Pollitt On Douthat
For a column that’s critical of me, I don’t really disagree with much of what Katha Pollitt has to say about Ross Douthat. He’s a conservative. I am not a conservative. If I thought that conservative views were correct, I would be a conservative. But I think they’re wrong. Therefore, I think that conservatives such as Ross Douthat are regularly wrong about a wide variety of important topics. Thus, instances of them being wrong can be easily produced. I also am not a fan of the idea that institutions are under an obligation to be ideologically balanced. Conservative editorial pages normally contain zero progressive contributors, and there’s no particular reason that The New York Times op-ed page needs to have two conservatives.
That said, The New York Times clearly made the decision that it does want two writers from the right on its pages. Given that, I think Ross Douthat is one of the best possible candidates and certainly will be a marked improvement over Bill Kristol. I don’t think it makes sense to reason “all conservatives are wrong about important things, therefore all conservatives are equally pernicious.” Tyler Cowen on economics has a lot more to offer than Larry Kudlow on economics, even though I agree with neither of them. I think that’s common sense, and I don’t think it makes one a traitor to progressive politics to point this kind of thing out or to think it’s a good thing when conservatives-who-offer-more replace conservatives-who-offer-less.
74 Responses to “Pollitt On Douthat”
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March 20th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Is that like a blogger pin up picture?
March 20th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Matt, you should at least consider the paroposition that the male-centric reaches of even the lefty blogocracy do indeed have a blind spot when it comes to gender politics and women’s rights and issues. In fact, every time you (very occasionally) post something along these themes, it’s astonishing how douche-y and hateful and, yes, misogynistic your comment thread suddenly becomes.
And Mr. Douthat, as Pollitt demonstrates in spades, is a royal douchebag.
Don’t get too clubby, son.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:52 am
“Conservative editorial pages normally contain zero progressive contributors”
I can only think of two conservative editorial pages off the top of my head (the WSJ and the IBD), and both contain progressive (i.e., liberal) commentators. The WSJ has Thomas Frank on staff, if memory serves, and the IBD regularly includes a syndicated op/ed liberal column under the banner “from the left”.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Way to go, Katha! Even when you cherry pick, the four blockquotes are still better reasoned and more thoughtful than your mindless screed, even though I disagree with them.
Only if the NYT follows Pollit’s idiotic advice will the WSJ actually rise to the level of national competition. The NYT wants find smart exponents of the major points of view. Ross is a smart exponent, and it’s just stupid to think that he doesn’t represent a significant swath of the culture.
Look at why Pollitt prefers Kristol, and how she slides in Republican for conservative. That tells you everything you need to know about her on this issue.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Ugh. That kind of tendentious reasoning and self-righteous fury is one reason I stopped reading the Nation long ago. My god, what a straw-person argument. Oh, look a few folks — Ezra, MY, etc — said something nice about Ross Dipshithat. Oh, and look, he has written all kinds of crazy & wrong things. Shocker — he’s a conservative. And if you actually read the rest of what MY and Ezra said, they said that, compared to the rest of the dreck comprising that movement, he is, relatively speaking, brilliant and a superior representative of conservative “thought” to Kristol.
A thoroughly pointless piece from Pollitt, raging at imaginary arguments. To paraphrase the end of her column, it shows the truth of my quip that a Nation column wouldn’t be a Nation column unless it engaged in firing shots in a progressive circular firing-squad, boasting about being more liberal and progressive than someone else.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Pollitt’s post is just an extended sneer, not a demonstration of anything. And the bit at the end about preferring Kristol because he won’t make you think is disgraceful – exactly the opposite of what Matt said in his original post on this topic.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Elle, does “royal douchebag” mean something other than “disagrees with me on issues I deem important”?
March 20th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
And Mr. Douthat, as Pollitt demonstrates in spades, is a royal douchebag.
Word. And, let’s be intellectually honest here: That’s an objectively weenie beard Douthat’s sportin.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
preferring Kristol because he won’t make you think is disgraceful
Many of us suspect that a lot of newspapers keep a token conservative on their op-ed staff for the specific purpose of making the right wing POV look stupid. I can certainly see how getting rid of Kristol in favor of Douthat instead of someone like, say, Jeff Jacoby, would give reason to complain if this is how you believed op-ed pages should be run.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
This is what happens when people become consumed by politics. The only thing Katha Pollitt is considering is whether Douthat has the correct political opinions; whether she agrees with him. She can’t seem to fathom the idea that someone could be a good writer and not agree with her. I don’t agree with the passages she quoted either, but I recognize them as well-written. I’d always rather read someone who’s a good writer but gets things wrong than someone who’s boring but always right.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
It is, however, an objectively weenie beard. I don’t understand how you could look at yourself in the mirror every morning and shave that stupid little chin-strap onto your face. I’d start laughing at myself. Either have a beard, or don’t have a beard!
March 20th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I should add: picking Douthat was a masterstroke for the Times. They get to appear magnanimous in hiring a conservative, one well-respected by fellow Harvard alumni such as Yglesias, who nevertheless has no chance gathering any adherents to conservatism. Douthat’s religiousness only preaches to the choir, and his “Grand New Party” ideas of using Democrat-lite domestic programs and transfer payments to buy the loyalty of the working class are worthless, as was demonstrated when Bush tried them (under the label “compassionate conservatism”).
March 20th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
hehe, looks like Ms. Pollitt’s mild criticism has drawn a relatively hysterical reaction from lots of “liberal” males. what a shock.
