Constructive Criticism

I'm sorting out some ideas I might post to Facebook.  If they turn out to hang together, I'll just post them here.  It may take a while, but I hope that before too long I'll finish venting and can return either to slacking off or writing on other subjects.  For now I'll try to be entertaining, at least.

It's easy enough to pick on people who are upset because Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service at a small restaurant in Virginia.  I've tried to explain why they are fundamentally wrong, but it might help to suggest how they could do a better job.  A better job of framing the problem and the controversy, if you will.

For example, instead of fixating on the nonexistent injustice Sanders suffered, let's try a different perspective.  Having been ejected, civilly and politely, from the Red Hen restaurant, Huckabee Sanders decided to use her bully pulpit as White House Press Secretary, her government Twitter account, to stomp on the restaurant and its owner.  A worker at the restaurant had already posted about it on Facebook, but most of the corporate media didn't pick on it until Sanders notified her vast audience that she'd been treated with disrespect.

If a journalist really wanted to raise the alarm about civility, he or she could have begun by pointing out that, inconvenient and unpleasant as it was to be refused service, it was incomparably more unpleasant for the Red Hen to be put in the crosshairs of the Trump base, and vastly more uncivil for Sanders to put it there.  So a really fair journalist might say something along those lines: We sympathize with Mrs. Sanders for having her dinner plans interrupted, though of course she is completely in favor of less godly persons being refused service, but civility and indeed democracy are under threat when a powerful government official takes petty revenge on a small business for putting her to inconvenience.

My Right Wing Acquaintance, RWA1, lamented on Facebook that "We are all the losers" when this kind of incivility takes place.  He was not, of course, referring to Sanders's abuse of her office to trash a small business, though one might have thought that as a (retired) small business owner himself and a critic of big-government abuses (when they hurt the wrong people, that is), he might have thought of the chilling effect her behavior could have on small business owners who dare to disrespect POTUS and his crew.  He might write something like: I would never refuse service to anyone, but Mrs. Sanders's conduct is uncivil and inexcusable, even if she does feel that she should have been served.  As a believer in small government, I shudder to think that small business owners should hesitate to exercise their rights for fear of being attacked by some unaccountable bureaucrat in Washington.

The important thing is, this never seems to have occurred to either RWA1 or the centrist pundits who've been piling on the Red Hen with Sanders.  It's not surprising, of course: RWA1 and his kindred spirits always side with the bigots first.  They may pay lip service to the bigots' targets, but only on the way to offer comfort to the already comfortable, who suffered so greatly by not receiving the obedience and servility that is their due.

RWA1 was very indignant, for example, when Ben Carson encountered resistance to his giving a commencement address at Johns Hopkins and decided to forego the honor.  "I'm for gay marriage," RWA1 commented as he linked to a fatuous and mendacious essay by the centrist writer Michael Kinsley, "but Kinsley is right about PC heresy-hunting in academia and elsewhere."

Carson took flak for a Fox News appearance in which, among other pleasantries, he compared same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia.  He addressed these themes further soon afterwards on MSNBC.  In addition to declaring that they don't make homophobes like they used to, Kinsley pointed out that Carson is a distinguished neurosurgeon and not your stereotypical toothless redneck bigot.  As if he suddenly realized the absurdity of that defense, Kinsley doubled back and acknowledged that even a university-educated military officer of impeccable pedigree can be the commandant of a death camp, but hey, this is America and we should be tolerant of bigots as long as they have advanced degrees and dress nice.  Kinsley also claimed that he and Andrew Sullivan invented gay marriage in 1989, I suppose to establish his bona fides as an Ally, howbeit a delusional one.  That claim was revised in the online version, but only the first time (of two) he made it; as far as I know, the second instance is still there, later in the text.

