(Update) Drezner a Coward?
[Drezner] lists several reasons why the media’s coverage is fine here, but what he writes doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. He argues, for example, that controversies where the target of the controversy comments on it will understandably get more media attention than where the target doesn’t comment (yet, almost immediately, John Yoo did comment extensively about his memos, while Hillary has said nothing about Lewinksy for years and Obama hasn’t commented on whether his bowling prowess means he’s an effete and out-of-touch elitist).
.
Worse, Drezner’s rationale would mean that high government officials who commit serious crimes will be able — and ought to be able — to keep the press coverage to a minimum simply by refusing to comment on what they’ve done, since all the press should do is report what each side says. If the wrong-doers say nothing, there doesn’t need to be press coverage about it — because, hey, what can reporters do?
Drezner also says that “the press appears to be more interested in events that determine the future . . . than in events that look back at the past” (without saying how Obama’s bowling abilities determine our nation’s future while ignoring the fact that the administration which implemented the Yoo Memos, and the Attorney General who lied about the 9/11 attack and spying laws, are still running the most powerful country on earth for another 7 months and the theories of presidential omnipotence they adopted are still in place).
Drezner’s response? Oh he has written back in reply to Greenwald (as is found in following hyperlink), but unless he has had some awfully convenient software issues, he has for days now chosen to close all comments for post after post rather than be challenged on home turf re: Greenwald’s arguments (as many of Greenwald’s readers have discovered).
.
If that is what you have done, Daniel, you are a coward. If my surmise is wrong, I will publish your explanation.
*****
Update: In comments, Daniel Drezner says:
Sorry, your surmise is wrong… my comments section has been suffering from spam attacks and has unfortunately been offline for a few weeks now.
I have little to fear from Greenwald or his commenters.
Comment by Chris Lawrence —
April 9, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Dan’s comments have been partially hosed for a while (as in months); first it was just from the article pages but even the pop-up links are hosed now.
I’d suggest emailing him to alert him of the problem or to ask what’s up rather than just assuming bad faith on his part. But I guess that isn’t how we do things any more.
Comment by Dan Drezner —
April 9, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
Sorry, your surmise is wrong… my comments section has been suffering from spam attacks and has unfortunately been offline for a few weeks now.
I have little to fear from Greenwald or his commenters
Comment by Jules —
April 9, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
Yes you Dan. Yes you do.
Comment by max —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
Obama hasn’t commented on whether his bowling prowess means he’s an effete and out-of-touch elitist
Bowling is elitist?
Wow. We really DO live in upside-down world. I suppose wine-collecting is now the province of Joe
Six-packVino? It’s gotten all common and grotty and underclass and redneck and stuff? Whoa. And soon we’ll be subjected to movies about the woes of the the hard-workin’, blog-writin’, no-neck, down home, salt of the earth law school types? And THEIR TREMENDOUS STRUGGLES WITH KEEPING UP THE NEIMAN’S CARD!Obama must be some kind of effete
graduatehigh school dropout! DOWN WITH ELITIST DROPOUTS!max
['Walter would be so proud.']
Comment by Dan Drezner —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
I’m afraid good faith was out the window the moment Greenwald asserted I was pro-torture.
Comment by Leonard —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
I have to agree with McArdle and Dresner on this one. Greenwald apparently has little idea of what the average American is like. Are there some nerds and wonks who think that Yoo’s torture memos are fascinating stuff? Sure. But there’s twenty times as many people who don’t care about details, and just want to have some sort of idea who the major candidate are. That’s as much effort as they’re willing to give: a few minutes to decide who to vote for next time. And there’s probably an equal number that don’t care, at all, about any of it.
I have great sympathy for this latter group. To my mind, one of the most offensive things about democracy, is that it requires you to have opinions about all sorts of things. Well, I may not be interested in democracy, but democracy is certainly interested in me. So I keep up, to some extent. But I still don’t want to have to.
Greenwald, and many other of the world’s goodthinkers, invert this reasoning. To them, the goodness and desirability of democracy is a given. Since we should all care about how we are governed, and we do and must have the power of voting that affects it, we should all be interested in informing ourselves about everything the government does.
But yet… we are not interested. Normal people can do simple cost/benefit analysis. They realize that their one vote, their one voice, has near zero effect on the system. They spend a commensurate amount of time informing themselves about it: nearly zero. Hence many of the great problems with democratic government: the people remain rationally ignorant and the politicians and bureaucrats do what they will.
Comment by Mona —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:37 pm
Drezner sez:
Now I know you are arguing in bad faith, for that is not what Greenwald wrote. What he did post was true, and is this:
Address what he argues, not your misleading-unto-being-false synoptic version of his post.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:41 pm
Leonard, I’ll grant you that there’s no particular reason why you should have to have an opinion on all sorts of things out there. I’d like to debate you on whether this is really the fault of democracy (i.e. one possible means for picking leaders) vs. the expansion of the state (something that states are perfectly capable of doing even without elections) but perhaps I should start a separate thread for that.
For this thread, I’ll just say that even if we take it as a given that all sorts of issues really shouldn’t be matters of public concern, government officials declaring the power to torture at whim should still be something of general public concern.
In a limited state there would be no particular reason for me to care about, say, pollution in New England ports. However, there would still be reason for me to care if people in power declare the power to torture at whim. There’s a big difference between caring about other people’s problems vs. caring about those with power over me.
(If you want to argue that the real solution to this problem is to have nobody else with power over you, fine, but that critique goes beyond democratic states and encompasses every conceivable state.)