I agree with what she writes. every time this happens (just about any conservative gets any job anywhere) there is an immediately round of unnecessary, masturbatory ‘congrats’ from liberals who seem to go out of their way to do so before even looking into the possibility that said conservative really is a f-in’ idiot who’s appointment is in fact nothing to celebrate.
you can praise these folks if you want, but you always, always every time, have to end up eating the praise and saying “my bad” anyway, so why not interrupt the patter and just replace it with tried and true skepticism?
March 20th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
That’s certainly true. Horribly, sadly, true. However…
…I disagree. Pollitt takes it as given that Douthat’s positions are, because they are contrary to feminist thought, self-evidently anti-woman and, I think, intentionally so.
I’m a liberal feminist who is pro-choice. Yet several things in Pollitt’s article set my teeth on edge.
The first was her Douthat quote on female orgasm. She takes it as self-evident that any evolutionary speculation on female orgasm by a man is presumptuous, wrong, and stupid. This sort of thing is pernicious in feminism, where women conflate the inappropriateness of male involvement in political feminism (and discussion of female experience) with any and all discussions that have anything to do with women.
The second is the common pro-choice assumption that women’s reproductive freedom (and control of their bodies) is equivalent in importance, or superior in importance, to the question of human life vis a vis embryos and fetuses. I’ve never understood this. No (or practically no…I’ve seen a few courageous exceptions) argued in favor of “choice” for infanticide on the basis of women’s rights. That’s because almost no one, including feminists, question the status of human life vis a vis infants. Good faith pro-lifers, of which there must be some, sincerely believe that embryos and fetuses are human lives. Of course they would see women’s reproductive freedom as relatively minor issues in comparison. It is unfair for pro-choicers or feminists to expect pro-lifers to give equal consideration to women’s concerns in this matter.
That said, it’s important to point out that pro-lifers commit the exact same unfairness, too. They disregard the assumption that pro-choicers are working under and assume that pro-choicers are anti-life. Pro-lifers never seriously engage pro-choicers that a) these things aren’t human lives, or b) their status is sufficiently uncertain such that c) women’s rights is the primary concern. They dismiss and completely ignore this, just like pro-choicers ignore that pro-lifers are taking as their base assumption that abortion is taking a human life.
What Matt’s trying to say here is that Pollitt makes no difference between conservatives except on the basis of how much or how little they deviate from liberal, and specifically, feminist beliefs. But Matt is saying, not explicitly, is that in civil discourse the most important consideration isn’t how right or wrong you think someone is, but how much you think they are arguing in good-faith, how much they are reasonable.
I’ve not read Douthat at all, only quotes by others, but he certainly seems to be acting in good-faith and to be reasonable. He takes extreme positions on some issues that are very important to feminists, and I certainly oppose him on that basis. Strongly. But I feel that it’s much more likely that I’d be able to get him to take seriously a contrary assumption in an argument (such as in abortion) than I would, say, Kristol. Kirstol is a hack and a party tool. Sure, he does dissent when certain neoconservative issues conflict with the rest of the GOP. But, basically, I think that Kirstol is a partisan first and foremost—it’s not about rational beliefs, it’s about power. There’s reason to believe that Douthat is a better class of person, even if wrong about a lot of important things.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“Matt, you should at least consider the proposition that the male-centric reaches of even the lefty blogocracy do indeed have a blind spot when it comes to gender politics and women’s rights and issues. In fact, every time you (very occasionally) post something along these themes, it’s astonishing how douche-y and hateful and, yes, misogynistic your comment thread suddenly becomes.”
Having seen some of those threads, you have a point. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that Matt’s blog has attracted a politically diverse group of people who make douche-y and hateful comments about pretty much every subject under the sun.
I’d also say that there are a large number of conservative Catholic white men in this country with idiotic views about human sexuality, and there’s nothing particularly unusual or troublesome about the fact that a talented young writer who happens to fall into this demographic group has been given a prominent editorial position. When you look around at some of the far more horrible people who write conservative editorials in this country (Jonah Goldberg? Mark Steyn?) it’s hard to criticize this choice.
If you want evidence of misogynism at the NYT, I’d look no further than the fact that the only “progressive” woman on their op/ed page is Maureen freaking Dowd.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
@ too many steves above – depends on how low of a bar you’ve set for what is a ‘good writer’. Douthat doesn’t qualify, or come close, by my standards. but we do have to give some praise any time one of these mental midgets is successfully able to put pen to paper at all, so, its a start.
really, can someone cite and example of this guy’s “good writing”? and yes, it really does count if your prettily-constructed sentence/paragraph is based on totally false information, bad assumptions, and self-canceling logic. there are such things as ‘facts’.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
oh dear, Keith M. Ellis above, there is so much wrong with what you have written it would take a while to refute. but I’ll just clue you in with one example.
you say
of course, this is incredibly wrong-headed and raises points not at all addressed or initiated by either Matt Y. or Pollitt. I think if you had actually read (and comprehended!) what Pollitt said about the quote, you’d notice that she probably has a problem with this part of it
because that is a massive assumption on Douchehat’s part which is certainly based on a sexist mentality. and the rest of your post is a simliar series of straw-men and sillliness. nice try though…
March 20th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
He lost me when he decided not to get laid because the girl had BC pills.
Dude, you need a really good reason not to have sex, and that aint it.