But I dissected Kinsley's claims at length at the time.  What I still find interesting is that 1) though antigay bigots must know by now that they will get in trouble if they compare homosexuality to bestiality on national TV, they just can't seem to stop themselves from doing it; 2) though apologists for bigotry will admit the absurdity and viciousness of the bigots' discourse, they will still insist that no one should get upset about it and the bigots should suffer no consequences whatever ("why can't [gays] just laugh off nutty comments like Carson's...?" Kinsley asked); and 3) RWA1, who is not as stupid as he often seems (though as time goes on, I'm beginning to reconsider that judgment), could still post Kinsley's gabbling as an exemplary diagnosis and refutation of "PC heresy hunting in academia."  I was going to wonder just how vile someone would have to be for RWA1 and his ilk to refuse to defend their freedom of expression, but then I remembered the Westboro Baptist Church: RWA1 is always ready not just to place them behind the pale, but to deny their First Amendment rights and to hint coyly that it would be nice if someone were to shoot them in the face or something.  So there are limits, but only for "demon-possessed preachers" and unruly rabble on the left.

There's the consistent pattern in the centrist-media outcry about the death of civility in America, into which people like RWA1 fit comfortably: they always side with the bigots first.  Their balanced, but-on-the-other-hand analyses may admit that perhaps the bigots have gone too far now and then, but that's no reason to say mean things about them or make them uncomfortable in public.  This is a consideration that they do not extend to left-wing agitators, let alone the bigots' targets.  We are supposed to grow thicker skins; the bigots and their apologists can feel a pea through thirty mattresses, and that sensitivity is protected by all the norms of democratic society.  It doesn't take an advanced degree to detect where their sympathies lie.  They're entitled to lay their sympathies wherever they like, but so are the rest of us, and if they want to be taken seriously, they should start being honest about their real allegiance.

Don't Demonize Me, Bro!

One of the things that made Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) so scary was that the audience never got a really good look at the monster.  This may not always be true, but often it's the unseen, what might be lurking in the darkness, that is most frightening: turn on the lights and there's nothing there.  And what the fearful imagination conjures up may be nothing specific; even the mind's eye averts itself.

In Homosexuality in Renaissance England (Gay Men's Press, 1988), Alan Bray recounts a remarkable story.  In 1630 "a labourer, Meredith Davy of Minehead in Somerset," was brought before the court.

According to the evidence of his master's apprentice, a boy 'aged twelve years or thereabouts' called John Vicary, with whom he shared a bed, Davy had been in the habit of having sexual relations with the boy on Sunday and holiday nights after he had been drinking; eventually the boy cried out and Davy ended up before the Justices [48].

Later in the book Bray adds,

Davy was not alone with the boy when he was forcing his attentions with him: throughout the whole time this was happening there was a witness, a servant who slept in the same room with him, to whom the creaking of their bed and the groans and cries of the boy were quite audible as he later gave evidence; and this was repeated on Sunday and holiday nights for almost a month [69].

Not only that:

But what is really astounding is the reaction of the household when Bryant [the servant who shared a room with Davy and Vicary] did go to the mistress and the boy told all.  Everything this society had to say about the nature of homosexuality and its horror would naturally lead us to expect a horrified reaction; at the very least one expects that Davy would have been locked up ... Not only was he not locked up; he was not removed from the boy's bed.  This is not the behaviour of people who think that they are dealing with a monster in human form [77].

Davy himself "denieth that he ever used any unclean action with the said boy as they lay in bed together; and more he sayeth not" (69).

Bray speculated that because the sodomite was culturally imagined as a monster, people were nonplussed when confronted with reality: since he seemed to be an ordinary fellow, how could Meredith Davy be a sodomite?

Davy's denial may have been born partly of the normal human reaction to lie reflexively when in trouble.  But I remembered it while thinking about some recent discussions of race and racism in America.