Comment by Leonard —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:49 pm
Also, as Drezner just said, the imputation by Greenwald that he can state, flat-out, what Drezner and McArdle think is offensive. If you think I am making a bad argument, criticize it on its merits. Criticize what I said, sure. Tell me what you think I might be thinking, OK. But don’t tell me what I think, unless I said it. I know it’s tempting to project onto your opponents (hell I just did it in 6). But if you’re called on it, and you’re wrong, just be an adult and admit error.
Comment by Mona —
April 9, 2008 @ 11:59 pm
Leonard sez in defense of McArdle and Drezner:
Well, if McArdle and Drezner agree with you on all that, alright, then.
But as to your #9, Greewald does not tell either of the duo what they think; he logically dissects their thoughts from their own words.
Comment by Megan McArdle —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:06 am
What Greenwald said about me and Dan was deeply, deeply offensive, and also, not true, though I’m sure many in the crowd here believe otherwise. A positive description of how the media works is not a normative prescription for bowling stories, much less [expletive deleted] torture. Greenwald basically says that we’re supporting some establishment conspiracy because it will help us continue and conceal our enthusiastic support for war crimes. Given that I’ve said that the war was a bad idea and repeatedly taken the position that we shouldn’t even talk about whether torture works because it takes too much focus off the fact that we shouldn’t [censored] do it, this is vile, ignorant, malicious twaddle. Since Dan has said the same things earlier and more often, it is even worse directed at him. Y’all don’t engage with people who call you objectively pro-terrorist, and with good reason. Why on earth would we listen to Greenwald’s venomous froth?
Comment by Megan McArdle —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:12 am
Mona, Greenwald made a positive claim–that the news coverage runs the way it is because journalists are “insulated” from their readers. I disputed the positive claim, with good reason, because if you’ve ever met a working journalist, it’s completely ludicrous. I am keenly alive to the problems of journalism, including its homogenous culture, but that culture is simply not a workable explanation for the particular phenomenon that Greenwald is describing; indeed, exactly the opposite. On this sort of thing, journalists are being led by other things, not following.
Greenwald took disagreement on a matter of fact and asserted that this was really a disagreement on principle. He didn’t dissect anything from my own words; he read into a factual claim all sorts of nefarious motives. Since you disagree with me about . . . well, I’m not sure what we disagree about, actually, but since you dislike me, his conclusions naturally seem entirely reasonable. But they are not divinable from a fairly anodyne, and not particularly original, analysis of why journalists cover the things they do the way they do.
Comment by Mona —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:23 am
Megan sez:
Your hyper-emotional responses are ones I may respond to more fully tomorrow, but for now (before I hit bed) I will say this: I am the daughter of a former “working journalist,” have repeatedly been interviewed by “working journalists,” have written press releases for “working journalists” and seen them — to my delight — lazily publish my spoon-feeding nearly verbatim, and happen to know that Greenwald has substantial experience with “working journalists.”
Comment by Jay Elias —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:26 am
I’m sorry, but I can’t find Greenwald’s reasoning here anything but tiresome.
A person with his prodigious skills as a writer can do and has done a lot to help educate people about why the torture issue is important. Resorting to the tiresome argument that his views (quite correct views) do not gain traction because other people aren’t doing what he is doing is dull, ineffectual, and navel-gazing. Most importantly, it has no chance of actually making a difference regarding torture. The notion that people don’t care more about torture because McArdle and Drezner don’t make a bigger deal about it is absurd on its face.
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:36 am
“The notion that people don’t care more about torture because McArdle and Drezner don’t make a bigger deal about it is absurd on its face.”
Yes indeed, this is the root of the problem, but not in the way you appear (and Leonard) to have intended.
Comment by Jay Elias —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:39 am
Would it be too much trouble to ask you to state that in a way that I can understand your point?
Comment by greenish —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:51 am
A pedestrian fallacy:
Is this really all you need to start calling people cowards and making like you’ve just proven their fundamental worthlessness?
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:52 am
“Would it be too much trouble to ask you to state that in a way that I can understand your point?”
Ask yourself, to whom do each of D&M assign the blame to the current situation?
Answer: The government failed them. Why?
In 2002 there was enough data to evaluate the then current government incarnation’s truthfulness/ability/etc. Yet they didn’t. Why?
This isn’t academic sociology.
They are both in the tank, and note the cross referencing. Nobody else stands up.
Comment by The Editors —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:00 am
I used to admire Greewald’s work, and he still does some worthwhile stuff, but too often he’s just looking for an excuse to get into some windy blogfight, which is basically what he’s doing here. There are plenty of ways to disagree with McArdle and Drezner on the merits (as there are substantive points to engage), but Greenwald ignores all this, pretends not to understand the difference between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and accuses them out of the clear blue sky of supporting torture. It’s unfortunate, because he’s really talented at laying out lucid, logical arguments when he puts his mind to it. Sometimes it all seems to bore him.
For my money, an all-too-accurate critique of working journalists is that they would rather be entertainers. They’d rather tell gossipy stories about bowling scores and get the big laugh than risk being a party pooper with boring old downer stories about torture and law and policy. (Or starting pointless blogfights; a temptation I know something about.) I suspect Greenwald knows what he is doing here, I suspect he’s trying to raise a little hell in order to force discussion of his own (mostly substantive) media criticism. While we nice liberals wring our hands about ‘the hack gap’, Greenwald rushes unto the breach. Perhaps it is effective. Or maybe he just enjoys putting on a show. In any case, it’s depressing to watch.
Comment by Jay Elias —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:10 am
Mr. Carter:
Pardon me for failing to see the connection between Drezner and McArdle’s coverage of the Yoo memos now and their credulity towards the administration in 2002.
