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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Maybe he got busted.
Probably not all him. You got his wife, his sister who has appeared as herself, his silent film critic friend, and his harp playing publishing friend. The thing on Thai food poisoning was obviously an exercise in creative writing, so you know that MLS fancies himself a fictional writer. My bet is that he has created some fictional characters to inhabit his blog and some of his friends have created others. Ted Spe, Truffault, xootsuit, and various others--who's who? I don't know. I am pretty sure a few of the more insanely aggressive anons here though have been MLS. I think he has become addicted to the idea that other people other than his family and closest friends are really on his side and feel aggrieved when he is slighted, so he continues to create characters who speak up for him or for his side. His only way to win an argument is to try to create momentum behind his position by rallying pseudonyms and friends behind his cause. Otherwise, it's clear that most people think he is a joker. Did you see the responses to his mode of argumentation during the Polanski discussion. People were astonished at how he cherry picked and caricatured counter-arguments. I think they thought they were having an argument with an eighth grader.
Oh there is probably a paid SF Gate staffer or two who rallies behind him as the criticisms begin to mount. THe editors may create some fake letters of support for publication too. The point is that he has very little independent support for what he says. It's not that people always disagree with his conclusions. It's just that his reasoning is really impoverished, not nearly as much as his ability to empathetically identify with people who are radically other to him--basically anyone outside of his white center-conservative, lower professional class circle.
God, Hartal, you actually made me laugh--thanks.
Who knows--I wouldn't trust those Hearse Corpse Bastards as far as I could throw 'em. They love money, pure and simple.
As for LaSalle, he's the little man with a complex. I think he sold his soul to the Devil a long time ago.
Yeah, she hoped the place would catch on--cafe and open mic, political topic of the night. At first it was fun. All kinds of characters showed up, savored their time on stage pontificating or one-lining it. Men, women, indeterminates, but no jerks. At first. Then these two drunks got 86'd for good from the bar next door and they stumbled in together, fighting like rabid lynx. Those who were there that night say the event was eerie. These two ripped and clawed and screamed at each other and, either by accident, or fate, or drunken seek-the-lime-light design, they ended up on stage. From that night on, they took over the stage whenever they wanted to and the usual crowd started to thin out.
She finally quit the place, but left it there, door open. And damned if those two don't get together on stage once in a while and pretend they have an audience. Damndest thing.
--Anon ;)
As I said, I don't expect much from a crowd that said nothing when I was kicked off SF Gate. So now I am called a drunk jerk? Not surprised. As I said, this is a tough crowd which for some reason can't appreciate someone who takes time to explain some complex ideas about important topics. But it's America, so obviously intellectual engagement comes across as a drunken tirade.
Gee, Hartal...maybe we should thank ferret for settin' us up so nicely?
We seem to have one member left in the audience, I wonder which indeterminate he is? He's rankled--he must be a member of the Hearse Corpse.
wv:anoban
Well I have to leave this joint due to work obligations, as I said. Got to watch Rev Road on HBO at my brother in law's over the holidays (don't have much time for the tube during the work year); still think MLS and the critics did not really pinpoint what the movie was about. Take the scene of the identically dressed white collar stiffs taking the train into work. Dressed identically reading the same paper as if they were machine produced. The point of this scene is that 50s life had no space for individuality, creativity and spontaneity--values associated with the arts. In other words, the scene stages an artistic critique of the machinic production of homogeneity. Now it's well know that mass production suffered set backs as customers somewhat pathetically began to define their individuality through their consumption choices. So production was organized away from Fordist mass production to what is sometimes called batch and niche production. Product cycles also picked up. But it's still commodity logic even if the commodities are more diverse and the product cycles faster. It's not as if late capitalism is more aesthetically pleasing or creative than 50s capitalism--it's still the same idea of work to consume to define your standing in society (and destroy the earth in the process). A lot of women left the household to join in the fun. In short, I don't think the 50s were as suffocating as compared to the present as Mendes does (overlooking the real story of course of the end of American apartheid) and I don't think the 50s were totally lacking in good things for white collar workers. The portrait of the 50s was just too simplistic. MLS thought it was the movie of the year. I think it was rather simplistic, and there was just too little to make sense of Winslet's descent into Depression (the movie was not edited well, and I would love to know what scenes about her background were left out).
Well bye
It promoted abortion. So does he.
wv: bootypo. How fitting. Bye, Hartal. Take care.
