I thought if I went away for a long enough time, folks would stop coming here. Then, I would reclaim my blog. So I come back, and the Gina/Hartal/Qua circle jerk is still in full swing. Seriously, you guys must have better things to do than to continually flog your own and each other's metaphorical meat. This can't be fun for you. It certainly isn't for me. If just one of you would go away, I would be happy to start posting again.
Gina, you get my vote. You've threatened/promised to leave before, but you never have. If you truly don't like to go where you're not wanted, why do you keep coming back here? You add nothing but lemon juice to the paper cut of life...
Anyway, flame away. I don't read the comments anymore - it's just toxic sludge in there nowadays. (Where do I get my application to become a Superfund site?)
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495 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 495 Newer› Newest»I think somebody should alert Phil Matier at the chronicle to the outrageous violations of professional and human ethics that have occurred on sfgate. (Don't forget, he does tv news, too! You could become a star . . . .)
The point remains that you just again would not explicitly call Polanski's actions anything more than sleazy.
Why do you say it was blind rage that motivated the DA. Polanski's attorneys are making very public claims that no arrest was made because the DA knew its Office was corrupt. The DA then arrested Polanski to show that a failure to arrest does not amount to admission of corruption and an exoneration of the fugitive. What should have a non-angry DA done in response to Polanski's attorneys' public claims and use of the HBO special? This you do not answer.
I agree with Anon--La Salle's opinion here is not very important. If it's so important to you, I really think you should take up my suggestion and write to the Chronicle under your own name and set forth your reasons why you think he should be canned. Of all of the changes that have occurred in the media, the anonymity of commenters is one of the worst, in my view. Letters to the editor were almost never published unsigned. Sorry, Anonymous (however many of you there are).
If that's your point, it's beyond picayune. My statements are clear, and your interpretation of them is not valid.
And I didn't say the D.A.'s office and the police had "blind rage", I said they were angry. There is a substantive difference between the two notions. Please read what I am writing and stop misstating what I say.
What should have a non angry DA done in response to Polanski's attorneys' antics?
You say, "What should have a non-angry DA done in response to Polanski's attorneys' public claims and use of the HBO special? This you do not answer." Au contraire, I did answer that question, in my initial response where I addressed your comment, to wit: "The rule of law presumes respect for the law and requires that everyone be equal before it; fleeing from justice flouts those principles, and corrodes public respect and obedience of the law." Unless it can be proven that their motives were illegal ones, like race, etc., they had the right and obligation to enforce the law.
Another way to look at it is this: Polanski's flight was the only action that should have mattered, as far as the police and D.A. were concerned. Whether Polanski tried to get his case tossed should have been irrelevant to their pursuing their duty to bring him to justice. This, of course, does not account for practical constraints, but you didn't ask me to weigh those issues.
But what of the argument that the system cannot afford to divert resources to the arrest and prosection of Polanski as this will leave other worse crimes unpunished. You have not made an argument against this counter. I on the other hand have tried to show that Polanski's attorneys' loud talk and Polanski's continued public minimization of the crime create a public danger to the integrity of the judicial system and that the DA has been thus forced to spend precious public resources to arrest him. And that the motivation for doing so is not celebrity justice but rather the integrity of the system in the public's eyes and child protection.
No I don't see why you say that his flight should have been the only issue on the DA's mind. He is alleging corruption and freedom on the basis of corruption; if unchallenged that compromises everything and that gives motivation for ever more flight.
typing way to fast. gotta go.
If you were asking me to weigh the practical constraints, you weren't very clear. How can anyone answer that not knowing the particulars of the budgets of the D.A.'s office and the police? If all you were trying to do is counter La Salle's assertion that Polanski's situation is "celebrity justice," I think it's a fool's errand, and one that cannot succeed. He's a celebrity, and his celebrity affects his treatment in myriad ways. Many superficial factors have an impact on administering justice in our legal system, but that's because we're human.
You miss one very important point: All of the accusations of corruption that Polanski might make would be irrelevant were it not for the fact that his case (among many others) had, at the very least, the appearance of corruption. The D.A.'s office and the police shouldn't be worrying about whether people claim they are corrupt, they should worry about whether they are actually corrupt. If they address that situation, the claims of corruption should also fall.
They have addressed the situation. They arrested him so he will now be able to make all the claims of corruption that he wants. But all evidence shows that Polanski's real problem was that the system not corrupt enough, that is his celebrity could not buy him a reduced sentence on a ridiculously reduced set of charges. Yes the DA was corrupt--why did it not charge him with serving alcohol to a topless thirteen year old. Today's DA is quite willing to face that corruption charge. Bring it on.
The question is not celebrity but how celebrity worked. And it works in this case by publicizing and thus making more dangerous to the public Polanski's attorneys' claims and his and his friend's minimization of his crime.
You know, your argument could easily be characterized as saying that corruption that results in rapists walking free is bad but that corruption that results in rapists being put away is good.
BTW, what do you have against attorneys?
Also, please explain to me how extraditing Polanski addresses whether the D.A.'s office is actually corrupt.
Obviously the DA called his bluff. He said that that DA would not arrest him because he had damaging proof of their corruption which proof should lead to the charges being dropped. Yes indeed we will find that the DA office was corrupt, but this is not going to help Polanski. That one ex parte communication would hardly warrant dropping a rape charge, but the DA will have to admit to real corruption--Polanski should never have been offered that reduced a sentence on such a reduced set of charges. Nothing against attorneys;the DA is probably doing the right thing.
So you have nothing to say in response to LaSalle's recent idiocy.
It's not intellect vs. emotion. It's informed and responsible vs. uninformed and irresponsible. This is not matter of competing reasonable claims.
The question is who understands that the painful anal rape of a drunk thirteen year old can be as damaging to her sense of self, autonomy and development as a physically violent rape of an adult woman. Statutory rape is rape. That was not as well understood in the 70s as it is, thankfully, today. Polanski should have faced his sentencing then instead of now. Now he's in real trouble, and he should have known that before giving into his self-interested and malfeasant attorneys' recent taunting of the DA and bringing about his arrest (and the consequent waste of taxpayers' money). And don't forget that this may have been a physically violent rape too.
I don't believe he should go to jail. I believe that he should be stripped of his wealth by the State and the money should be used to finance various services for children and women.
Oh, God, Hartal. How does that compensate the real victim here?
That's brilliant. Let the state find a reason to steal someone's wealth and feed the pigs at the trough in the guise of helping rape victims. They can't even balance a state budget and you expect them to help rape victims?
Not much of a socialist, are you? -
I guess not
hartal's a capitalist pig
Polanski's a persecuted Jew
LaSalle's getting drunk on expensive scotch and posting like hell on the last Polanski thread
nobody has any dignity anymore
Hartal, I did have things to say, and I said them. Sorry if you don't find them satisfactory, but that's life in the big city.
That would explain all the thumb's downs...
It is not a good thing to be too concerned about the approval of others.
It's not a good thing for people to keep on implying or saying that statutory rape is not real rape. What an embarrassment SFGate is! How could it allow LaSalle to delete comments at his will? As if he understands or even cares to understand the nature of statutory rape. And only silence from xootsuit, dsg, TedSpe...Again it's good for me to see what I am up against as a parent of two daughters.
Juliet was 13, close to her 14th birthday. and girl's mature earlier today, don't they?
The inequality with a man three times more her age takes away any possibility of consent and defacto non-coercion. Again an adult that age can easily make a child of that age think sex is expected of her, given the authority he has, especially if it is buttressed by professional position. And Romeo was probably as old as Polanski's victim's two time teenage lover. That is not rape.
didn't say it was. just giving you a parental heads up.
Why are the women on this list not saying a thing?
"Only silence"? Hardly. But because the response doesn't meet the hartal/laxmi standard of demonization, it is called "only silence." It seems like an unpleasant way to go through life.
Yes you all did not meet my standards for the criticism of statutory rape. But then LaSalle began his discussion with the claim that the case against Polanski is dubious to begin with. Hasn't retracted that; nor has he ever considered what role P's attorneys played in his arrest. I am also not laxmi. I criticize Saletan's take on this over at Brad DeLong's website.
Does the concept of "agreeing to disagree" make your flesh burn and shrivel?
BTW, if you're not laxmi, you ought to sue, because he's stealing your identity.
wv: dethfu
"I criticize Saletan's take on this over at Brad DeLong's website."
oh, we'll be sure to zip over there to catch your work, soon as this balloon boy mystery is cleared up
and you got nailed, laxmi, several times, for using sui generis hartalian "logic" and locution on lasalle's blog
I am not Laxmi. In fact the logic and locution of West Berkeley Flat's was more like mine than Laxmi's.Oh I get it there couldn't be more than one Indian in the whole who can use big English words and who condemns statutory rape. You people are crazy. Let me say this to you again: my IP address was blocked. I am not Laxmi
New computers have new IP addresses.
Hmmmm. Puss in Boots, dsg?
I regret every minute of this story! Nothing but misery! Bad, bad, bad ending!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unless of course, there was some other, better ending for the lied-to Princess...
I just like the drawing. When I was a kid, I had a book with that drawing in it, and it always fascinated me.
Stories about Princesses usually are for some reason.
Hartal, sorry, but I'd seen WBerkeleyFlats around for a long time, and his writing was nothing like yours. I often found his posts to be agreeable.
Well good old agreeable West Berkeley Flats has been unsubbed from SFGate as a result of LaSalle's abuse of his editorial power.
gotta love it. Now dsg, TedSpe, and xootsuit are just talking to each other at the MLS blog with others stopping in only to give them their thumbs down. A bunch agreeable to themselves and no one else. A journalist at Mother Jones has already accused MLS of a serious breach of journalistic ethics for the way in which he deleted many well-thought-out messages critical of his understanding of statutory rape; she also told MLS to get out of the kitchen because he cannot handle the heat. What MLS does is unsub people who have become angry due to the deletion of their posts on which they sometimes spent considerable time--that's why I became angry.
