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The “Vanishing American affair” continues
Christine S. writes:
I do agree that this has gone too far. However, I believe that your latest post is very insulting to Vanishing American and her loyal readers. Let me illustrate why.
[LA replies: Before you go further, you’re missing the point that further down in the entry you’re complaining about, I and Sage McLaughlin take responsibility for having included VA’s name among the examples of the phenomenon—long-windedness—that was being criticized. My first response in this entry was not to our admitted mistake, but to the amazing attack against me at VA. The first I heard of this was not VA saying to me, “Mr. Auster, you let a commenter praise you while criticizing me by name, that was not nice.” No. The first I heard of this was VA unleashing a major personal attack on me; and THAT was what I initially responded to.]
“How liberalism reverses legitimate and illegitimate criticism”
This title is very misleading for two reasons. First it places VA in a “liberalism” category. You have accidentally compared VA’s reaction to liberal thinking. Her reaction has nothing to do with liberal thinking and you should not excuse your readers accidental rudeness with “liberalism.” Also, using the word “liberalism” as a way of describing VA, you have unwittingly said to your readers that VA should be ignored. The conservative right uses the word “liberalism” much as the liberal left uses the word “racist.” [LA replies: First, I was not calling VA a liberal. I was saying that the particular type of reaction that was on display at VA’s blog fits a common liberal pattern. Second, you obviously are not familiar with my writings. I do not use liberal as the equivalent of “racist.” I say that the entire modern world is liberal, including most conservatives.] Finally, ‘reverses legitimate and illegitimate criticism’ is basically you trying to sound like you did nothing wrong. But you did by posting a negative comment about a fellow conservative’s blog without editing the name of the blog. [LA replies: Amazing. Now you’re saying that to post any critical comment about a fellow conservative by name is wrong.]
“The blogger Vanishing American is offended at VFR commenter Sage McLaughlin’s criticisms of her”
This sentence simply pits Vanishing American against a “VFR commenter.” I can hear it…can you? What you said in this sentence is “VA was offended by one of OURS” [LA replies: This is absurd. I’m describing what happened. VA was offended by VFR commenter Sage McLaughlin’s criticism. That’s the simple fact. If you are bent out of shape by the simple reporting of a simple fact, then clearly no communication will satisfy you.]
“She sees it as a violation of etiquette or even of basic ethics that I posted the comment, and she has turned it into a personal issue, with many of her commenters joining in.”
In this section “violation of etiquette or even of basic ethics” the use of the word ‘or’ was you trying to deepen the level of the accusation. Then you said “she has turned it into a personal issue“…that has an insulting connotation by the use of the word ‘she’. [LA replies: Describing VA as “she” is now insulting? Well I can see that it’s truly impossible to avoid offending certain parties.] You Mr. Auster turned it into a personal issue originally by not editing the commentator’s post. But by saying “she” did it you are putting the blame squarely onto VA. [LA replies: Yes. Because the criticism of her was not personal. It had to do with writing style, while her and her commenters’ comments about me were highly personal.] Then you proceed to insult her commentators who joined in. Of course we join in! We love her because she represents our beliefs. [LA replies: You’re making an equivalence between one VFR commenter including VA among a large group of bloggers who are too wordy, and an entire blog discussion at VA attacking me personally in vicious terms. You are only confirming the suspicion that you are a group of hysterics.]
“In my second comment, I finally figure out a phenomenon I’ve been trying to understand for years.”
Good for you! This is you trying to make the whole thing into a ‘learning experience’ which is another way of not taking responsibility. It’s similar to me accidentally insulting my friend and making her uncomfortable, then when she confronts me I defend myself by saying “Ahhhh…..I know have a deeper understanding of you and certain thought processes” but it still doesn’t change the fact that I insulted my friend!
Anyways, I don’t actually care about any of this. But I know that it means something to your readers and VA’s readers so I wrote this. Also, take a page out of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round and be a bit more Chivalrous and simply apologize the next time you accidentally post something that insults one of your own.
