{"id":1335,"date":"2007-02-10T15:38:04","date_gmt":"2007-02-10T15:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2007-02-10T15:39:56","modified_gmt":"2007-02-10T15:39:56","slug":"crooks_liars_an","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1335","title":{"rendered":"Crooks, Liars, and the Unfair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicole Belle, over at John Amato’s Crooks and Liars has a brief look at l’affaire Arkin<\/a>, and springboards from there to a look at Internet argumentation and to make a plea for civility.<\/p>\n

Not on Arkin’s part, mind you…ad hominem, slander, and dishonesty on his part are summed up as:<\/p>\n

A little background: After watching an NBC Nightly News report that had troops bemoaning the lack of support at home Arkin posted that the soldiers should be grateful that we do respect them<\/a>, even if we don’t support the mission.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

Apparently the masochist, Arkin responded again<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

.<\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

1500 comments and another closed thread later, Arkin had been insulted in every possible way. Never one to back away from a fight, Arkin takes issue with the ad hominem used in lieu of debate<\/a>:<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Belle says<\/p>\n

So what do you think? Arkin’s plea for civility (one I share \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you commenters can be brutal and seem to forget that there are real people behind the words you’re reading) suggests that a civilized exchange is a lost art. Is it the anonymity of the internet? Is it that certain topics are just too provocative to discuss calmly? Or have we collectively forgotten our manners? <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem, of course is that Arkin deliberately used inflammatory language, deception, and slurs to make his original point – that the troops needed to be taken aside and told to STFU – and in my view lost whatever standing he had to complain that the audience “was mean to him”. A better writer and thinker than Arkin could have raised parallel points – which are important ones – about the relationship between troop opinion and public opinion, and the role of each is establishing the other. He could have asked about the cost of a polarizing political dialog that excludes the people spoken about. He could have done a lot of things. But then again, he’s Arkin.<\/p>\n

Belle makes a plea for civility, but fails to make an even-handed one. He must not have more than one child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crooks and Liars is upset about Arkin’s critics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}