Yesterday I read Jon Chait's NY Magazine article, "Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say: How the language police are perverting liberalism." It was an enjoyable read, because it's well written, as is most everything Chait writes. I also disagreed with much of it; I found his anxiety about rampant academic censorship too extended, and his general thrust — "While politically less threatening than conservatism … the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed" — overblown. I nearly rattled out my objections, especially to Chait's "philosophical" generalization. But then I recalled my many transgressions along the same lines, and further recalled that the good Dr. Samuel Johnson had once written perceptively about the "grandeur of generality." I promptly forgave both myself and Jon Chait, and set my rattling machine aside.
Gawker's Alex Pareene did not. He instead exploded — at length — with indignation, rattling out "Punch-Drunk Jonathan Chait Takes On the Entire Internet." The polemical punishment contained therein fails to fit Chait's thought crimes: Chait "embarrass[ed] himself," says Pareene; Chait is a "broken" man"; Chait "hates it" that "writers of color can be just as condescending and dismissive" as Chait is (here, Pareene is invoking the writer's famous spat with Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates); Chait once worked for one of those "center-left opinion journalism shops" (the New Republic), which for "many years was actively fighting for white supremacy!"; and so goes, and goes, Pareene's screed. Accusing Chait of having once been in league with a center-left journalistic force of "white supremacy!" is more than absurd, some would say it's deeply offensive. I very much doubt Chait cares, however — I know I don't — since offensiveness, since Paris, is in fashion. And for Pareene, offensiveness causes readers to Gawk, right?
And that's the whole point, right? Pageviews! Find a polemics writer of greater Internet heft than oneself's, and then rip into him or her. Hurl a disproportionate counterpolemic his or her way, and then sit back and wait for said writer of greater Internet heft to respond, linking, it goes without saying, back to the counterpolemic — which I can almost guarantee you Chait will find irresistible. And Pareene knows it. So off we all go to a counter-counterpolemic (for who dislikes a good street fight?), which inspires a counter-counter-counterpolemic. Those pageviews … rack 'em up, boys.
Actually, this is an old academic trick. The obscure but wise assistant professor would, in search of tenure (a passed-over fad), conjure an outrageous thesis on some topic in some academic journal which would inspire fierce professional opposition, all of which the asst. prof. then "answered" in yet another journal article, which inspired more professional criticism — in short, the asst. prof.'s career was made, and tenure soon granted. Pretty damn smart.
Given the chance, would I join Chait and Pareene and Coates' Internet circus? Of course I would. Hell, I'm doing it right now. The Chait-Pareene spat is something to write about, something different from the same old, same old, and pageviews it will get. The chief difference betwixt their act and mine is that I'm too obscure to be much noticed — to be "answered." Were my Internet presence more prominent, I'd be more offensive about all of this, more polemical. For therein lies the prize of gargantuan pageviews. It's all a bit dreary, perhaps, but that's just the way it is.
So a writer uses hyperbole to make a point. What's the crime? I find it far more offensive when strongly ideological pundits use a soft style to pose as reasonable centrists, all the while smuggling partisan talking points into a discussion. The Deeply Mature and Serious David Brooks is currently the reigning champ of this game. This kind of rhetorical trickery brings us radical policies in the guise of reasonableness (i.e., deregulation of the financial industry, invading Iraq, endless warfare against an elastic concept called "terrorism" that can be anything any demagogue wants it to be.) Alex Pareene gives us ... bad manners? Over-generalization? Forgive me for not clutching my pearls and heading to the fainting couch!
(Besides, nobody but us blog nerds reads any of these guys anyway. Ask the next fifty random people you meet what they think about Jonathan Chait, Alex Pareene, or The New Republic. Whether you regard this as deplorable ignorance or the beginning of wisdom is entirely up to.)
Posted by: ohollern | January 28, 2015 at 10:50 AM