Now, West Berkeley Flats has been unsubbed twice.
And it turns out that several people have all accused MLS of violating the standards of good faith discussion (for example he chooses only the weakest replies to respond to) and that breach of journalistic ethics for misusing his editorial power.
You can all think that hartal alone has this view of this blog, but to any honest person it is obvious that this has become a common view indeed.
dsg, xootsuit and TedSpe have become laughable apologists for MLS and SFGate's decision to allow him to handle his blog any way he wants.
Here's the sum of your worldview:
"It's informed and responsible vs. uninformed and irresponsible."
And you are always on the side of the informed and responsible, and anyone who disagrees with you is in the other camp.
no comment necessary
Because it's indisputable.
Yes it's indisputable that Mother Jones journalist is echoing what I have said for over a year and that WBF was unsubbed twice and that you agreeable men are now talking to each other about Yoko Ono's behind after MLS took what many considered to be anti-feminist stand.
It's all indisputable.
But I am spending the day outside with my two girls.
Bye, bye.
Even Mick's critics made fun of the Mother Jones blogger's lack of comprehension. Nice company you keep.
Some people just look good and are interesting to study...at any age.
Hartal. Don't let MLS get underr your skin. He's a fake.
On the one hand he writes books and spouts off about women's rights and preserving their freedom and integrity, on the other, well, actions speak louder than words...
It all depends on who he's trying to impress. He's not worth the anxiety he's causing you. After he's dead and gone, what is he leaving behind? And what are you leaving behind? More more than an arrogant, ignorant opinion. Enjoy your children while you can. You never know what tomorrow brings.
I mean come on. Celebrity impresses him. He aspires to be one of the famous, and considers himself a member of that "elite" class. Naturally, he'd play lapdog to become a member of the "Club".
What he doesn't see as that he's insignificant. He don't count in the overall scheme. What's his opinion worth to society at large? They don't give a rat's ass what some schlump thinks. That's all he's contributed--his opinion of movies. Impressive, huh?
Oh, ya. Can't forget his bestseller books. I'm sure they'll go down as must read masterpieces...
Fame, (fame) makes a man take things over
Fame, (fame) lets him loose, hard to swallow
Fame, (fame) puts you there where things are hollow
Fame (fame)
Fame, its not your brain, its just the flame
That burns your change to keep you insane (sane)
Fame (fame)
Fame, (fame) what you like is in the limo
Fame, (fame) what you get is no tomorrow
Fame, (fame) what you need you have to borrow
Fame (fame)
Fame, nien! its mine! is just his line
To bind your time, it drives you to, crime
Fame (fame)
Could it be the best, could it be?
Really be, really, babe?
Could it be, my babe, could it, babe?
Could it, babe? , could it, babe?
Is it any wonder I reject you first?
Fame, fame, fame, fame
Is it any wonder you are too cool to fool
Fame (fame)
Fame, bully for you, chilly for me
Got to get a rain check on pain (pain)
(fame)
Oh the company I keep. Not worried about that. If you only knew. But you, poor dsg, are simply in denial that hardly anyone challenged the MJ reporter's claim that MLS had acted in breach of basic journalistic ethics (deleting post after post that carefully showed his and Cowie's claims to be dubious and banning people after they got angry that their posts were deleted) and that he showed no good faith in the discussion (cherry picking the worst arguments against him). Did the MJ reporter miss an ironic line? Perhaps. But surely the fault is mostly MLS's incoherent posts. And the anxiety is all MLS's. I laugh at him, his apologists, and SF Gate. They have embarrassed themselves. Not just in Hartal's eyes, but in the eyes of the majority of the people who followed his interventions in this discussion. And don't forget your own long tortured and proofread briefs in defense of Polanski, Ted Spe's claim that we really don't know what happened (oh we know enough), and xootsuit's irrevelant evidence in favor of lenience.
What a team!
Believe me, people are laughing at you.
Do you know why MLS should lose his job?... 'cause he's blind to the reality of life and its complicated facets. What he needs is a serious dose of the real world--jar him out of his fishbowl existence. Then he might really do some great work. He's got the potential--he just can't make that leap, though. I suppose fear of failure is what holds him back
Laugh all you want, it's no skin off my nose. I've already said several times that it's a sad existence that is defined by the approval of others, whether it's yours or anyone else's. I'm also not worried one way or another about the company you keep; that's your concern, not mine, I point it out to you simply for your own education. To no one's surprise, you missed it on the first take and picked it up after I pointed it out to you.
And you're misrepresenting my posts regarding Polanski. At no point did I ever defend him, I simply showed how he could be defended; anyone paying attention could tell the difference. My points were simply that I understood the impulse to run, without approving of his flight, and that as a matter of law he still had the power to challenge the underlying claims against him; his apparent unwillingness to do so is, as I said, the most damning evidence against him.
And I don't proofread my posts; I simply don't make as many mistakes as you do putting thoughts into print. I doubt you'll believe me, though, since you are apparently constitutionally unable to concede your deficiencies relative to others.
wv: hydry
Yes, you are.
I concede that you make fewer grammatical errors blogging than I do. Even in my professional work I pay for a copy-editor. Still I would be embarrassed by the substance of what you did post on this topic. How long did it take for you to realize that the statutory rape charge against Polanski was rock solid? Read over your posts just as you should read over your posts on immigration (did you ever read the Pew data that you had yourself recommended? Hilarious. So much like xootsuit on Conrad). I would much rather live with a grammatical error and an infelicity in expression on a blog than the substantive errors to which you and your good frieds are prone.
Yes, we know, you think everyone with whom you disagree is an insensate amoral monster.
Ever visit the Le Brea Tar Pits...I hear they're nice sometimes...
Never been there, but I should probably stay out of them.
The only fossils in this discussion have been the views of Cowie and LaSalle. Don't detain yourself here, though; you can't afford to fall behind in the post sweepstakes at SF Gate, and there are still more things to be said about Yoko Ono's behind. Go play with your superfriends TedSpe, MLS, and xootsuit
Of all of Joel Chandler Harris's once popular children's stories, only two continue to resonate in popular culture today. One is particularly pertinent here. On that note, have a nice life, Hartal.
Oh it's hardly a surprise that you would think of me as a tar baby. You also once told me to tend to my squishee machine too. Yes, go, play with your superfriends at MLS blog.
So sorry, stopped slapping sticky simulacrums.
Have a nice life.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm....squisheees...
The only thing worse than a bipolar academic is a bipolar failed academic
hartal's professors are lucky he didn't shoot one of them before he quit
It kinda makes you wonder who he really, is, huh?
The "facts" just don't add up.
really is. Sorry, my mistake.
You're the anon who lost custody of your kids, right? I suspect that you know a lot about which you falsely charge others.
Now Xootsuit is wrong about almost everything--whether it's Sotomayor on class action lawsuits (remember he forwarded to us a statement by a corporate defense attorney, thinking that in itself proved that she was pro-defendant on the position), the significance of Solis' appointment (not nearly as important as the NRLB appointments, he thundered), the way in which Conrad was often taught (though my exact point was made in the wiki that he forwarded), the case for lenience for Polanski (did you count the number of flip flops he made in that discussion; a normal person would have felt some chagrin).
dsg has made a living defending the indefensible. Formally correct in terms of grammar and incorrect quite often in a substantive way (that is, the few times he is willing to say something not qualified by hedge words), e.g. the strength of the case against Polanski for statutory rape, the percentage of illegal aliens who have been here long term (5 plus years), the question of whether he or I first punctured holes in the Republican narrative that the GSE's caused the financial crisis.
Oh yes you think I am a failed academic who could never have written a major (technical) book by a major academic press.
I haven't lost custody. My divorce isn't even final. And, since you don't know the specific details of my marriage, you don't know what you're talking about when in comes to me as a failed parent. Time will tell. They're still young.
If you are who you say you are, prove it. Otherwise, ya got no street cred...and you should probably shut up.
I am really sorry your life is so troubled. I don't have to disclose a thing about me. You said that I am a failed academic, and I don't care to contest that.
But don't forget xootsuit's defense of LaSalle's misuse of Wordsworth verse or twinfan's defense of LaSalle's inaccurate historical claims about Che.
The reason that LaSalle couldn't stand to let my posts stand on his list is that he and xootsuit and twinfan could not handle me in a real test of intellectual and critical strength. And then when I got angry about the arbitrary censorship, he used that to get me banned.
But that's no longer only my story. West Berkeley Flats patiently showed that Cowie whom LaSalle was touting as authoritative was wrong about Polanski in a line by line refutation. LaSalle took it down by himself. West Berkeley Flats got angry, and then LaSalle had him banned.
Past accomplishments are not relevant in a test of strength on a debated issue. I only made reference to some of my academic accomplishments very late in this discussion. I laugh at degree dropping. One of the wonders of the internet is that people can argue without credentialism. It allows us attend to the actual substance and logic of what people have to say. I like that democratic element.
"One of the wonders of the internet is that people can argue without credentialism. It allows us attend to the actual substance and logic of what people have to say. I like that democratic element."
argue deceptively, falsely accusing others of arguments they never made, declaring victories that never occurred, yeah, the internet matches your wits just fine, you blowhard phony
No you miss the point of this technology altogether. It's easy to respond to those who offer invalid, false, unsubstantiated or false claims. You can respond in real time; you can cut and paste the dubious claims and respond to them systematically.
But MLS abused the medium by cutting out the arguments to which his lackeys (or pseudonyms) were responding.
So for example you can read twinfan's responses to my well-evidenced claims about Che but my replies have been expunged. You can read xootsuit's defense of MLS's laughable use of Wordsworth but you cannot read my interpretation. You can read TedSpe's ridicule of my posts on Michael Jackson but you cannot read what I wrote, drawing on Megan Pugh and Margo Jefferson. You can Cowie but West Berkeley Flats line by line refutation has been deleted.