In any case, they make for poor targets. What was the realistic influence of “Jane Galt” in 2002 over public opinion? If Greenwald wants to go after people who truly enabled Yoo, why doesn’t he use his platform to question Boalt Hall’s employing him, such as Brad DeLong? That at least has a chance of making a difference.
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Comment by Megan McArdle —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:41 am
Yes, Mona, I too have watched working journalists rewrite press releases. And I would be happy to entertain the notion that various papers are source greasing . . . except that the major papers with White house access actually have published Yoo stories that certainly aren’t making anyone at the White House happy; indeed, they are where Glenn Greenwald gets some of his information. Those just aren’t getting very much regional play.
Also, while the White House correspondents may be source greasers, they aren’t lazy, and they certainly aren’t there because they’ve always longed to write about bowling.
Comment by Barry —
April 10, 2008 @ 9:06 am
omment by Russell L. Carter —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:52 am
“Ask yourself, to whom do each of D&M assign the blame to the current situation?
Answer: The government failed them. Why?
In 2002 there was enough data to evaluate the then current government incarnation’s truthfulness/ability/etc. Yet they didn’t. Why?
This isn’t academic sociology.
They are both in the tank, and note the cross referencing. Nobody else stands up.”
And Megan is *still* enthusiastically in the tank. And profiting immensely by it. Note her recent Atlantic column where her bloggersh*t gets promoted to an article. Too bad for the Atlantic’s credibility, but then again, the editors didn’t care about it, either.
Drezner, of course, is a US poli sci guy dealing with foreign policy, and suffers from a basic flaw – he can’t really criticize the Empire, because that’s a basic accepted thing. Implementation can be discussed, but only to a certain level.
I’m Godwining here, but it’s like the Usenet alt.history threads on whether or not Germany could have won WWII if their Eastern front policy had been one closer to liberation from communism, as opposed to a multi-million untermenschen slave raid/extermination campaign. Which one participant summarized as ’shorter version – could Nazi Germany had won if it wasn’t Nazi Germany?’.
And going back to the basic g*d-d*mned controversy – do you think that people were crying out for an article on Obama and bowling? Do you think that focus groups used to guide reporting were coming up with ’sports’ as the number one item of interest? Do you think that people don’t actually give a f*ck about the war in Iraq, or the economy?
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2008 @ 9:59 am
Thoreau, it’s a feature (but also problem) of democracy in that we do have, at least in theory, some ability to change policy via the franchise. In a dictatorship they may or may not torture, but since the average person cannot do anything about it, the average person does not need to know details. Now of course I’d rather live in the democracy. But even more I’d prefer to live a situation with easy exit.
I would agree that government officials torturing citizens at a whim should be something of general public concern. However, that is not what you said, and also not what we are talking about. Rather, as you say, “government officials declaring the power to torture”, largely limiting it to a hazy “enemy combatant” or whatever, and not obviously “at a whim”, either. How exactly does John Yoo think torture can be justified? Who exactly can be tortured? Who justifies it? Who believed him? Who believes him? What’s the practical effect? What are the limits? These are the exact kind of nitty gritty details that I think many people don’t want to have to know. People may read until they get to the point where the thing seems academic, then give up. I.e.: “No maiming is known to have occurred in U.S. interrogations, and the Justice Department disavowed the document without public notice nine months after it was written.” I read that and I think, “Oh OK, the system more or less worked. Time for the comics!”
And yes, I do object to the state having, de facto, the power to torture me. Yes, I am an anarchist. They have had this power my entire life, though, so it’s nothing new. That’s another sense in which this whole Yoo memo thing is overblown: are we really so naive to believe that American apparatchiks never tortured a soul until some high level apparatchik lawyer told them it was OK? Very doubtful to me.
Incidentally, I think this entire business about no wanting to know explains a lot of why I like bright lines in the law. In this case, the right line is no torture, ever, for any reason. That makes it easy to know when someone has stepped over the line, and also means that there should be no infighting over petty details.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
April 10, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Well here’s GG’s indictment:
Instead, I want to leave their specific claims behind and focus on what is actually important here. What really underlies the mentality of people like McArdle and Drezner are two pervasive though toxic afflictions — a drooling, self-loving American exceptionalism, along with a self-interested refusal to acknowledge that there is anything truly wrong with our political and media establishment because they both support and are part of that establishment.
Well, since Glenn’s never ever right and
1. Everyone agrees that torture is wrong
2. We’re no longer dealing with hypothetical acts of torture but self-admitted instances of waterboarding
3. There’s no way of actually knowing if stress positions, beatings, sleep deprivation, long time standing, cold room and a host of other enhanced interrogation methods have stopped
4. Between the Yoo memo and the Principals group revelations, torture is pretty topical right now
When can we expect either McArdle or Drezner to address this in a meaningful way, i.e. not “Greenwald is mean.”?
Because if it ain’t soon, then I don’t see where Greenwald’s criticism is off base.
P.S. I guess it wasn’t a quick question.
Comment by ed —
April 10, 2008 @ 10:07 am
I’d be more convinced by the deeply, deeply offended Ms. McArdle if I could find a link to Jane Galt righteously getting the vapors over the canning of Phil Donohue or Ashleigh Banfield (let alone the axis of Murdoch-Scaife-Cheney which spoon fed her the Iraq Invasion/Bush Campaign talking points she so eagerly slurped down). Seems kind of relevant. I guess at that time she was too busy clutching her very libertarian pearls about Norman Mailer or someone else being a big bad meanie.
I’m not sure where Greenie labels Ms. McArdle objectively pro-torture, but I did see where he notes that, based on her blog, she hasn’t suggested that she understands The Yoo Situation. As with the Iraq Invasion, Ms. McArdle skips any attempt at even half-assed libertarian anaylsis with respect to Teh Torture, although she does drop the occasional smoke bomb (i.e., “Does torture work?”–she thinks it does but doesn’t cite any examples).