He isn’t just wrong, he’s a god damned dweeb.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Balance? At the Times. That’s a laughable idea. I can’t get too worked up by the conservatives who have been or will be or are on the Times’s payroll. At least the conservatives are openly conservative, as opposed to the rest of the op-ed columnists (other than Krugman), who continue to be thought of as “liberal” even though they are apolitically vacuous at best.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
onceler writes:
Er, not exactly. When the NYT hired Kristol, it was greeted with unmitigated scorn here, as it should have been.
Now the NYT has fired Kristol. They apparently insist on hiring another conservative. This is a stupid decision on their part, but, having made that decision, Douthat is far from the most appalling person they could have chosen.
Consider this: I can probably name a hundred right-wingers who would be worse than Douthat to have in the NYT (Gingrich, Ben Domenech, that Erickson dude from RedState, Krauthammer, Bob Owens, Michael Barone, and believe me I’m just getting started here).
How many actual right-wingers can one name who would be better than Douthat? I can probably think of a couple.
That’s not praising Douthat, unless you consider less-than-total condemnation to be “praise”
March 20th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
onceler, you’re going to have to bring more game if you want to be so condescending.
Just to point out the fact: Pollitt doesn’t say anything about the quote. She rather relies on people like you to fill in the argument by calling Douthat names like “Douchehat” and asserting without evidence that his argument is “certainly based on a sexist mentality.”
Fail.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
No (or practically no…I’ve seen a few courageous exceptions) argued in favor of “choice” for infanticide on the basis of women’s rights. That’s because almost no one, including feminists, question the status of human life vis a vis infants.
This is incorrect. The reason hardly anyone argues for infanticide is that there’s no conflict between a living baby and a woman’s autonomy over her own body. And if you see this distinction as a mere technicality, then boy do you need to think about this some more.
If pregnancies could be terminated in such a way that the fetus could be transplanted, with no greater inconvenience to the original mother, nor greater permanent consequences, than a first-term abortion currently poses (provided as well that the additional expense would be borne by the people adopting the fetus), would feminists object to a requirement that these fetuses be kept alive? Exercise to be left to the reader, I guess.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I’m all for the glorification of Douthat: by all means, let’s set him up as the very best conservative mind of our age. (He may well be just that–it’s kind of hard for me to judge.) Then we’ll slap him into pancake batter.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
onceler,
i am a progressive (male, as that may be relevant here) regular reader of this blog and the comments. i also agree with most of what keith m. ellis wrote above. your refutation did nothing to dissuade largely because you didn’t really try to refute anything. i understand that you are busy and you’re not required to answer ellis’s claims, but if that was the most effort you were willing to put forward, why do it at all? it just irritated me.
i agree that douthat was making an assumption in the quote you cited but it doesn’t seem self-evidently false nor “certainly” based on a sexist mentality. it seemed like it was probably based on an evolutionary psychology hypothesis that could be proved/disproved and a claim about how we think society ought to be that could be agreed with or disagreed with (and i choose the latter).
If you think people are too dumb (or “silly”) to bother refuting, you probably won’t make it any better by pointing that out to them. I guess you might make yourself feel better.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Ah, Keith Ellis is at his tricks again, claiming that for pro-choicers, “these things [fetuses] aren’t human lives.” Does any pro-choicer really think this? I understand the argument that fetuses are not persons, but that they are not human?! or alive?!–not so much.
Much more instructive is the thought-experiment proposed by kth [not the same Keith, I take it]. The answer there, however, is yes, feminists would object, on the grounds that said legislation still requires them to relinquish their autonomy over their body to the state. Plus, such a requirement would set a precedent for legal recognition of the fetus, which would work to undermine the existent R.v W. legislative framework.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Isn’t that the truth. Stupid is stupid, whether it’s saying women don’t belong in politics or saying George Will isn’t a global climate change denier.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I think it’s also fair to say that Ross is much happier to engage in productive conversation than many others in the conservative stable. One needs not be persuaded by another after a discussion to have learned something valuable through the exchange. And certainly Ross will spur more interesting and demanding discussions than Bill Kristol, even if you disagree at the end of each of them.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Douthat wrote:
This is just flat-out dumb. It barely qualifies as “evolutionary speculation,” and is better described as pseudoscientific nonsense.
“It makes adaptive sense for women to have a hard time achieving orgasm, because it encourages them to seek out partners who enjoy giving oral sex and will therefore stick around and help with the children.”
“It makes adaptive sense for women to have a hard time achieving orgasm, because it encourages them to seek out a variety of male partners in the hopes that they will eventually find one who can actually pleasure them.”
I mean, the human body is the product of evolution and sex is pretty damn important for spreading your genes, but does Pollitt really need to spell out that the Douthat quote is nonsense?
Also, if women really just care about finding a single long-term partner who will stick around and help raise the kids, then shouldn’t they evolve a dislike of promiscuous men, and shouldn’t men evolve to be less promiscuous, so as to actually be able to attract women?
But yeah, it’s pretty mind-blowing to see sloppy “evolutionary” reasoning about human adaptations. I’ll be darned.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Says who? Being glad that the NYT replaced an imbecile (Kristol) with someone who isn’t one doesn’t mean we are thrilled about Ross Douthat.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I should add that, as a pro-life male, I am no doubt supposed by many here to be rapturous over Douthat’s appointment to the Times. But, sadly, he does come across as a douche-bag, he is not very interesting, and there is some reason for worrying that Yglesias can’t be clear-headed about his fellow Harvard grad, for reasons of friendship, professional courtesy, etc.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
If you read all the way to the second paragraph, Pollitt answers your question.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Just for the record, if the Times had chosen Megan McArdle, I don’t know for sure what Matt’s reaction would have been, but mine would have been substantively identical. In fact here’s a proposition:
Christopher Caldwell is the only extant non-douche-y conservative pundit/commentator/critic in the land. Hire him, goddammit (if he can be persuaded…).
