Ive had some correspondence with Instapundit over the whole Burk thing; as noted below, I think hes off-base, and that hes not acknowledging a whole history of right-wing satire of leftists (which I dont have time to research just now, dammit). In my view, that makes his points on Burk kinda meretricious, and as I told him privately, hes not a moron so he cant just wave that stuff off.
Now hes comparing the controversial suicide-bomber self-portrait with the Burk article, and here Ill go back to the point above, which is that the painting is romanticizing violence and death, while the article was satirizing reproductive politics. One != the other.
But theres another point (surprise!!) thats more urgent. I think Lileks (scroll to the bottom) and Reynolds are missing the more serious issue, which is the connection the painting makes between romanticism, Romanticism (as Ive talked about endlessly) and cathartic violence.
I think that the Beltway shooters may have had an ideological framework that made their violence OK, or a plan to bury an act of domestic violence in a mass murder. But I also think they were acting out of an impulse to cathartic violence which is legitimized by modern philosophers, in the modern arts world, and in the mass media.
One issue (unfair satire) is a cold. The other (romantic violence) is the plague. Lets not get distracted by sniffles.
Oh, good grief.
Couldn’t agree more. Reynolds is bitching about the symptoms, not the disease.
Which brings up another point. All this “double-standard” belly-aching and gnashing of the teeth over white-male bashing (which, for the record, I’m one- and a southerner to boot) particularly as manifested in the media profiling in the DC sniper case is – perhaps unintentionally – an attempt to co-opt “victimhood” status for white males.
So, rather than denounce the girevance culture that’s the real problem with liberalism at its most pandering, all this anger by white males over being stereotyped as “angry white males” trades on the idea that white guys who live in the ‘burbs and vote republican are just another oppressed minority.
I guess if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
-M
I wish I had a dollar for every “they are wrong but I respect their passion” that I have gotten when pointing out the sheer idiocy of this or that person’s or group’s positions or actions. The inability of too many on the left to place the nuts beyond the pale has incalculably harmful.