It’ll should be fun, five years from now, to watch Ms. McArdle try to walk this latest jackassery back with a non-apology apology. In the meantime, we’ll have to put up with painfully long-winded repetitive blog posts which signify nothing, and discussions about which big studio, mass market, feature-length cartoons most echo her own awesome, rugged, Ayn Randian individuality.
Comment by Fraud Guy —
April 10, 2008 @ 11:17 am
Leonard,
What do you want:
or
You’d rather live in a democracy, but you don’t want to know the details, even though the government where details aren’t needed is a dictatorship, yet in the case your country becomes a dictatorship, you’d prefer an easy exit.
You are reminding me of the host on Fox News’ Red Eye (featured on another recent post here). When commenting on their meme that parents are voting for Obama only to seem cool to their kids, he says that it’s ok, because he gets drunk before voting, and one time ended up in a phone booth instead.
Now that’s informed participation.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 10, 2008 @ 11:49 am
Obviously they’ve tortured before. A lot of torture goes down at police stations. The only thing that keeps it in check right now is the fact that if they get caught they can get in trouble, so they have to keep it below a certain level that will spark enough outrage to generate prosecutions.
The significance of the Yoo memos is that they’re trying to rework the system so that even if they do get caught they still won’t face any legal problems. Once you go down that road, you remove the last restraint. And that is really, really bad.
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
Fraud Guy, the set of all imaginable government types is larger than {democracy, dictatorship}. I don’t think democracies produce particularly good quality of service. Just better than the average dictatorship.
As for easy exit, understand that I am coming at this from an anarchist perspective. To me, the current USA, even the current Maryland, do not have easy exit. In both cases to get out from their suzereignty I have to physically leave. Exit to my anarchist eye is only “easy” if I can do it without changing my residence or my job.
Comment by Mona —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
Comprehensive reply:
1. It is simply a lie that Greenwald accused either McArdle or Drezner of being “pro-torture.”
2. Objections to Greenwald’s style — when his substance is accurate — do not change the fact that the media spends a great deal more time on Obama’s bowling and culinary choices than on Yoo’s torture-permissions and Fourth Amendment suspension. That phenomenon encompasses most (tho not all) of the vaunted Beltway “working journalists.”
3. If McArdle and Drezner object to this state of affairs, they could post about point #2, rather than quibbling with Greenwald’s points — quibbles which have virtually nothing to do with what he actually wrote.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
Dan Drezner:
I’m afraid good faith was out the window the moment Greenwald asserted I was pro-torture.
That would be a stronger argument if it were true that Greenwald had said that (see Item 9 here for details).
Similarly, your argument that the release of the torture memo didn’t attract much coverage because Yoo didn’t comment on it would be stronger if it were true that Yoo hadn’t commented on it. (In the real world, an interview of Yoo on that very topic had been published four days earlier.) And so on.
Comment by Mona —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
In brackets at the top of this post, I link to Greenwald’s observations regarding the discussion here.
Comment by Fraud Guy —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Leonard,
I understand that the set is larger, but it seemed that you were trying to choose between the two.
In any case, was it Heinlein who said that the best government is a well run dictatorship (but of course saying that there was no such thing)?
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:35 pm
I should add that I read Dan’s blog from time to time and have learned from it. But (without weighing in on the heated rhetoric from both sides here) I think he is just wrong on the merits here. This is what I wrote him in replying to his initial post replying to the four points he made:
Comment by brendancalling —
April 10, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
I never realized Drezner and McArdle were such defensive little crybabies.
Greenwald is right however: they pushed for a war of aggression, and as such they own the consequences.
Greenwald, however, never said they were pro-torture. Besides being defensive little crybabies, Drezner and McArdle also need to learn how to read properly.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
Although Glenn didn’t explicitly state that Megan and Dan were (objectively) pro-torture, he does lump them into the “USA USA USA” crowd who believe that anything done in the name of the bright and shining city on the hill is inherently good. That would include torture.
The real problem is that the accusation certainly seems well founded.
I’d be satisfied if they posted quite simply “Torture is wrong, even when Americans do it.” Then maybe we can get them to say the same thing about bombing.
But I guess I’m an optimist.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
Just a Quick Question, see e.g. here. Drezner quotes with approval Tyler Cowen saying “Torture is morally wrong, and the U.S. government should not be torturing people or easing the use of torture.” At the bottom of the post, Drezner writes “perhaps this would be a good time to ease out the guy responsible for this cancer on the military?” The guy in question is Rumsfeld and the cancer torture.
Comment by Dave Hunter —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
“For my money, an all-too-accurate critique of working journalists is that they would rather be entertainers. They’d rather tell gossipy stories about bowling scores and get the big laugh than risk being a party pooper with boring old downer stories about torture and law and policy.”
This is Greenwald’s argument. McCardle is arguing the opposite.
Greenwald’s media critique has always been that journalists ignored or downplayed the outrageousness of this administration for personal reasons nearly identical to the ones you listed. They fear that being a “downer” will cost them viewers and access to famous powerful people, and, therefore, status. But the further along they go preferring blitheness to outrage, the harder it is to turn back, as they now have to admit that their blitheness was a dereliction, that they fell asleep at the wheel, and so bear some of the responsibility for the bad things the powerful have gotten away with. I’d say “nefarious” isn’t the right word to describe all this.
McCardle’s counter-argument is that journalists are nothing at all like you describe them. They don’t fear being “downers”. In fact, they wish they could just be downers all day, but to the degree that they deviate from the norm, no one will pay attention, so there’s no need to even try. The defects of the media have nothing at all to do with any personal defects of journalists, but the invincible defects of most media consumers.