March 20th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
That’s a point that needs to be emphasized whenever the question of “media bias” arises.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
When I first read your comment, I thought you were in earnest. Now that I quote it, I realize that you’re just, well, playing games.
Assuming you’re in earnest, my response would have been that I am pro-choice and I am so exactly because I don’t think that embryos or fetuses are “human lives”…
…which I intended to be equivalent to “persons”.
When you accuse me of being “at my tricks again”, you imply that I’m writing in bad-faith, that I chose the phrase “human life” specifically to imply something that isn’t true.
Which, really, is bizarre. I seriously doubt that anyone, including you, misunderstood what I meant by “human life”. Not the least would be because no one is dumb enough to think that either of those two terms mean the same thing thing independently as they do in conjunction.
Incidentally, I think that fetuses are human in the sense that they are of humans, but they are not a human, anymore than I think that a kidney is a human. If you think this view is unique among pro-choicers, than perhaps you’ve never met any pro-choicers.
The conjunction of the words “human life” pretty clearly indicates a person.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
If you think that there aren’t issues about women’s rights with regard to caring for an infant, then boy do you need to think (and learn) about this some more. I have, as I said in my comment, read a few feminist defenses of infanticide on exactly the basis that a) in cultures where infanticide has been practiced, women have been the primary caretakers of infants and infanticide is the only real means of asserting their reproductive freedom; and, b) infants are arguably no more persons than fetuses are.
So your arrogant dismissal of my point implies that you are less aware of the feminist literature about abortion than, gasp, I am. That’s because I’m a pro-choicer who has, in fact, thought and read about this issue a great deal.
And, by the way, I find those arguments about infanticide more than a little bit persuasive. Pro-lifers appeal to emotion and metaphysics for their assumptions about the personhood status of fetuses. For the most part, I think our automatic acceptance of the personhood of infants is similarly motivated by emotion and cultural status quo.
It’s telling that other cultures have not considered infants people.
I agree that there are a number of pro-choicers who explicitly endorse the idea that fetuses are persons and yet oppose bans on abortion anyway on the basis of women’s rights over their own bodies. They are explicitly subordinating a “person’s” right to life to other concerns. Yet I sincerely doubt that the same people would be willing to endorse infanticide on the basis of other concerns, similar or otherwise.
I think it’s very convenient for someone to find infanticide horrifying yet find abortion acceptable. I think that very few people have thought about abortion without simply taking their predispositions and rationalizing them with whatever arguments are conveniently available from their fellow partisans, pro or con.
I believe that pro-choicers either explicitly deny the personhood of the fetus, or they somehow rationalize ignoring it. In that context, of course a woman’s right to control her body and reproduction is the dominant concern. But when you strongly accept the personhood of the fetus, then similarly of course the life of the fetus is the dominant concern. Your comment is subtly an example of how each side contorts itself to utterly ignore the other side’s essential assumption. “We’re talking about a woman’s right to her body here, everything else is just a diversion”, and “we’re talking about a person’s life here, everything else is a diversion”. And around and around we go.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Come now, Keith, try to rouse yourself from your slumberous thought.
As far as I can see, you’re committed to the following propositions:
1. A fetus is not a human in the same way as a kidney is not a human.
2. The term “human life” is equivalent to the term “person.”
Now I know plenty pro-choicers, but very few (none?) of them are so stupid as to hold to your first proposition. This may be because many of them have taken biology, and so they realize that the issue is not, has never been, and will never be whether a developing fetus is a human, but rather whether the *kind* of human that a developing fetus is should be accorded the rights and privileges of a “person.” The suggestion that a fetus is a kind of kidney that, once out of the vagina, magically becomes a person is absurd.
Secondly, I cannot really believe that you are unaware of the vast deserts of philosophical literature devoted to establishing just the distinction between “persons” and “human lives” that you assume is self-evidently fallacious.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Politt’s best point is that since he’s 29, we may be facing many decades of Dullthud columns in the Times.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Matt (this is purely an apostrophic address, since Matt does not read his comments)- Matt, would you give a moment’s consideration to the possibility that you approve of Douthat because he’s like you in every respect other than his politics? He;s your twin, for chrissakes. (Has anyone ever seen the two of you in the same room?)
March 20th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
As Barbar wrote, it may be a really vulgar form of an evolutionary “just so” story, but it’s not “certainly” based upon sexist thought.
I think that something Barbar wrote elsewhere his/her comment is very interesting:
I’m pretty sure that Pollitt and onceler assume that anything that smacks of EP and deals with female behavior is both factually wrong and sexist. But your argument (which occurs in the context of slapping down Douthat) is in conflict with that point of view.
If, as I agree, sex is evolutionarily extremely important, then it stands to reason that there would be behavioral sexual dimorphism among humans, especially considering that behavioral (as opposed to strictly anatomical) sexual dimorphism is extremely common in nature. But the feminist party line right now (from which I unhappily dissent) is that theories of evolutionary behavioral sexual dimorphism is factually wrong and sexist in motivation. Pollitt and oncelor take this as a given.