More than once I've seen people say, as Jason Richwine told The Washington Examiner (via), "The idea that I am some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremist never even crossed my mind ... The accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life."  Richwine, you may recall, formerly with the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is the guy who wrote that "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites."  I'm not going to discuss the validity of IQ tests; like many other people, I'm more interested in Richwine's assumption that "Hispanics" aren't white.  (Does that mean he wants to keep Sergio Garcia out of the US?  If so, I could be persuaded.)  But for the purposes of this post, I want to talk about Richwine's assumption that a racist is "some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremist," and his ill-worded claim that "the accusation of racism is one of the worst things anyone can call you in public life."  Someone called him an accusation of racism?  That's pretty weird, but there are worse things he could be called.

Racism is not necessarily some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremism.  Much racism is soft-spoken, polite, middle-of-the-road, almost apologetic, and wields scientific research in its defense.  The racist is just a regular guy, hearty and ready with jokes about fried chicken and collard greens.  Just as much antigay bigotry wears priestly robes and clerical collars, and humbly quotes Scripture to justify itself.  As with Meredith Davy's case, if you believe that a sodomite has horns and a tail, you won't know what to make of an ordinary laborer who's porking his twelve-year-old male bedmate -- if you're Davy himself, you won't recognize that porking your male bedmade is sodomy, because you never thought of yourself as some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth monster.  You were just fooling around, having a little friendly fun.  Calling Davy a sodomite is so harsh, because the accusation of sodomy is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life.  Richwine, according to the Atlantic Wire post I cited above, can't even tell that someone like John Derbyshire is a racist, presumably because Derbyshire doesn't foam at the mouth either.

I don't see that calling someone a racist is so bad in American public life.  Yes, Richwine was dumped by the Heritage Foundation, but he'll probably find another paying gig with another right-wing think tank.  People like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and so many other notorious American racists have been accused of racism, yet they soldier on, and their careers haven't ended.  That could be because racism is so popular in right-wing circles, which almost by definition are well-funded, and even the fact that Richwine doesn't seem to be very bright won't count against him.  (On the other hand, even if Richwine ends up flipping burgers or driving a cab, worse things could happen to him, and worse things have happened to better people.)

Of course I read selectively and lazily, but I haven't seen anyone call Richwine some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremist.  What I have seen is that his work has been picked to pieces on its substance, including his strange assumption that "Hispanics" are a discrete racial group.  Since "Hispanic" refers to language and not biology, it covers people from a rather wide range of physical and cultural groups, many or most of whom consider themselves to be white.  He told one audience in 2008, "Decades of psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America, you have Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics, and then blacks."  Aside from the fact that Jews aren't a race either (except when they are), nor are "non-Jewish whites," Richwine is evidently ignorant of the history of IQ ranking in the United States.  A century ago, Jews were ranked as feeble-minded, along with Italians and Slavs, way behind the pure Anglo-Saxon race.  Those who criticized the validity of such judgments were denounced as hostile to Science, usually because they resented that Science revealed their innate inferiority.  As the prominent American eugenicist Madison Grant said, the Jewish anthropologist Franz Boas "naturally does not take stock in any anthropology which relegates him and his race to the inferior position that they have occupied throughout recorded history."

So, people like Richwine create a spectre of The Racist, lurking in the shadows and ready to leap out and eviscerate the unwary with its teeth and claws.  That, they insist, is The Racist, and since they demonstrably are nice respectable people, they couldn't possibly be racist.  (This spectre occupies a place in the American imagination much like the one Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church does: bigots need someone demonstrably and visibly extreme, someone beyond the pale, so they can plausibly define themselves as moderate by comparison.)  That much is fairly obvious, I think, but it seems that they are also somewhat vague about what racism and racists are, perhaps so they can continue to frighten themselves with inchoate fantasies.  Richwine, with his "foaming-at-the-mouth" image, is a bit more concrete than most, but he still fits this familiar and ancient pattern.