Yes, that is at the core of the movie. it promoted the right of a woman to make choices to live the life that she thinks best for herself. Remember before she attempts the abortion, Mrs Wheeler allows Mr Wheeler tell her at length over a well prepared breakfast about he excited he is to sell the new computer technology, and she tells him that he should be happy about doing what he wants to do. And she claims the same right for herself. As you know, I think that a woman has that right. Only the religious assumption that God breathes personality into the fertilized egg sustains the view that abortion is necessarily murder; otherwise it's not possible to show a reasonable person that embryo, blastula, even fetus is a human person. But I think the movie really fails as a woman's movie; too few scenes are devoted to making sense of Winslet's suffocation and depression. There is just not enough in it to make sense of and care about her. Or even to dislike or pity her. She's just too confusing. If it's a feminist movie, it sure gave more coherence to diCaprio's character. It's not the movie of the year. Not even close. MLS is not a good critic.
Would you expect anything more from a man that sold his soul to the Devil?
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you implying that you think he takes advantage of quasi-monopoly power he has over one of the most lucrative markets in the world. That he has to paid for his good reviews (or even humorous negative publicity, that being better than no publicity) and that he punishes those movies that don't pay up to him? Are you saying that he's running a racket?
"So production was organized away from Fordist mass production to what is sometimes called batch and niche production. . . ."
10 to 1 hartal has never read Gramsci. hartal heard the term "Fordism" somewhere and thought he understood the reference. He didn't. So now he's regular Mr. Malaprop. Typical empty bombast.
When I see the comment total has jumped a 100, I usually take a look at the tail end. Always funny. hartal never disappoints.
You said he was a good critic. Why would you expect goodness from someone that has sold their soul. It's an contradiction. Another reason why, if you believe all of what you say about him, that you should just drop it now.
Excuse me, wasn't a good critic. I said he sold his soul. You point out that he misses the mark continuously. Naturally, can we expect greatness from a compromised man?
WV: honaer.
Wow, cowardly anon. You sure reveal a lot of knowledge of Gramsci's critique of not Fordism but Taylorist Fordism or Americanism. Again look at what you have written? Look at what I wrote about dialectics. Just like so many Americans after Abu Ghraib, you have no shame. You reveal no knowledge of what you speak yet you accuse others of ignorance. So here's your quiz. I want the answers quick, or I'll flunk you. Which you guard against by not using a consistent handle.
1. How did Gramsci distinguish America from Europe on the basis of Fordism-Taylorism?
2. What did he think had to supplement the organization of consent created by the factory itself?
3. Why exactly did Fordism itself create scope for critical consciousness? Of course you could elaborate on the role of consciousness in his theory vis a vis mechanist theories.
Oh yes you think I just googled all this, but you are wrong.
And again you have nothing to offer.
Gramsci was interested in factory workers. Rev Road is not, by the way, about factory workers.Since I was focused on the shift in the nature of production in the 70s, I was referring to Fordism as defined not by Gramsci but Agliett, Boyer, and David Harvey.
Seriously anon you need some shame, for without it, you will continue to be a doltish blowhard.
Too bad I can't collect on the bet.
Ok you had time, and you failed my quiz. You need to use a consistent handle so you can feel the shame (it's a public emotion unlike guilt) that you need to feel for aggressively accusing someone of the ignorance from which you so obviously suffer. Feeling shame is the first step in your recovery from doltish blowhardism. It's a disease, but you can heal yourself. Start the process.
"Look at what I wrote about dialectics."
You wrote nothing of interest about dialects. More to the point, bombastic one, you never, ever think dialectically. You never do. You're a vicious, purely logical hack with a half-ass academic background. As I've said before, there are few things in this world worse than bitterly failed academics. (Bunch of them murder professors they blame for their failures.) I'm sure your ex professors are happy every day they don't hear from you. . . .
"Look at what I wrote about dialectics."
You wrote nothing of interest about dialects. More to the point, bombastic one, you never, ever think dialectically. You never do. You're a vicious, purely logical hack with a half-ass academic background. As I've said before, there are few things in this world worse than bitterly failed academics. (Bunch of them murder professors they blame for their failures.) I'm sure your ex professors are happy every day they don't hear from you. . . .
sorry
You wrote nothing of interest about dialectics.
How's this? Mr. Spock with a chip on his shoulder?
Sorry you failed the exam on Gramsci, so you need to apologize for your demented accusations of ignorance given how ignorant you actually are.
And too bad I can't collect on the bet, and I could never get into a discussion with you about Gramsci's ideas about hegemony, civil society, Crocean idealism, passive revolution, and subalternity, But if you ever get serious about Gramsci--read these people Ranajit Guha, Joseph Buttigieg, Renate Holub, Kate Creehan and Joseph Femia.