McCardle’s counter-narrative is familiar. The idealistic journalist shows up in town with the desire to take down the powerful, only to be thwarted by the system. But it’s also self-refuting, since if you sell out your ideals and buy into a system that, by its nature (as defined by McCardle) will bury what’s important under a mound of trivia, well, that’s a personal defect. Not an unusual or nefarious one, but one that needs to be owned.
And yes, to a certain degree, this is Greenwald criticizing other people for not being more like him. And he’s not perfect or anything. He’s certainly not as funny as McCardle is, or as Drezner aspires to be. And I think reasonable people can object to the tone, if not the substance, of what he argues.
But basically, I think he’s correct that the failures of the press do indeed spring from personal failures of journalists, which they bear responsibility for. And though it hardly seems like the his anger at the media is directed significantly at bloggers, McCardle and Drezner took it on themselves to argue that the blame be directed entirely elsewhere. It certainly is a difference of principle.
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
JAQQ, is Megan’s comment (#11 above) not an adequate abjural of torture? If you really cared, you could google up stuff like this:
http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009728.php
pretty easily.
I imagine, based on Megan’s earlier comment, that you could find the same sort of thing from Drezner. And so, for that matter, could Mr. Greenwald.
Comment by Mona —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:44 pm
Leonard, that’s nice. But is utterly irrelevant to what Greenwald actually wrote about McArdle and Drezner. I strongly encourage you to click the link in bolded brackets at the top of my post, and scroll down to his Update II.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
Leonard:
I imagine, based on Megan’s earlier comment, that you could find the same sort of thing from Drezner.
Indeed. See my comment at #37 above.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
What Mona said at #40.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
April 10, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
Thanks Crust.
GG is then clearly wrong about Drezner being afflicted with “a drooling self-loving American exceptionalism”. And I’m wrong about believing that accusation to be true.
It looks to me like this is a miscommunication. Glenn thought Dan was defending the media, when Dan was just attacking Glenn.
Comment by The Editors —
April 10, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
No, it isn’t. Greenwald is an capably precise writer, and if that was his argument, he would have said so. This is Greenwald’s argument:
Greenwald argues that they act as they act out of class interest; he accuses people who put forth any alternate theory of a litany of awful things, sans evidence. Now I suspect there are plenty of people who act in just the way Greenwald describes, and for all I know that’s exactly how D&A behave in all situations except the one at issue (I don’t read them), but, in the situation at hand, it’s quite clear that they are both talking ‘is’ not ‘ought’, and Greenwald is deliberately trying to obscure this, and is now claiming that they deserve whatever he gives them because they supported the Iraq War. This is a logical leap I am not familiar with.
Comment by The Editors —
April 10, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
I had a lot of commas that were about to go bad, so I put them all in that penultimate sentence. You would have done the same.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
Just a Quick Question:
GG is then clearly wrong about Drezner being afflicted with “a drooling self-loving American exceptionalismâ€.
I’m not sure this inconsistent with Drezner’s opposition to torture. Note that what GG is referring to here is Drezner’s original support for the invasion of Iraq (”cheer[ing] on optional invasions and aggressive wars”, etc.) which GG believes Drezner would not support if it were some other power leading the charge. Hence the “American exceptionalism” label. Obviously “drooling” is hyperbole (I doubt GG thinks DD literally has drool coming out of his mouth).
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
The Editors:
[I]t’s quite clear that they are both talking ‘is’ not ‘ought’
Huh? This firefight started with a post by Dan Drezner titled “You can’t blame the media for everything”. Where I come from, words like “blame” and “indictment” (from the text) are normative not descriptive. Drezner was clearly trying to defend — not simply explain — the press’ behavior. “Ought” not “is”.
Comment by Corey —
April 10, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
I’d like address something Drezner wrote about GG’s methodology being poor for the Lexis-Nexus search. I am a social scientist and it’s rather clear your criticism is bogus. A simple matter of mathematics shows why.
For the first week after breaking, the Yoo and Mukasey searches show approximately 100 articles apiece. The Obama AND bowling stories showed a far larger number (1000+) in the relatively same cycle. That means Obama AND bowling equals 10 weeks of Yoo AND torture. It’s hard to see how you can argue with that.
It’s simple mathematics and a little bit of logic. Maybe you should stick to poli sci.
Comment by The Editors —
April 10, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
It is traditional in these cases to read the whole post, rather than infer everything from the title. Perhaps someone should have said.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
The Editors:
It is traditional in these cases to read the whole post
If you check out my comment at #34 you might infer that I did read the whole post fairly carefully.
Comment by Matt S —
April 10, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
It is all well and good for Drezner and McArdle to say that they are against torture (an assertion I am happy to take them at face value), but as Greenwald points out the reality is that when you support a doctrine that embraces aggressive war as Drezner and McArdle did and still do then you are implicitly supporting those abuses, such as torture, that are inevitable and foreseeable results of those wars.
The fact the Drezner and McArdle chose not to consider the reality of what actually occurs in aggressive war campaigns, though history is rife with examples, does not abdicate them from their responsibility for the fallout of the war they supported. It is also naive to believe that their coverage of that fallout is unaffected by an effort to disavow themselves of any such responsiblity.
Comment by Dave Hunter —
April 10, 2008 @ 5:20 pm
“Greenwald argues that they act as they act out of class interest”
He seems to me to be arguing that their primary motivation is self-interested narcissism, tied more to their image-based self-conceptions as good, thoughtful, important sages than to their wallets. I’m not sure what you mean when you say “class interest”. That seems to imply an economic motivation, whereas the motivations Greenwald imputes in his media cycle are more likely to be psychological. Greenwald isn’t saying that the media desires that the underclass be maintained, only that they themselves maintain their positions of fame and power. And I think you’re overstating his precision on this particular topic.
