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Missing: The Guardian's Spinal Column

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16:19 / 25.10.04

Sorry, that was in response to Sleaze's post about the pretzels.

Although I've still got my toboggan positioned for a slide down the slippery slope, waiting for Diz to tell me under what imaginable circumstances, say, mass rape or genocide could be considered morally acceptable tactics, provided they bring the greatest good to the greatest number.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:25 / 25.10.04

And so isn't this really just a popular opinion (Bush is bad) put into provocative hyperbole (too bad those assassins aren't around right now)?

Yeah, that was basically the defence in Watts vs US - that the threat could not be fulfilled, and as such was not, strictly speaking, a threat. In the same wise, wishing for a pretzel might be seen as something over which the individual can have no control, and so be potentially in bad taste, but not actually a threat.

Whether that's better or worse? Well, one might as well say, in effect, "The American people (or the House, or the Supreme Court) have made a terrible mistake, the consequences of which are so ruinous that we must hope for an act of God, be that natural death, accidental death or some fortune than removes Bush from the political arena". The obvious failing of this is easy to summarise: Dick Cheney. Dick may not be in great shape, but he can probably last a term, and certainly organise a successor. Cutting off the head is of limited utility, especially in the case of Bush. The Republican Party needs to be dealt with, in the hope perhaps that decent conservatives within the party can put some sort of muzzle on its more corrupt, ideology-crazed and just downright nasty elements in a four-year healing period.

Jack The Bodiless

19:29 / 25.10.04

Brooker's article is clearly a joke, not a particularly good one, and the Guardian were specatularly craven for removing it, although the "not the Guardian's opinion" caveat is traditional and, most importantly, assists in preventing lawsuits. Dumb article (Brooker specialises in rants against easy targets with an established consensus against them, but this is a greased slide even for him), dumb reaction.

What I find disturbing beyond words is, in this thread, the tacit - and in a couple of cases, open - approval of murder as a means of punishment or illegal regime change. There really are no words for how morally questionable that is to me.

Oh, and I think a good analogy involving Thatcher would be a satirical jibe to the IRA to come back, finish what they started, and bring a bigger bomb this time.

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:52 / 25.10.04

Oh, well, I don't think anyone here is denying that it's morally questionable. I think the questions are probably, in order:

1) Is assassination as a means of securing regime change *ever* acceptable?

And then

2) Would it be acceptable to kill George Bush if he were re-elected.

To which my answers are probably 1) Yes and 2) No, but YMMV...

20:24 / 25.10.04

Firstly, thanks to Flyboy for the link. Secondly, I'd like to pick up on something he said earlier on (while "is assassination ever acceptable?" is a perfectly good question I think it's something of a sidetrack here).

Presumably what is happening here is that The Guardian want to appear even-handed and counter the impression that they lean one way or the other ... This is all horribly misguided, and I firmly believe they're over-compensating.

I'd certainly agree. In fact I think that the Guardian, which has picked up much fame and notoriety in US internet-aware circles (I'm told it has about 200K US net readers) is starting to believe their propaganda about it being a haunt of commie eurofags - apparently unaware of its reputation amongst actual commie eurofags as a bit of a liberal joke, the odd article notwithstanding. Bizarrely it seems to be compensating on the basis of its position on the left-right scale of a foreign country.

They are also, in my opinion, not very internet-aware. Their talkboards were famously freeped almost into oblivion and certainly to the point of uselessness, and I am not at all sure that they really understand the commonly-used US tactic of mass emailing and intimidation (as I said in my letter of complaint). They also pulled Operation Clark County because of this behaviour, carried out by people rarely anywhere near Ohio, as well as server attacks, which regardless of what I might think of OCC seems craven too, as well as stupid. It's been pointed out to the freeper/rightblogger community that they can get things pulled from the Guardian now and they will keep harassing it.

Incidentally I heard a rumour that the US editor of GU was threatened with arrest by the Secret Service, which would be a reasonable justification for pulling the piece on their part, if disgraceful for a host of other reasons, but I've had no confirmation of that from any other sources so I wouldn't believe it for the moment.

05:06 / 26.10.04

I have of course been mailed by people who seem to think I am Charlie Brooker, now. I look forward to collecting the best examples. (I have also rewritten my mail form so that I can only get one email per minute from it.)

07:54 / 26.10.04

You'll forgive me for sidestepping the entire debate that's composed this topic and responding to Flyboy's original post, but..

