at some point the role of an editor has to be to sit down with a writer and say "you are too obsessed with twitter." http://t.co/tnhm5I4bJt
— max read (@max_read) January 27, 2015
Jonathan Chait, who is a widely-read self-professed Liberal political commentator, has a lengthy sad inspired by rude Twitter treatment of his personal friend Hanna Rosin.
Hanna Rosin is a professional “feminist” troll, a hipster Kathleen Parker who makes a living explaining, for outlets like Slate and the Atlantic, that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds — assuming you’re an upper-middle-class Stanford-grad professional person, preferably married and with a respectable number (at least one, not more than four) of children. And if you’re not of those fortunate categories, WTF are you doing hanging around her nice ideological neighborhood?!?
Dr. Brittney Cooper is an academic with a side gig at Salon cataloging microagressions against her and her peers. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.
Hanna Rosin is sureasfvck not my “ally”, although I have garnered some insights by hate-reading her. Dr. Cooper probably wouldn’t have me as an ally, because I read her work (mostly at Salon) keeping in mind that she’s being paid to pearl-clutch at that venue.
But if Jon Chait can’t tell the difference between Rosin’s social/cultural influence and Dr. Cooper’s… then he is letting his friendship seriously compromise his judgement.
(Also: Alex Pareene remains a very sharp writer.)
jl
I did not know about Dr. Brittney Cooper. Peppy writer, and has some interesting insights and can articulate them well. Even in the ‘ The right’s big racism lie: How Tucker Carlson & co. distort “white privilege” ‘, which I thought would be some lame and boring shooting fish in a barrel.
OK, one good thing came of the somewhat kind of sort of, but not at all too, sad Chait affair.
I have to go to sleep, and stopped reading one column just when Cooper unfurled the term ‘blackademic’, which is new to me. I’ll be sure to finish it tomorrow to see what that is about.
NotMax
Hyphenosis in extremis.
upper-middle-class Stanford-grad (upper middle class Stanford grad)
she’s being paid to pearl-clutch (pearl clutch or better yet, she’s being paid to be a pearl clutcher)
Also too:
judgement (judgement)
my “ally”, (my “ally,”)
One glass of vino too many tonight?
SatanicPanic
I can’t stand Rosin. Except for Marcotte, does Slate employ any woman writer who isn’t terribly irritating? I guess that advice columnist isn’t bad.
Amir Khalid
@SatanicPanic:
Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon are really good on legal issues, and neither strikes me as full of herself.
Adam
The perfect description of Chait was written before he was even born.
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: Oh yeah. Maybe I was thinking too much about Double X.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Even better, I think: she’s being paid to clutch her pearls
Nemo_N
At least we will be safe of scientists wearing the wrong kind of shirts and women making the wrong kind of music videos.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: I’m not even sympathetic to the post at hand and you pissed me off. Only one of those supposed errors is even an error.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: you literally respelled ‘judgement’ as a correction for the word ‘judgement’
Morzer
@NotMax:
I saw them in concert some years ago.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
She is, in fact, professionally margarita-leptic.
Tommy
I am stunned that even in 2015 journalist, or anybody really, does not realize if you post things online people might not like it and call you one it. I post a lot here and at times I have said things I wish I could take back or were not as factually accurate as I thought, and people called me on it. I wouldn’t say I liked it exactly, but it is just a fact that it will happen. It is the price you pay to post online, send out Tweets, or write for a publication.
People have the ability to push back and not just do as they might have in 1980. Mailing a letter to the editor and hope it is published or just cancel their subscription in protest. As long as the people are not saying they will kill you, rape you (which of course has happened) then it is all kind of free game isn’t it?
Amir Khalid
@Morzer:
I thought they were the people who did those cool prog-rock album covers from the 1970s.
burnspbesq
Listening to the forthcoming Diana Krall album, which is streaming at NPR First Listen.
Oh, dear.
“This is a bottle with a message in it, and the message is ‘Beware!'”
Tommy
Totally off topic but where the heck do you go if a company takes your money and doesn’t deliver the product? Lies about it? This isn’t an eBay thing or an online purchase. Actually a brick and mortar store that was supposed to send me glasses I ordered after the eye exam. They say they delivered them but can’t show confirmation of delivery or even a packing slip. I know there is the BB and sites like Yelp, but that seems hopeless and it wasn’t close to a small sum of money.