MLS has made a joke of himself; those who defend him--such as xootsuit, dsg and twinfan--appear foolish.
A hilarious moment happened when I responded to the mass deletion of my posts that I won't be silenced. MLS conveniently and laughably interpreted that as a physical threat and then had me (a practicing Jain committed to non-violence) banned from SF Gate.
And the reason is that he can't win an argument by honest means. That also showed up in his cherry picking only the worst counterarguments to respond to. That was not my take on what was happening. Several people said that about his modus operandi, and it's as clear as day that he is a fundamentally dishonest writer--the sad result of the discrepancy between how he wants to see himself and what he is actually capable of.
Ask dsg whether he thinks the whole suit of Republican loonies--like perzo, GOP4me, kyrax, PC Reece--were someone he would have like banned though their posts were dishonest and they often falsely claimed victory. Their presence was a great contribution to the consolidation of Democratic forces.
I never wanted their posts taken down; I wanted them to keep writing right up to the point that they were defending the cut-nut (remember her with the BO on her cheek) and Palin.
If you are strong, you don't delete voices that crazy. You use them to consolidate your forces.
MLS took my posts down and xootsuit cheered that on because they are not strong.
They are intellectual wimps.
"MLS conveniently and laughably interpreted that as a physical threat and then had me (a practicing Jain committed to non-violence) banned from SF Gate."
Jainist consider verbal abuse a form of violence. Faker. That's why you got banned.
you're a vicious dishonest agressive phony
you try to hijack discussion into a little corner of argument you try to define so that you can "win"
meanwhile, other posters are, you know, discussing
the fact that you cannot engage otherwise is proof of your condition
your IQ isn't high enough to compensate for your disability
sorry
First, you grant the point. You accuse me of verbal abuse which means that you do not think I ever threatened physical violence which is the reason MLS got my posts deleted.
Verbal abuse? Are you joking? That I described MLS threatening to *vomit* if Obama were preferred over Gore as intellectual thuggishness? That is not abuse. You will hardly ever see me using a cuss word, though I did cuss in response to the gratuitous use of the n word. Meanwhile, do you have any idea what I have been called by xootsuit and dsg and TedSpe? I am a model of civility.
Oh I can engage just fine. I write informed posts to which many people respond, and I can defend my view point. That is why MLS and xootsuit and TedSpe can't handle. THey want their posts on Clinton, Slumdog (mine were very well informed), Che, Wordsworth, and MJ to stand while deleting mine even when they were explicitly responding to me. Of course my posts tended to get at least as much approval as theirs even though I was on their territory.
It's unbelievable cowardice.
Again it's not about me. It was the majority opinion on MLS's own blog that he breached journalistic ethics in what he deleted and in how he responded to counterarguments.
Try as you want, but hartal's opinion is not idiosyncratic.
"Try as you want, but hartal's opinion is not idiosyncratic."
No, that's not the adjective one would employ.
Hartal. You obviously can't recognize what it is that you do wrong. Or refuse to believe that you're anything less than perfect.
YOU'RE VERBALLY ABUSIVE! You said it yourself...ad hominum attacks are your modus operandi.
From Wiki:
"Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam[by whom?]) usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions.
This tactic is frequently employed as a propaganda tool among politicians who are attempting to influence the voter base in their favor through an appeal to emotion rather than by logical means, especially when their own position is logically weaker than their opponent's."
I did nothing to justify the flushing of all my posts and the lifetime ban from SF Gate. I did get angry about that--who wouldn't? Has anyone asked West Berkeley Flats what he thinks about MLS banning him from SF Gate twice for showing that Cowie had no business introducing dubious claims about the mother and the victim's sexual history. All I showed is that MLS's arguments for Clinton, claims about Che, dis of Slumdog, use of Wordsworth, and dismissal of MJ could not be sustained. My criticisms were well evidenced and logical. In fact they kept to a higher level than MLS's own musings and especially the compuslively abusive xootsuit and dsg and TedSpe. As for illogic, Gavone wins that hands down. Look at her irrational claims against choice. That's you, right?
"As for illogic, Gavone wins that hands down. Look at her irrational claims against choice. That's you, right?"
Case in point.
You call people murderers; the accused responds by saying that your arguments are illogical. So the argument is no ad hominem. How did you prove that the life of the cells that form the blastula or embryo should count as a human person? Or that one human person is obliged to make her body available to secure the life of another person? I don't think Gavone ever attended to the most well known difficulties of her position. hence the argument were in bad faith, and illogical.
http://tiny.cc/98HMd
Contrarianism is out; it can't withstand the reasoned real time criticism made possible by internet discussion. Author of one of the great non fiction best sellers of the last twenty year, Steven Levitt finds that his new book is being demolished.
Much lesser contrarians such as Debra Saunders and Mick LaSalle (contrarian to Obama, Slumdog, MJ, and the crime of statutory rape) also can't stand the heat of well-evidenced and logical internet debate. They have to ignore or delete it, but their reputation is left in tatters. Their fate is the same as Steven Levitt's.
"their reputation is left in tatters"
Keith Olbermann:
For those of you who do not follow the blogs, a movie critic for the San Francisco Chronicle named Mick LaSalle has drawn justifiable fire for craven contrarianism toward statutory rape, Che Guevara, Michael Jackson, Wordsworth, and, yes, to President Obama himself. Have you no shame, LaSalle?
Here is how the estimable hartal recently described the situation on LaSalle's blog:
You will hardly ever see me using a cuss word, though I did cuss in response to the gratuitous use of the n word. . . . . I am a model of civility.
Oh I can engage just fine. I write informed posts to which many people respond, and I can defend my view point. That is why MLS and xootsuit and TedSpe can't handle. THey want their posts on Clinton, Slumdog (mine were very well informed), Che, Wordsworth, and MJ to stand while deleting mine even when they were explicitly responding to me. Of course my posts tended to get at least as much approval as theirs even though I was on their territory.
It's unbelievable cowardice.
Unbelievable, indeed.
Oh yes I forgot that I once called MLS a cowardly liar. Why? Because he used an anonymous blogger to make the charge that Che killed innocents. Another breach of journalistic ethics. Then twinfan took up the task of trying to defend the claim. His evidence? It began by saying that the minor that Che killed was guilty (shades of xootsuit using a wiki that supported my point on Conrad and dsg citing Pew data that supported my point on how many long term illegal immigrants there are since the intensification of the border war in the early 90s). And the source I drew on to express criticism of MLS' claim that Che had killed innocents? Jon Lee Anderson.
In the heat of political conflict MLS simply has no respect for basic journalistic ethics and the truth. That was shown in how he handled the Obama controversy, the controversy over where Che went wrong, and most recently the Polanksi affair.
And MLS has had his loyal defenders--xootsuit, dsg and twinfan (until recently when twinfan explicitly broke with MLS over Polanski).
not just quiet here but quiet over at the MSM blog too. Not just MLS is quiet but so the entire coterie--dsg, xootsuit, phylloflix, tedspe, suzagoob. But the Babbler babbles on. Wonder what's going on.
Ah the silence on the MSM blog from MLS and his coterie is interesting. No podcast either. Hmmm.
Is MLS working on his book? But then why the silence of superfriends too? Have they forgotten how to sustain a conversation?
Perhaps due to widespread criticism MLS finally lost the ability to edit his own blog and perhaps he is protesting the loss of control by not blogging?
Perhaps more drastically he lost his blog due to his poor choice to run the badly argued and basically unethical editorial by Cowie in defense of Polanski (note here the references to the mother and the victim's sexual history) and his own inability to argue in good faith?
Saletan was forced to publish a retraction due to criticism that I was the first to articulate on DeLong's blog. Saletan admitted it was an error to take the probation officer's account as authoritative over and above the victim's grand jury testimony. And Saletan also softened his claim that Polanski was only acting on spontaneous urges for a physically mature girl.
But the editors at SF Gate never asked LaSalle to admit any error in his blogging on the material. Do the editors think that the case was dubious to begin with, as LaSalle falsely claimed? That Polanski's attorneys played no role in the arrest? Or that we can be certain that statutory rape in itself can never be as great a crime as rape by physical violence?
LaSalle never reconsidered a thing. And it seems that his editors never demanded that he publish some kind of qualification of the things that he and Cowie said.
All we have is silence.
http://beachbodycoach.com/esuite/home/wwkaiser
Here's a link for you, kiddies.
Enough noise for you?
http://beachbodycoach.com/wwkaiser
Last one didn't work...this one should.
Oh my goodness, did you listen to the Podcast?
1. MLS' editors seem to have impressed on him that he is to write about the movies and culture more broadly.
2. He has now seen pictures of the victim at the age of her violation and comes close to calling Polanski a pedophile, but he then still insists that Polanski should walk due to the crime having happened too long ago. Leba Hertz pipes in that some kind of community service may be appropriate. I think Polanski owes the community monetary damages, and his lawyers should be tried for malfeasance.
3. He says that he won't put his qualification in print because he does not want to deal with the comments. I think his editors should not allow him to get away with that. Xootsuit made me admit that I had confused Stiglitz's claim that Greenspan had kept the fed funds rate lower than he otherwise would have with the claim that Greenspan actually lowered the fed funds rate in 2005.
I admitted to the honest and technical error, and expressed appreciation that I was forced to get it exactly right.
Yet where are xootsuit and the editors when it comes to demanding the MLS admit to substantive errors in his analysis of statutory rate?
It's amazing to me that the editors are letting MLS get away with his qualifications in the podcast.
Now he says that a healthy man would not have pursued sex and the anal penetration of this girl who was barely pubescent and too young to give consent even in a sober state.
Why did it take him so long to see this and consult the evidence? Why did that week of debate never lead to a public and written qualification of his and Cowie's position?
Why is he allowed to get away with being too stubborn?
3. Leba Hertz was cleared of responsibility for editing his blog.
4. MLS the strong feminist supporter of Hilary Clinton ends by saying that sexual harassment charges are now to easy to make. He should check out the opposition to the Franken proposal.