..surely the point is that the Guardian is a mainstream newspaper rather than a radical political publication, and as such what else do you expect them to do when a significant number of readers complain about something? "Hey man, fuck you!" wouldn't quite be the done thing here would it?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:15 / 26.10.04

I think that having taken the decision to publish this article, which was always going to be offensive to some, they should have published their reasons and stuck by it. Unless their reasons were just dumb, in which case they should never have printed. I am however indebted to their dithering for revealing to me something I would never have suspected, namely that a surprising number of people here have no moral problem at all with assassination, just with who's giving the orders and the circumstances under which to deploy it.

08:39 / 26.10.04

what else do you expect them to do when a significant number of readers complain about something? "Hey man, fuck you!" wouldn't quite be the done thing here would it?

The point has already been made, however, that The Guardian has indeed, in effect, said "Hey man, fuck you!" in response to significant numbers of reader complaints in the past - and I'm thinking of Julie Burchill's hyperbolically bollocky Controversy-U-Like column, which regularly produced similar commentary on anyone she happened to dislike in any given week. There's an inconsistency of approach here.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:11 / 26.10.04

What I find disturbing beyond words is, in this thread, the tacit - and in a couple of cases, open - approval of murder as a means of punishment or illegal regime change.

That does sound disturbing. Could you point me to an example of it in this thread?

09:21 / 26.10.04

There's an inconsistency of approach here

Yes, when it often seemed like the whole point of Julie Burchill's column was to generate letters of complaint from the average *Guardian-reading liberal,* it seems a bit rich for the editors to then turn round and pull an article on the basis that it's offensive to a group of people who as I understand it, don't even buy the bloody paper in the first place.

10:46 / 26.10.04

Apologies that I can't recall which of you brilliant people said this uplist (ah! it was Jack Fear!), but I thought this point was cogent:

It's an open (and interesting) question, though, whether liberalism's obsession with "fairness" and equal time for opposing viewpoints is really helpful. I think that calling [the Guardian's decision] "horribly misguided" as a general principle is overstating the case, but it certainly happens that, in their dedication to "balance" as a prerequisite of trustworthiness, news outlets sometimes lend credibility to unreliable sources. This is particularly true in science reporting, esp. in US media coverage of global warming, where shills for petrochem-industry think-tanks are routinely given rebuttal time to dispute whether the phenomenon even exists.

I think what tends to happen in the US media on this point is not the fault of a "liberal obsession" with fairness (although that probably does exist to some degree, even here in the conservative USofA) so much as a laziness, a desire not to offend big advertisers, etc., on the part of the media, under the cover of the idea that bad ideas should not be censored but should be countered with better ideas. Most media outlets present far too much that is, quite simply, by rational standards of evidence, crap, and take almost no responsibility to point out the flaws in the logic or argumentation that might be present in arriving at that opinion.

Whether this problematic epistemological context (sorry to go all headshoppy on you) might be partly a result of deconstructive (pace Derrida) / cultural studies analysis, and its distrust of empiricism, is something we discussed in the Head Shop some time ago without really coming to any conclusions. It would be lovely if someone else decided to revive that thread again, as I seemed to kill it every time I tried...

Jack The Bodiless

11:25 / 26.10.04

Fly: Here y'go - although it's only a two page thread, y'lazybones.

we can all agree there can be little in the way of credible moral objection to wishing for the assassination of Bush. A strategic objection, sure, but not a moral one.

Tacit approval for the concept of assassination as a political tool - apparently any moral objection to it in the case of George W. Bush lacks credibility.

i don't have any moral objection to assassination per se.

'Assassination' refers to the unexpected or treacherous premeditated killing of another for impersonal, usually political or monetary reasons. The above references no moral objection to it. Fairly open, I would have thought.

And it's absurd not to recognise that there is nothing purely immoral about wishing George W. Bush was wiped off the face of the earth.

Why?

though i would agree that the tactics you mentioned are rarely, if ever, productive, it's foolish to rule out anything out of hand. tactics are, by themselves, morally neutral.

In chess, possibly.

That's enough to be going on with, I think.

11:47 / 26.10.04

(good point Ganesh - I didn't think to look at it with regard to prior decisions etc.. inconsistency indeed.)

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:56 / 26.10.04

I know it's only a two-page thread, Jack. It would help the discussion greatly if you wouldn't leave out some of the things people have said in it.

How is saying that there is an "objection" for "sure" the same as approval, tacit or otherwise? How is saying "I'd be pretty horrified because it would be a massive... error. It would probably make the current situation worse." giving approval? How is saying "in the real world, that sort of approach doesn't actually work in many, if not most, perhaps even all, circumstances, and usually pursuing it is merely inviting a backlash which is worse than the original problem... i don't think killing him would prevent the rest of his administration and his half of the American populace from continuing on their present course, and would also invite a backlash. accordingly, i oppose it" giving approval?