[LA replies: I’ll repeat what I said before. If VA had pointed this out to me and said the inclusion of her name combined with the praise of me was offensive, I would immediately have seen her point, I would have said, “I’m sorry about that,” and I would have removed her name, and that would have been the end of the matter. It was a minor mistake, not a huge deal. But my first experience of this “affair” was not a reasonable complaint by VA, but a full-scale assault on me at VA’s website, with the litany of adjectives that are so frequently used against me. And THAT was the “phenomenon” I was commenting on when I said that I had finally figured out this phenomenon. In any case, once again, I have said repeatedly, and I’ll say it one last time, that the inclusion of her name was a mistake and that if I had caught it, I would have removed her name. But from the moment of her and her blog’s all-out assault on me for such a minor thing, this has gone way beyond the point where I owe her an apology.]
- end of initial entry -
Sage McLaughlin writes:
I don’t know if you’ve read the latest from Vanishing American at her site—she’s closed down comments and has moved all discussion to her forum for now. I don’t know if you’ve registered at her forum, but if so you may be interested, if only in passing, in where things stand. She’s “reconsidering the future of the blog,” and placing all new posts in the forum. She says she isn’t at all interested in what you’ve written lately on the tiff at hand, and claims to be getting swarmed and harassed by people from VFR.
I find the latter claim absurd, since I saw the many comments being posted to her site before she shut them down, and all but about two were very supportive. I have to admit to being very taken aback by this, by how bitterly she has responded to the comments I made in my email to you, by her reaction in general. I never would have wanted all this trouble, and maybe I should have declined to name names, but honestly her inclusion was almost by chance—I had recently visited her site and had it on the brain, but it could well have been any number of blogs rather than hers. She isn’t interested in reading either my clarification or yours, and seems downright determined to make this as big a deal as it can possibly be. I am sorry for it, and would not have it so. I doubt very much there’s anything to be said now—she claims that her response has been quite restrained (!), and is determined to play the victim in the most ostentatious way possible.
It’s too bad, and I apologize to you for embroiling you in another conflict of this kind with my remarks.
Sage M. continues:
I see now that VA is characterizing this whole thing as a Two Minutes Hate directed at her. This is just bizarre stuff, Larry. Again, I’m really sorry. I really just wanted to throw a compliment your way, and I maintain that your style is dramatically more well suited to the blogging environment than some others’. But I really put my foot in it when I started naming names. Lesson learned, I suppose.
LA replies:
It’s alright, you’re no more responsible for it than I. In both of our cases, if we had thought a little more about it, we would have seen that the combination of the praise of me with the criticism of other bloggers by name was not desirable and we would have taken out the names. So we both made a mistake. But it was a minor mistake, a minor offense, not a major offense. VA has blown it up into a huge offense. And that is not our fault.
Adela Gereth writes:
Christine’s post has been most enlightening, particularly this sentence:
Then you said “she has turned it into a personal issue” … that has an insulting connotation by the use of the word “she.”
Had I known that the use of the word “she” could have an insulting connotation, I would not have admitted to you yesterday that I am, in fact, a … you know … female person.
To avoid my feeling insulted, will you therefore kindly refer to me in future as “Mr. Gereth” or “he,” unless or until such time as Christine informs us that those male gender-based designations also have insulting connotations?
Terry Morris writes:
Your fem … uh, Mr. Gereth wrote:
Had I known that the use of the word “she” could have an insulting connotation, I would not have admitted to you yesterday that I am, in fact, a … you know … female person.
To avoid my feeling insulted, will you therefore kindly refer to me in future as “Mr. Gereth” or “he,” unless or until such time as Christine informs us that those male gender-based designations also have insulting connotations?
LOL! I’m reminded of a scene in “No Time for Sergeants” where Andy Griffith’s character’s remarks, following the advice of a fellow enlisted man, could be easily customized to fit this case:
A.G.: “Alls I see is a blogger.”
Friend: “What!? You can’t see that she’s a woman?”
A.G.: “Alls I see is a blogger.”
Adela Gereth writes:
I was so amazed at Christine’s “logic” that I only just now thought to glance at VA’s latest blog entry. It’s a combination pity party/veiled attack and is so far off-base that it’s not even in the ball park. Incredibly, she assumes that to her critics, the only acceptable alternative to her self-confessed longwindedness is a Hemingwayesque sparseness! From one extreme to the other, she is so muddled by emotion that she’s cast balance and moderation to the winds and is obviously completely incapable of reasoned, moderate thought. Look at the emotive language she (with typical longwindedness) employs: Hate, sinned, forgiven, transgressing. Why? Because some blogger on another site casually mentioned her, among others, as being an example of longwindedness.
Sheesh … er, I mean, s/heesh.
