[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: More on moral incoherence

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Posted by Ron Coleman:
More on moral incoherence
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1165116688.shtml


     An idiot comparing Bush to Hitler is not news. An idiot making this
     comparison after the opposition wins a national election isnât
     news, but it is peculiar. A respectable Internet news and comment
     outlet publishing a piece elaborating this grotesque analogy, and
     doing it with stunning ineptitude, may verge on news. Editors at
     mainstream outlets serve as gatekeepers and tend to exclude at
     least some sorts of vicious nonsense; descend to a certain level,
     and you usually become marginalized as a crank or a clown. When a
     certain sort of vicious nonsense makes it way past the gatekeepers,
     something may be happening; when previously acceptable if very
     nasty voices are pushed out of the mainstream, something else is
     happening. Ann Coulter, for example, pretty swiftly devolved into a
     clown. Is McWhorter the leftâs Ann Coulter? I donât think so. Slate
     wouldnât publish Ann Coulter.

   [1]Read the rest to see exactly what he's talking about. (Hat tip to
   [2]Taranto.) The point of the piece is that we can't let -- I mean
   that rhetorically; I mean we have to object in the free press and
   argue our points in the marketplace of ideas, right? -- the
   devaluation of "the Nazi comparison" become part of the background
   noise.

   And who is Ms. McWhorter? it says [3]here, and elsewhere, too, that
   she is a Pulitzer-Prize winner who had written about the Civil Rights
   movement. She writes not only for Slate but the left-wing [4]Nation
   magazine. Diane McWhorter doesn't appear to be a particularly
   controversial figure -- and that is my point. She's not a certified
   wingnut like Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky or Al Gore. She's a run of
   the mill successful non-fiction writer with a beat, and good enough at
   it that when writing her "big book" on a politically correct topic,
   she wins a Pulitzer and becomes a bona fide B-list talking head. Don't
   laugh. I aspired to that once.
   
   But this is what a person of that caliber, which is to say fairly
   high, thinks and writes. The problem isn't just that Slate published
   it. It's that a lot of Slate readers didn't think its premise is the
   least bit remarkable.
   
   We've gone [5]beyond Pauline Kael in the cultural divide. We've moved
   beyond contempt to accusations of not mere criminality but
   crimes-against-humanity criminality over matters of political
   disagreement. And there's nothing we on the right can do about it.
   When will someone of real stature on the left "own" this problem and
   address it forthrightly?

References

   1. http://www.americanheritage.com/blog/200611_30_738.shtml
   2. http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009330
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_McWhorter
   4. http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/diane_mcwhorter
   5. http://www.eddriscoll.com/archives/005873.php