If someone does not support a course of action, but does not support it for different reasons than the ones you hold, then this is not the same thing as actually supporting it. Surely you don't believe that "having an objection other than a moral one" and "approving" are indistinguishable? We should probably continue this here, anyway...

12:27 / 26.10.04

So what does the word 'Tacit' mean? Perhaps a little trip to the dictionary would have made the previous post unneccesary?

Anyway, getting back to the original topic:In the face of a far greater number of publications with a right-wing bias, the best one can do is produce a publication that attempts to redress the balance

I would hope that the best one could do would involve trying to be as accurate and truthful as possible while doing ones best to objectively weigh the merits of opposing views.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:41 / 26.10.04

Um... I know full well what tacit means, mate. How can saying "I object to x on the grounds of y" mean giving tacit approval? Unless one assumes that the statement "I object to x on the grounds of y" has to be a lie, because the only grounds on which one can be allowed to object to x is in fact z.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:45 / 26.10.04

I'm not entirely sure that's possible, though - who is the ultimate arbiter of bias, subjectivity or editorial slant? It might be more honest to admit that you can't guarantee that your perspective is utterly unbiased, but that you are doing the best to ensure that your sources are comprehensive and balanced... and, again, to stand by your sources.

14:01 / 26.10.04

For FlyBoy: I'll be brief since there's now another thread for this particular subject. To state that the objection to a specific assasination is that it would not be an effective means of regime change is to suggest that where it to be an effective means, then it may be acceptable. This clearly seems to be suggested by some of the exerpts posted by Jack.

For Haus: Sure, everyone has their bias. My point was that striving for balance and comprehensivness(huh? is that a word?) is a much better best then trying to redress the imbalance by becoming as Left leaning as the others are Right leaning.

Of course I could be wrong. Reading onesided articles pains me almost as much as I expect reading my errors in spelling and grammer pain some here.

Tryphena Absent

14:32 / 26.10.04

Then democracy isn't all that important any more, is it? I mean, if people can't see what the situation is, and that won't change however bad he gets, then democracy is clearly a lousy way of running a country.

Quite apart from the fact that America is a failed democracy, yes it is a lousy system. If the right questions aren't asked than it doesn't work, if voter registration is tampered with than it doesn't work, if in England MPs don't listen to their constituents than it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work than it isn't all that important. The Election Hinkiness thread describes in detail the horror that is US democracy- do you think that it works as a system?

So then I wonder what's important about our democracy? I have absolutely no idea. It's rather farcical IMO, a nice idea- to be able to choose- but I never get to choose the kind of person I would like to see in power because they never get backing so I pick the least ill of the candidates. So perhaps I'm getting something but who's to say I wouldn't prefer a dictator who believed in absolute equality. We mythologise democracy, we think it's an absolute good but there are no absolute goods, there is just life and the way we interact. That's what makes murder wrong, it's not wrong because killing in itself is wrong- if it were we would never swat a fly or eat meat or talk about the practicalities of banning fox hunting. We are fundamentally all murderers.

19:10 / 26.10.04

My point was that striving for balance and comprehensivness(huh? is that a word?) is a much better best then trying to redress the imbalance by becoming as Left leaning as the others are Right leaning.

Of course I could be wrong. Reading onesided articles pains me[...]

Forgive me, I'm not terribly familiar w/ the Guardian - is Brooker a reporter or a columnist? If the latter, I don't see the problem with publishing a "one-sided" opinion piece. Of course, a good opinion piece usually makes note of the opposing point of view, if only to effectively destroy it. And ideally, a newspaper makes some effort to present at least one (if not an equal number) column or op-ed from the other side in the interest of fairness.

If Brooker is a columnist, as I'd guess from the piece posted here, I think the paper's retraction was absurd. The joke about assassinating Bush is obviously controversial and offensive to some, but I hardly think it's deserving of censorship. I'm too lazy to back this up with examples, but I'm quite sure that during either of the Iraq wars, a handful of US columnists advocated killing Saddam Hussein - in all seriousness, without Brooker's macabre humor. Undoubtedly those same columnists would be up in arms over any suggestion that Bush should be eliminated.

