And so to something a bit different (it being a disquisition in three parts).
There are some things in life which, when you chance to come across them, it’s better just to step over or around. One such thing, within the blogosphere, is abuse. It doesn’t seem to be all that common – judging, anyway, from the blogs I mostly read – but once in a while you do come across it. Step over or step around.
However. If other bloggers than yourself happen to take it up as a talking point, making of it a topic of public reflection, so to say, and if, further, you yourself are the object of the material in question, then what the hell, you may feel free to pitch in and have your say. For ‘you’ there, people, read ‘I’ or ‘me’ as appropriate, with the proprietor and principal author of this blog in the position of speaker and referrer.
Not long ago posts at the Stoa and the Age of Waiting (see ‘We must be doing something right’, 29 January) drew attention to a couple of guys who were – dash it – being jolly unpleasant about me. Or to me. Or both. Anyway, I didn’t feel they were altogether friendly. In his post about this Chris at the Stoa had some observations on the pros and cons of politeness, and the comrades at Age of Waiting for their part diagnosed, in the item they were addressing themselves to, a certain lack of sophistication. Without wanting to dispute either of these two approaches to the phenomenological, and indeed ontological, nexus constituted by the abusive matter Stoa and Waiting were discussing, I wish to offer a complementary theoretical perspective upon it.
I take the posts which here form our object of enquiry in chronological order. In the first of them (to be read only by those possessed of a strong constitution), Martin Wisse, down at Wis[s]e Words, kicks off with a ‘What he said’ which used to link to a post shortly to be described, but which now links mostly to whiteness. As I am best able to recollect the post it used to link to, that post contained a familiar obscene admonition repeated many times, first in front of the name of George Bush, and then in front of other names – I think those of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice amongst others, though I won’t swear to it. So much did Martin admire the string of profanities thus formed that he decided to continue with a similar string of his own.
At this point, Gentle Reader, I must try what I can to acquaint you with the obscenity that had been put to work here by Martin and A.N. Other, while doing as little brutality as possible to what I know to be your refined sensibilities. From his now seemingly defunct source, Martin was availing himself of a word that would rhyme with ‘back’ if, for the ‘a’ in ‘back’, you were to substitute another vowel: the vowel, in fact, which would become free for substitution were you to re-type the phrase ‘the exploitation of labour’ to conform to US spelling.
Whew. I hope we haven’t got too sullied there. I’ve tried my best. I do feel a bit sullied, but only a bit. You? No, don’t worry, you don’t look sullied.
OK, so Martin, after his emboldening ‘What he said’, wrote something like this:
And back Norm Geras, back Harry and friends and back any other member of the so[-]called reasonable prowar left too. They bought into this myth of “liberating Iraq” sold to them by a man who himself… [etc and so forth]
Now here I have to make a brief explanatory digression. Martin has put in one previous appearance on normblog. For he it was who, back in September, expressed the view:
If you… support the war on Iraq, you’re a fool. We said nothing good would come from this and indeed, nothing good has come from it.
Not long afterwards I engaged with Martin about this (see Unwise words: old site, September 27), urging him in a friendly way to reconsider. Did he really want to commit himself to the claim that nothing good had come from the war? Not even…
the closing down of the torture chambers… the eviction of Saddam and his two boys from their seats of power… the opening up of Iraq to a free press.
So, has Martin reconsidered? This I cannot say. What I can say is that, if he has, he evidently hasn’t changed his mind. For, as he now puts it:
If Iraq really becomes free, it will be in spite of the American led coal[it]on, not because of it.
I would call this the Kleinian view of things, except that it may be Martin got there before Naomi Klein. It might possibly be fairer to refer to it as a piece of Wissedom. But, as I said in connection with the Kleinian variant, it’s not my way to mock.