McCardle insists, meanwhile, that journalists are, by definition, good people, and if Greenwald refuses to acknowledge this then it’s because he just doesn’t “know much about his profession.” “[N]early every journalist in DC” at heart wants to write about important things, but can’t, because nobody cares, so why bother.
Your description of the typical journalist as vain and desperate to be loved seems a lot closer, though admittedly not identical, to Greenwald’s conception than to McCardle’s.
Comment by Robert1014 —
April 10, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
Perhaps inevitably, the discussion is focused too much on Drezner and McArdle and their wounded sensibilities. Greenwald, however, was not restricting his accurate criticism of contemporary mainstream journalism merely to these two persons, but highlighting them as all too typical of a widespread problem.
For a more bitingly humorous critique of the same problem, but with no focus on individual journalists, refer back to Steven Colbert’s brilliant evisceration of the Washington Press Corps (along with the administration) at their own self-congratulatory banquet a couple of years back.
To assert that fewer journalists write about John Yoo because “fewer Americans are interested in Yoo than care about Obama’s bowling” is both condescending and a self-fulfilling prophecy…a self-justifying rationalization after the fact. This assumes Americans wouldn’t be interested in John Yoo and his memo and the implications of it and the real world policy decisisions deriving from it if they were clearly informed about it. Yet, so far, they haven’t been…because we’re fed a diet of stories about Monica Lewinsky and Obama’s bowling technique. With this thinking in mind, Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate stories wouldn’t have seen a second day’s publication: any story that lacks an immediate “hook,” (i.e., sex, drugs, or scandal)requires persistence to get and report the facts and to arouse the public’s attention. ANY information conveyed through the media requires repetition and saturation to penetrate the media fog that envelops us all. Advertisers know this and this is why they repeat the same commercials repeatedly in a given week or evening of broadcasting time.
If McArdle and her ilk took their journalistic responsibilities seriously, rather than assuming “the dummies out there don’t care, so we have no choice but to write about Obama the pantywaist bowler,” and if they therefore pursued and reported what (they say) they know to be important news stories, they would be more likely to catch the public’s attention and arouse its interest. As long as the reporting on any given serious issue remains scant, the public has little opportunity even to notice it…and thus we are left only with the trivia that is published.
And yes, journalists that fail to challenge the administration on a failed, even criminal policy, (as the Iraq invasion certainly is), are complicit in the damage done by that policy. That’s the press’s job: to oversee and challenge those who hold elective power, not to tsk tsk that the unwashed plebes “just don’t care.”
Comment by Jon H —
April 10, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
“It’s simple mathematics and a little bit of logic. Maybe you should stick to poli sci.”
Hey, it’s good enough for the CFR. Unless you’re in an organization that includes Angelina Jolie as a member, then you’d best be leavin’ Dan alone.
Comment by Corey —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
Jon H wrote:
Hmmm. No. If Drezner wants to make statements implying that since he’s a “social scientist” he knows methodology better than Greenwald, then Drezner needs to make sure he gets it right.
He didn’t, so he needs to be called on it.
And I don’t consider Poli Sci to be a social science in any case.
Comment by Corey —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
Oh…and Jon H…
Dr. Drezner is a big boy and will have received far far worse criticism than what I wrote in any peer reviewed articles I published and in any sort of formal review for tenure or professorships.
Comment by The Editors —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:09 pm
Uh, yeah. Numerous name-calling updates and spin-off posts calling them out as cowards can have that unintended effect. For future reference.
I mean what Greenwald means by “our political and media establishment”. This isn’t personal narcissism, it’s group interest, and there’s certainly something to that. There’s also something to the idea that news consumers prefer gossipy fluff to depressing stories about torture, an idea about as controversial as the idea that small children prefer ice cream to boiled cabbage. Except Greenwald finds it “patronizing” and grounds for Jihad. As there’s something to the idea that you can kill a story in the press by giving no comment. Except that Greenwald believed this constitutes evidence that Drezner wants more reporting on John Edwards’ haircuts and more wars. And so on. It’s fine to moan that nobody’s taking his larger arguments seriously, but he is the primary author of this misfortune.
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
The Editors channeling Dan Drezner:
[T]here’s something to the idea that you can kill a story in the press by giving no comment.
Just because DD said that John Yoo didn’t comment on the story doesn’t make it true. John Yoo gave an interview about it for goodness sake. Who was it who was saying something about it being “traditional in these cases to read the whole post” again?
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:49 pm
“I’m afraid good faith was out the window the moment Greenwald asserted I was pro-torture.”
You’re a lying hypocrite; Greenwald asserted no such thing. People like you, who live lives of bad faith, can be easily identified by the absence of those little ‘”‘ marks from your claims about what others assert.
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 6:52 pm
“There’s also something to the idea that news consumers prefer gossipy fluff to depressing stories about torture, an idea about as controversial as the idea that small children prefer ice cream to boiled cabbage.”
There is nothing so intellectually dishonest as to claim that a view on which you differ from your opposition is “uncontroversial”.
Comment by Happy Jack —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
As is frequently pointed out by historians and other scholars, the types of aggressive wars that McArdle, Drezner and their fellow establishment mavens support inevitably lead to exactly the sort of war crimes and pervasive government lawbreaking which they want to pretend doesn’t matter.
Inevitable? In my version of Warm,Fuzzy Puppy War and My Little Pony Patriot Act, bad things are impossible!