Do you ever get the feeling he reads this blog?
Why don't you let it go, Hartal?
WV:dinkl
His superfriends have or had been reading this blog--Winkingtiger, TooSense, dsgonzale6, suzagoob, xootsuit, Ferrethead, and twinfan. I am more interested in discussing SFGate blogs with them than I am interested in conversing with MLS.
MLS represents that flat out contradictory Reaganite worship of libertarian individualism and leviathan worship, so his interest for me is as a representative of a dying ideological American form.
He's also the laughable contrarian who whines like a selfish and fragile teenager after he receives the angry responses that he wanted to provoke.
As for his movie reviews, the only ones that left an impression were the ones of Revolutionary Road, the hatchet job on the Guy Ritchie movie (really smart hatchet job) and the insightful praise of von Trier's Dogville (and since following AO Scott many are getting fed up von Trier perhaps it would be worth consulting Jacques Ranciere's recent criticism of Dogville, a movie I also quite liked).
http://tinyurl.com/yjs6slh
See this is what criticism reads like.
I think this is more your speed, hartal:
http://www.babyeinstein.com/en/products/product_list/
"He's also the laughable contrarian who whines like a selfish and fragile teenager after he receives the angry responses that he wanted to provoke."
So what. He can and his employers obviously don't mind...'cause they keep paying him to do it.
Hilarious at MSM pocast. MLS appears just to make a short comment, and he receives 22 thumbs down (I put one in myself!) winkingtiger had asked him whether he was eating something during his podcast.
All MLS had to say was that he was in fact eating, eating crow, to have received a few thumbs up. But I guess that he and SF Gate are not going to apologize too openly to their readers for his performance during the Polanski discussion. I don't see why Leba Hertz and her editor (and who is that?) don't demand it of MLS.
"thumbs down (I put one in myself!)"
you're a really inspiring political activist and a dazzling public intellectual, hartal
congrats
Yes I agree. I thought my satirizing of the birther movement, concern for the plight of the thousands of unemployed illegal immigrants and their US born children, my critique of the Bush doctrine (articulated long before Charlie Gibson and the SF Gate reporters got there), defense of the Obama-Biden policy towards Iran, criticism of the Republican narratives about the cause of the financial crisis, defense of the legitimacy of Obama's victory over Clinton in the primaries, and explanations of why Obama won his debates with Clinton and McCain were at times spectacular public interventions.
Gosh, who knows what luminaries were damn impressed by my public interventions?
Even Carolyn Lochhead thought they were first rate and very well informed. She would have never had my posts expunged and my handle blocked permanently from SF Gate,
Only a stupid movie critic and his even stupider fans would think that was an acceptable course of action.
Oh look at xootsuit tell us that the victim's wishes should be dispositive in a case like this. What an attorney. Does he even consider why this should perhaps not be so? No. What a fake. But there they are the tag team--xootsuit and TedSpe.
But of coure the victim's main complaint was about the media attention that the resurrection of the case has brought. She's not withdrawing her view of what happened.
"spectacular public interventions"
too funny, hartal
you could use a spectacular private intervention
no friends?
You should realize that you just don't know enough to understand how spectacular those interventions were. I am sorry for the darkness in which your mind remains shrouded.
Your guess is as good as mine, but mine is that MLS has gone on strike in response to losing editorial power over the comments section to his SF Gate blog. If that is what has happened, of course the blame is TedSpe's and xootsuit's for telling MLS that he was in the right to flush what he did not like from his blog. Those like dsg, winkingtiger and suzagoob/mindful life did MLS no favors by not telling him that he was wrong to eliminate strong criticism from the comments section.
I guess that we are not going to find out what Leba Hertz and the other editors have told MLS about his performance during the Polanski affair, but I do think the readers of SF Gate are owed an apology and a public retraction of Cowie's 'arguments' supported by LaSalle. Perhaps we are owed his resignation as well for how he has responded to his readers from the Obama nomination run on.
You know, hartal, if you log in with different email addresses you can thunbs down for each one. Your computer still will get blocked for posts, but you can vote! Go for it, political activist man!
I can't log in with any email name. Why aren't Winkingtiger, xootsuit, toosense, phylloflix, suzagoob, dsg,twinfan and Truffaut yakking away at MSM blog? Ted Spe and the Babbler write, but their old buddies have deserted them. Something has changed, but we don't know what.
Even if MLS is detained with other work, why aren't his buddies yakking away? Is the blog being closed down (is his work at SF Gate being reduced too?)? Is MLS on strike? Why the silence of his coterie?
Perplexing.
yeah, fassinatin
The hilarity continues. TedSpe cries like a baby that people are giving his good friend MLS all those thumbs down and implores them to articulate their objections...as if that wouldn't get them kicked off SF Gate. Ask West Berkeley Flats and Laxmi who too has now had her posts flushed.
Such small minds, Ted Spe and xootsuit. They helped MLS stay on the path to ruin. Oh yeah and Ted Spe said he wanted to hit me on the head with a baseball bat. Racist.
Pascoe wonders whether LaSalle is being cowardly (cowardly liar) or dishonest. Both of course but they both are rooted in a deeper problem--Mick LaSalle is not a very bright person. Out of hundreds of reviews no more than a few stand out, and they were probably cut and paste jobs that took advantage of the time zone differential. He has never been able to sustain a quality argument for the position that he defends. I don't know how he got through a school as good as Rutgers (just spent the weekend with a friend who is History Prof there, and she's tough). The answer is probably 'barely".
He's not a good fit for the Bay Area. The Hearst corportation should just move him to some suburb outside Houston.
Well, hartal, how do you pass the time while the little ones are nappiing or at daycare? Are you writing, at all?
Oh, yes. I participate in a number of blogs.
I see.
In fact, I am the central figure commenting on one particular blog.
Oh, look. Here's one of the little ones now! [and not a moment too soon]
You really don't have a clue.
Neither do you. But I know I'm wasting time here. (So I'm hardly ever here. While you . . . .)
Just leaving a record of how absolutely stupid MLS is. He and his supporters act as if there are no good reasons for society not to follow the victim in forgiveness or send the signal that there is no escaping punishment for statutory rape (see for example the esteemed philosopher AC Grayling's immediate take on Polanski's arrest). It also does not follow from the argument that Polanski should be forced to face a sentencing jude that the judge should impose prison time. He has other options. But the problem for him is that Polanski's attorneys have taunted the Court and the DA and Polanski is in the public record dismissing any charge of moral failure.
But truly the most despicable thing that LaSalle has allowed on his blog is the insinuation that statutory rape is not rape. Even those criticizing Polanski do so on the grounds that he committed real rape, implying that statutory rape is not.
I made my case on Brad DeLong's blog.
Let's see if Winkingtiger, TooSense, xootsuit, dsg, Ted Spe or anyone else has the courage to tell MLS off. Why not do the right thing and forward these messages to the badly named Maximum Strength blog.
Here's what I wrote on DeLong's blog in reply to William Saletan's defense of Polanski (which is several times more intelligent that the blathering and special pleadings offered by Levy and Cowie). Stether conceded my point immediately, and Saletan apologized for some of things he said.
hartal said...
Don't forget that this same Saletan takes seriously that there are deep heritable racial differences in cognitive ability, in spite of the findings of Richard Nisbett and many others. And Saletan forgets that he understands a girl's age has to be judged in terms of the totality of her physical maturity, intellectual maturity and emotional maturity. Any 40 year old man thinking that he has consent from a thirteen year old for painful anal penetration is out of his mind. No man that age can be sure that even the girl who does not have to be physically coerced is not going on along because an adult is making her think that this is what is expected of her. Polanski also had professional power over her, and she was high. He had the advantage in intellectual sophistication that comes from being more than 3x her age. Anyone whose so-called natural impulses are not over-ridden by an understanding that consent is impossible for a girl in this position is actually quite sick and perverted. And the girl looks hardly physically mature. And there is good reason to think that she said no. But the racist Saletan takes it on Polanski's probation officer's authority that the victim was willing. The same Saletan tells us to take the victim's grand jury testimony with a grain of salt. So what we have here is Saletan as the cheerleader for a racist fraternity of male privilege, always willing to presume that one of their own is an essentially good old boy and always willing to be skeptical of the woman (and others in a socially weak position)
Saletan should not have been given access to major papers after his excursion on race. And this shows why.
Reply October 15, 2009 at 08:28 PM
hartal said in reply to Strether...
Sex with minor is sex without consent; sex without consent is coerced sex; coerced sex is rape. That is why it is called statutory rape. In this case, the girl, once she has sobered, comes to see that she was asked (and perhaps forced) by a man three times to her age and who has professional power over to her to do something that she did not want to do, viz. get drugged so that she could endure painful anal penetration. Now the point is that this act could create as much long term damage, given that she is going through crucial developmental stages, as a physically violent act of rape against an adult woman. Do not minimize the crime.
Reply October 15, 2009 at 08:46 PM
dsg plays lawyer to defend MLS's ignorant opinion that the case against Polanski was dubious to begin with, and anon hands him his hat. Hilarious. Of course dsg has no understanding of what a serious crime statutory rape is. TedSpe comes across as the uneducated fool that he obviously is. Xootsuit thinks Polanski's guilt is minimized if the girl accepted the quaalude and drink. But he's also the "lawyer" who told us to take the victim's willingness to forgive should be dispositive. It's just great that so many people get to see the three stooges at work.
There are serious issues about which serious people are interested--what is the nature of the crime of statutory rape; how is the age of consent determined; what are the psychological effects of statutory rape; what effect should greatness as an artist have in the sentencing process in a system dedicated to equality before the law; what role has fame played and what effect should Polanski's public posturing have on the sentencing; how have social norms changed in thirty years; what punishment is appropriate, if any, for this kind of crime after so much time has elapsed.