Here's the point: Racism, like any other form of bigotry, is not necessarily monstrous, though it is often expressed in monstrous ways.  Since I'm not black and don't wish to tell black people how they should respond to racism, I'll put this in terms of antigay bigotry.  (It should be noticed, though, that Jason Richwine and people like him are at least as upset by other whites calling them racist as they are by what non-whites think.)  I don't think that someone should do hard time for calling me a faggot, nor is such a person a monster; I do think that fag-bashers like the guys who brutally murdered Matthew Shepard, should have gone to prison.  I'm not sure such people are monsters either; certainly antigay violence has often been socially acceptable in American society.  I recognize that there are degrees of bigotry.  But I'm not obligated to laugh at someone else's fag joke, nor to refrain from declaring that I don't think it funny.  I'm not obligated to respect someone who calls me a faggot, or even those who want me to be a second-class citizen legally or socially -- even if they do so out of sincere religious faith.  As an advocate of freedom of speech, I respect people's right to say bigoted things, but I'm not obligated to respect their bigotry.  This is not because they're monsters, but because they're bigots.  And my disrespect for them does not constitute throwing them under the bus, or "sending in the drones to take [them] out."  Michael Kinsley asked (via) why gays "can't laugh off nutty comments like [Benjamin] Carson"; why the hell should we?  The alternative to laughing is not "sending in the drones to take him out": it's withholding respect from him, and correctly labeling him the bigot that he is.  Even that, little as it is, upsets the likes of Richwine and Kinsley.

You Don't Have to Be a Monster to Be a Bigot

My Right Wing Acquaintance Number One linked to a bizarre column by The New Republic's Michael Kinsley, "LGBT PC: Being against marriage equality doesn't make you a monster."  RWA1 commented, "I'm for gay marriage, but Kinsley is right about PC heresy-hunting in academia and elsewhere."

Kinsley was displeased because Dr. Benjamin Carson ran into some controversy when he made some ordinarily bigoted remarks about same-sex marriage on TV.

In March, Ben Carson appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” show to talk about gay marriage. Carson is the latest Great Black Hope for the Republican Party, which is quickly running out of African American conservatives to make famous. But Carson’s appearance was not a success. He should have left bestiality out of it. And any reference to NAMBLA—the “North American Man / Boy Love Association”—is pretty good evidence that we have left the realm of rational discussion and entered radio talk-show territory. This alleged organization exists—if indeed it exists at all—for the sole purpose of being attacked by Republicans and conservatives on talk radio and television.

Carson repeated this performance on MSNBC a few days later, more mildly but a lot more incoherently:

“If you ask me for an apple, and I give you an orange, you would say, ‘That’s not an orange.’ And then I say, ‘That’s a banana.’ And that’s not an apple, either. Or there’s a peach, that’s not an apple, either. But it doesn’t mean that I’m equating the banana and the orange and the peach.” 

Despite one of those standard insincere apologies that public figures make when they've said something notably vicious, Carson suffered.

Carson was supposed to be the graduation speaker at Johns Hopkins Medical School. There was a fuss, and Carson decided to withdraw as speaker. The obviously relieved dean nevertheless criticized Carson for being “hurtful.” His analysis of the situation was that “the fundamental principle of freedom of expression has been placed in conflict with our core values of diversity, inclusion and respect.” My analysis is that, at a crucial moment, the dean failed to defend a real core value of the university: tolerance.

Kinsley's rationale rivals Carson's diatribe for incoherence:

Carson may qualify as a homophobe by today’s standards. But then they don’t make homophobes like they used to. Carson denies hating gay people, while your classic homophobe revels in it. He has apologized publicly “if I offended anyone.” He supports civil unions that would include all or almost all of the legal rights of marriage. In other words, he has views on gay rights somewhat more progressive than those of the average Democratic senator ten years ago. But as a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he just won’t give up the word “marriage.”