LA writes:
Also, a reader sent this, which was posted in December at Vanishing American’s blog:
Your thoughts on blog changes
I’d like to ask my regular commenters their opinion on a possible change in the way comments are handled here.
In view of recent nasty and abusive comments (which most of you will not have seen, as they were posted to archived posts), I am looking for a way to forestall some of this ugliness which I really don’t need in my life. It’s enormously draining and it’s gotten to where I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach when I go to check comments.
The reader pointed out that since this is from two months ago, VA could not have been referring to any “ugliness” from VFR. It was evidently someone else’s ugliness that had disturbed her. Also, while there are very nasty people in the blogosphere from whom one must protect oneself, I cannot help but wondering: since VA described my remarks as “hate,” what were these ugly comments in December like?
In any case, if I had known that VA is so deeply disturbed by negative comments as she indicates here, I would certainly have been more alert to any possible problem and would have removed her name from Sage McLaughlin’s comment.
A reader writes:
I wouldn’t take Vanishing American too seriously. The writing and topics seems deceptively good at first glance, but underneath the attractive style is nothing more than David Duke racism and a healthy dose of anti-Semitism fancied up in a bespoke suit. The intellectual substance and rational honesty you subscribe to doesn’t exist on that site.
I would let it go, that blog should be flying well below your radar.
I have been quietly reading your blog for about two years, while I don’t always agree with your opinion, I’ve been highly impressed by your integrity, reasoning and intelligence. You’ve made me see things from a new perspective which has made me THINK about why I believe what I do. You’ve been good for me. You’re also a gentleman in debate. Besides if you can piss off that insanely hysterical and mindbendingly stupid Debbie Schlussel—you’ve got me in your corner.
I found Vanishing American last summer, and after a brief burst of excitement (so many blogs are incredibly lousy) I started commenting. So far so good! Then the topic of Ron Paul was on offer one day. As a native Texan from Houston (near his home base) I have a solid opinion of Ron. I don’t dislike him, he’s a good man, he’s been a good rep for his district. As far as politicians go, he’s one of the better ones. But, I do have some criticisms of his policy positions and the friends he keeps.
I stated my thoughts politely on VA, and was basically called an ignorant person and a traitor to my race and country. Maybe my prediction that old Ron didn’t have snowball’s chance in Hell of winning the election put VA over the edge? Being lectured on my lack of love for my race and country was insulting, bizarre and completely unworthy of debate. Color me gone.
That’s my little VA story.
I know you’re a strong minded individual, but I would advise you to let this go—your posts validate her and she sure doesn’t deserve your attention or any further free advertising for her creepy blog. My father in law has an old favorite saying that he likes to whip out for intellectually barren charlatans …..”You can put a monkey in a suit, but he’s still a monkey”.
I think that saying applies in spades to Vanishing American.
LA replies:
Thank you for your comments, I’m glad you get something out of VFR.
Regarding the VA blog, I really haven’t read it for a long time and am not familiar with it, though I think I had some interaction with VA in the past, but I don’t specifically remember it. In the recent discussions I didn’t endorse the site or ascribe any particular qualities to it. I’ve had a general sense from the past that VA is an ally, but again, it’s all a bit vague in my mind, as I just haven’t kept up with the site very much. I think VA is friends with John Savage, and I stopped having anything to do with Savage a few months ago after he became an intellectual ally of the anti-Semite Tanstaafl. I don’t know where VA stood on that dispute, because, again, I haven’t followed her site.
As for your advice that I should not have gotten into this discussion about VA or that I should “let it go,” my answer is that I get into subjects when there is something to say about them, and I let them go when what needed to be said has been said. If I had not dealt with the issues that people have advised me over the years I should not deal with, I would not have written half or three quarters of the things I’ve written. The very qualities you say you like about my writings would not exist if I were to listen to such advice. And specifically, when one is attacked or when some dispute arises, it is necessary to reply and have it out. Truth emerges.
I have no knowledge that VA has a creepy blog. But one thing you need to understand. When one gets into an debate or dispute, the purpose is not to persuade the other party, which rarely happens. The purpose is to inform and persuade the people who are following the discussion, and to articulate and explain one’s own position. If we only engaged in arguments with people whom we thought were wise and virtuous or whom we thought we could win over to our side, virtually all debate would cease.
Thanks again for writing.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 17, 2008 10:10 AM | Send
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