Just as it’s the case that many people who are pro-life are really more concerned with rationalizing oppression of women than they are with defending the supposed life of the fetus, many people who support EP theories of sexual dimorphism are really just rationalizing oppression of women with a trendy scientific veneer. I freely admit this.
But just because this is common doesn’t mean that every pro-life argument and every EP argument about female behavior is a facade for sexism. There’s legitimate reasons (though, in my opinion, wrong) for many people to truly believe that fetuses and embryos are people and there’s legitimate reasons (in my opinion, right) to believe that women and men behave differently for evolutionary reasons. I know that I, for example, accept behavioral sexual dimorphism for earnest and non-sexist reasons…just as some of the late 80s academic feminist theorists did. It’s perfectly okay to push back against those who use such rationales as a cover for their sexism; it’s not fair and okay to assume that everyone with these beliefs are sexists.
Furthermore, and again, I agree that Douthat’s evolutionary speculations are uninformed, simplistic, and more than a little silly. I myself happen to think that reproductive differences between men and women are the evolutionary reason for the difference in orgasm ease and frequency between men and women. But Douthat goes beyond that into speculation that conveniently validates a conservative status quo about how men and women should behave in other ways. It’s dumb, it may be an example of sexism, but it also may simply be an example of lay, uninformed speculation about evolution that unintentionally validates his biases.
When I say ”unintentionally”, I think that Douthat is just taking for granted the behavioral differences he’s explaining—in the same way that many people offer lay, uninformed and simplistic evolutionary explanations for, say, human “love” in contrast to other animal behavior. Almost everyone takes for granted that humans “love” and that animals don’t (and all those other “noble” things we supposedly exclusively possess) and people will come up with evolutionary rationales for this that are intended simply as explanations and not because they are really motivated to denigrate other animals.
In short, I think that it’s entirely possible for someone to be a very strong pro-lifer and not be motivated by sexism. I also think that it’s possible for someone to believe in behavioral sexual dimorphism without being sexist. Some such behavioral dimorphisms are not self-evidently sexist. For example, it’s not clear at all to me that the claim that men are by nature more antagonistic and competitive and women more empathic and cooperative is self-evidently sexist. If it’s used to validate a subordinate position of women in society in some way, then it is. In contrast, the claim that men are smarter than women is self-evidently sexist. This is why the whole subject of behavioral sexual dimorphism in humans is such a politically dangerous topic. It needs to be handled with care and people like Douthat most deserve criticism precisely because they are being careless.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Politt’s best point is that since he’s 29, we may be facing many decades of Dullthud columns in the Times.
That assumes that the Times will be around for many decades.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
“hehe, looks like Ms. Pollitt’s mild criticism has drawn a relatively hysterical reaction from lots of “liberal” males. what a shock.”
Nothing Matt wrote was even remotely hysterical.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I’m pretty sure that Pollitt and onceler assume that anything that smacks of EP and deals with female behavior is both factually wrong and sexist.
You don’t seem to have any evidence of this, other than the fact they think that the Douthat quote is obviously stupid. The problem with this evidence is that the Douthat quote IS obviously stupid, and so I don’t see why they lose points for being right.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Matt, would you give a moment’s consideration to the possibility that you approve of Douthat because he’s like you in every respect other than his politics?
Not true! Matt likes basketball. Ross prefers movies.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
mad6798j wrote:
But onceler’s comment wasn’t directed entirely at Matt.
Let me quote from the comments in this thread preceding onceler’s:
your mindless screed
Pollitt’s post is just an extended sneer
tendentious reasoning and self-righteous fury
consumed by politics
Yup, no hysteria there.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
agreed. however, the weenie beard + mushroom helmet head of hair kinda works for him. but he needs to sport a native american bolo tie to compelte the look.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I don’t think it’s a gender issue so much as a strategic one. You can make an argument that you would like your enemies to be as stupid, incompetent, hidebound, and ridiculous as possible, on the grounds that they will undermine their own cause and redound to your benefit. Or you can hope that your enemies are smarter and less incompetent on the grounds that on a practical level it’s best to have people in positions of influence who are not dumb.
I tend to side with Matt; I’d rather that the conservative opposition were reality-based and willing to argue in good faith from time to time. I think a healthy democracy needs two parties, and that it would be best to have one of them run by people who are just wrong, rather than by people who are lunatic assholes.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
To use your charming logic Barbar, it simply IS a mindless screed. And that’s not hysterical, because unlike your bland so-obvious-I-refuse-to-defend-it-and-the-fact-that-you-don’t-agree-means-you’re-stupid-too assertion, I actually provided evidence and arguments.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Cut the NY Times some slack. They are obviously in fierce competition with the Washington Post to see which one can assemble the biggest stable of douchebag editorial columnists and the WP is way ahead.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Pollitt raises potentially interesting issues here, but she doesn’t actually raise them well. Listing quotes and taking it as self-evident that readers will have the same reaction as one wants them to is pretty much the paradigm of preaching to the converted.
The interesting issues that could have led to fruitful discussion, but don’t seem to have are of two types.
1) What is the point of the op-ed pages in a paper like the Times? Does the conservative side deserve representation simply because it is one of the two main political positions out there, or should slots go entirely based on merit. Assuming that one believes that conservatives do deserve affirmative action (or even quotas) should they be chosen for representing the best of conservative thought or the most characteristic of conservative thought? Does the NYTimes see its pages as propandizing for the views of its editors (presumed to be liberals) or does it see it as one of presenting its readers with the best articles that could inform their own thinking about the issues?
