The Job of the Intellectual

Christopher Hitchens discusses George Orwell with Russ Roberts.  Best part, near the end:

The job of the intellectual, the so-called public intellectual, as we are now for some reason doomed to call it, is or ought to be, to say something along the following lines:  It's more complicated than that.  You mustn't simplify this; there's more complexity to this subject.  That's what an intellectual should be doing for public discourse.  One thinks.

But then there are occasions when, it seems to me, that the reverse is the case.  That actually, what the really thoughtful person should be saying is, It's simple; do not make complexity here, where none is required.  I was trying to imagine what Barack Obama would say if he was asked about Salman Rushdie.  Would he say, Of course, I'm for free expression over religious sensibilities, every time?  He wouldn't be able to do this, I suddenly realized.  He's never been asked.  But in his campaign to remake our relationship with the Muslim world, no one's ever asked him the fatwa question.  Could he just give a straight reply?  And no dancing around.  I bet you he could not.  Whereas the most boring thing I've ever said about Salman Rushdie was the only thing I wanted to say.  Which was, you have to be on his side; there's no other side you can possibly be on.

I understand what complexities that people want to introduce, but I'm here to repudiate them and say no-no, keep it simple.  Orwell is very good in that way.  It's very hard to tell what the truth is and some people even say that you can't quite do that; that there may not even be such a thing as objective truth.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't try for it.

Recorded on 17 August 2009.
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On Moderate Muslims

If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a white supremacist, who, say, walked into an African-American church and started shooting, we would easily identify him for what he is.  However, if a muslim walks on to a military base and starts shooting, what do we call him?

Well evidently, anything except:  An islamic supremacist.

Islam is a supremacist ideology.  It is very much akin to Hitler's nazism.  One did not have to man the death camps to subscribe to the ideology.  Plenty of Germans stood by approvingly or turned a blind eye.  I suppose we could say that those people were "moderate nazis."

Hasan's rationale comes straight from the teachings of islam.  The fact that most muslims don't run around killing infidels says nothing whatsoever about their beliefs or the teachings of islam.

Islam reveres muhammad and teaches that he led the "perfect life."  A life that all good muslims should emulate.  And yet, he was a warlord, a rapist, a pedophile, a misogynist, and a polygamist.  One could go on and on.  But, in short, he was an evil man.  So islam reveres evil.  If one subscribes to islam, one subscribes to evil.

So, so-called "moderate muslims" are like those "moderate nazis."  Do not let them off the hook for their vile beliefs just because they did not pull the trigger.

Now, the politically correct crowd argues that we should be tolerant of islam.  But this is like saying we should be tolerant of racist white supremacists.  I mean they don't all run around lynching people right?  To paraphrase Bruce Bawer, tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance at all.  It's suicide.

Hugh Fitzgerald asks:

There is no way that those so-called...moderate Muslims can suggest that no, it is the extremists who are untrue to Islam.  They aren't untrue.  They are perfectly loyal Muslims, good and righteous followers of that exemplar Muhammad....  If one really knew what Islam contained, as not all Muslims born or raised in the West may quite realize, then how could any decent person remain a Muslim? 

So, before you brand me a simple-minded bigot, I urge you to go do a little research on the basic tenets of islam.  After that, you can call me whatever you like.
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Love and Hate for Pamela Geller

LOVE PAMELA GELLER  She does basic shoe-leather reporting that no one else in the country is doing.  No one.  Take the Rifqa Bary case.  Not one so-called journalist bothers with the necessary legwork to accurately report this story.  Like it or not, there is only one source for this story:  Pamela Geller.  What's more, Geller does not subscribe to the delusional and deceptive premise that journalism must be neutral.

HATE PAMELA GELLER  But Geller has a problem:  She presents poorly.  There's just no other way to say it.  Geller does not present herself well and people, regardless of their own ideological convictions, often have a hard time taking her seriously.  Ordinarily I couldn't care less.  But the problem is, like I said above, Geller is the ONLY source for accurate reporting on Rifqa Bary.  If she is not taken seriously, and she is not, then the story suffers.  And, the truth is dismissed with the messenger.