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:09 pm
Since you say that this is what “Greenwald points out”, then it must be something you believe. But it is not in fact what Greenwald claims. He does not claim that people “implicitly support” the consequences of actions they support, merely that they are responsible for them. This is a critical distinction, and when you, as well as Dresner and McArdle, make the former claim, it lets them off the hook for that responsibility because they can then go on and on defending themselves against this strawman charge that they support something that they don’t.
Here is the truth about Greenwald’s view; it’s the truth because it’s what’s rare in these parts, an actual quote:
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:17 pm
Greenwald argues that they act as they act out of class interest
No he doesn’t.
he accuses people who put forth any alternate theory of a litany of awful things, sans evidence.
No he doesn’t.
in the situation at hand, it’s quite clear that they are both talking ‘is’ not ‘ought’
No it isn’t.
and Greenwald is deliberately trying to obscure this
No he isn’t; in fact he deliberately notes this claim and then rebuts it, repeatedly.
and is now claiming that they deserve whatever he gives them because they supported the Iraq War.
No he isn’t.
This is a logical leap I am not familiar with.
Hardly, since you’re the one who made it.
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
This is correct, and will remain correct no matter how many times they and “the editors” lie about it.
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
So is Dan Drezner lying scum, or merely incompetent?
Comment by The Editors —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
… and so this thread goes the way of all threads.
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:30 pm
Unfortunately, we live in a society where the response from such liars is simply to lie again. This will continue until we find a stronger response to them.
Comment by truth machine —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
And intellectually respectable response would be instead to admit that you’re a lying piece of scum and indicate that you plan to do penance and change your ways.
Comment by Jon Hendry —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
“There’s also something to the idea that news consumers prefer gossipy fluff to depressing stories about torture, an idea about as controversial as the idea that small children prefer ice cream to boiled cabbage.”
There’s also something to the idea that the CBS Evening News would get record viewership numbers if Katy Couric did anal on camera.
We’re talking about professional ’serious’ journalists, aren’t we? Isn’t the job description kinda heavy on the cabbage?
If they only do ice cream, then there should be no surprise if they are no longer taken seriously.
Comment by Matt S —
April 10, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
truth machine
Your are absolutely correct, I did overstate the point that Greenwald argued, an oversight on my part.
For the most part I believe we agree on this issue, but I stand by my argument. Their argument that they do not support torture is like someone arguing they supported the bombing of Baghdad, but did not support the killing of civilians. Of course no one supports the killing of civilians, and (hopefully) few people actually support torture, but once one has thrown their support into aggressive war, they do not have the luxury of looking back on the collateral damage and saying, “I didn’t support that.” Maybe the revelation that our country tortures is to some less foreseeable to some than the reality of civilian casualties, but one does not have to look to deeply into history to see the horrible things that war makes people do to each other.
Comment by Margalis —
April 10, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
I love how when Megan is flustered her solution is to post the same thing 6 times in a row.
Her latest post is quite funny. Her response to the accusation that she is a drooling American exceptionalist?
Yeah, I am!
Comment by Crust —
April 10, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
The Editors:
… and so this thread goes the way of all threads.
I’m tempted to say “Congratulations”, but glancing at your blog it looks like you can be better than this.
Comment by truth machine —
April 11, 2008 @ 4:03 am
Of course no one supports the killing of civilians
This simply isn’t true. There are many people who support the killing of civilians, as long as they are certain sorts of civilians, in the pursuit of certain aims. It is certainly impolitic in the U.S. to admit to this in public, but many people make no bones about it in private conversations with people of like mind.
and (hopefully) few people actually support torture
But again, you are failing to make important distinctions. Condi Rice and her roundtable not only supported it but directed it. There really is a difference between their position on torture and the position of McArdle and Drezner, and conflating the two has the result I mentioned: the latter get to rightly say “you’re accusing me of supporting torture, but I don’t”, thereby obscuring the fact that they nonetheless bear responsibility for it (but not to the degree that Rice/Cheney/Rumsfeld/et. al do).
Comment by LWM —
April 11, 2008 @ 5:38 am
McArdle (aka Mindles H. Dreck, aka Jane Galt) 3/17/2003
Greenwald’s point, or claim, is that the media and McArdle are somewhat in agreement on this point and have been for some time. What the mythical “average person” may or may not be interested in, like dicussions about the market, is not really germane, IMHO.
Mona,
My e-mail here in hopes you will see this. I’d like to read that.
Thanks.
Comment by LWM —
April 11, 2008 @ 6:47 am
Here we go. McArdle and Cohen.
That really is the central belief of our Beltway press, captured so brilliantly by Cohen in this perfect nutshell. When it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, “it is often best to keep the lights off.” If that isn’t the perfect motto for our bold, intrepid, hard-nosed political press, then nothing is.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
April 11, 2008 @ 8:48 am
Leonard @ 39.
I clicked through on the link provided. I read the post. I am thoroughly unimpressed.
I got three things out of the Drezner anti-torture post linked in this thread:
1. Torture is wrong.
2. It doesn’t even help, after all we’re after “hearts and minds”.
3. It would be better if the person responsible for it were no longer in a position to be authorizing torture.
Point #2 is superfluous and self-serving, but doesn’t detract much from the nature of the complaint against torture.
McArdle’s however is saying:
1. Torture isn’t as bad as being in prison
2. Don’t accuse me of supporting torture, just because it ain’t as bad as prison doesn’t mean that it’s good.
Which really, is laughable. I mean aside from the fact that people in prison have been put there after due process, and that each and every one of them knows the date that they can walk free again – there’s the evidence that solitary confinement (which is essentially what the Gitmo detainees are experiencing, only broken up by hours long sessions of not answering the same four or five questions over and over again – and that’s a best case scenario because no one is allowed to know what’s going on down there) is used as punishment in prisons. That is to say, that people with very direct and very intimate experience of being in prison think that the analog of what’s being done to Gitmo detainees is worse.
