A My Little Pony Version of the Khmer Rouge
I definitely approve of mocking people who publish ignorant screeds against the internet, and all the more so when my name comes up in the course of doing so. Here’s Ross Douthat in The New York Times:
“One could write a Talmud,” Helprin notes at one point, “in reaction to the oceans of material supplied by commentators who either deliberately or otherwise (probably otherwise) cannot grasp the meaning of a simple sentence.” True — but this does not mean that one should. In particular, one should never, ever write a book that includes, in its footnotes, “Posting No. 12” from thelede.blogs.nytimes.com, or “Posting 3:41” from missnemesis.blogspot.com — or comments by “Peep,” “Constantine” and “Anon,” from Matthew Yglesias’s blog. Helprin acknowledges the peculiarity of arguing with anonymous commenters rather than training his fire on more intellectually serious targets. “Why talk to the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room?” he wonders, quoting Churchill; the answer, he explains, is that in this case only the monkeys really matter. “The philosophical basis of the war on copyright is crackpot and stillborn,” and “apart from unavoidable forays, it is best to stay out of such thickets.” Instead, the battle should be waged “wherever the gnats in their millions crudely make real the musings of the Mad Hatters.”
As the tone of that last line suggests, alas, it’s hard to write a polemic premised on the assumption that your opponents are monkeys without sounding like a particularly high-vocabulary monkey yourself. Helprin variously describes his foes as “wacked-out muppets,” “crapulous professors,” “regular users of hallucinogenic drugs,” “a My Little Pony version of the Khmer Rouge,” “a million geeks in airless basements,” “mouth-breathing morons in backwards baseball caps and pants that fall down” and so forth. The overall effect is like listening to an erudite gentleman employing $20 words while he screams at a bunch of punk kids to get off his front lawn.
These kind of arguments really do tend to be self-refuting in my opinion. The underlying conceit behind a lot of this sort of complaining seems to be that the traditional crop of professional writers—full-time journalists and, in Helprin’s case, novelists—are the only well-informed people on the planet. In reality, a great deal of what you see on blogs is writing by people who aren’t or weren’t professional writers but who—unlike most journalists—have actual subject matter expertise. You can get a take on events in Iran from Gary Sick and Juan Cole and Daniel Drezner and Steven Walt. You can read dozens and dozens of blogs by lawyers and economists. It’s Helprin rather than, say, Larry Lessig and Tyler Cowen and Tim Lee who doesn’t know how to seriously evaluate the issues relating to intellectual property law.
That said, “a My Little Pony version of the Khmer Rouge” is a great turn of phrase.
79 Responses to “A My Little Pony Version of the Khmer Rouge”
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June 22nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
So, has anybody here read this book? Was I actually quoted?
I’m very curious, but it sounds like an unpleasant read.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Mark, if you’re still reading, I want to thank you for contributing to this. I’m not sure Clinton could have done it without you.
“Let me be the bridge to an America that only the unknowing call myth.” Christ almighty.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The “My Little Pony” thing isn’t original to Helprin.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Wait a second, this book isn’t by Mark Halperin, noted even-the-liberal pundit from ABC and Time? So I guess the only people reading it will be the people quoted in it, then.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
The truth is that there’s little real difference between Bush and Gore. They both have nearly identical positions on the major issues, such as the drug war (pursue it), defense spending (increase it), immediate universal health care (oppose it), gun control (no meaningful change), gay marriage (oppose it), WTO & NAFTA (support them), and foreign policy (they agreed on damn near every foreign policy question posed in the debates). In fact, most observers have conceded that the only areas in which they seem to disagree are on abortion and the environment, but it’s unlikely that Bush will actually move to outlaw abortion, and while Gore talks tough on the environment, his record shows exactly the opposite.
As Michael Moore said about the debates: “I kept score. Bush and Gore expressed agreement or support for each other’s positions THIRTY-TWO times! Even Lehrer asked them at one point how the average voter was to decide what the difference was between them. Gore answered: Well, I don’t hear any disagreement in the last few exchanges.”
That’s why I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that George W. Bush, if elected to the Presidency, will be practically indistinguishable in that office from Al Gore.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
It’s not a great turn of phrase. It’s a bad Dennis Miller joke.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Also, I generally loathe Douthat, but I’ll give him credit for that review. He starts off with a reference to an xkcd cartoon, and he found someone even dumber or more of a tool himself to pick on. Good work.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Good catch, Duvall. I remember gagging when I heard Dole deliver that line.