And you should make some effort to understand what I wrote about dialectics. Or get the tutor that you really need. You are so out of your depth that you have not been able to figure out who you are talking to. I feel sorry for you. You need to show your professor friend these exchanges.
J
For all those anons blasting stupid insults at me, I'll forgive you if you make a substantial contribution to Haiti today. I just did.
What professor friend? Anyway, as usual, you lie. But keep cutting and pasting. And, oh, yeah, thanks for saving all those people in Haiti.
OK so you were not the same anon who was arguing about Conrad and spoke of a professor friend. You are just the blowhard who invoked Gramsci while knowing nothing of him. Still haven't apologized for that. But who won't. You can accuse others of ignorance while you are yourself massively ignorant of the things you claim to know about.
You have no shame. You are a pathological case. You can't even understand how good what I posted on dialectics was. Get that tutor. Have him explain it to you. Have him tell you about how dialectics tries to get around the basic assumptions of analytical reason, e.g. the laws of the identity, the excluded middle, and non-contradiction. Have the tutor tell you how dialectics often means a critique of an atomist or substantialist ontology. I could explain all this to you, but you don't deserve it. And you would not be able to assimilate it because you are too angry and fragmented to actually think anything through.
Who knows who you are? As a cowardly anon, you can't expect me to keep your identity straight. That's what you don't want--an indentifiable handle that could be associated with the venomous stupidity that you post.
At any rate, we can all make a difference in Haiti together if we can contribute what we can.
I'm the one who recognized your gratuitous reference to "Fordism." I don't understand who you're attacking. You certainly don't seem to recognize me from the old days on this blog. But I thought it was clear from your loose use of the term Fordist that you have not read Gramsci. I have. His life and career inspired me to attempt and accomplish things I otherwise would not have attempted. His Prison Notebooks just made sense to me, as esoteric as they are, in some respects. One of the great figures in political history. As a result, I posted a comment here for the first time in a long time. I also took a pot shot at you, hartal, instead of simply arguing my view. I apologize for that extreme rudeness. But I still see indication in your responses that you have read Gramsci. Why do you bother to pretend so extravagantly?
You're pretendng--isn't that clear? You say you understand Gramsci on Fordism. So then prove it. Also you should know that Gramsci is not the only theorist of Fordism; Aglietta, Boyer and Harvey also have theories. And I used them to make a simple point about the cultural critique of the 50s. You don't speak to what I wrote about Rev Road. And if you are a Gramsci expert, it should have been clear to you that I was not talking about those aspects of it that Grasmci analyzed.
So prove that you know what you are talking about. You raised Gramsci on Fordism. Not me. Answer the basic questions about Gramsci on Taylorist Fordism or Americanism that I stated. You claim some inspiration from him, but say nothing concrete.
I have read both the Modern Price and much of the Prison Notebooks, and a lot of secondary literature on Gramsci.
But I was not invoking Gramsci.
Oh where are you Gramsci-changed-my-life anon? You said ugly things about me, seemingly because you did not know that one could talk about mass production, mass consumption and Fordism without out talking about Gramsci. But now that you have accused me of ignorance, show that you are not. Or express shame. Or weasel away as the weasel you are.
No this poor pathetic ignorant person wrote this, thinking I had misappropriated Gramsci:
"hartal heard the term "Fordism" somewhere and thought he understood the reference. He didn't. So now he's regular Mr. Malaprop. Typical empty bombast."
The aggression was all his, but the weasel had to weasel away because he actually did not understand Gramsci.
Go ahead and look at the web for what I wrote about dialectics, Gramsci, or Revolutionary Road. It could just well be that I am exceptionally well read, and you are barely literate.
Wow I am confusing people who refuse to identify themselves. How dare I do that! And this last anon is under the delusion that he has exposed lies and malapropism, though of course he can give no actual examples of this good work. I did not misuse the word Fordism as an example of mass production and consumption; nor am I wrong that some see production and consumption having shifted away from mass produced homogeneous goods to niche production, batch production and faster commodity cycles. This is one of the basic features of post Fordism as theorized by Boyer and Harvey in particular. Read the book Post Fordism ed Ash Amin as an undergrad.
I was not referring to Gramsci's theory of Taylorism-Fordism but one of the anons did, and he has had to weasel away because he seems not to have understand what he himself brought into the conversation. It was a pretty sad performance. Pathetic actually given how he aggressively he attacked me.
Here let me let you on to something. Either you and many of your fellow anons are too uneducated and illogical to understand the soundness and richness of what I have been writing or you all are too racist to acknowledge the quality of what I write.
Make your choice. Of course you don't have to choose. It is probably both.
