{"id":795,"date":"2005-06-04T23:55:55","date_gmt":"2005-06-04T23:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:11","slug":"nepotism_civili","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=795","title":{"rendered":"Nepotism, Civility and Pain au Chocolat<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve read my stuff for a while, or participated in one of my discussion threads, you’ll know that to me, one of the core values I promote is civility; we may disagree – even violently – but we acknowledge each other as human and worthwhile, and accept that we’re “in this together” – we’re all part of a civitas, or as defined from Latin (a) a community of citizens, a body-politic, a state, and (b) the condition of a citizen, citizenship, membership in the community. We’re all members of this political and social community, and we need to remember that.<\/p>\n

That’s an important political value for me, and this morning I just had my face rubbed in why it’s an important social and intellectual one as well. <\/p>\n

I may have grown a little bit today, and that’s my good news.I’m in New York for some family business, and this morning had breakfast with Adam Bellow…yes, that<\/a> Adam Bellow. Through Roger, he’s come up with some genius ideas for Pajamas and the intersection of blogging and publishing. TG and I met him this morning to discuss them, which is a post for another day.<\/p>\n

Today, as we wrapped up our discussion, I felt I had to apologize for the tone of my posts. When we’d arranged to meet, I’d suggested to the friends we’re staying with that I hoped he hadn’t actually read what I’d written about him. But after such a positive meeting, I felt I couldn’t avoid responsibility for what I’d written, and apologized for the tone of it.<\/p>\n

Adam laughed, reached into his briefcase and pulled out a copy of the book he’d obviously meant to give me as a parting gift. <\/p>\n

TG insisted that he sign it, which he did.<\/p>\n

He suggested that the Atlantic article and oped which I’d lambasted didn’t fairly represent his premise, and suggested that I read the whole thing and see what I thought.<\/p>\n

And lest you think I’m a whore for free books (why yes, I am) the real point to make is this:<\/p>\n

When you disagree with people, it’s dangerous to do so in terms that – while seductively self-confident – really move to end debate, rather than encourage it. I don’t like it when people do that in discussions, I don’t like it when people do it on televisions or in opeds, and – in retrospect – I particularly don’t like it when I do it.<\/p>\n

I may or may not change my views on nepotism when I’ve read the whole book. I have changed my views on what tone is acceptable to take in debating the issue, and I hope that my small reconciliation is something that leads all of you to think about your style of argument as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve read my stuff for a while, or participated in one of my discussion threads, you’ll know that to me, one of the core values I promote is civility; we may disagree – even violently – but we acknowledge each other as human and worthwhile, and accept that we’re “in this together” – we’re […]<\/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\/795"}],"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=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}