Mary Jackson refuses to allow me to reply to David Mills
The same comment that David Mills posted at
What’s Wrong with the World, he also posted at
New English Review. When I attempted to post my reply there, I saw a note by NER Senior Editor Mary Jackson saying she had closed the thread to further comments. The following exchange ensued.
From: Lawrence Auster
To: Mary Jackson
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 11:52.a.m.
Subject: I need to reply to Mills’s last charge
You’ve closed the thread. Mills has quoted me supposedly showing I was seeking to blacklist Roberts. Here is the comment I was about to send. I request that you open the thread one more time to allow this comment.
From: Mary Jackson
To: Lawrence Auster
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 12:07.p.m.
Subject: Re: I need to reply to Mills’s last charge
Dear Mr Auster
I’m afraid I can’t comply with your request.
Once a thread’s closed, it’s closed. If I allow your comment, then I must allow a rebuttal and further comments ad infinitum.
Why not post the comment on your own site? And why not open comments on that site fully to give others right of reply?
My thread got out of hand. New English Review is primarily a site for celebrating the good and pleasurable things about Western civilisation and for warning about the dangers of Islam, which would destroy it. It is not a site for political squabbles or for pigeon-holing people’s views into artificial political categories.
Best regards
Mary Jackson
Senior Editor
New English Review
LA to Mary Jackson:
You allowed a comment by Mills in which he made a specific and damaging charge against me, namely that I sought the blacklisting of Roberts. I wrote a comment in which I answered that charge, with quotes from my previous articles showing that I sought the spiking of Roberts’s insane articles, not his complete exclusion. If you do not post my comment, then you will have allowed Mills’s attack on me to stand, without allowing me to reply. I repeat my request that you post the comment that I have posted at the site. Obviously it is not impossible for you to do this. You can simply open it up again for my comment, saying that you are doing do to allow me to reply to Mills’s charge.
Mary Jackson to LA:
Technically it is not impossible, but as a character in Measure for Measure said: “What I will not, that I cannot do.”
You have your own site and the rest of the internet to refute David Mills’ claim, and also to complain how unfairly treated you were at NER.
Alternatively, you could lighten up a bit. Our site has many interesting articles that could take your mind off such matters and put them in perspective.
LA to Mary Jackson:
Your dismissive reply brings us back to where this whole thing began. You began the thread by making cheap, mindless aspersions about me, suggesting that I take the position I take on Hirsi Ali because I regard her as an “uppity woman” whom I “don’t like much.” Yet now, by way of explaining why you won’t post my comment defending myself from Mill’s charge, you write:
“New English Review is primarily a site for celebrating the good and pleasurable things about Western civilisation and for warning about the dangers of Islam, which would destroy it. It is not a site for political squabbles or for pigeon-holing people’s views into artificial political categories.”
You don’t seem to notice that this whole “squabble,” as you call it, began by YOU pigeon-holing me as someone who is so small, trivial, and bigoted, that I criticize Hirsi Ali, not because of her positions that I’ve criticized at length, but because she’s an “uppity woman.” And now, when I simply ask that you allow me to reply to a charge that you have posted at your site, you not only refuse, but you have the audacity to tell me to “lighten up” and put my mind onto other matters.
As I said, your reply brings us back to where this began, namely with the fact that you are an irresponsible, politically correct, sub-intellectual idiot, unworthy of editing a comic book.
L. Auster
Mary Jackson to LA:
You don’t “make aspersions,” cheap or otherwise. You cast them.
Have a nice weekend.
* * *
Here are two e-mails I’ve sent to the contributors of New English Review
First e-mail:
To the contributors of New English Review:
Mary Jackson hosted a very active discussion that went on for a few days, then David Mills posted a misleading and false statement about me, namely that I had sought to have Paul Craig Roberts completely excluded from Vdare, when in reality I had called on Peter Brimelow simply to stop publishing his hate-mongering articles, not all of his articles, and at that precise moment Jackson closed the thread and would not let me reply with the correct facts. So the false and damaging statement stands uncorrected at your site.
Not only that, but having launched the thread with a cheap ad hominem against me, namely that the reason I am critical of Hirsi Ali is that she is
“a bit too uppity for Auster, She probably believes women should have the vote,”
Jackson told me that she has closed the thread to further comments on the basis that NER does not exist for the purpose of contentious debate! Then why did she have this whole debate to begin with, which went on for days, and closed it just at the moment that David Mills smeared me? Below is my e-mail exchange with her in which she refused to post my comment, and followed that by telling me to “lighten up.” Below that is the comment Jackson refused to post.
Does Mary Jackson’s conduct, not to mention her level of argumentation, represent the standards that NER’s contributors want to uphold for their site?
Lawrence Auster
Follow-up e-mail:
To NER contributors
I need to bring something else to your attention.
The ostensible topic of Mary Jackson’s initial post in the thread was my criticism of Hirsi Ali, whom I have often described in the past as someone who is not a defender of the West against Islam but who rather has a leftist agenda destructive of the West, though, as I acknowledged (ironically) in the very article that Jackson quoted, maybe that is changing for the better. Jackson then referenced an unrelated article of mine in which I had pointed out some negative effects on society of the women’s vote, and said that this made me anti-woman and this was why I found Ali “too uppity.” All this was pure smear. My ideas on the women’s vote have nothing to do with my concerns about defending the West from Islam. Jackson’s agenda was to cast me as “anti-woman,” and therefore as someone who is just off the charts, and therefore as someone whose views on Islam should also be rejected out of hand.
But it didn’t stop there. Jackson posted a comment by David Mills, a.k.a. the Undercover Black Man, in which Mills brought in my criticisms of Paul Craig Roberts and made some complicated argument that I am a “hypocrite.” Now, the Roberts issue had absolutely nothing to do with either Hirsi Ali or the subject of the woman’s vote, it was purely an opportunity for Mills to smear my character. Yet Jackson (who now tells me that NER is “not a site for political squabbles or for pigeon-holing people’s views into artificial political categories”) posted Mills’s attack on me. How did that attack fit with NER’s supposed avoidance of political squabbles? Yet when I sought to defend myself and set the record straight on Mills’s attack, Jackson closed me out.
So, when Jackson wants NER to be a place of ad hominem smears, it’s a place of ad hominem smears. But when the person who has been smeared seeks to defend himself, suddenly NER becomes a place that is “not a site for political squabbles” and the person who has been smeared is told to “lighten up.”
I repeat that this is disgraceful conduct, and it’s not something I expected at NER, which I thought was a civilized, and conservative, website.
Lawrence Auster
- end of initial entry -
John Hagan writes:
Mary Jackson has achieved what she wanted. She has let a cheap smear of your character stand on her blog by allowing this creature Mills to get the last word in. You are correct though that a comic book would be above her skill-set to edit.
John Hagan continues:
Public discourse is sloppy enough, but the internet can be a nightmare concerning these matters. Jackson knows damn well Mills has an irrational vendetta against you, and she had no trouble aiding and abetting him in his smear campaign.
Marius writes:
Compliments on your discussion at The New English Review. You are in another league, and it is all too apparent.
No wonder Jackson closed the thread.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 11, 2007 01:12 PM | Send