While Geller should clean up her image, the real tragedy here is that so-called journalists are not doing their job.  Undoubtedly part of the issue is that one cannot turn to Muslim preachers or Islamic scholars for accurate information.  The preachers practice Taqiyya, which is beyond the comprehension of journalists, and the scholars have a vested interest in portraying Islam in a positive light.  The easy solution:  Just go read the Islamic texts.

Is that so difficult?
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Why Does Anyone Patronize Starbucks?

Nathan Heller writing about Starbucks coffee in Slate:

The flavor was bitter, the dark liquid acidic on the tongue.  One taster described it as aggressive in the manner of drain cleaner.  An iridescent oil slick capped all our samples, looking like something spewed out behind a maimed petroleum tanker.

To me, it is even simpler.  Starbucks' coffee just tastes burnt.  And, what's worst, they must aim for this taste because I have found this characteristic consistent across visits, times, and locations.  I have a hard time believing that most people like it.

So why do so many people buy it?  Ambiance?  Seems unlikely.  I think people buy it and drink it because they just don't know any better.

Before you tell me how wrong I am:  Go try a cup of the unpretentious Dunkin' Donuts coffee.  My office just happens to be equidistant between a McDonald's and a Starbucks.  Price aside, I always pick McDonald's for coffee.
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On the Mess that is Craigslist

I detest CraigsList.  Any yet, like millions of us, I use it regularly.  Not because I want to, but rather because there is no alternative.

I often complain about the arrogance of tech companies like Microsoft.  They have become so rich, they no longer really care about their customers.  CraigsList also has incredible arrogance towards its users, derived from monopoly power.  But this is a monopoly based on price zero and size.

Gary Wolf writes about the service in Wired Magazine:

The glory of the site is its size and its price.  But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.
...
The current strategy for growth—a slow, bloblike, seemingly unstoppable accretion of new craigslist cities, each an exact clone of the others, launched with no marketing or publicity.  Sometimes a new site grows very slowly for a long time.  But eventually listings hit a certain volume, after which the site becomes so familiar and essential that it is more or less taken for granted by everybody except the distressed publishers of local newspapers.  Revenue from newspaper classified ads is off nearly 50 percent in the past decade, a drop that comes to almost $10 billion.  Only a fraction of this loss is because of Newmark's company, but as the largest online classified site, craigslist is easy to blame.
...
It is difficult to overstate the scale of this accomplishment.  Craigslist gets more traffic than either eBay or Amazon.  eBay has more than 16,000 employees.  Amazon has more than 20,000.  Craigslist has 30.
...
The long-running tech-industry war between engineers and marketers has been ended at craigslist by the simple expedient of having no marketers.  Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at craigslist.  There is no business development, no human resources, no sales.  As a result, there are no meetings.  The staff communicates by email and IM.

Now I love the fact that they don't have marketing types.  But they have a tin ear when it comes to user needs, in no small part because their customer service is a joke.

The CraigsList people argue that they are not a business, but a community service.  But what do you get when you cross a free community service with a business monopoly with a hundred-plus cities?

Evidently the answer is:  Monopolistic anarchy.

I found this article thanks to my friend and blogging mentor, Craig Newmark (no, not the CraigsList idiot savant, but the economics professor).  On his blog, he has pointed out more than once, that if you don't like what you find there, he will gladly refund your money.  And sarcasm aside, his point is so true that it needs no further comment.  And he argues, this applies to CraigsList as well.

However, if I don't like his blog, or any blog, I can go elsewhere.  If I don't like CraigsList, where do I go?  The newspaper?  God forbid.

In fact, I often rail against newspapers on this site.  It's ironic that a company largely responsible for their demise, is so wholly undeserving.
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Hanna, Michelle, and Mary Jo

Hanna Rosin:

Public officials who do terrible things and then say they’re sorry (often in a press conference or book) are a dime a dozen.  But the ones who do something terrible and then repent indirectly in the form of a lifetime of dedicated public service are rare.

Well, in regard to Ted Kennedy, how hard is it to dedicate your life to public service when you inherit that much money?  What a sacrifice.  Public service from the family compound.  It would be funny if it were not so real.

Rosin goes on to point out that Kennedy did something terrible.  And, He made up for it partly by declining the ultimate glory of running for president, and choosing the more humble path....

Really?  Not running for president?  Let's get real:  Kennedy never paid for his mistakes.  The only thing worse than Ted Kennedy's unaccountable early life, and elevation to family-entitled position, were the dead brains who kept voting for him.