2) The second concerns whether liberal appraisal of conservative commentators turns on the quality of the writing of those commentatators or it concerns those commentators not saying the kinds of stupid things which affect one as fingernails on a chalkboard.
(As one example of this, academic compilations often contrast liberal views with libertarian ones, e.g. Rawls v Nozick, presumably because while liberals are not libertarians they find it easier to get inside the head of a libertarian than a conservative. Or they do ethics as Mill vs Kant when most conservative ethics is closer to Aristotle).
And if it is the latter, is there a habit among liberal bloggers to not be as affected by conservative arguments that degrade women than by conservative argument that degrade the principles of economics, or of successful foreign policy (or even degrade minorities rather than women). I take it that Pollitt’s argument is ultimately supposed to be along these last lines. But it would have been good to see a more careful case.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Touchy touchy nolaboyd. Why don’t you take a chill pill and try to use logic, instead of assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid and dumb?
March 20th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
What bothers me is that when Douthat was selected, a bunch of his friends who happen to be liberal all spent so much time telling us how “brilliant” Douthat was without, you know, producing any EVIDENCE of brilliance.
No links to any thought-provoking posts. No claims that “Ross had gotten it interestingly right on issue X.”
I’ve been reading the guy for a year now, and I have to admit that I don’t see much there there. He isn’t a terrible writer, but what evidence of a genuinely critical mind at work is there? I’d like to see some.
Seriously, Yglesias says that Douthat is better than Kristol. But when one doesn’t provide any reason for this claim, then suspicions of cronyism shouldn’t be all that surprising.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Oh and nolaboyd, if you weren’t so busy getting the vapors and wetting yourself uncontrollably, you would have noticed that I had already provided the argument behind comment #42 in comment #28.
Next time, more calm calculated logic, and less knee-jerk tribal hysteria, please? K thx bye.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I posted here in these comments, when Yglesias first posted his excitement over Douthat, that Douthat was in fact, a sexist. I also added that I knew Mat wouldn’t care because he runs the most anti-feminist “liberal” blog that I know of, and his commentators are doubly so. One need only read comments from male posters on Atrios’ blog to see how the blogger themselves sets the tone. Atrios has a feminist sensibility, and he is a man.
The second you criticize a male, or several of them as Pollitt, quite correctly, did, you are called a man-hater. This is nonsense. Atrios deserves to be recognized as a man, who is cognizant of gender issues. Mathew, and Ezra Klein, deserve to be recognized as men, who are not cognizant of gender issues, and display zero feminist sensibilities. Another great example other than this one, is the post both Matthew and Klein wrote congratulating the CIA for handing out free Viagra, paid for by the US taxpayer, INCLUDING WOMEN, to Afghan warlords. It never occurred to either of them that handing out free Viagra to men in a country where women enjoy zero sexual rights, was in fact, facilitating rape. Even after being told, they refused to acknowledge this.
Stop whining you guys here. Digby called them on the Viagra thing, and now they’ve been called on this. Instead of whining, or ignoring it, maybe they could try and learn something. Wouldn’t that be something?
March 20th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Onceler,
This isn’t the Onceler from a political message board that everyone moved to from another board (SR), a couple of years ago, is it?
March 20th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Oh, please. I think that at some point in genstation, the fetus becomes more like a person than like a kidney; but that prior to that point, it’s more like a kidney and certainly at fertilization it’s not even as qualitatively interesting or person-like as a kidney.
So you think it’s self-evident that there’s something really, really special about a fetus, even though you don’t call it a person. And you attribute that view to every other pro-choicer in existence.
Despite your appeal to science, through a significant portion of gestation, there’s no scientific validation for the idea that a fetus is more similar to a person than it is to some other piece of biological tissue. Potentiality as the basis for an argument for similarity to personhood is not scientific, it’s philosophical.
And, indeed, I am familiar with the extensive philosophical literature rigorously examining what a human life is. That’s neither here nor there. In common language, “human life” is equivalent to “person”. I challenge you to find someone who, in the context of common language and without prompting, says differently.
Anyway, again, I’m happy to enlarge your experience of pro-choice analysis: I don’t think that a first trimester fetus is special in any way whatsoever; it is neither a person nor person-like; and in this sense it’s equivalent to a kidney and not a newborn (or third trimester fetus). At least during the first trimester, the status of the fetus is, for me, a complete non-issue. I am unpersuaded by touchy-feely “potentiality” arguments, or “cute little fingers” or heartbeat arguments or whatever argument you choose to make the unqualified claim that a fetus is “person-like” and vastly unlike a kidney.
(Re: “unqualified”. If I erred in not qualifying what stage of fetal development I was referring to, then so did you.)
March 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Catherine,
Whatever you say. I suppose that denying women the right to the legalized butchery of their children is a massive oppression. If you say so.
Keith Ellis,
Thanks for a well-reasoned post. It was, at the very least, an attempt to take seriously people who disagree with you on the abortion issue. I think that Douthat does the same, in large part- he is strongly pro-life, but he at least acknowledges that some pro-choicers are acting in (mistaken) good faith. I wish I had his charity, or yours, because it’s probably true that the best way to argue in favor of protecting the unborn, is not to begin by comparing your enemies to the Ku-Klux-Klan, or to imply that they support abortion so that they can keep using women for casual sex without having to worry about the consequences. That’s a temptation that I fall into too often, but it would be more productive- and more charitable- if I didn’t. Abortion is a particularly vile form of homicide, but it’s also one that many people support because they aren’t aware of why it’s wrong, or even that it’s wrong. This makes it a much more difficult, and tragic challenge to be overcome.