As creative as Helpy is with a line, he doesn’t seem to be thinking very clearly when it comes to the implications of the laws that make his work profitable, which is sad. He knows he’s creative, and he knows he wants money. And … well, that’s it, actually. In the meantime, turning every meme into a coin-slot would stifle the very creative process he clearly doesn’t understand, outside his own estate. Of course, that’s not unusual. A generation establishes itself in an industry, then they attempt to fold the lion’s share of the proceeds into their own pockets at the journeymen’s expense. Damn them! Don’t they know that help is trying to establish a Noble Line?!?!?
I guess he doesn’t know why all us little people hate it when the established try to throw their weight around at our expense. The more that people like Helpy want to abuse their power, the more people like us will want to abuse them personally.
Actually, there’s a certain RIAA lawyer I’d like to shoot in the face.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
So much for Helpy’s belief in intellectual property. It’s simply a matter of who has the greater resources of brutality that can secure for themselves the greater portion of the available spoils.
Think a quat-chewing technical in Mogadishu, but with the humor of an ivy-leaguer.
… no offense.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I know it’s way to late to change the perception, but the book Bush was reading to the kids on 9/11 is titled “The Little Pony,” not “My Little Pony.”
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I agree with you on most of this. At the same time, widespread piracy, appropriation without citation, and the collapse of paid media in the face of free media are very large challenges for the creation of worthwhile media going forward. You don’t have to agree with most of what this guy says to see that the Internet isn’t actually going to just spread rainbows and “access” for amateurs, but is most certainly eroding our ability to make artistically and intellectually successful media, in certain situations.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Helprin’s book sounds awful, but I think if we define “professional writer” broadly, it is actually true the great majority of the best-known bloggers (as opposed to commenters) are people who had previous writing experience. Lessig may not be a “professional writer” in the exact same sense as a journalist or a novelist, but he did write a book.
There have several times when I discovered that a blogger who seemed to be a fresh and distinctive voice actually had a lengthy publication record in pre-Internet small-circulation magazines and political newsletters. The major exceptions are younger generation bloggers like Yglesias, Douthat, Larison, etc., but most of those probably would have ended up as professional writers anyway.
I’m saying neither that “This proves professional writers really are the smartest people around after all!” nor that “This proves the evil MSM actually controls the blogosphere and is crushing authentic voices of dissent after all!” I’m just saying that the craft of blogging and the craft of writing are not so different as sometimes claimed and that the fabled amateur in pajamas doesn’t really exist.
I first realized that the amateur in pajamas is largely a myth when the people behind the anonymous well-known sports blog Fire Joe Morgan, who had been thought to be amateurs in pajamas, turned out to be professional television writers, one of them (Michael Schur) fairly well-known. To be sure they were neither authors of books nor professionals in the field their blog covered, but they were people who had writing experience, and that was doubtless a major reason why their blog was entertaining and popular.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
If you’re going to be a hopeless pedant you should try to get it right – the book was “The Pet Goat“.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
My Little Pony – 1980s children’s toy commercial disguised as an animated cartoon. The girl-targeted equivalent of Transformers or G.I. Joe.
The (not My) Pet Goat – book read by Bush on 9/11
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Helprin’s done a Lee Siegel against the commentariat, after being whacked about for his ignorance seven times backward? That’s really pretty sad. But Douthat’s not much better:
Leave the Tolkiens the rights to “The Hobbit”in perpetuity, but not the right to prevent two enterprising film companies from going forward with competing adaptations.
Unconstitutional, and with good reason: the judicial prohibition of perpetual copyright, which happened close enough to the drafting of the relevant clause to make it relevant for originalists, was a good thing. It opened up a vast amount of literature to the reading public.
(Plus, it’s not as if Christopher Tolkien hasn’t brought in enough from publishing every scrap of paper left by his father.)
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
What’s funny is someone complaining about copyrights not lasting long enough. The original conception of copyright was that it should be limited. Enough to give the writer the benefit of his labor, but not long enough to discourage the spread of ideas. It’s already been extended far beyond the original conception, and Helprin wants more?
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
buzz – you are right of course – thanks for catching that – like I said, I’m hopeless…
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
What, no typos?
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Helprin? Never heard of the stupid neo-colonialist tourist roquet motherfucker. Or is it Helperin, the fat-assed neocon wannabe hack?
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I’m always confused by stuff like “A My Little Pony Version of the Khmer Rouge.”