As to the question of whether a news outlet can or should attempt to restore balance to the media by leaning Left... well, in a perfect world, no. But at least in the US today, the supposedly liberal media is continually wringing its hands and questioning whether it's okay to present a blatantly liberal view, tiptoeing around the incompetence of the Bush administration, etc. - meanwhile the Right's propanganda machine (Fox, Rush, etc) is brazenly steamrolling ahead without ever stopping to question its own truthfulness or ethics. And so yes, if the Right's going to continue to shout so loud that the Left can hardly be heard, the Left's got to shout too.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:25 / 27.10.04

Quite apart from the fact that America is a failed democracy, yes it is a lousy system

It's a little early to say that, but I'd argue in any case that it is a 'democracy with failings.' Chief amongst which is the absence of an informed, enlightened electorate, perhaps. The system - in the sense of the concept - is as good as any other. The mechanisms are faulty, but subject to reform, and it's possible that the demonstration of how frail is the connection between what is intended and the mechanisms in place to achieve it which is afforded by Bush's gerrymandering and so on may well be what is needed to begin that reform.

And if it doesn't work than it isn't all that important

Actually, it is still important. It may even be more important for being unattainable. Certainly, I can't see a way in which admitting assassination to the pantheon of legitimate political tools will improve matters. It strikes me that an abjuration of such things is at the core of good society - whether for real or for 'wishful thinking'; I don't believe it's helpful to couch the wish that a politician you don't like vanish in terms of violence.

We are fundamentally all murderers.

We're really not.

10:46 / 27.10.04

I don't believe it's helpful to couch the wish that a politician you don't like vanish in terms of violence.

Well, merely expressing the wish is individually helpful in the sense of being deeply cathartic...

10:56 / 27.10.04

Ibis: Forgive me, I'm not terribly familiar w/ the Guardian - is Brooker a reporter or a columnist?

Charlie Brooker is a humorist, creator of the brilliant TV Go Home; as a brief trawl through the archives would suggest, his stock-in-trade is being scurrilous, scatological, contemptuous, and screamingly offensive.

He also used to be funny, although you'd never know it from this piece—the "haunted tree" bit aside.

Jack The Bodiless

11:11 / 27.10.04

Yeah, that was my favourite bit, too.

Fly: will go over other thread. However, in relation to comments made in this thread - the ones I quoted clearly advise that they have no moral objection to anyone desiring the assassination of the current US president. That is tacit approval of the concept of assassination - murder as a political tool. QEfuckinD.

Anna De - 'murder', in any moral or legal sense, and certainly in any semantic sense, is demonstrably a different concept from 'killing'.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:21 / 27.10.04

So you really are saying that anything which people disapprove of or oppose from any reason other than a moral one, they actually secretly approve of? Wow.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:27 / 27.10.04

Just so we're 100% clear, does this apply in all cases - if I say "I have no moral objection to people voting for Nader, but I do object to it as we need as many people to vote for Kerry as possible to get Bush out", am I giving "tacit approval" to people voting for Nader? Or is it only in this case that QED is being rewritten so that language and logic and meaning do not work as we are normally used to them working?

11:50 / 27.10.04

Flyboy, I think you should try the formulation with an example of something you disapprove of morally.

Try, "I don't disapprove of torture morally, but I can't imagine a situation in which it could produce useful information."

Do you really see no distinction between that statement and a moral condemnation of torture?

Your Nader example is flawed, if you ask me, since it seems to rely on taking a situation which isn't obviously moral. However, I would say that if someone went out of their way to say that there is no moral objection to voting Nader, they would leave me with the impression that they empathised, yet disagreed, with those who did.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:07 / 27.10.04

Do you really see no distinction between that statement and a moral condemnation of torture?

Of course I see a distinction, Lurid. They are two different positions, and I am lucky enough to possess the ability to be able to differentiate between different positions.

Okay, you want me to try it with something I morally disagree with? Okay. If someone said "I have no moral objection to people voting for the BNP, but I object to it on the basis that they're policies are unworkable", would I call that giving the BNP "tacit approval"? No, of course not, because they are not the same thing, and again, I am lucky enough blah blah blah. The next question might be: would I feel comfortable working to defeat the BNP with that person. I'm not sure I would, but it might defend on the level of threat the BNP posed: certainly, I've marched alongside people in the name of saying No To War who I have major disagreements with, and the whole idea of supporting Kerry's bid for President involves making huge concessions of this kind. In fact, here's a good example: in many ways, voting for Kerry is not an action that is in itself morally laudable (perhaps even defensible). It is an action that involves a huge amount of moral compromise, sacrifice, concessiom. It is laudable because in the end it may prevent a great deal of suffering coming to a great number of people. Is saying that voting for Kerry is not a morally laudable thing, therefore, the same as disapproving (tacitly or otherwise) the action of voting for him? Only if you cut out the other things I've just said. Which is convenient, but short-circuits debate.