I am a pretty laid back guy and if they just said they messed up and corrected the problem I could live with it. But got the outlet where I ordered the glasses and the corporate office say they were delivered. $280 is $280. I’d kind of like to have my glasses or my money back, none of which at this point seems to be happening.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Whoopsie. Just goes to show ya. Judgment.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: Maybe your town has a consumer affairs department? You could make complaint there. Or the state’s Attorney General/Department of State may have consumer affairs department. Find out if they have a form to use for a complaint. Give as much detail as you can.
burnspbesq
@Tommy:
That may be an accurate description of the world as it is. I maintain that we are better off when the response to a stupid post is “here are seven reasons why that’s a terrible idea” than when it is “DIAF, you straight white male right-handed football-loving douchecanoe.” Do you disagree? If so, why?
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: Thanks for the response. But I kind of already knew the answer to my question I guess, there isn’t much I can do other than fill out paperwork. I buy a ton of stuff off eBay and they have a resolution process, which I have only used once for almost 300 purchases, and it worked like a charm. I am kind of stunned I got nothing for an actual store.
SRW1
This discussion of PC really not being politically correct kind of has a circular feeling to it. And that phase change from clockwise to counter-clockwise depending on who complains is tiresome.
Her’s my personal rules:
1. Nobody’s not all-knowing, if you unintentionally gave offense, appologize.
2. If you give offense because you don’t know any better and you’re proud of your ignorance, you’re an idiot.
3. If you give offense all the time because you love denigrating people despite knowing better, you’re a fucking bully.
4. Everybody is entitled to give offense in a targeted manner and for a recognizable reason, but you gotta be prepared to accept the possible consequences.
5. Step back for a second when an exchange of offenses escalates and be sure you won’t regret your participation in that escalation tomorrow.
6. Issuing threats of physical harm is unacceptable no matter what.
YMMV
Tommy
@SRW1: Those are rules to live by. Maybe print up a card and hand them to everybody with Internet access. I try to follow them and am not always successful, but I try very hard even if I have never written them down. Kind of basic civility isn’t it?
opiejeanne
@Tommy: Don’t feel too bad. Matt Welch came after me on another site because of something I posted here. He must google his name.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: credit card company. Call them and tell them. You have a couple of months, so do it right now. They will investigate and cancel the payment.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: That is the only out I see. Purchase was on my AMEX card. I plan to call them one more time and try to find a resolution and it is then a call to the CC company. I’ve looked at the AMEX policy and they seem to be pretty anal about it all, meaning anal in my benefit.
tybee
@Tommy:
a lawyer’s letter – or even just a certified letter threatening court action does wonders.
small claims court is easy.
ETA: opiejean’s plan is even better
Tommy T
This sort of thing is pretty much why I unfriended Amanda Marcotte on FB.
Marc
Except he’s talking about their influence over the left, not “society/culture” in general.
geg6
@Marc:
As far as I can see, neither much influences the left either.
Marc
@geg6: In which case there would be no difference for Chait to miss. But Cooper is far more representative of the kind of left discourse he’s talking about.
Nickws
Is Anne Laurie’s post dedicated to the proposition that Chait’s piece is all about the intense personal/ideological/adversarial relationships between Chait, Rosin and Cooper?
Rosin gets two paragraphs, in the middle of nearly forty. Cooper receives one link to an argument she made directed at Michelle Goldberg.
No doubt there’s something here, but too bad the logic of social media politics-of-personal-derp is obscuring the issues.
Kay
@Marc:
Yeah, except his stock in trade is criticizing “the Left”. He doesn’t like the “PC Left” and here he is making a ridiculous argument about how Campbell Brown has been demonized by “the pro-union Left”.
He calls her a “hate figure”. I don’t have any idea what that means but it sounds pretty “PC” to me.
The “PC Left”, the “pro-union Left”- which parts of “The Left” are acceptable to Jonathon Chait? I’ll take a wild guess and say “none of them”.
Campbell Brown is a a former cable tv personality turned anti-labor activist. She invented a job for herself attacking teachers unions after her career on cable tanked She gets a huge forum on media outlets BECAUSE she is a former cable tv personality- a well-connected member of a very exclusive club. The idea that she’s a victim of “the pro-labor Left”, by which I guess he means “public school teachers” (those radicals) is ludicrous.
He doesn’t want open debate. He wants to control debate by deciding who is allowed into the “liberal” category and who is not. He excludes people he disagrees with by labeling them “Left” and issuing warnings that if these interlopers are allowed into the “liberal” category Democrats will lose elections. If he wants to exclude “the Left” from liberalism and the Democratic Party why doesn’t he just make an honest straightforward argument on why Democrats have to do X, Y and Z to win elections? Because then he’d be exactly the same as 50 other pundit-hacks instead of a “public intellectual”.