And the entire subtext of the post, even though she claims that “she’s not defending Guantanamo” is that what’s happening down there isn’t so bad because we do *worse* things to our own. i.e. It’s okay to lock up strange foreigners because we’re also willing to lock up Americans.
If anything, this only makes Greenwald’s criticism more valid.
Comment by Leonard —
April 11, 2008 @ 10:35 am
Jaqq, this shows a difference between you and me. When I read McArdle saying that she’s against torture, but that she is willing to admit that there are worse things than waterboarding — not all torture, waterboarding — which we currenly do (the worse thing here being that we allow or at least don’t stop prisoner rape), I do not take that as a coded way of saying she is actually for torture. Rather, I take it as meaning she would rather be waterboarded than raped. Which is, you know, in the text of her post: “given the choice between being raped and waterboarded, some likely would choose waterboarding”. (Those are not her words but she quotes them and says she agrees with them.)
Presumably, although she does not say it explicitly in that post, McArdle considers rape to be a very horrible experience.
IMO, this entire project of projecting subtexts onto people in clear contradiction to their text is wrong, tedious, and politically speaking a bad ploy. Rather we should engage with the best our opponents have to offer. If someone really does write something which there is no possible way to construe positively then by all means call them on it. But it’s always worth asking yourself, before you hit ‘post’, whether or not you are quite sure you are not incorrect in your reading.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
April 11, 2008 @ 11:42 am
Leonard,
I agree that it is important to consider what people are saying when trying to figure out what they mean. But context is important too. If I was going on just what you quoted at 39, I’d come to a different conclusion then if I had read the entire post.
I guess it’s just difficult to get past the notion that “It is entirely possible that life at Guantanamo is more bearable than life at San Quentin” with a positive spin.
Comment by Ice —
April 11, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
Here’s what McArdle should say if she wants to be taken seriously:
“I no longer believe what I used to believe. In the past, I supported torture. I no longer do so. I was wrong then.
I was also wrong to support invading Iraq. Invading Iraq was a monstrous act of aggression. While it would be impossible to list everything wrong with it, the worst result is that hundreds of thousands of deaths have occurred because of it.
To the extent that anything I have written has supported the invasion, and/or convinced others to support the invasion, I am complicit in this terrible deed. I ask, without excuse or reason, only for your forgiveness.”
When she says something to this effect, I will think that perhaps she should be taken at her word. Until then, she’s clearly still in the denial stage.
Comment by LWM —
April 11, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Leonard, You do realize you could have kept silent on this thread and come out ahead, don’t you?
Comment by Egilsson —
April 11, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
McArdle and Drezner became “targets” of Greenwald’s ire because they *chose* to defend the indefensible – not because he singled them out.
What’s worse of McArdle is that apparently in her 2008 outrage she forgot about her 2003 position that torture was ok if it was kept secret in dark rooms.
She really couldn’t have made Greenwald’s point better if she tried.
Comment by ignatov —
April 11, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
Megan, 3-17-03:
“are you going to give him back to the Feds to be sent to Gitmo … Or are you going to whip out the toolbox and get to work?”
Ouch.
Comment by softdog —
April 11, 2008 @ 2:54 pm
I don’t think Megan can be proven any more bankrupt by comparing these two quotes.
Megan McArdle Now:
Megan 3/2003, talking about hidden law, which is clearly based on the idea that torture works:
Again, McArdle is against codifying torture, but she openly says it shouldn’t always be punished which has the implicit subtext that torture works.
Megan is right about one thing “this is vile, ignorant, malicious twaddle”, but it ain’t coming from Greenwald.
Comment by Thomas —
April 11, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
This thread is fascinating. There’s obviously a lot of well spoken people laying forth their political poetry.
I find it interesting that this is even a topic of debate. Everyone is writing from their insulated cocoons, debating details of law and the simple truth of the matter is that over a million Iraqis, who had nothing to do with 9/11, with WMD’s, or terrorism, are.. dead.. as a direct result of what is essentially a war of choice.
It’s silly to drill down into the details. I was annoyed at all the responses to the Slate “why were were wrong” article. It all sounds to me like an academic case study on a fictional event. It’s not. Over a million people, with hopes and dreams, with families and friends.. are dead.
Anyone who supported the invasion in any sense, and who holds a position of offering opinion on politics or foreign affairs should be self-shamed into finding another line of work. You should spend the rest of your days thinking about the dead, instead of debating if John Woo was right.
But that’s not how Americans do things. We’re so insulated from realities of what other’s lives are like that we just offer up a “why I was wrong” excuse, and then think that somehow they should offer up an opinion on “where we go from here”.
It’s really sad. I don’t thing GG should be arguing the points of McArdle and Drezner. He should be asking them where they get off writing anything ever again.
Comment by LWM —
April 11, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
Ahhhh, Leonard. Even you responded on this Jane Galt Thread in 2003.
You should have left it there.
Comment by Pooh —
April 11, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
Now, I’m biased here since I’m much closer to GG on this issue than McArdle (I have a softer spot for Drezner, who I routinely disagree with, but at least tends to “show his work” in ways which McArdle does not), BUT, boiled down to blogspeak, Greenwald is noting that DD and MM asking why these nice invasions couldn’t just happen without all that torture and other nastiness is the functional equivalent of asking for invasions and a pony. Their complaints that they didn’t anticipate the lack of ponies are hardly reassuring with respect to their judgment.