12:28 / 27.10.04

Of course I see a distinction, Lurid. They are two different positions, and I am lucky enough to possess the ability to be able to differentiate between different positions.

Right. And it is on the basis of this distinction that people are objecting to your original comments. In both my statements about torture, the position was *against* its use. But if I were a prisoner hearing the former statement, I would be much more worried. Having an objection on explicitly utilitarian grounds rather implies the possibility of the position changing with circumstance. Thats the impression I would get, anyway, and thats the source of the "tacit" approval.

Is saying that voting for Kerry is not a morally laudable thing, therefore, the same as disapproving (tacitly or otherwise) the action of voting for him?

Oddly, I would say yes. To point this out as a moral problem implies some deep reservations about Kerry. These may be overcome by tactical concerns, but I would assume that anyone who made those sorts of remarks did disapprove, in some way, of Kerry and of voting for Kerry.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

17:21 / 28.10.04

The Guardian were right to apologise for this bollocks- it was trite, unfunny and immature. The left should maintain a higher standard than the opposition, at least in print. Threatening to kill the prez in a "humor" column just makes the left wing look like idiots.

I buy the Guardian because it's the best of an imperfect bunch, Flyboy. If you feel this strongly, complain to them about the retraction.

Apropos of very little, publishing Burchill was inspired- it reminded me why I hated the opinions she was putting forward, and held the squeaky voiced dunce up to public riddicule every week (I remember one letter they published debating whether she was a man in a fat suit or a burns victim. S'fucking harsh).

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:23 / 29.10.04

If someone said "I have no moral objection to people voting for the BNP, but I object to it on the basis that they're policies are unworkable", would I call that giving the BNP "tacit approval"? No, of course not

Er...

Right. Let's just take a look at that.

You would have no moral objection - in the sense that you would not question the morality of voting for a party of hate? So if they proposed workable policies which evinced that hate in a functional and effective way, but continued their hate-speech and so on, would that be okay?

In that statement, you're giving tacit approval to the BNP as long as they can make stuff work. I realise you may believe that that's a contradiction in terms, but I'm still surprised. Again, my objection is twofold: 1) they're a bunch of monstrous fuckheads and 2) they're incompetent. I am marginally less determined to root them out and make them beg forgiveness on account of 2).

Or were you waving the irony flag and I missed it?

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:56 / 29.10.04

You would have no moral objection - in the sense that you would not question the morality of voting for a party of hate?

Flyboy postulated a hypothetical other whose position on the BNP was such, and then further asked whether he (Flyboy) would be prepared to work with such a person against the BNP, despite the difference in position on why the BNP should be worked against. He did not claim this position for himself.

In that statement, you're giving tacit approval to the BNP as long as they can make stuff work.

Well, no, even if we replace "you" with "the hypothetical other". The statement components are:

a) I do not disapprove of voting for the BNP on moral grounds.
b) However, I believe that the BNP's policies are unworkable.
c) Therefore, I would not personally vote for the BNP, nor would I advise anybody else to, and would further like to work with Flyboy against the BNP.

Now, there is a difference between "make stuff work" and "have workable policies", yes? The statement as it stands says, in effect, "I would not vote for the BNP, nor believe that others should, unless the BNP changed its policies for workable policies" - which must be non-BNP policies, since BNP policies have been judged unworkable.

So, if this person can be said to be expressing "tacit approval" of anything, it is tacit approval of a BNP that does not currently exist - an imaginary BNP with workable (by implication, non-racist) policies which would therefore not be the BNP we know and love, since political parties are to a very great extent defined by their policies and the BNP to a very great extent by its racism. Since this imaginary BNP is not the actual BNP, it follows therefore that tacit approval for the BNP is not being expressed.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:43 / 29.10.04

Well, yes. I thought it was perfectly clear that I wasn't saying that I had no moral objection to the BNP - the use of those little "" marks often denotes that someone else is speaking, especially when coupled with the words if someone said - and in the section quoted by Celibate Mink, I'm only making a statement of classification, not one expressing my own approval or disapproval at all. It seems that Celibate Mink is so keen to assert his moral superiority (over me in particular, but also in general) that either he can no longer be bothered to engage in acts of basic reading comprehension, or he has decided to deliberatelty distort what I've said so that I appear to occupy positions I do not. That being the case, I'm not sure there's any point in me discussing this issue further, with him at least.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:00 / 29.10.04

OK, everyone. Breathe. Calm. Feel the love in your hearts. People make mistakes...

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