Michelle Malkin says it is crass to point this out today.  She is wrong.  The starry-eyed mainstream media will make Kennedy out to be an unblemished hero.  Somebody needs to point out their omissions.

Look, he was the brother of an assassinated president and senator.  He was a long-serving senator from the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  And to give him his due, he was an effective legislator.  I'm sorry he's dead.

But he was not a great man.
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Cool Ad Watch

Via Copyranter
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Rosenberg on Journalist versus Bloggers

Scott Rosenberg offers an extended excerpt from his new book on the rise of blogging, Say Everything.

Chapter Nine:
Journalists versus Bloggers

My take:  Traditional journalists with their press passes, phony neutrality, and monopoly on the public narrative, showered bloggers with invective, condescension, derision, and ridicule.

Rosenberg argues that traditional journalism was not objective about the rise of blogging.  They were too dismissive to be objective.  He does not, however, challenge traditional journalism's self-proclaimed objectivity itself.  To be fair, this is probably beyond the scope of his book.  But he goes on to point out that traditional journalists often lack the time, interest, or expertise to properly report on given issues.  Note this problem existed long before the internet.  Bloggers just helped make it painfully obvious.

In addition to the economics of the internet, to truly understand the trouble traditional journalism faces today, one must consider the quality of the product.  I would argue this starts with traditional journalism's claim to be objective.  Journalism is not, and has never been, neutral.  The idea of neutral journalism is, at best, delusional, and at worst, deceptive.  Proclaiming neutrality and objective reporting does not make it so.  Rather, it simply engenders public distrust.

As a long-time blog reader, what is refreshing about the medium is the best bloggers, on all sides of any issue, don't pretend to be neutral.  Readers are invited to engage with the writers or free to seek alternative viewpoints.  Traditional journalism, condescending to the end, trembles at the thought of it.

Update:
July 27, 2009
Kyle Smith reviews Say Everything in today's Wall Street Journal (archive).
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The Gates Incident

Richard Thompson Ford writing in Slate:

I know Gates and find it very hard to imagine him engaged in disorderly conduct.  But many police officers demand more than orderly conduct; they demand submission and deference.  Given the difficult and dangerous jobs they do, they usually deserve it.  But it would be naive to imagine that there are no power-hungry bigots wearing the uniform.  Anyone, particularly a black person, needs only to encounter one such rogue officer to find himself in serious jeopardy—at that point a few hours in custody is about the best one can hope for.  Maybe Gates, who is well-acquainted with the history of American racism, raised his voice in anger or fear.  Maybe he even unfairly berated Crowley.  But there's no way that the slight, 58-year-old Harvard scholar, with his cane, posed a threat to public order that justified his arrest.

Let's face it, Gates made the officer mad.  Last time I checked, that is not a crime.
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M.A. Khan on his Journey Out of Islam

In the article, Shaming the Muslims Out of Islam, M.A. Khan, editor of Islam Watch and author of the recent book Islamic Jihad, discusses his own journey with Bill Warner:

I was one such liberal/moderate Muslim.  When 9/11 occurred, I felt that the attack was rather justified because of the United States' unjust policies toward the Palestinians.  I was lucky, I should say, that I was already involved in some internet groups that were critical of Islam.  But after the 9/11 attacks, as critical analysis of Islam, the Quran and hadiths flourished dramatically, I became a defender of Islam for quite some time.  I continued to resist looking into the basic texts of Islam, the Quran, Sunnah and Muhammad's biographies for 2-3 years.  But I eventually read them, and I was shattered and frustrated with myself.  I was ashamed because the Quran reads like a manual of unconditional war against non-Muslims, Muhammad was one of the most horrible, if not the worst, human being in the history of mankind.  And I had believed that Islam was the most perfect and peaceful religion, a perfect code to human life, for 35+ years of my life.  Emphasis mine.

This reminds me of Hugh Fitzgerald's question:

If one really knew what Islam contained, as not all Muslims born or raised in the West may quite realize, then how could any decent person remain a Muslim?

Personally, I am not at all sure that willful ignorance is susceptible to shame.  What's really frightening is that the true believers are perfectly well aware of the basic tenets of Islam.  Stronger measures than mere shame will be necessary.
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