Kay
@Marc:
He objects to Coates because “liberals dropped that in the 1970’s and 1980’s, rightly”. Maybe Coates doesn’t see his life’s work as promoting Chait’s view of liberalism and The Democratic Party? Maybe his work is bigger than whether Hillary Clinton wins Ohio? Maybe his historical lens doesn’t begin in 1976 and end in 2016?
Maybe labor unions and public schools have been around a hell of a lot longer than either Chait OR Campbell Brown and that battle is not about one cable tv personality and the current faddish media celebrity obsession with “ed reform”? It’s bigger. Older. Longer.
ThresherK
@SRW1: Slight addition:
1a: “If I offended anyone” is not a phrase found in any real apology. If one feels compelled to include this phrase, see #2 or #3.
scuffletuffle
@Tommy: Small claims court.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: Have you gone to the store in person to try to resolve it? If not, I’d try that and ask to speak to the manager if the first person you speak to can’t help. Explain that your next move is to inform your credit card company that you’ve been charged for a product you didn’t receive, etc. It’s much easier to put someone off on the phone or email. No store wants an unhappy customer in their lobby asking to see the manager, etc., when they’re trying to rope other consumers into a sale.
kc
Yay. Another post about lefty infighting on Twitter, Salon, Slate, etc.
One gets paid to write for Slate, the other gets paid to write for Salon. Other than that, what IS the difference?
Aimai
@Tommy: if you paid by credit card file a complaint with your credit card company. They will take you seriously and refund your money, clawing it back from the vendor.
kc
Speaking of Cooper, read her Salon essay about the white guy who touched her purse on a train. It’s awesome.
Bobby Thomson
@SRW1:
Really?
Betty Cracker
@kc: She’s a worthy successor to Camille Paglia.
Sondra
Thank you for this explanation of Chait et alia. I tried to read him a few times, but didn’t think there was anything special about his stuff..just the same old same old.
I try to find really outstanding writers like Charles Pierce. Reading his stuff engages my mind in a way that I find very pleasant.
So all and all, I really don’t care whether of not he is comfortable.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: Dan Senor’s wife is an unusual hill to die on.
Aimai
Yes. Thanks for the introduction and link ti cooper. I really like her work and will be following her.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
It isn’t if you’re Chait. He’s a dedicated anti-public school warrior. That’s another area where “Leftists” are holding back “liberals”, according to him. The icky confrontational “Leftists” won’t gracefully turn over their public schools to privatization. They actually use a word, “relinquishment”. To be a good liberal one has to “relinquish” local public schools to this gang of idiot media hacks, tech titans, Wall Street people, and corrupt pols.
I love the word. “Relinquish!” It’s so groovy and Zen-like. Much, much more ‘progressive’ than “get out of way peons, we’re ready to privatize the last remaining universal public sector system”.
John PM
Thank you for the link to Pareene. He expressed some of the problems I had with Chait’s article and a few others that were lingering at the edge of my brain. Chait’s Sister Souljah reference was especially telling. His article is a good example of someone comfortable being afflicted by the powerless.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
That’s amazingly consistent too. A huge number of people who support the privatization of public schools also supported the invasion of Iraq. It’s almost a marker. Show me a “liberal” public school privatization warrior of a certain age and I’ll show you when they were selling invading that country.
It’s the same fucking group of people! They just hired Condaleeza Rice. It’s 1/1.
In 20 years when the “education sector” is privatized they can all tell us how no one could have predicted it would turn out like it did in Chile under Pinochet. Oh, well. Mistakes were made!
Samuel Knight
I hope that Chait just did to himself what Niall Ferguson did a few years ago – write something so stupid and un-self-aware that he drops out of the political discussion.
Niall of course wrote those stupid economics articles riddled with mistakes and was torn apart by Krugman. Chait has written yet another ignorant piece about something he clearly knows little about. And yes, he’s been writing this drivel for years in the New Republic and other places. He’s always assumed that everyone should listen to him and respect his opinions. Just because he’s never bothered to think stuff through, reflect on others comments about his work, or in fact give any indication that he’s ever reflected on what he doesn’t know – doesn’t stop him.
Bluntly, like Sarah Palin always having been an idiot. Jon Chait has always been this twerp and has now made it painfully clear.
kc
@Kay:
I’d like to read more about public school privatization, and how to oppose it, and less (WAY less) about the intra-left culture/language war crap that Salon & Twitter foster.
Any reading recommendations?