It seems like just a more obscure version of the classic “Bad Thing X Without the Stuff That Made X Bad” genre of smear.
Like, I could call George W. Bush “Hitler minus the Holocaust,” but what does that mean exactly? Hitler minus the Holocaust really isn’t Hitler. And it’s really quite hard to imagine a “My Little Pony” version of the Khmer Rouge.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
“I agree with you on most of this. At the same time, widespread piracy, appropriation without citation, and the collapse of paid media in the face of free media are very large challenges for the creation of worthwhile media going forward.”
Bingo.
If anything, you are being far too mild here, Freddie.
If we look forward several decades, I worry more about us entering a new dark ages (a breakdown of books and libraries brought on by misjudgments in the digital age) than I do about global warming. Global warming is solvable, but information breakdowns historically can last more than a thousand years.
—–
Also, Helprin is a great writer with questionable political tastes.
He’s sort of a better version of Michael Crichton, a good writer with awful political tastes.
I highly recommend Winter’s Tale.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Also, speaking of My Little Pony versions of the Khmer Rouge, I notice my comments have been selectively scrubbed from the archives of Matt’s site.
I’m surprised and disappointed.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Instead of torturing and executing people, the My Little Pony Khmer Rouge gives people pony rides and lets them eat candy. Then you get to play fun games and take a nap.
I don’t know, they don’t sound too bad.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I notice my comments have been selectively scrubbed from the archives of Matt’s site.
Must be the start of another calamitous Information Breakdown. Be very scared.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Also, speaking of My Little Pony versions of the Khmer Rouge, I notice my comments have been selectively scrubbed from the archives of Matt’s site.
I’m surprised and disappointed.
Given what I remember from the vast majority of your comments (particularly those from, say, October 07 to May 08), you should probably be grateful at least some of them are gone. The less people remember the better.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Also, who the hell browses Matt’s archives looking for their own comments?
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Helprin’s nuts about extending the copyright. The Europeans are better with the rule, use it or lose it. And as for the children of the writer, well, cry me a river. What, shall the auto mechanic’s child get a residual from the repairs his daddy did on some car? Helprin is being stupid and odious, but such is his royalist politics. The children will have to get along by writing their own books.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Yes, “a MLP version of the Khmer Rouge” certainly kicks the rhetoric up a notch from “juicebox mafia.”
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
How about the Care Bear Al Qaeda? Rainbow Brite Taliban? Strawberry Shortcake Manson Family?
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
“Must be the start of another calamitous Information Breakdown. Be very scared.”
Not scared, just surprised and disappointed.
—–
FWIW, I noticed it this weekend when I finally saw Hancock. I remembered I’d made some comment on Matthew’s Hancock thread from when the movie was released, and I wanted to see what I’d said.
It turns out that I’d made a comment on that thread telling folks to go see Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, (then in theaters). My comment is deleted on the thread, but you can still see someone quoting my comment.
Did fifteen minutes of further googling, and discovered my comments had been selectively scrubbed from the majority of posts on the site from during primary season ‘08, which makes for some odd reading. You can find long threads that consist of me arguing with 20 people, but all of my comments are gone. On threads like that, there are ‘ghost’ quotings of my comments from other commenters, but my comments that they’re quoting from are gone, which makes for some threads that read pretty oddly.
I’m not scared and I’m not angry, but I am mildly surprised and disappointed. Matthew had my email address. If he’d requested it of me, I’d have refrained from commenting in the first place.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
And Hancock is as good as Matthew gave reason to suspect.
The analogy to Starship Troopers is quite apt.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Krauthammer is an idiot and should be exiled, but in strict-constructionist terms he’s not being a hypocrite here. Obama is using the title in a non-ironic and default-respectful way, while K. is using it in a generic and contemptuous way, judging from the respective contexts.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Also, who the hell browses Matt’s archives looking for their own comments?
You’re so vain, you probably think this blog is about you.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:58 pm
It really is too bad about the missing Petey commentary. Self-refutation doesn’t need to be messed with.
My favorite is when he tosses around the phrase “almost always wrong” about other people without the slightest sense of irony. This legacy really needs to be saved for posterity.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
“My favorite is when he tosses around the phrase “almost always wrong” about other people without the slightest sense of irony.”
You’re almost always wrong on every topic, DMonteith.
“This legacy really needs to be saved for posterity.”