I don't agree that "your classic homophobe revels in" hating gay people.  Your classic homophobe generally insists that he or she has nothing against homosexuals, indeed he or she loves us and wants to help us win the struggle against unwanted homosexual desires.  I presume Kinsley has in mind someone like the Westboro Baptist Church, but they don't hate gay people either: they just report that God hates us, so that the world can escape his judgment.  I've said before that the worst thing about the WBC is that it represents an extreme compared to which other bigots can pretend to be moderate, and Kinsley's ramblings here probably are an example of that.  I've also pointed out another strategy of today's bigots: despite their reliance on the Jewish/Christian Bible for morality and the definition of marriage, they're oddly reluctant to endorse execution of sodomites, and protest their devotion to equal rights for everybody.  They may compare homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, but they're very tolerant, and it grieves them when they're called bigots.  This is nothing new, of course: white American racists hid behind the Bible during the Civil Rights Era, and insisted that they loved the Negro, and it was because of this love that they wanted to shield him from a false equality for which he was un-equipped by his God-given nature.  Not only does sincere religious belief not justify bigotry, it has been the basis for most bigotry historically: the Catholics who burned Protestants, the Protestants who burned Catholics, all did so in humble obedience to their God.

Kinsley goes on (and on):

The university’s response was wrong for a variety of reasons. First, Carson isn’t just another gasbag. He is director of pediatric neurosurgery at Hopkins. Pediatric neurosurgery! He fixes children’s brains. How terrible can a person be who does that for a living? Yes, I know the flaw in this thinking: There is no necessary connection. As a character says in Mel Brooks’s movie The Producers: “der Führer vas a terrific dancer.” But Carson didn’t murder millions of people. All he did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage—an idea that even its biggest current supporters had never even heard of a couple of decades ago. Does that automatically make you a homophobe and cast you into the outer darkness? It shouldn’t. But in some American subcultures—Hollywood, academia, Democratic politics—it apparently does. 

"All he did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage" -- well, no, he said a bit more than that.  He also compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality.  And maybe he said more than that; I don't suppose Kinsley has reported everything Carson said.  But that comparison has nothing much to do with the question of same-sex marriage, as Kinsley actually concedes: Carson has left rational discussion behind, and is cavorting in la-la land.  Nor does the bestiality-pedophilia comparison follow from Carson's Christian beliefs; he could argue against homosexuality on Biblical grounds.  It's strange, really: plenty of antigay bigots have made exactly the same comparison, it's almost a cliche, and they always get attacked for it.  You'd think they'd learn that people who compare homosexuality to bestiality in public will take heat for it, but they're always taken totally by surprise, and hasten to explain that they never meant to offend anybody.  Then they do it again, and again.  (What would Carson, or Kinsley for that matter, say about a white person who compared people of African descent to monkeys, or interracial marriage to bestiality?  What would they say about the white guy in this story?  Would they defend him, denying furiously that he is racist?)

Citing Carson's good works as proof that he's not a "homophobe" seems wilfully off-the-mark; perverse, even.  Just about any adult can probably think of visibly good, civic-minded, charitable individuals who have nevertheless done terrible things: Nazi concentration camp commandants who loved Brahms and Beethoven and deplored gratuitous violence; Roman Catholic priests beloved in their parishes who raped numerous children; or a white policeman with a black fiancée, an exemplar of anti-racism on the force, who nevertheless sodomized a Haitian immigrant with a broomstick.  Carson isn't remotely in the same league as people like these, as far as I know; but if he were,* there would still be well-meaning people who'd leap to his defense and insist that he wasn't a monster, and shouldn't be cast into the outer darkness over a little lapse or two or two dozen.

I can't help wondering, though: would Kinsley argue that "tolerance" requires a university, private or public, not to withdraw an invitation to someone who is a monster by Kinsley's criteria, whatever they are?  And suppose that Carson hadn't withdrawn as commencement speaker.  Would Kinsley insist on the freedom of speech of students to protest and picket his appearance?  I doubt it; I know RWA1 wouldn't.  He'd consider them a bunch of fascist PC yahoos.  I can't remember any time RWA1 has criticized right-wing students or organizations for hunting "heresy" on campus or elsewhere.  When Ward Churchill was being attacked for some distinctly un-PC remarks a decade ago, and ultimately fired from the University of Colorado at Boulder, despite tenure and numerous awards for service and scholarship, RWA1 was silent, because Churchill violated right-wing Political Correctness.  Nor have I ever observed RWA1 criticizing the numerous right-wing organizations that try to monitor classrooms for liberal and left-wing thoughtcrime.  This, unfortunately, fits the normal American pattern: free speech for me, but not for thee.