What is not serious are the arguments offered by Cowie, Levy, LaSalle, xootsuit, TedSpe, and dsg (there is an admission of guilt in the plea; that exists today, so the case against Polanski is not dubious to begin with--it is rock solid, and no reasonable person questions his guilt, meaning that dsg and LaSalle are not reasonable),
Defending the indefensible in an unreasonable way. The worst of lawyering, and there you have it in dsg. No dsg there is no question about the factual and legal guilt of Polanski. Polanski's plea has not been withdrawn by the DA; nor has Polanski had it set aside. And there is stands. Why don't you do something important, like educate people about why statutory rape is a serious crime. Such loser men. Thank god you have not had children.
dsg makes a fool of himself, The stupid racist Ted Spe does him better. And who is this mmmm fool? Amazing. How low will SF Gate go? For Leba Hertz's stake I hope that none of these commentators are paid SF Gate staffers (or pseudonyms for MLS himself). My guess at this point is that MLS is trying to organize his own exit from SF Gate--trying to make it seem that he is getting canned for his courageous politically incorrect, high brow, philosophical defense of Polanski rather than the poverty of his reviews and intellect.
No rape is not necessarily an act of brutal violence. It is sexual act without the consent of the other. A woman who has been drugged need not be physically pinned down to be raped, but she has been raped. A child who cannot give consent can be raped without physical violence. And the experience of sex to which one is not ready to give consent can have as devastating psychological effects as a violent forcible rape on an adult woman. Who is this mmm fool and why is MLS allowed to have a blog to post on matters that he does not understand. This is not funny. It's horrifying.
I have been blocked from SF Gate. someone needs to act responsibly and tell TedSpe, mmmm and MLS to stuff it.
I can't believe you'd rather have me leave than pyscho nut...
The record will show that MLS, TedSpe, dsg and various friends made NO comments at all about the injuries that can result from statutory rape and that they wasted time asking unreasonable questions about the factual guilt of Polanski. The record will also show that MLS systematically deleted comments that tried to explain with some detail why statutory rape is a serious crime. The record will also show that MLS admitted that he was himself deleting comments that he considered abusive though he later denied that he had done so.
Let's see what Leba Hertz and Phil Bronstein have to say about this. I can't imagine that it will be pretty.
But those who rallied to MLS should keep their distance from children. Perhaps take up animal rights, a worthy cause indeed. But keep away from children and the institutions that serve them.
It's one think to buck a reactionary social consensus; it's another thing to buck critics who are trying to encourage the public to consider challenging forms of art and genre twisting experiments. LaSalle is a reactionary critic; he criticizes critics who are challenging a staid social consensus.. He does not know enough about the world to comment at all on Slumdog or Che, two movies he slammed on the basis of the shoddiest reviews. He does not know enough children to comment on the constraints of Wall-E.He also has little understanding of what made Malick's New World an important exploration of the experience of wholly novel world. Other critics were trying to get the public to appreciate a view or experience outside the social mainstream. LaSalle often criticizes those critics when he's not using the time zone lag to follow some actually smart East Coast critics. There's nothing avant gardist about him (I remember he trashed one of the Bourne movies without much appreciation at all of how it subverted the James Bond narratives). He's a reactionary who's deeply immersed in the world of classic Hollwyood.
He's also consistently a deeply incoherent thinker. He says that he never sets out to buck the critics' consensus and then says that he is happy that he is doing that more so than any other critic. There is a tension here; he does not even recognize it. The guy's not bright. And he's best suited to talking about cool celebrities.
MLS is not standing against 99% of the critics or just 75% of them. He's standing against 85% of them, especially when the rest of them are doing their job by encouraging their readers to tackle a new challenging art work, such as Slumdog Millionaire. The critic who really does his job is Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. He stands against his fellow critics when they give in to commercial pressure and when they don't appreciate novelty and depth. My other favorite critic is AO Scott, though I like his mother (the great feminist scholar Joan Scott of the Institute of Advanced Studies) even more.
So when trashing Michael Jackson, MLS tells us that he turns to Maria Callas to hear the depth and range of the human voice only to now laud Eminem with his neo fascist aesthetic as a new John the Baptist, suggesting in turn that the same Obama who made his wretch is Jesus.
To those whm it is not as plain as day that MLS is crazy and unprincipled, all one can say is that they too are crazy and unprincipled.
Hartal, Mick (and me) likes Eminem because he is a fantastic poet. Michael Jackson was a great performer but his lyrics are generally terrible.
Fine his voice has no aesthetic quality, the music has a neo-fascist simplicity and brutality to it (I am no fan of NWA either), and the lyrics would appeal mostly to people who barely earned their GED's (nothing for example of the subtlety of MJ's Winter in Moscow or the importance of the Earth Song). And not the music for someone who would invoke Maria Callas to dismiss the possibility that there could be anything of value in MJ's last three albums. Note that you did not speak to my point that MLS's positions are manifestly incoherent and prejudiced.
But go ahead and defend him. I laugh at both of you.
I like Eminem, too. And, for the same reasons as YC. Eminem's an artist. A good one.
Yes the faithful descendants of those brought black minstrelsy to America have a disproportionate presence on MLS's blog. And why not? This is a person who did not even take the time to understand a single allusion in Slumdog (does he know who lives in the Bay Area), who wrote juvenile and massively ignorant criticisms of Obama, who has no inkling of what role the CIA backed overthrow of Arbenz had on the formation of Che's politics, and who understood little of the case against Polanski or of the harms that statutory rape can do to a developing girl.
For whom does MLS think he is writing? What does he know of the general Bay Area audience? I think there is only one minority who spends any time on his blog. And this is a minority who did not know that many Chicanos are offended to be called Hispanic! His musical hero also seems to be Brian Wilson and he's a commercial real estate lawyer.
Yes of course the idea that Eminem is a great musician as compared to MJ could take hold on that blog.
Oh by the way I have heard that at a film department at...umm....major university the graduate students have looks of disgust and contempt when MLS's name is mentioned. So if he cannot speak to the diversity and sophistication of the general Bay Area audience and if he is something of a joke among the specialists in film (for example could he even popularize and speak to the debate between Sinnerbruck and Ranciere on Dogville?)...oh well draw your own conclusions....
What's driving MLS crazy, and what led him to expunge a massive amount of intelligent commentary, is that he cannot deal with the fact that people have more intelligent things to say about film and culture in the spare moments on their technical jobs than he does after a full work day. The comments that he expunged tended to be so more intelligent that anything he could possibly write that he had to eliminate any evidence of them.
Why did he expunge everything and anything that WB Flats, a former fan, had to say about Polanski?
Why don't you put your boner for LaSalle back in your pants where it belongs?
WV:cochdo
"Yes of course the idea that Eminem is a great musician as compared to MJ could take hold on that blog."
Hartal, Eminem isn't a great musician, he's a great writer. Mick is a writer, Michael Jackson isn't. I think they both grab their crotches too much, but at least I can listen to Eminem, Jackson's childish lyrics and treacly voice are a huge turn off for me.
I'm surprised you dislike Eminem so much. He's rapping about many of the injustices that you have written billions and billions of words bringing them to light. People on Mick's blog and the internet in general prefer quality over quantity.
Eminem is vulgar, MJ was not. Mather's music is brutal and violent. Sometimes in content, almost always in form (especially if you include that cartoon video made for people with the sensibility of a twelve year old). MJ's content and form was not violent, and devoid of aesthetic qualities--listen to example for his gospel tune on his last album. But the point is what do you make of someone who ridicules MJ because he has not the depth of Maria Callas but then lauds the stylistically neo fascist Emineum? The best you can say is the guy is an incoherent mess, and he does not care about whether one blog entry is consistent with another or whether his own mind has any coherence at all.
Oh poor MLS...he's being assigned teenage girl vampire movies. Maybe that is his editor's idea of a good joke. But he's found a niche for his talents--writing light reviews that will have no influence on anyone who is likely to see the movies. Compare Edward Gomez's reflections on Food Inc with MLS's, and remember that SF Gate let Gomez go while continuing to feature MLS.
Enzo Traverso had already linked the abattoir to the concentration camp.
Got lost in that thicket over there at MSM blog, dsg? Take away those acting unctuously towards MSM as pseudonyms for MSM and who's left? A couple of drunks, a doltish blowhard, and the SF Gate posting champion.
oh why is SF Gate such a terrible paper? With no Edward Gomez there is no one to track down the international news on the significance of Dubai World's difficulties--a portent for a Global Depression or a localized bust? Phil Bronstein has gotten Abu Dhabi and Dubai confused before.
still lost in that thicket at the MSM blog, are you, dsg? Shutting down good and vigorous debate is never good for the long-term health of the mind. But that's what xootsuit and TedSpe wanted, and the others (except TooSense) remained silent every time the cowardly MLS took his eraser out. So many posts on Polanski, MJ and, most importantly, the French penguin movie expunged.
Wow. It's dead over there at MSM's blog in spite of MLS's desperate attempt to turn up the heat by mentioning Polanski. I really miss talking with you all; I had to content myself with lunch with...well...you wouldn't believe me. But Stockholm doesn't give many of them.
If Ferrethead wants to come out of hiding, I am with President Obama on the need for an escalation of troops in Afghanistan. The left for which Thom Hartman is a most eloquent spokesperson is incensed at what they think is President Obama's war mongering. I think it's time that the US destroy the force that it created via the Pakistani army--the Afghan Taliban about which jane Perlez writes insightfully on the front page of today's NYT.
Does anyone else get the impression that MLS has had some sort of sordid affair? And what's up with Too Sense and his hissy fits about infidelity?
Red-booted Man Slut.
I am sure xootsuit caught this in yesterday's NYT:
'In Nigeria Mr. Achebe attended schools modeled on British public schools. He read classic English novels, plenty of them about Africa. He writes firmly and vividly about his first experience of these novels, and how the blinders eventually fell from around his eyes. It’s worth quoting his recollections at length:
“I did not see myself as an African in those books. I took sides with the white men against the savages. In other words, I went through my first level of schooling thinking I was of the party of the white man in his hair-raising adventures and narrow escapes. The white man was good and reasonable and smart and courageous. The savages arrayed against him were sinister and stupid, never anything higher than cunning. I hated their guts.
