I regularly read Meryl’s blog, and a few days ago noted the LGF/MSNBC hoohah, and meant to follow up (but had no time).
Tonight, I was browsing, and followed her links to this great – essay – (post seems dismissive) by Anil Dash, who apparently stepped into a fight on this issue by criticising what he saw as racism on LGF.
Following Matt Yglesias’ lead, I haven’t yet read my way through the MSNBC issue; I do have some opinions on the LGF issue, as I’ll note below, but I wanted to compliment Anil for his self-reflective essay; he manages to stand his ground and take responsibility at the same time, and that’s not something many writers are necessarily very good at (including me). So I’ll read the threads out as I have time, and draw my own conclusions. But this is a good piece, and well worth reading.
Re LGF: I think Charles Johnson has done an incredible service by opening a portal into the media and news ofthe Arab Middle East – lots of what we see is stuff we wish weren’t there, but it’s better to see and hope than to hope blindly. We have to deal with reality, first.
Having said that, I’m still not on board on the Clash of the Civilizations model. I am sure there is more here than a few loose psychopaths; but I’m not yet ready to lay it at the feet of the entire culture. I will suggest (remember the ‘armed’ in the blog title) that being well-prepared for war is often a good way not to have to, and any Administration would be remiss not be staging, planning, and otherwise preparing for the worst case, while negotiating like mad to get us to a better one.
I’m not sure if Charles is either; I know he’s signed on to the Clash model, but I’m not seeing what I would perceive as ‘kill them all’ in his writing.
He has however become the center of a community that includes people whose dream is a Middle East made of slag and glass, and who aren’t shy about saying so. If it were my blog, I’m not sure what I would do – in his case, the volume of content he creates, traffic, and so posts by readers is so great, I wonder if one person could police it if they chose to. I know this is an issue I would somehow address if I were him. I’m not.
And finally, I do think that for MSNBC to characterize it as a ‘hate site’; hang on, let me get the exact words from Meryl – ‘A popular but controversial Warblog focusing on militant Islam and terrorism. Is this news or hate?’ – was waaay out of line, and Charles and the blog community that supported him were not wrong for taking a stand on that.
But read Anil’s post; I’m certainly going to be thinking about it.
[Update: I just went over to LGF and there’re a few things you should read before forming a complete opinion. (my penalty for not reading the while damn set of threads first) It may put Anil in a slightly different light…it does for me…but I think Charles is a little too dismissive of the issue of the ‘glass and slag’ folks. They aren’t even a substantial minority of his posters, but they set a tone that makes it easier to dismiss the serious stuff in his posts. But as I’ve said, that’s his thing. ]