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May 22, 2010
Penny from Evanston 1928
Posted by JD Hull at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)
Speaking of Club Ned: Time to man up, grow up, and go on record.
Our new digital culture permits a certain accepted wimpiness to masquerade as privacy and personal style. But anonymous writers are rarely worth your respect.
This blog does not publish anonymous comments.
Absent compelling reasons, nameless blogosphere participants, in our view, are rarely worth anyone's time, thought, or respect--even when they think and say brilliant things. Anonymous writers and commenters have already "discounted" themselves.
Above: The revered French Resistance in action 70 years ago. Today, certainly, these heroes might need to comment and blog anonymously. However, lawyers, shoe store managers, Tulane grad students, accountants, and other country club Charlies haven't earned that privilege.
They are second-class citizens. They generally say third-rate things. Certainly, they have no incentive to exceed below-average. Feel free to look down on them--and enjoy it.
It doesn't take much thought or courage to lob one in there when you don't sign your name. Our new digital culture permits a certain accepted wimpiness to masquerade as needed "privacy" and personal "style". But it's a ruse. Most of us can do better than that. Don't buy into nameless blogging and commenting (or participation through pseudonyms) unless it's deserved.
As Walter Lippmann once reminded us, "cowardice" is a strong word, and you don't throw it around. We dislike using it. It implies a certain moral superiority of the user (which the writers of this blog would never claim, and do not wish to achieve). It generally furthers no discussions, and justifiably puts people on the defensive. But that word, unfortunately, may fit here.
If you want evidence and examples, see the comments on any given day to posts at Above the Law, which enjoys a status as one of the most successful sites ever (in or out of the law).
Check out the anonymous haters, nameless "experts" and scores of prissy pundits who won't sign their real name to their rants and indictments. (We don't know how much David Lat is paying editor Elie Mystal these days, but it's not enough. Mystal is a mensch, soldier, hero and lightning rod who is often himself targeted for abuse.)
Club Ned Exemptions. "You sure do have a pretty mouth." Special needs exemptions, however, may be available to deserving applicants at this blog. Examples: Rape victims discussing being raped. CIA operatives talking about their jobs. Cuban, Iranian, Chinese dissidents. Abused housewives. Risk-takers and Radicals. Real victims. And those who have experienced a "high profile" humiliation--like Ned Beatty's character Bobby in "Deliverance".
Everyone else? (1) Get over yourself. (2) Get some help. (3) Or simply get back to work. You're just not ready for the bigs until you sign your real name to your real words.
Past posts on the subject are here and here.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 05:42 AM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2010
Main Street's May Day Times Square Wake-up Call: Did America listen this time?
Counterterrorism expert and D.C. lawyer Eric O'Neill, The Georgetown Group, on what the Times Square bombing attempt means.
We Yanks get the big hint? We note that this week's Newsweek and cover article about the May 1 Times Square bombing attempt hit the stands with a date of May 17. That's a long time. Did the first news of the Times Square misfire or fall flat with much of the establishment media and most Americans?
Just starting to sink in, maybe?
True, no one was hurt. Mainly because the bomber--Faisal Shahzad, a Westernized Pakistani--is a very young 30 and a world-class screw-up. Your average troubled, normally mild, and lackluster young American male who can't chew gum and do loyalty oaths at the same time. Moreover, the press may have unevenly or half-heartedly covered it simply because we have all been consumed with so much happening at once: the residuals of health policy wars, the Goldman Sachs hearings, mid-recession finger pointing, the BP spill off our southern shores.
Maybe Islamic terrorism is decentralized, domestic, and in your backyard? But Shahzad is also a U.S. citizen--and very unlikely to have been under the command-and-control protocols of any branch or level of mainstream Al Qaeda. He's obtained degrees in and lived in the U.S. Father and husband. Devout. And before things went bad for him personally, he even had a house in what would pass for Connecticut suburbs. There are certainly others like him we haven't met yet.
What does that mean for day to day life in America? Do we see malls, parking lots, and subway stops differently in the last three weeks? Probably not--but maybe we should. Are we suddenly in "mass denial" about what was precisely everyone's fears after 9-11?
A new kind of "homegrown" threat? In a short but compelling interview with Reuters last week, Eric O'Neill, both general counsel and chairman of D.C.-based The Georgetown Group, and often still in the news for his role (and subject of the movie "Breach") in taking down spy and FBI agent Robert Phillip Hanssen in February of 2001, came closer than anyone to both defining the problem and what's needed.
Listen to the above segment and O'Neill's comments, which begin at about 1:25.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)