Cluttered Mind
Speaking as a 31 year old white man who grew up in Brookline, MA (pretty privileged area), I have to say that while I can sort of understand where Chait is coming from, I think he needs to just accept that overall the state of American liberalism is a hell of a lot better now than it has been in decades, and it’s thanks to people like Brittany Cooper and not people like him. I grew up in the 90s, in an area that was doing pretty well economically, and like most of my liberal neighbors I attributed it to the Clinton administration and their obviously good policies. It took me until I got to college before I realized just how much I didn’t know, and that maybe I should keep my mouth shut about things that I have no actual knowledge or understanding of. I understand that Chait is upset that people are calling him on his public idiocy on racial issues, but he needs to just get over himself. Being an idiot on racial issues is kind of the default setting for white people in this country, and it takes real effort to change that. Step 1 is acknowledging it. Perhaps Chait should thank everyone who is pointing this out to him instead of attacking them. They’re not trying to tear him down, they’re trying to get him to be a better and smarter liberal. Chait isn’t a stupid or bad man, and he’s not even a bad liberal, he’s just a myopic one.
ETA: Just had a semi-deep thought. What’s playing out right now on the internet between Chait and the minority writers he’s upset with is a real time example of why diversity is important in pretty much any setting.
Cluttered Mind
@Samuel Knight: Agreed. Chait knows a lot about a lot, and when he writes about the things he knows, he’s great. Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge has never stopped him from writing articles about things he doesn’t know, and that’s where he steps on rakes.
Barbara
I have heard of Hanna Rosin, but I can say with either amusement or bemusement that I read the whole post and have no idea what you were saying. I don’t know whether I feel blessed or cursed as I head into cultural irrelevance.
Robert M.
Pareene’s piece at Gawker also has a priceless comment from friend of the blog Freddie DeBoer. It says, in part:
Isn’t it just weird how often Freddie’s positions result in his alignment with noxious assholes? I’m sure neither Freddie nor I have any idea why that might be.
Kay
@kc:
Absolutely. I’m thrilled you asked. One of the nice things about the pro-public school faction is it’s really lively-there’s a lot of bloggers. They have a network of sorts with 300 independent blogs in it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out teachers write a lot :)
Some are state-specific and policy-wonkish, they do real reserach, FOIA requests, that sort of thing, but this is the blog of a clever (professional) writer in Boston. She’s genuinely funny, so I would suggest you start with her. She does interviews with regular people and travels to public schools but is also entertaining and concise! I like the teacher-bloggers and I admire them for doing all this volunteer advocacy but they write LONG :)
. I (along with others) donate to keep her going.
Here.
pete
Greenwald is good on the subject of Chait, and I say that as someone who is by no means a fan. He even demonstrates some self-awareness; he empathizes with Chait and tells him he’s full of shit.
Kay
@kc:
This guy, too.
They’re kind of semi-organized, or I should say “organizing”. They had a meeting in Austin TX last year (I went) and it’s in Chicago this year (I can’t go). They’re very passionate. I have an older lady in Texas who calls me at the law office if she finds something on Ohio. I had to tell her “I don’t really run the state of Ohio but I will take this information into consideration” :)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Kay:
I tend to agree with you that most of the privatization advocates are themselves the products of private schools, so they really don’t understand that (a) public schools are necessary and (b) public schools can be just as good academically as private schools, and sometimes even better.
It amused the hell out of me to find out that Rick Santorum went to Carmel High School in Mundelein (IL) in the 80s because, frankly, it wasn’t a very good school. People who lived in nearby districts that weren’t as good (like North Chicago) would send their kids there, or very Catholic people, but the nearest public high schools (where I went) were some of the best in the state. So why spend the extra money on a private school that wasn’t as good academically as the public
Kay
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I just want the politicians to tell the truth. If you’re going to run around in this ed reform silo that is below the radar for most people and eviscerate public schools to donors and the like-minded, then don’t fucking show up for photo ops at public schools when it’s time to get elected and pretend to “support” them. Stop using our schools to get elected and then work to privatize our schools once you’re in. Tell the truth. Run on privatization.
They do it because 90% of kids attend public schools and they can’t get elected on what they say to these think tanks and donors and “movement” ed reform people. If they want to dissolve elected school boards (and they do) then RUN on that.
kc
@Kay:
Thanks, Kay! Bookmarked.
kc
@Kay:
Also bookmarked. Thanks very much.
Kay
@Robert M.:
Except he doesn’t know that. My daughter is a voter, but she’s basically disinterested in politics. She loved the “mansplaining” thing because people have been doing it to her her whole life and she had never heard it described or discussed. People aren’t born knowing the history of feminism. THIS variant of feminist discussion is new TO HER. She’s allowed to be young without a stern lecture.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: I wouldn’t bother with the company that’s messing you around, I’d go straight to the CC company and let them duke it out. Who needs this shit?