This is an excellent example of why I don’t say you’re always wrong…
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I want my pile of My Little Pony skulls, and I want it now.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:45 pm
I have no idea of the backstory here, but it sure seems like our esteemed host doesn’t want anybody else to build up any kind of social capital via commenting…petey, surely you knew from the beginning that somebody else’s comment box is an unreliable route to literary immortality?
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
I’m pretty sure Petey’s relentless advocacy for the only national Democratic politician that could have found a way to lose to John McCain in 2008* will make him immortal in ways no CAP intern could ever destroy.
*Yes, even Kucinich.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
You’re almost always wrong on every topic, DMonteith.
What, no accusations of trust fund scumbaggery? Are you saving your best shot for last?
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 pm
“I have no idea of the backstory here, but it sure seems like our esteemed host doesn’t want anybody else to build up any kind of social capital via commenting…”
Well, I’m not using my real name, not selling any product, and not linking to my own blog, so I believe I’m innocent of trying to build up any social capital via my commenting.
Also, there are simpler and more obvious motivations for the My Little Pony version of the Chinese internet police at play here than the one you cite.
“petey, surely you knew from the beginning that somebody else’s comment box is an unreliable route to literary immortality?”
Sure. That’s why I’m not angry. I didn’t walk in thinking I had any IP rights to my blog comments.
But again, I am surprised. A banning at the time would have made more sense. A simple email request to stop commenting would have made the most sense (and would have been honored.)
But a months after the fact scrubbing of the archives isn’t what I’d been expecting. Whatever my intemperance during primary season, I did think I was adding value to the blog for free.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Also, who the hell browses Matt’s archives looking for their own comments?
To be fair, I’ve done it. Maybe not here but at other blogs. It’s a slow afternoon at work, there’s an argument on a blog, I know I wrote something trenchant about it a few months or years ago and I want to link to it…
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:36 pm
What Cyrus said.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Also, My Little Pony Storm Trooper.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:00 pm
So, is it just Petey, or is the entire blogosphere being scrubbed of criticisms of Obama? And who is doing it? And in preparation for what?
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Someone scrubbed Petey’s comments from the archives? I may not often agree with him, but that is just awful. What’s up with that, Matt? What’s next, disappearing him?
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
45:If it was done on command of the White House, Matthew would likely be under serious legal restraint about discussing the censorship. We do not want to put MY in jeopardy.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:15 pm
petey, just to be sure it’s not some kind of artifact of something else (i know not what), how about posting a few links to some of those ghost conversations? i’m actually shocked that someone would bother to delete old comments thread comments, so much so that i really want to see it with mine own eyes.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Impossible not to think of the Care Bear Cleansing bit from Robot Chicken:
http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=00eb0097d06a011fb7252a888a3c113a
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I think all of these signs point ominously to the great Information Breakdown that is occurring. I really don’t think it can be denied at this point.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:34 am
There’s a lot of holes in the deserts of Chicago. And a lot of commenters who caused problems for Obama are buried in those holes.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:23 am
I am not a fan of Petey, but if someone actually went to the trouble of ’scrubbing’ his comments from the archives here, I’d like to know who did it and why. That’s odd, at best.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 am
Edwards great, HRC crazy hawk, 2nd rate, well her healthcare plan is better, the more liberal Clinton, working class hero,
Obama most conservative Democrat running
Edwards is driving the policy, win Iowa, how it is suppose to work, caucus is a good system, beer vs wine, Clinton has won more votes from Democrats, youse all kind of suck, GE, TF scumbaggery, I told you so
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:56 am
And here’s a hoops thread where you, howard, are seemingly replying to some comment of mine about Marcus Camby that has been disappeared.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:07 am
Wow. I’ve been disappeared all the way back to 2006.
Here’s an ‘06 Iverson thread where you can see multiple folks responding to my disappeared comments.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:07 am
So, a guy whose most famous book is derived from Shakespeare via Marquez is concerned about the sanctity of IP.
Nobody stranger than people.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:22 am
The funny thing about the ‘06 Iverson thread is that Matt is participating in the discussion, and in this comment you can see him quoting a disappeared comment of mine, thus preserving it…
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:08 am
Here’s a good example from a nomination thread:
(I’m having trouble getting the link past the spam filter. Try adding the following address to the domain name of this site to get the link.)
/archives/2008/03/the_speech_2.php
You can see a multitude of folks are quoting and replying to my now disappeared comments that point out Clinton was handily beating Obama in the popular vote among self-identified Democrats.
(This was and is completely true, FWIW. Obama ended up narrowly winning the overall nomination popular vote by racking up huge majorities among self-identified independents despite losing among self-identified Dems.)