To act as though this is some sort of ‘women’s issue’ seems to me to be spectacularly absurd. I don’t think _anyone_ has the unfettered right to happiness, economic advancement or risk-free sexual pleasure. Women don’t, and neither do men. One is entitled, at least legally, to try to pursue these things within reasonable limits, but killing a human being to allow you to pursue them is not a reasonable limit. Neither do any of us have unfettered rights over our own bodies. As it’s written, “Your bodies are not your own, for you were bought at a price.”
March 20th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Keith Ellis,
Just saw your post….you’re deeply wrong, but at least you argue in a semi-civilized manner, unlike the tiresome hipster rabble. I don’t have time to respond right now, but I will try and get back to it this evening. Just one note- humanity is not defined by existing function, but, indeed, by potentiality. If that were not the case, then a man in a deep sleep is not a person. He’s not walking, talking, or ruminating on the damnable errors of Mill, Locke and Singer either.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Hector, I disagree with you about a sleeping person because I think a sleeping person is in every important respect exactly like a person. On the other hand, I think that someone who has very little brain function is not. My argument about killing people who are functionally not person-like in the sense that people with very little brain function are not person-like is a civil, political argument built upon utilitarianism, not a moral argument about personhood.
Indeed, the only pro-life argument I find plausible (when pro-life applies all the way back in development to the embryo) is the same as my argument against euthanizing people with very little brain-function. I think that a) there’s too much uncertainty about “personhood” in these cases to make such determination; and b) it’s a slippery-slope. If I were less sure about the status of a first-trimester fetus, I’d support the anti-abortion movement on the basis of this uncertainty (when it’s matters of life-or-death, it’s better to err on the side of safety, not convenience). Furthermore, I mistrust other pro-choicers who are not as adamant as I am about the status of the fetus because I suspect they are erring on the side of convenience and not safety.
Nevertheless, I am pretty sure of the argument you are going to make—it’s the doctrine exquisitely spelled out by the Vatican on this issue. I am not persuaded, I think it’s a post-facto rationalization and reminiscent of so many theological arguments I’ve encountered over the years. Including, as I previously mentioned, my past studies of the great theologians. I like Augustine, he argues from passion and not too-clever-by-half intricate rationalization of the cultural status quo. Aquinas both bored and angered me. And Anselm was just dumb.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Keith,
I think you should read Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion.” It defends the right of women to abort even if we grant full personhood to the fetus.
Not entirely sure it works for all cases of abortion we’d want to defend, but it is a good example of waking everyone from their dogmatic slumbers.
On the other hand, I think characterizing the pro-choice movement as defending abortion out of “convenience” is pretty goddamn offensive, especially in light of that Brazilian story where the Catholic Church excommunicated people over giving a raped 9 year old girl an abortion. But whatever…
March 20th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I did no such thing. I said that I suspect that some pro-choicers who accept personhood of the fetus yet support abortion are doing so out of convenience. I strongly suspect that were some of those people to live in a culture which doesn’t sanction abortion and never has, and it wasn’t a controversial issue, it would never occur to them to do anything other than support abortion.
I don’t know how many people this describes. I do know that the number of people who have read a serious book rigorously examining the issue of abortion, such as your example, are a fantastically small portion of all the people who have taken a position on the issue.
Anyway, I haven’t read Thomson’s book, but serious arguments supporting abortion while affirming at least the possibility of personhood of the fetus are something I’m not unfamiliar with. And they have all struck me as extremely unpersuasive and, well, sophistical.
I no longer engage in arguments about the essential issues of abortion and I no longer seek out new opinions or discussions. I have made my mind up; it’s among a number of things that I spent almost twenty years frequently thinking and reading seriously about. I decided that continuing investigation once I’ve become very secure in my own opinion after having made an extensive good-faith effort to form that opinion is a waste of my time.
As you see here, I do, however, engage in discussions of the topic in the context of trying to work against the reasons why this argument is still so very contentious in American public life. I think that the chief participants are no longer listening to each other at all, they don’t even consider that their opponents could be arguing in good-faith from differing assumptions, and they vilify everyone who substantially disagrees with them. This, in contrast, to the majority of Americans who support abortion roughly during the first half of gestation and oppose it the second half. The majority opinion infuriates the partisans of both sides—it’s a particularly sorry state we’ve found ourselves in when the majority can see a perfectly acceptable solution but the discourse continues to be dominated by two minorities who refuse anything that seems like a compromise.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Keith Ellis,
Ah yes, the infamous Judith Jarvis Thomsen essay. In a civilized society every copy would be confiscated and burned by the public hangman. It’s interesting work, though, in the same way that the works of the Count de Gobineau, or Julius Streicher are interesting. Like them, she seeks to justify the butchery of one part of humanity by another. She seeks to destroy the impulse to love and charity in the human heart, and her argument can only be completely unconvincing to someone who, like me, rejects the very premises on which her argument is founded. I’d like to see someone try to defend her basically antihuman argument in that notorious paper.