“But a time came when I reached the appropriate age and realized that these writers had pulled a fast one on me! I was not on Marlowe’s boat steaming up the Congo in ‘Heart of Darkness’; rather, I was one of those unattractive beings jumping up and down on the riverbank, making horrid faces.”
Mr. Achebe is sickened by what he reads in “Heart of Darkness.” Conrad speaks of Africans as “rudimentary souls” and savages, and compares one mechanically adept African man to “a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs.”
Mr. Achebe calls this “poisonous writing,” and he has no patience for anyone who argues that Conrad’s racism was the norm for its time.'
Achebe's famous essay from the mid 70s was a piece of advocacy. Like a lawyer arguing one side of a case, Achebe cherry-picked evidence of racism from the text of HoD.
Early in the novella, there is a crucial paragraph in which Conrad surveys his entire project, foreshadowing all of the themes that will develop. The imagery in that one early paragraph is stunning. Achebe yanks one image from the paragraph to use as evidence in support of his argument, but he completely ignores the other images that initiate the anti-imperialist anti-racist themes in the work.
Achebe, in his famous essay, also gives short shrift to the distance between the narrator Marlowe (and his racism) and Conrad himself. Conrad deliberately left the nature of that distance obscure and his reputation has paid the price. But Conrad inserted subtle hints.
For example, Marlowe finds a technical manual with handwritten notations on the pages. Later in the story, he meets the motley Russian Kurtzian acolyte, who lost the manual. Marlowe is embarrased to realize that the cryptic hand-written notations in the manual were not written in some deliberately secret cipher, but in Russian. In other words, Marlowe's somewhat arrogant and pompous punctilio, which relates directly to his racism, is not Conrad's.
So Achebe's essay, which was so disruptive in the 70s, is only one view. It is a great view, however, and the force of his moral indignation at the racism, no matter how nuanced or qualified, in HoD was a great contribution to English letters. HoD cannot be read today without also reading Achebe's attack.
But HoD should still be on the shelves. Now go get a copy and read it for the first time -- see if you can identify that early paragraph. (My money says your paltry imagination will sail right past it.)
No what you already missed and what Achebe missed as well is Conrad's subtle association of colonialism with the death of European culture. Remember the quiz that I gave you on how that association was symbolized. You failed. You still haven't understood it. But the point is for you to revisit your initial response to my mentioning well known problems with both Heart of Darkness itself (you for example still do not speak to what Achebe himself has to say, and your reference to Conrad's criticism of Slavophobia hardly acquits him of anti African prejudice--what a foolish point to make in response to Achebe who would have tired of you long ago) and with general postwar reception of it (which is the point that I emphasized, following one Adam Hochschild). You scoffed at both points, revealing yourself to the be the doltish blowhard that you remain.
Wrong again, google boy. I offered a general statement, not a thorough discussion. You just repeat stuff you don't understand and pretend that it's thorough. Only reason I even responded to your pitiful cry for attention was out of respect for Achebe. I felt like writing about him. (I didn't realize he's been paralyzed waist-down for so long.) Now, I'll ignore you again. Adios.
Take your second paragraph. No meaning can be gleaned from it. You refer to Conrad's project and argument but give your reader absolutely no idea what you understand them to be. Why do you write like this?
I on the other hand added something to Conrad's well known cynicism about the colonial project--that is something above and beyond his criticism of the scum that it attracted, his recognition of the violent contradiction between its ideals and its practice, and his attempt to grasp the absurdity of the colonial project from the so-called native's point of view.
I referred to Conrad's imagery of alabester/sepulcre/ivory as symbolic of the death which colonialism had brought to European culture. His descriptions of European are funereal.
Now go google that. You won't find it. I gave you a quiz on the meaning of those images. You failed, and now we see the kind of dimwit that thinks Mick LaSalle is an interesting thinker.
And you do know that Achebe missed Conrad's actual insinuation of the Satanic nature of Africans.
And do remember this most important point: without Achebe's strong criticism of the Conrad's characterization of Africans--that is, without his fighting for Africans against the hegemonic images strengthened by Conrad--Achebe would never have explored the ethical and political depth of African people as in THings Fall Apart.
By the way, has your professor friend told you that you are out of your depth yet?
Wow! SF GATE is fucking retarded. I just noticed they deleted one of my Feliznavydad(Parquay Manteqilla) posts. What a bunch of uptight douchebags. The gist of it was that oxygen is a demonic element and the purpose of humans is to bind these atoms with carbon by burning everything.
Hey Jean are you still here?
Have to admit that I got great laughs out of that internet character of yours; the inspiration for my creation of bernardi, defender of the birther movement.
On a more serious note
http://tinyurl.com/ycjrz87
I finally saw Revolutionary Road, and while LaSalle depicted it as a tragedy about two people who married with a false sense of their shared hopes, the movie is not primarily about that at all.
The movie is a narrative account of the artistic critique of corporate capitalism--this is clearly the main point, and LaSalle missed it in his review of what the considered last year's best movie. I'll try to show that this is the main point in a few quick comments.
Winslet's character is a failed actress (clearly the movie is about the nature of the artistic critique of 50s America), slipping into depression as she assumes the role of suburban wife to a white collar stiff in a corporate bureaucracy.
Winslet's character is desperate to escape her already scripted life, and she encourages DiCaprio to leave it all behind to make a life in Paris and to try to find himself there. DiCaprio aims to find a life that will make feel as alive as he paradoxically did as a World War II combatant, that is as he risked his life. She wants a life defined by the artistic values of creativity and autonomy and he hungers for a life of vital experience.
But thinking that he is leaving his corporate job, DiCaprio spontaneoulsy puts together some recommendations for the Toledo office. The spontaneity and a touch of insolence are in fact just what the compnay needed though its official culture encouraged obedience and deference, and DiCaprio finds himself rewarded with a lucrative opportunity to join a new team for the sale of business computers.
But the point is that he would not have acted spontaneously and creatively without Winslet's commitment to artistic values
She becomes pregnant, and wanting.
to move to a new world to make her life anew, she does not want to carry the fetus to term, but DiCaprio sees that he has an interesting and lucrative life to live in the States (again the result of Winslet's carryng the torch of artistic values in the dark times of the 50s), so he violently castigates Winslet for her wish to abort.
At this point his insensitivity to her wishes for the one life she has to live turns her against him, and their marriage is over.
She slips deeper into depression, and does not abort until it has become too late to do so safely.
But here's the problem with the movie.
The artistic critique of 50's corporate capitalism turned out not to be the revolutionary road.
Corporations reinvented themselves to give workers more room for creativity, and more say in les hierarchically organized work teams, more task shifting , and more flexible hours.
Corporate capitalism reinvented itself to make itself less vulnerable to artistic critique, and while that brougt great advantages, it has also meant that workers have lost stable employment, corporate ladders that they could ascend, and pensions. That is, capitalism has made workers live with what has becvome intolerable levels of insecurity.
The artistic critique turned out not be the revolutionary road; it became the language in which a brave new capitalism came to justify itself, and so the movie lacks a critical self awareness of the limits of the artistic critique of 50s corporate capitalism to which it so smugly
gives narrative form.
I can't see why anybody would find this to be a cutting edge piece of work. It's not. It's sociologically naive in the extreme.
Is there anything duller than a pompous and strained allegorical "close" reading?
Of course, more modest, more intelligent alternatives are many, e.g.:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/re-imagining-revolutionary-road
That piece is overwritten, and it misses the point. So what if Mendes' movie is not faithful to Yates' novel. Mendes used the novel to make a movie about the emergence of the artistic critique of 1950s corporate capitalist business organization and culture. Winslet's character embodies that critique, and DiCaprio's character profits from its articulation in an official business culture that devalued creativity, spontaneity, and initiative. This review misses the point. This movie is not Yates' novel; it's Mendes' assault on nostalgia for an older culture of obedience and scripted lives.
You think unimaginatively in abstractions and impose those abstractions on what you read. Rookie that you are, you devise categories ("corporate capitalism," "art") that are both vague and absolute simultaneously. Of course, that also means your categorical view is quite useless. (No wonder anything with concrete detail seems "overwritten" to you.)
wv: abled. Damn straight.
Yet again you offer nothing of your own, except the deep incoherence of your own mind, accusing me at once of too close of a reading of a movie and overuse of abstractions. But here's the point--you have nothing to offer. To only someone deeply ignorant of the changes of American society would a reference to the structure of the big stable, hierarchical and unimaginative corporation of the 50seem like an abstraction. To the rest of us, the passing of it--along with the security that it provided to a good number of AMerican workerss--makes up the fabric of AMerican life. Actually it was Babbler who got it right. He wondered why the movie was so one sided in its critique of 50s culture for the white collar worker given the security that the big stable corporation provided. Go back and look at the comments. Babbler made a good point.
The bitch review misses the point. Winslet's character is depicted as out of synch with 50s culture not because of her traumatic childhood (as in the novel) but due to her artistic values being ahead of their time. And LaSalle simply had no idea what the movie was about.
Vague and absolute and dull. You offer nothing but cliches. I haven't seen the movie or read the book. (I started the movie and shut it down aftera bout 1/2 an hour. Better things to do.) So I'll critique your critique. Your tripe certainly doesn't revive any interest.
And learn to read: I didn't write that you offered a close reading, I wrote that you offered a bs abstract-based allegorical "close" reading. You see, the quotation marks mean . . . .
Nothing. You got nothing except for venomous jealousy. I see that you hate allegorical readings and abstractions, and such hatreds are characteristic of a pedestrian mind. No wonder you hide behind the anonymous tag. Who could stand to be associated with what you have written and write now.