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 am
petey, i’m shocked (i remember the camby thread, as a matter of fact!): i can’t imagine any other explanation than a deliberate effort to scrub you, which is apalling, whoever is responsible for it.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:03 am
Well, Petey, you called Matt a trust-fund scumbag and corporate whore literally hundreds of times, partly in what looked like an attempt to associate those insults with Google searches for his name. If he decided he didn’t like that, or you, and went through and took out your crap by hand, so what? He has generally been far more civil and lenient with you than you arguably deserved.
So your “gee, why didn’t he ask nice” act here is not very convincing. In fact, it looks like you’re trying to get another round going of Let’s Make It About Petey, a game whose appeal palled quite some time ago (even as I get sucked into it).
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
“In fact, it looks like you’re trying to get another round going of Let’s Make It About Petey, a game whose appeal palled quite some time ago (even as I get sucked into it).”
I noticed it this weekend, found it surprising and disappointing, thought it was newsworthy, and thought this was an appropriate thread to mention it, being an example of A My Little Pony Version of the Chinese Internet Police and all.
Not quite sure what’s wrong about me mentioning it.
“So your “gee, why didn’t he ask nice” act here is not very convincing.”
He didn’t have to ask nice. He just had to ask. As stated, we’ve corresponded via email in the past, so he had a way to reach me. And if you’ve followed my blogospheric history, I’ve had other bloggers who have asked me not to comment on their blogs, and I’ve complied.
“If he decided he didn’t like that, or you, and went through and took out your crap by hand, so what?”
My comments weren’t taken out by hand, otherwise non-political stuff like basketball and movies would have remained. My comments for several years were all erased wholesale via some sort of script.
As to the “so what” part, I think it’s blogospheric bad form to erase stuff from the archives. It pretends stuff that happened never happened. The general acceptance of it being bad form is why bloggers have learned to attach corrections to the ends of posts they are unhappy with rather than just deleting them.
Also, I was under the impression that I’ve generally been helpful to building Matthew’s blog and reputation, despite a couple of months of nastiness during the height of the ‘08 primary battle.
The wholesale comment deletion is not the biggest deal in the world. But I think it’s worth mentioning.
For that matter, I find it hard to believe anyone would think it not worth mentioning.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
live, let me second petey, since i remember one of the threads in question: there was no trust-fund scumbaggery, no nothing. it’s obvious, as petey says, that some kind of script must have been deliberately used by someone, and frankly, if that someone were either matt himself or known of by matt, my opinion of our host would drop quite a few notches.
this is not about petey.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
He didn’t have to ask nice. He just had to ask.
He didn’t have to do anything. Not even, amazingly enough, if Petey thinks otherwise.
My comments weren’t taken out by hand, otherwise non-political stuff like basketball and movies would have remained. My comments for several years were all erased wholesale via some sort of script.
OK, take out the ‘by hand’ part. The question remains: so what? If it’s just a question of “bad form,” then that’s a pretty weak criticism; moreover, it’s one you have very poor standing to make given your campaign to associate “Matt Yglesias” with “trust-fund scumbag” on the Internet in general.
But of course you don’t really think it’s just “bad form.” You think there’s repression going on here, “an example of A My Little Pony Version of the Chinese Internet Police.”
IOW, you’re a victim of injustice. Waah. Combine that pose with “if you’ve followed my blogospheric history [...blah blah]” and “I was under the impression that I’ve generally been helpful to building Matthew’s blog and reputation” and it’s clear you’re high as a fucking kite on your own fumes.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
“If it’s just a question of “bad form,” then that’s a pretty weak criticism”
In my book, that’s actually a pretty strong criticism.
“He didn’t have to do anything. Not even, amazingly enough, if Petey thinks otherwise.”
Here’s where I think you are most confused.
I didn’t think he had to do anything.
Either Matthew and/or CAP thought they had to do something, which is precisely why they did do something.
My criticism here is that choosing to try to silently scrub the archives seems a lousy “something” to do.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
You seem to think Matt owed you the courtesy of proceeding according to (your conception of) “good form.” Given your extremely rude behavior towards him, he owed you nothing — certainly not courtesy or good form.
My criticism here is that choosing to try to silently scrub the archives seems a lousy “something” to do.
If you had not been such a prick to him, I’d probably agree with you. As things actually stand, I can’t see where you get off criticizing the action.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
“If you had not been such a prick to him, I’d probably agree with you. As things actually stand, I can’t see where you get off criticizing the action.”
