I saw, they had a spin on this as well that some might conceivably call scary.

      Delete
  5. “In these ways, we improve the story, in which Our Side is flawless.”

    Somerby has been on this road for at least the past 10 years. This is a straw man argument. Any “Side” believes its ideas and attitudes are better than the other side. That’s the nature of politics. It in no way implies that “Our Side is flawless.”

    Also, Somerby has not looked at the totality of coverage and/or “liberal reaction” surrounding this incident, so he is willing to believe his own Script, which is that “liberals” all reacted the same way, rushing to tribally pleasing judgment.

    As far as the media is concerned vis-a-vis Phillips’ military service, his initial statement was somewhat unclear, and the news media issued corrections to their original reporting.

    ReplyDelete
  6. “The next time an unusual event like this occurs, our time would be well spent trying to figure out why we rush to build novelized narratives”

    Who is “we?” This incident *somehow* made it into the news media. How exactly? That is an important question. Is it the *news media* rushing to build “novelized narratives?” If so, that should be the focus. “Liberals” reacted in many different ways. But then, so did “conservatives.” There is at least the possibility that behind-the-scenes forces pushed this story into public view and manipulated it to gain a reaction. Wouldn’t that be at least an equally important fact that would be worth the time to look into? Average people on both sides of the political spectrum are going to react a certain way. That isn’t news.

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  7. This is big news. These two articles he mentioned represent an understanding, bubbling to the top in mainstream media, of the tribalism and over interpretive zeal accorded to relatively unimportant stories at the expense of more important stories.

    Bravo! The Times (and Post), they may be a changin'.

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  8. “we rush to build novelized narratives”

    Somerby didn’t provide any examples of this in connection with this incident. The two media reactions he did quote, from Slate and the Washington Post, do *not* illustrate the building of novelized tales. In fact, they tend to *disprove* his assertion.

    So, it seems the reader is left to provide his or her own examples of “media” reaction that “proves” Somerby’s thesis.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "the two media reactions he did quote, from Slate and the Washington Post, do *not* illustrate the building of novelized tales."

      Isn't that his point? Isn't that why he has pointed them out to us here?

      If you can't think of any examples of novelized media narratives (Really? You can't think of any examples?) but if you can't think of any examples, perhaps you could turn to the one that the two writers wrote about. As a start.

      Delete
    2. He has pointed these two out in a post telling us that there has been a novelized tale being developed in the media. These two media op-Eds do not illustrate his main complaint.

      Second, the op-Eds are talking about generalities, without mentioning specific accounts that illustrate either their thesis or Somerby’s thesis.

      Finally, it isn’t my job as a reader to supply examples to support the blogger’s thesis. That would be his job. I have no idea what media he has viewed.

      Delete
    3. I appreciate your response - have a good weekend.

      Delete
  9. “And yes, it's tremendously petty terrain—the only kind the tribal mind wants to stampede upon”

    Consider this:
    The North was a tribe. So was the South. The abolitionists were a tribe, as were the pro-slavery forces.

    Supporters of civil rights, led by MLK, were a tribe. As were opponents of civil rights.

    The forces of “democracy” were a tribe, as were the forces of “fascism.”

    All of these represent what Harari called “fictions:” North, South, abolition, slavery, civil rights, democracy, fascism.

    Does Somerby really want to condemn tribalism and fictions?

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  10. I can’t seem to find this rush to judgment from the mainstream media about the Sandmann incident. I see where there have been *accusations* of a rush to judgment from right leaning sources and concerned liberal/mainstream sources.

    I find nothing from Maddow on this.

    There was this however, about how the original video went viral:

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-suspends-mysterious-account-that-helped-spread-covington-catholic-video

    ReplyDelete
  11. Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike to End as Deal Is Reached
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/la-teacher-strike-deal.html

    By Jennifer Medina and Dana Goldstein

    Nurse in every school five days a week - The district will hire 300 new nurses

    Eliminated contract section 1.5, which allows the district to remove class size limits

    500: 1 ratio of students to counselors (used to be 900:1)

    District will hire 80 more teacher librarians

    6% raise

    30 schools to become community schools

    50% reduction in standardized testing

    Duty free lunch for early educators

    ReplyDelete
  12. "The wealthy already have class solidarity."

    ReplyDelete
  13. The Rude Pundit gets its right: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2019/01/random-observations-on-some-racist.html

    ReplyDelete
  14. Why do we have Cecelia, Leroy and Waylon here trolling and interrupting liberal discussion on liberal topics? Why doesn't Somerby moderate his blog?

    For example, Leroy thinks this is an argument: "TAFFAARD" and Waylon thinks this is helpful: "That is idiotic."

    Maybe these are school spirit chants at their home school, but I'm sick of being harassed by Russia-funded bots and people without the decency to think up a genuine response -- to Somerby or anyone else here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "interrupting liberal discussion on liberal topics"

      Oh dear. Zombie chants are being interrupted by Infidels. Censorship is not practiced, and the Enemies are allowed to freely spread their subversive opinions. Horrors, horrors. Outrageous attack on Free Speech!

      I sincerely sympathize with your frustration, dembot, and encourage you to expand on this theme...

      Delete
    2. 3:01

      Keep in mind -

      1) you are a stupid whore

      2) no one gives a shit what you.think or are sick of.

      Delete
    3. Anon - nor is this an argument: "The Rude Pundit gets its right" and it is idiotic because it treats an inconsequential pseudo event as significanct and symbolically meaningful and in doing so once again uses racsim to demonize the other, the only liberal refuge.

      Delete
    4. The drummer fucked-up when he didn't punch the Nazi hat wearing fucker.

      Delete
  15. Short of two, think tanks are all run by big capital. The schools are run by big capital. The military is run by big capital. Sports are run by big capital, and honors the military.

    This frenzied system in the media of issue-commotion is the only part of liberalism that has any democratic input. And now that it is the tiniest bit critical of big capital, it's the biggest problem in the world?

    ReplyDelete
  16. If the kid in the MAGA hat wanted to be held accountable for his actions, he should have been black.

    ReplyDelete
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