Don't Feed the TROLL!
sorry. I just get so damned annoyed at simple-minded allegorical bs. (See Gott is German for God, so "Gotts-by" is "God's boy," or Adam, and that makes Daisy, . . . ." etc. So programmatic. A kind of blindness that allows the person to see light glinting off only one small facet of a many-sided jewel.)
Daisy Buchanan, btw. (ha!)
You have gone from having zero to less than zero. Who knows what you are talking about? As for the allegorical nature of Rev Road, only a dimwit could miss it. We have a culture that prizes obedience, deference, conformity.
manicured lawns and time off for television consumption and (for men) keeping a woman who'll breed trophy children for you. It's a business culture that on its own terms needs a dollop of irreverence and more creativity from its employees. It's a home culture that is stultifying.
Those who are trying to think outside of it are considered insane (note the institutionalized math professor) and Mrs Wheeler can't find a socially valid language to express new values, so she slips into depression.
LaSalle had the movie be primarily
about a
marriage based on miscommunication as if Rev Road was the same kind of movie that Vince Vaughan and Aniston had leading roles.
He missed the screamingly obvious points, and so are you.
Why are you such losers?
the allegorical elements really do sound obvious. keep beating them to death. really makes you sound insightful. i mean, "insightful."
LaSalle's review is so oblivious to what the movie is about (no mention of the math prof at all) that it's not wonder that he has written at length about Brittany Murphy. And remember that this was his favorite movie of the year!
in case you check this list, dsg, Boyz N the Hood was not a great movie. It made a story out of reactionary underclass ideology, that is the idea that what ails poor blacks is single headed households--not deindustrialization, white flight and discrimination. It was poignant in parts but thoroughly reactionary in its story.
I can't believe how low level the discussion is at MSM blog, and that is surely the fault of its moderator. There are those who can listen to a symphony and tell the instruments apart, understand major and minor keys, and thus appreciate the complexity of the composition. But all MLS and his followers do is make lists. That's fine if we are talking about what we like but not when we are talking about what is a good movie. Then you have to point to the writing, the direction, the editing, the music, the costumes, the cinematography, the special effects. You have to be able to talk about all this separately, and in terms of the effect it has on the whole. That is what a movie critic should be able to do. Anyone can make a list of likes. But that's not the same as explaining what makes a great movie actually great. MLS is a hack, and he attracts very low level discussants. That's why grad students think he is a joke. He couldn't even make good on his promise to show exactly why Ritchie failed so miserably as a director in Sherlock Holmes. He just insults him.
And I think Malcolm X was edited terribly even though time constraints seem to have been loosened considerably. But I would have to rewatch the movie to show why.
Your inability to think dialectically is hilarious.
What is it that you mean by 'dialectically'? Do you mean a discursive approach, an ontological premise, and epistemological guideline, a form for the order of the introduction and presentation of concepts, a historical vision?
Have you ever studied philosophy? I am sure not, yet you throw around words like dialectical. Have some shame, anony!
So you know what's really hilarious--nay sad and pathetic-- is your inability to think in any form; equally risible is that Mick LaSalle's review of Revolutionary Road probably had more to say about his own relationships than the movie itself!
So what's the point? THat MLS is slightly more coherent than Mariah? How does he skip from counseling against too much intertextual analysis (this movie reminds me of this and that movie) to criticizing those who say someone looks like a combination of this and that person? What's the root error? Talking about something in reference to something else? It's not possible not to do so--xootsuit will tell you why on the basis of his profound understanding of Saussure. The point is to make good comparisons and contrasts that will resonate with or edify your reader, not to avoid them. Which you can't.
Then MLS makes a reference to a short story by Tobias Wolf but does not tell us its title! Pretty sloppy.
And of course the only thing that makes MLS an interesting critic is his intertextuality--his ability to compare contemporary Hollywood's imagination in regards to women's lives with pre code Hollywood's and France's today.
If you take away that bit of intertextual analysis from MLS, he's got nothing left.
He has proven that he's not a good critic of the films themselves--he's obviously not a trained critic of direction, editing, acting (he's got that one trick of comparing apotheosis vs chameleon acting that he repeats over and over again when he's not making vague and embarrassing references to aura).
What he's got is some historical and very limited cross national sense of movies. THat's all he's got to share, so he should find a way of introducing older movies that his readers likely haven't seen or remember.
He's cutting himself off at the knees by critiquing what the academics call intertextuality. But he's probably oblivious to all that!
Somebody should tell him since he had a lifetime ban on SF Gate imposed on me.
Someone should tell you to shut the hell up.
Oh, I think they just did.
And MLS gets the sophisticated, articulate and witty defenders that he so richly deserves.
"What is it that you mean by 'dialectically'? Do you mean a discursive approach, an ontological premise, and epistemological guideline, a form for the order of the introduction and presentation of concepts, a historical vision?"
No. A discursive approach is useful sometimes, but no. Epistemological? No. Dialectical thinking abhors stasis and false certainty (the technical philosophical terms are available via google). (See Adorno, Against Epistemology, for a great critique.) Mere form? You miss the point. Dynamic substance. (See Wilson, To the Finland Station, arguing, erroneously, that the Hegelian dialectic is really spiritual in nature; he's right that it's a bid deal, though). A historical vision? Dialectic reasoning leads to a (not an an) historical point of view. So, by accident, you got a bit close, you phony poseur!
oh, I skipped ontology. sorry.
No. Dialectical reasoning is not limited to ontology.
Thank you. Thank you. You're all so kind. Thank you.
wait a minute. wtf is a "phony poseur"? hmmm. gotta edit and proof before I post. gotta, at least once in a while. New year's resolution.
Anyway, you're simply a poseur, hartal. A phony.
Again what do you mean by dialectical? Let me begin with some basic ideas.
It can mean an identity of opposites. For example, let's say you start out with the simple concept of being and you try to figure out what being in itself is, and your inability to figure out the determinations for being as such leads you to think that being is really nothing. So dialectical thinking has led you to believe that there is an identity of opposites--being and nothing or, to put it Hegel's terms, being passes into nothing.
This is how Hegel begins his Logic.
Or by dialectical you could mean not an identity of opposites but a unity of them. Here two things exist only in mutual implication but they still oppose each other. For example, in Marx's analysis, money exist only as commodities become the general form of produced objects, but commodities only become the general form of produced objects if one has been set aside as money, i.e. has the ability alone to acquire or purchase all other commodities. So while commodities and money are mutually implicated, they are by their very logic opposed to each other in the precise sense that only money can be used to acquire other commodities and that commodities must request an exchange with money to realize their universal exchangeability.
So here I have given you two of the most famous examples of dialectical thinking in modern Western thought. I did it off the top of my head. You have provided nothing of substance because you are what you call me--a phony.
Now here's another interesting example of an immanent dialectical contradiction--life itself is progammed both to sustain itself through cellular regeneration and to destroy itself through cellular death--I think the word is apoptsis. Here life proves to be a living contradiction--another example of dialectical thought.
You really should not throw around terms that you don't understand.
There are simpler examples of dialectical thought too. For example, a willingness to see the coherence of two consistent but opposed sets of ideas about the same object.
And there's the historical dialectial idea that things are not good and bad in themselves but relative to the context of the situation and the historical period. One of the more controversial examples of that idea is that early on slavery was a step up from the killing of conquered people and that a later stage of development it marked a huge regress in terms of the progressive freedoms that labor had been winning in the West.
If you think I am a phony, all I can say is that you are too ignorant to know otherwise.
I see that you have nothing to say. Try to have an idea in your head before you lauch insults against me. Here's another sense of dialectical though not what you could have had in mind when you said vaguely that I could not think dialectically. This sense is not a matter of thinking but a matter of the nature of things--that is, dialectics in an ontological sense. And here dialectical can mean the emergence of new phenomena as a result of contradictions or contradictory tendencies of one and the same system. So perhaps you could say that the elliptical pattern of the planets is the result of the contradictory pushing and pulling forces on planets. they neither fall into the sun nor out of its orbit, but as a result of forces pushing it in two contradictory tensions into and away from the sun (leave aside the three body problem here), an elliptical motion is formed; the contradiction is thus resolved or overcome or negated (the German aufhebung famously has all three connotations) by the emergence of a new phenomenon. So dilaectics is linked to contradiction and emergence.
I don't mind patiently explaining things to you, but you should try to say clearly in a paragraph what you meant by saying that I cannot think dialectically.
Do you know what his problem is, anon? He never listens to sound advice from well-meaning strangers.
Phony poseur would be redundant, I think. I think he's more of a blathering idiot with access to a computer and way too much time on his hands.
Oh I hardly post here, and because I have thought long and hard about things it takes me the same amount of time to write a long, informative post that it took you to pen yet another waste of space. And no way do I have the time to challenge dsg to become the comments champion at SF Gate or to maintain a blog with edifying entries about Brittany Murphy and sundry. I will hardly post at all when I go back to work next week.
Again you may well be calling me a poseur or a blathering idiot sadly because you are too ignorant to know otherwise. I try to raise the level of discussion. Either you really are too uneducated to see that--and that would be sad-- or you can only express your appreciation by insulting me. Either way you have a troubled character.
See what I mean?
While browsing around to see how you cribbed together your irrelevant blather, hartal, I came across a discussion of the Jain dialectic. I'd forgotten about your background. Really, your combative linear approach to argument surprises me.
That's 'cause he's a Janeist.
wv:Kramic.
My respect for dialectic comes in two fomrs: I give easily understable reasons for the theses that I defend, and I consider alternative points of view (with exceptions in case such as statutory rape). On the latter, look at the nuanced reading I gave of Revolutionary Road. Or I remember once when MLS simply labeled a blog entry Obama vs. Clinton. As the tension rose, I was the first to speak of the strengths of the other candidate. I don't think MLS was expecting that!
