Andrew Sullivan is nostalgic for the McCarthy years, and he thinks William Kristol should be the first one made to account for his errors:
But when you’re this prominent a war-backer and you get things this wrong on a subject this important, don’t you think a smidgen of self-criticism or self-analysis could be in order? (I’m omitting the fact that the WMD casus belli Kristol also asserted as fact was a total chimera, but given the number of Kristol’s errors, this now seems small beer). …
It seems to me that we demand accountability from our politicians and we should demand accountability from our intellectuals. Not that they always get things right - but that they give a full accounting when they are wrong. Instead we reward and celebrate those who not only get things wrong - Kristol and Rove now have prominent columns in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal - but those who have never taken personal responsibility for their own mistakes. Until we purge all these tendencies from Washington, we will not learn from history and we will keep repeating it.
Somehow I doubt that Sullivan’s idea to put the neocons to the screws will get very far. But the urge to purge, to punish, to flay the evil-doers in our midst, to exorcise the demons, reminds me of this movie.
Here’s something Sullivan ought to ponder—that some of those who were purged in this country didn’t weep for themselves; they took it on the chin:
In spite of the subsequent loss of Trumbo’s livelihood and stature (”He probably was the best writer of that time,” Kirk Douglas offers, not inaccurately, in an interview), not to mention the aftereffects of a seminomadic existence with his family and the injustice of seeing his work produced under assumed names, “Trumbo” clearly proves that, if nothing else, its subject endured the deprivations of the blacklist with more wit than any of the rest of the writers in the original Hollywood Ten.
“Get ready to become nobody” is how Trumbo describes the process of divestiture that followed his HUAC adventure.
But since he’s the punitive sort and because the stakes are so very high, perhaps Sullivan has more exquisite tortures in mind for his neocon victims, ways to force them to recant and repent? Waterboarding, perhaps? I hear it’s all the rage.
There is a sickness afoot in the land when a popular non-political blogger makes note of a politician’s lowering of his own standards and his commenters attack him for speaking his mind.
Jeff Jarvis:
Whenever you want to show how soft big media are on Barack Obama, refer back to Howard Kurtz’ column on their coverage of the candidate’s hypocritical flip-flop on campaign financing. Chapter and verse.
Some comments [e.a.]:
Just drop it. It’s clear you were a Clinton supporter, but if you want a Democrat in the White House in 2009, the political reality is that attacking Obama is the same supporting McCain.
Jeff, would you consider some even handed-ness in your political posts ? It makes your position on press bias seem fairly hypocritical.
Jeff replies:
I am likely to be an Obama voter but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold him to high standards. I am not a member of his cult so I can disagree with him. It’s allowed out here. No, I won’t drop it.
Commenter:
Jeff, you’re entitled to “hold Obama to high standards,” just like the rest of us. And I realize, in a post like this, you’re trying to expose the inherent bias of the media, not bash Obama. But that’s what you’re indirectly doing.
I realize you’re trying to change the media, but please don’t (conciously or unconciously) swiftboat Obama in the process.
Commenter Steve:
So, if I support Senator Obama, I am a cultist?
Jeff responds:
No, Steve, but I’m being told I can’t criticize him and hold him to high standards. That’s a cultist talking.
Last word (not on Jeff’s blog but here on mine, where I’m the editor) goes to this commenter from Jeff’s blog:
Obama supporters panic whenever a story appears to question, criticize, or point out the hypocrisies of their candidate.
Indeed! and get a load of this attack, published at the HuffPo, on Jon Stewart for—gasp!—making fun of the Obama Messiah. Joseph Palermo builds his case by accusing Stewart of having been complicit in selling the war in Iraq to the American people:
Slamming the UN weapons inspectors as ineffectual twits dominated right-wing talk radio at the time and The Daily Show was in effect regurgitating the talking points of those who wanted to bring the country to war. Dissing the UN’s efforts on Comedy Central inadvertently helped make the case for war. It is kind of like when Dick Cheney pointed to the New York Times to buttress his warmongering saying: “Hey, even the liberals agree with us!”
Then Palermo goes on to warn Stewart to watch his mouth when he’s making fun of Obama:
When Jon Stewart seeks “balance” for his targets of satire he can end up reinforcing the false impressions that the Bush Republicans want people to have. It’s unfortunate because political humor is a powerful force that can sway some of those “low information” voters the pundits have been flogging lately.
So too was the case last night when Jon Stewart ran a bit about Barack Obama’s decision to eschew public financing. The Daily Show seized the issue as an opportunity to display “balance” and to poke fun at the Obama campaign. But not only did the bit fall flat it played right into the Republican line, which is full of half-truths and outright lies about Obama’s decision.
During the primaries, Keith Olbermann attacked Stewart just for mentioning Obama’s middle name.
Here’s what I think: this attempt by hyper-partisan ideological enforcers to shut down the debate among Democrats about Barack Obama will backfire. Badly.
Intimidating people who are on your own side (Jarvis and Stewart are both Democrats, from what I can tell) is never a good idea, especially here in America, where, as Jeff said, we don’t—and won’t—shut up.
Undoubtedly, those trying to shut down the debate are the product (or the masters) of our elite universities, where diversity is god but where diversity of opinion is unwelcome.
Those often kindly teachers, however, do have a sense of urgent mission. Even if we put them on truth-serum, the academics who dominate the humanities and social sciences on our campuses today would state that K-12 education essentially has been one long celebration of America and the West, as if our students were intimately familiar with the Federalist Papers and had never heard of slavery or empire. Having convinced themselves that the students whom they inherit have been immersed in American and Western traditions without critical perspective—they do believe that—contemporary academics see themselves as having merely four brief years in which to demystify students, and somehow to get them to look up from their Madison and Hamilton long enough to gaze upon the darker side of American and Western life. In their view, our K-12 students know all about Aristotle, John Milton and Adam Smith, have studied for twelve years how America created bounty and integrated score after score of millions of immigrants, but have never heard of the Great Depression or segregation.
Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individual- ism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten “minorities,” including women (the majority of students), about the “internalization” of their oppression (today’s equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university in loco parentis to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them?
Disagreement is at the foundation of human existence, and American democracy is successful (among other reasons) because it takes this fundamental fact of human nature into account.
Plus: If Barack Obama cannot stomach, answer, and withstand criticisms from his own side, he is unlikely to be able to withstand criticism, or attacks, from his political opponents.
The Urge to Purge lives on in the fever swamps of the nutty left. The efforts to take down Joe Klein continue apace:
Glenn Greenwald has been waging his own little war against Time columnist Joe Klein for more than a week now owing to what Greenwald says was a “factually false” description of the FISA legislation in the House in Klein’s latest piece.
Kos himself has since joined the pile on, here, and now Greenwald has kicked it up a notch, teaming up with the “tenacious” Jane Hamsher to go after Klein’s editor.
The whole thing is a bit ridiculous, but, like a battle between the Giants and Cowboys, it’s fun to watch and root for injuries.
Yep.