As for me, while I can accept that banning late-term abortions is probably the best we can do in America at this stage, I cannot budge from my conviction that abortion is, barring some exceptional circumstances (e.g. when the mother’s life is at risk) is gravely evil, and should be illegal in a just society. Furthermore, I do think that SOME (not all) pro-choicers are not really arguing in good faith, they simply want to justify their lifestyles, and to hell with the lives of those infants who get in the way.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Honestly, who turns to Katha Pollitt as a judge of rhetoric?
March 20th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
barbar,
Also, if women really just care about finding a single long-term partner who will stick around and help raise the kids, then shouldn’t they evolve a dislike of promiscuous men, and shouldn’t men evolve to be less promiscuous, so as to actually be able to attract women?
Yes, but only to the extent that less promiscuity produces a net benefit in reproductive success. Men are more promiscuous by nature than women because the minimum investment of men in reproduction is lower than the minimum investment of women.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I don’t think it makes sense to reason “all conservatives are wrong about important things, therefore all conservatives are equally pernicious.” Tyler Cowen on economics has a lot more to offer than Larry Kudlow on economics, even though I agree with neither of them.
Which important things is Ross Douthat right about? Because I didn’t notice any in the examples that Katha Pollitt gave. Or are you trying to say that Douthat is a better writer than Kristol? And if that’s what you’re trying to say, why do you think it’s better for the New York Times to hire a stylish writer to present terrible, repugnant ideas than to hire a clunky writer to present terrible, repugnant ideas?
Also, thank you to Catherine for reminding us about Matthew and Ezra’s amused and approving reaction to the news that the CIA is giving Viagra to Afghan warlords. That really shocked me to the core.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Honestly, who turns to Katha Pollitt as a judge of rhetoric?
Anyone who cares about it.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:48 am
All you have to know about Hector is that he once offered to marry Terri Schiavo’s husk in order to keep her on the tube. He would have consummated the relationship, too, because that’s what Jesus would have wanted.
As far as Douthat goes, he has still never explained why he was locked in a public circle jerk with white supremacist Steve Sailer for several years, and in the absence of such an explanation I think “royal douchebag” is about the nicest appellation he has earned.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Moe,
Very funny. Typical hipster tactic, I suppose- when you don’t have an actual argument, resort to feeble jokes.
As for Douthat, from what I know of him (through mutual friends) i have no reason to believe he’s a racist, or that his linking to Steve Sailor was anything other than an ill-chosen mistake. Can you point to any racist thing he’s ever said?
Kathy Kattenburg,
Actually, most of the things Pollitt quoted seem perfectly reasonable to me….is there anything particularly that you think i should disagree with?
March 21st, 2009 at 7:34 pm
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March 21st, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Hector babbles again: “As for Douthat, from what I know of him (through mutual friends) i have no reason to believe he’s a racist, or that his linking to Steve Sailor was anything other than an ill-chosen mistake. Can you point to any racist thing he’s ever said?”
He linked to Sailer and cited him for years BY MISTAKE? He pretended that Saint Reagan’s bullshit remark about “young bucks buying steaks with food stamps” wasn’t racist BY MISTAKE? He calls a poor black woman a “welfare duchess” in homage to Saint Reagan’s “welfare queens driving Cadillacs” BY MISTAKE?
Hector, I realize you’re spending all of this time publicly tickling Douthat’s taint just because you want a lifer loon writing for the NYT, but even you’re not crazy enough to think Douchehat’s constant defense of and affiliation with racists is A MISTAKE. And as I told you before, if the prick really regrets his “mistakes” let’s here it from him, not from you serving as his frigging waterboy. You don’t even know the weasel, Hector.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Oh, and Hector: “Very funny. Typical hipster tactic, I suppose- when you don’t have an actual argument, resort to feeble jokes.”
I didn’t need to make an argument because I wasn’t arguing, nitwit. I was just taking a gratuitous shot at you because you’re an easy target. It wasn’t “feeble,” either – it was a good joke. You wouldn’t know, of course, because you have no sense of humor at all that I’ve ever seen. Ever make a funny, Hector? Try it. Let’s see what you can do.
(Pause while Hector borrows a “Reader’s Digest” from his mom and scans it to decide which joke to steal.)
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Moe,
I believe I made it clear in that comment thread that I considered ’strapping young bucks’ to be a very racist expression. That expression was used, however, by Reagan, not Douthat. If you want to call Reagan a racist, I’ll be the first to agree with you. As for the ‘welfare duchess’ line, I think that it was cruel, uncharitable and un-Christian, but I’m not sure it was racist. I suspect Douthat would have said the same thing about a white woman in subsidized housing in Portland.
To call Douthat a racist is a serious accusation, and it demands serious evidence.
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
OF COURSE Saint Reagan’s “young bucks” line was racist, Hector. So was Douchehat’s defense of it. And the “welfare queens with Cadillacs” line was also racist, as was Douchehat’s defense of it. And when gallant young Ross paid homage to Saint Reagan’s racism by adopting it and using it as his own, he was being a racist little prick, and if he wasn’t a pro-life prick you’d be calling him out for it. Saint Reagan is dead, or you’d be defending him, too.
Maybe Douchehat would say the same about some white woman in Portland, but we’ll never know, because he hasn’t. He’s a Repiglican and he probably thinks it’s not worth offending a potential GOP voter. But he’ll hammer a poor black woman just like his heroes have been doing for decades, because that’s the GOP way – and it’s also Ross’s way, because he’s the most desperate GOP toady you’ll ever observe. Ross wants to sit on the collective GOP lap and feel the bulge that means they’re happy to meet him. Always has, always will.
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