First they disappeared the Peteys, and since I was not a Petey, I said nothing…
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Petey is shuttling back and forth between “it’s a courtesy/form issue” and comparing himself to victims of fascist repression. That attempted dodge is amusing, but easily seen through, as both poses are ludicrous on their face in this particular case.
Look at it this way: you attempted a technological power play by making a sustained effort to associate “Matt Yglesias” with “trust-fund scumbag” in Internet searches. Matt has made a technological counter-move to neutralize that, on the same level as what you attempted. Tit for tat, turnabout’s fair play, etc.
Of course, you’ll probably slyly compare him to Franco next.
(And I’m not “saying nothing”; I’m saying Matt did nothing wrong here.)
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Wait, so if I want to quote Petey on how Isiah Thomas has a Genius Master Plan for the Knicks, I can’t do it anymore? Or if I want to resurrect a Petey quote on how Obama can’t possibly beat Clinton in the primaries or McCain in the generals, or on how John Edwards is the Democrats’ only hope, or on how nothing tells you more about politician than his stance on health-care mandates, I’m out of luck? What if I want to dig through the archives to jog my memory on other topics Petey has been completely wrong about, because I can’t remember right now? Arrgggh!
I’m with live: Petey is an asshole and his comments were removed almost certainly because of his dickishness, not because of his trenchant political criticism. Of course, he has never been right about anything before, so it’s not surprising that he makes the wrong call here yet again.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
my goodness, has it come to this? the fact that some people don’t like petey means it’s cool to do something as odious as scrub comments generically of anything petey said?
you don’t have to think petey walks among the immortals to think that this is spectacularly bad form, and as i noted above, if matthew actually approved of this, it lowers my opinion of him many notches.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
To be more clear, I should distinguish between the fact that Petey is unbelievably wrong about everything he writes about, and the fact that Petey repeatedly insulted our host, without warrant. Although Petey is truly remarkable in both respects, I have to believe that if his comments have been scrubbed, it’s because of the latter fact. And if that is indeed the case, worrying about “bad form” is ridiculous.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
my goodness, has it come to this? the fact that some people don’t like petey means it’s cool to do something as odious as scrub comments generically of anything petey said?
“has it come to this?” Oh, please. The guy was repeatedly and calculatedly rude. I’d not only scrub his comments, I wouldn’t let him post.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
well, color me astonished. if matthew or any other power-that-been wanted to ban petey, so be it: that would have been clear and above board.
but to go back in and edit him out of the historic record: y’all don’t see the problem with that?
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
the historic record:
Oh, please. I love this blog, but it’s glorified water cooler talk.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:59 pm
“Petey is an asshole and his comments were removed almost certainly because of his dickishness, not because of his trenchant political criticism.”
I agree with you on the why action was taken. Insults were flung about during the height of the primary battle, and Petey is pugnacious.
I just think that the how is pretty indefensible.
It’s similar to what Felix Salmon (correctly) bitches about when newspapers don’t keep accessible archives. You want to be able to go back and check the past. That’s where a lot of the value of this kind of stuff lies.
Why on earth would Matthew want to destroy half his comment threads from 2006 and 2007 because I called him names for two months during spring 2008? Beats me.
Like I said, I always thought I was adding value to the blog. Folks who take comments seriously always made this a more vibrant place. And scrubbing the archives mean you can’t take comments seriously.
It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it’s not nothing either.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Yeah, when I google the offending phrase, I find you saying it in January 2009. He clearly didn’t delete enough.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
“He clearly didn’t delete enough.”
I’ll put you down as a vote for the My Little Pony Version of Ayatollah Khamenei’s press policy, Barbar…
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
jeffrey, you do understand that glorified water cooler talk in which someone becomes a nonperson and what they had to say is never again repeated isn’t so hot either? don’t play word games about “historic record,” for crissake. you think petey’s an asshole, so you think it’s justified to delete a long span of his comments.
i think that’s pathetic.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Wow. “my little pony version of the Khmer Rouge” ought to qualify for some sort of honorary Godwin’s Law citation or something. It’s not about the Nazis directly, but the comparison is just as ridiculous and outrageous.
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
ou think petey’s an asshole, so you think it’s justified to delete a long span of his comments.
i think that’s pathetic.
Pitch defileth.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
If we, the denizens of the interwebs, are barbarians, then this guy is a solipsistic troglodyte. Lessig is much more thorough and much more acute, please read.