In fact, the very idea of a “test of right thinking on gay issues” or any other kind of issues, is absurd. Gays, who know a thing or two about repression, ought to be the last people to want to destroy someone’s career because they disagree. In their moment of triumph, why can’t they laugh off nutty comments like Carson’s, rather than sending in the drones to take him out?

This is absurd.  Being disinvited as speaker to the Johns Hopkins commencement isn't going to "destroy [Carson]'s career."  Nor is it comparable to "sending in the drones to take him out."  I've spoken up for the free speech rights of bigots in the past myself, but nothing in the doctrine of freedom of speech requires people to say nothing when someone says something vicious.  Freedom of speech includes my freedom to criticize, and even to attack verbally, people who say bigoted things.  I don't want to destroy Ben Carson's career, but I do want him to know that if he says things about gay people that he'd surely object to if they were said about black people (and they were, in his lifetime), he will face criticism.  Patently insincere "apologies" won't suffice.  I know that Carson has opinions on other topics that are less than fully rational and open to question; he is evidently a fine neurosurgeon, but that doesn't mean his political opinions therefore command agreement.

Another curiosity about Kinsley's column.  He makes much of the relative recentness of same-sex marriage as a hot-button political issue, suggesting that people like Ben Carson can't be blamed because they haven't had time to get used to such a radical new idea yet.

The first known mention of gay marriage is an article (“Here Comes the Groom” by Andrew Sullivan) commissioned by me and published in this magazine in 1989. And I would bet that there is no one born before 1989, gay or straight, who didn’t, when he or she first heard the idea, go, whaaa? Many on reflection got used to the idea, and a majority of Americans now support it.

I've reread these sentences several times to make sure I didn't miss some qualification that would allow them to make sense.  Same-sex marriage was mentioned long before 1989.**  Maybe it wasn't discussed in The New Republic, but radical gay activists were trying to get the issue before the public no later than the early 1970s, and it was discussed in gay and lesbian publications before that.  The heterosexual newsweekly Look magazine covered the struggle as early as 1971.  I'm sure it must have been mentioned in straight-but-hip newspapers like the Village Voice during the 70s and 80s too.  I presume Kinsley means that nobody who mattered mentioned gay marriage before 1989; but I'm not obliged to respond to such a claim by doing anything but pointing my finger and making rude derisive noises.

It's funny, because Andrew Sullivan is always claiming (falsely) that gay radicals have tried to erase the history of the gay movement before Stonewall; but here's Michael Kinsley trying to give himself and Sullivan credit for first mention of same-sex marriage in 1989.  Kinsley also seems to assume that opposition to same-sex marriage only comes from right-wing religious bigots, apparently unaware that such opposition also comes from "the left", from gay and feminist thinkers who can actually think about the issues involved.  But they, like anyone who mentioned same-sex marriage before 1989, aren't Very Serious People Who Matter, so they don't exist.  There are other ways to silence debate than overt censorship: if you have a platform like The New Republic, you can also rewrite history, and misrepresent the true range of opinions on an issue.

* The article linked here is from The Onion and therefore a parody, not to be taken at face value.  I think it's a great send-up of the kind of excuses Kinsley is making for Carson, Obama fans make for Obama, and Ted Koppel makes for Henry Kissinger.

** Kinsley's article has been revised online to curb his hubris somewhat: "One early seminal article on gay marriage (“Here Comes the Groom” by Andrew Sullivan) was commissioned by me and published in this magazine in 1989."  The original wording can be found in this blog post.  But the editors failed to notice or correct the same claim in the opening of the article: "It [i.e., gay marriage] was a genuinely new idea when it first appeared in this publication in 1989."