Now on the former point, only the Stanford trained lawyer dsg has appreciation for the burdens of argument. But remember that he is a lawyer. He is willing to say unreasonable things in defense of his positions (for example he claimed that there is still reasonable doubt as to whether Polanski committed statutory rape!), can't admit that he is wrong (as for example when he mishandled his own PEW data), and will attempt to shift the topic when he can't defend his original thesis. He's a lawyer. I am not. I am more profoundly committed to the pursuit of truth. But still he knows how to make an argument. And sadly you and the other anons on this list don't.
BS. You started this with a technically legit but intellectually weak attack on Boyz N the Hood. Your argument was nasty, linear, and purely abstract. Of course there was a reactionary theme at the core of that movie. It could have been a fucking western. It was a fucking western, with South Central filling in for the badlands subject to rough justice and in need of rugged indiv . . . . etc. etc. etc. (It's all really very obvious; not worth further discussion. So can it, clown.)
BznHood was a pretty good movie nonetheless for other reasons. It wasn't great. As I say, that's obvious to anyone who can think critically. OK What's your CONCRETE response? Cut the facile abstract crap, if you can. Who gives a shit about your abstract cliches? NO ONE. Take the movie on, concretely, as a work of art, on its own terms to start with, and then circle round with your critique. Respect the accomplishment before you question, impugn and contradict. It's not a matter of politesses. It's a matter of integrity. You think you dont' need to worry about that, down here in this dark corner of a forgotten blog. But even here, you're wrong.
As usual.
ho ho ho. WV: ecomonic
Your field, right?
A Western does not narrate the auto destruction of the children of a single mother and the Horatio Alger escape of those who had an active father.
What are you saying? What does the Western have to do with that? Did you watch the movie? It's probably been a while for a lot of us, but I don't think anyone remembers any Indians in that Western.
Do you have a drinking problem?
At the same time the movie had several poignant scenes.
It's a matter of challenging whether single mothers are at the root of the underclass crisis--that is, bitchy mothers who won't submit to marriage and irresponsible fathers who abscond.
That is the right wing view of the underclass crisis and only a few perceptive critics realized that Boyz gave a black imprimatur to that view. It was a long time ago, but I remember agreeing with the review in The Nation by James Foreman, Jr. I think that was his name.
"You started this with a technically legit but intellectually weak attack on Boyz N the Hood. Your argument was nasty, linear, and purely abstract."
Anon, you wrote this. I am wondering whether you could quote what I wrote about Boyz that was nasty, linear and purely abstract. Of course I did not try a close reading of a movie that I saw fifteen years ago, but I had a long discussion about it with friends after we went to see it, and I raised the problem I mentioned. Then I found that it was the exact criticism that was made in the Nation. So I would not say that my criticism is nasty. linear (???) or purely abstract.
And perhaps you did not notice, but I did not write at length about Boys but Rev Road. And the point here is that MLS misread the characters. He says Mr. Wheeler was a closet conformist. No, he was not. He wanted two things--not to live the life of his father and a life of vital experience. Mrs. Wheeler also did not want to be completely distinctive. She wanted an unscripted life, a life outside the world of ordinary experience. Perhaps MLS was reading the dynamics of some other relationship into the Wheelers' relationship.
"Then I found that it was the exact criticism that was made in the Nation."
Yeah. We all know. Why harp on it now? And who cares what MLS says? He's an interesting writer (his plain style really is interesting; check it out), with a mini-macho conservative streak he'll never overcome. So what? I really don't care, at all. He provides a place for people to stop by and talk. Nothing more.
hartal's gotta har-har-hardon for MLS...
wv:rousnous. I think that's some kinda french word for what Hartal's wants to do to LaSalle.
Agreed, but I do think Rev Road is a movie worth talking about. The fundamental problem though is that Winslet's acting can't overcome the editing of the movie. There is just too little context to make sense of her depression.
But it was dsg who lauded Boyz, not MLS. And I think the movie needs to be handled critically. Tre is the one who escapes. no thanks to his professional and uppity mother. It's his father's invovlement and discipline that saves him while the children of the single mother end up dead.
But that's exactly how the right wing understands the roots of the underclass crisis! Most critics did not see that. In my circle we talked about it.
oops, a bit of lag there. agreed not about whether I have a boner for MLS but that his blog is interesting for people to meet and discuss, not so much for his views, though it's possible that some of the big participants are pseudonyms for MLS.
Now wouldn't that be funny if you were one of them?
You forget that MLS had a lifetime ban imposed on me at SF Gate (not only is my IP address blocked, he blocks the address of anyone he thinks is me). He also had removed all my previous comments everywhere at SF Gate; these included comments on politics, and I spent a lot of time on them. So don't forget that I am angry about this. And I know that I am not among friends since none of you (except perhaps TooSense) objected to this. So we all have a hostile relationship.
Someone suggested that xootsuit may be MLS. I am more doubtful of that than Ted Spe being MLS or his BFF, the silent film critic. Who is Suzagoob, a character created around an always pending marriage? I don't know. Under what name does MLS' wife post? No idea. Does MLS' editor Leba Hertz post under a pseudonym? I would think so.
Hartal, dear, quit wasting you time obsessing over MLS--it will lead to no good.
Let it go.
Suza really exists--and she's got the pictures on FB to prove it.
Again I am angry about being kicked off SF Gate altogether because the whiny b who is a critic (and no he is not macho, he is a simpering wimp who resorted to censorship) could not handle criticism. I posted more on the politics blog than his blog, and now I don't have access to SF Gate.
Do you don't think MLS is one of the anons here? One or more of the anons here has all the incoherent anger of an MLS unraveled by my acute criticisms. Wouldn't be so sure you're not watching the same old show far away from a lot of people can see what a fool MLS makes of himself.
Oh, I commented on boyz not only because dsg (not mls) recently praised it but also because I was worried then about the powerful images that it provided right wing discourse. Only a few years later the blaming of welfare for encouraging single motherhood was considered even by Clinton to be a major source of underclass pathology and he signed welfare reform into law. My wife was raised in an impoverished single mother household, so the issue is close. Now with the economy going south we are seeing for the first time how much pain Clinton's welfare reform will have caused. Boyz was part of that zeitgeist. It needed to be talked about much more critically than it was, and it wasn't talked about critically in part it had a black director.
dsg and most of the critics just did not get it.
No, darlin'. We just have other things to do. Give it a rest, now. Do something more productive with your time.
Go spend some time with your kids--they're young now and one day they'll be gone. Do you really want to look back on this day and say you spent your time complaining about LaSalle instead of watching Sponge Bob with them and laughing?
No really I just like talking about Revolutionary Road, Boyz, dialectics, the age old struggle to emancipate children (Polanski affair). It's interesting, I guess, that MLS gets it wrong to the extent that he comments on such things. People seem to be souring on the guy. His review which obsessed over the death of Ledger was not well received--people wondered why he didn't engage the movie itself. Remember more than 4 out of 5 critics see things differently than he does.
I thought I would get a little love for laying out so well so many of the different meanings of dialectics, but this is a tough crowd.
If you believe that then that should be all the more reason to let it go--he's just one man, and not that important. Think about it, Hartal.
Prioritize.
So I should just accept that he has imposed a lifetime ban on me and had expunged a massive amount of my comments from the paper of record in the Bay Area? Why does SF Gate give him the power to do eliminate from SF Gate existence anyone whose criticisms he cannot answer persuasively? Oh he'll say that he only removes abusive commentators but people generally only become angry once he starts flushing their comments (look how he posted Cowie's defense of Polanski, West Berkeley Flats wrote a line by line refutation, MLS expunged it, WBF got livid that his hard work was flushed, MLS banned him--that's how the smirking wimp operates).
And a lot of people now know that!
Given how he acted unilaterally against me, I don't see the harm in my showing how vapid he is, when commenting on his favorite movie of the year to telling fellow critics that they should minimize references to other movies. Of course there are many people who hate on him more than I ever did.
Exactly, Hartal..you catch on fast. He's not worth the emotion. Why do you need his approval? And why do you care about the Hearse Corpse? Consider the source and their history--not nice people at all.
MLS is what he. You'll never change him. He gets paid to be the way he is. It's a free country--things that seem wrong can't always be made right no matter how much you'd like them to be. No one said life was fair--and there may not be something like Karma, either. Just move on and find a different outlet...it'll probably be more advantageous for you in the long run.
Think outside the box, dear.
I know what the Hearst paper has done. I get it that LaSalle got this job not on the basis of his knowledge of film (which after twenty years is still hardly technically or globally impressive) but due to the fact that the Hearst editors could trust him to write simplistic common sense reviews that would not offend and perhaps even please conservative readers, the customers to whom the Hearst brand already meant something good. The editors and LaSalle just don't understand who their Bay Area reading public is.
I am still betting that some of the anons here were MLS trying to defend himself by aggressively attacking me. Given how unhinged the comments are, it's obvious I got under someone's skin.
Ha, ha!
ok, Hartal...you scored. You musta pissed him off big time.
Take your victory and move on to another subject...it's time.
cmon now who's talking about MLS? I'm talking about the rights of children, the determinants of Che's politcs, the radical nature of Slumdog Millionaire, the many meanings of dialectics, the implicit reactionary message of Boyz 'n the Hood, Revolutionary Road, the significance of the Gaussian copula function, the range a movie reviewer should have and my distaste for hip hop which is general and not just for the white minstrel Slim Shady form. I actually don't think MLS has much of interest to say about all this, but that he talks about some of these topics in a barely coherent way should not disqualify them for conversation.
And if he or a friend or associate wants to explode into an abusive tirade under a pseudonym or anonymity, that's his or her prerogative.
I thought about this Anon stuff. He really shouldn't do it on his blog because that would appear to be unethical. If it is done intentionally to create traffic, that would not be right.
I believe ad rates are calculated by hit counts. You shouldn't artificially inflate them--it's like cooking the books.
And considering how journalism is tanking these days, it could appear like a desperate attempt at job security.
I mean, there was a time back in 2007 when he'd make numerous posts in a day, and the comments would number in the hundreds. There almost all gone now, though.
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