On Achebe and Conrad by a novelist that my wife tells me is great.
http://tinyurl.com/yb8xaow
Hartal. You break my heart. The world is not against you. It's always not about you.
Just a paradox of individual existence that each of us can have near infinite value to our respective individual selves and almost no value to others. Of course when you post anonymously only to abuse someone else on manifestly false grounds and have nothing to say to advance a discussion, you may well have no value to yourself too and suffer from seething self-hatred. Still that is one way of escaping a paradox--just eliminating one side of it.
The point here though is that there will be Iraqis who will respond to Hurt Locker (which may well prove to be the most awarded movie of 2009) in a way similar to how Achebe has responded to Heart of Darkness. Is the native population caricatured to the point that it becomes just the human landscape needed to probe the Euro-American psychology in extreme situations or limit experiences? I had a respectful exchange with Roger Ebert over at his blog on this question.
I posted this on Ebert's blog several months ago. A recent piece in the American Prospect makes the same point.
By hartal on July 11, 2009 11:45 AM
The movie seems to make a statement that the reality worth exploring, via fictional means, is the intense psychological experience of life-and-death situations for a few select soliders in an occupying army. This is what is most real and interesting about war–that seems to be the ideological statement of this movie. And that raises the suspicion that it is narrow, untruthful and reactionary due to its attempt to focus on psychological reality rather than the more complex social reality of the occupation including what it meant to the Iraqis. Perhaps Bigelow thought that she could say something profound about the experience of war without being perceived as political. I take this to be a very unfortunate choice.
I am wondering whether Roger Ebert knows about the controversy over Ernst Junger who explored how war elevates the soldier’s life, isolated from normal humanity, into a mystical experience. He turned out to be a fascist, embracing militarism over the ‘talking houses’ [parliamentary democracy] of the Weimar Republic. One would guess that Bigelow is a bit more critical of such intense and primordial experience. Yet I wonder how Bigelow’s movie could be seen in relation to Junger’s embrace of war as a mystical adrenalin rush. But more importantly there is something inherently insidious about a Iraq movie that takes psychological experience of members of an occupying army as the sole focus when Iraqis are now struggling with one million premature deaths, the return of cholera, the hardening of sectarian conflict and the possible dissolution of their nation, and the loss of up to nine trillion dollars.
How can a movie marginalize such phenomena, and be truthful?
It’s not just about America. Our president is trying to teach us a more cosmopolitan philosopy. We have to grow up and learn to live in a world where we take other points of view seriously. Is this an immature movie?
Seems that way to me.
Ebert: Junger's politics may not be relevant to his opinion. War can create a bond between soldiers so strong they become willing to die for one another.
Why hasn't one of the LaSalle haters picked up on his "guido-phobia"? The guy's latest blog entry is like a movie about his Oedipal complex. He couldn't come up with a single Italian American woman to praise. He tried blond, N. European bred Rosemary Clooney, whose Italian tunes he probably heard as a kid, removed the reference to her after some of the usual jokers made fun of him and inserted instead a reference to Anne Bancroft--who is Jewish but not of Italian descent. Meanwhile, he talks about being "revolted" by coarse Italian American men and asserts that the guido culture meant nothing to him when he was a bookish little boy.
Wow. Come on you LaSalle bashers, develop this stuff. Maybe some Freudian crap, or whatshername the British Freudian, Kline, I think, etc. etc.
Sorry. Anne Bancroft is Italian American. And LaSalle did come up with Annette Funicello, too. But he strained to find women, while the admirable Italian American men were easy for him to list. Hatred for his father and adoration for his mother still dominate the guy's psyche -- decades later. Hell, you could connect this to his man-crush on Reagan! Come on, let's hear it!
It's Melanie Klein, founder of object relations theory. Don't see the hatred to Italian American women that object relations theory would account for. Do note that he did not mention Sophia Loren who was compared unfavorably to my mother when I was growing up. And objectively I think that is right. Did Loren have more sex symbol status in America than Sonia Braga or Almodovar's heroine?
Klein's version of the Oedipal complex focuses on the attachment to the mother. What a tool you are, google boy.
Anon, don't waste your time here. This guy has nothing to say. He's resigned to LaSalle's disdain.
Are you the one who failed the Gramsci exam?
God have you ever done A work in any class?
Object relations theory has focused on the trauma from loss of unity with the mother and the subsequent rage. For example if the loss of infantile unity was attributed to the actions of both the mother and father, then the rage would not necessarily be directed against the mother alone and a source of misogynistic violence would be attenuated. This for example is the conclusion that Dorothy Dinnerstein and Isaac Balbus both drew from object relations theory.
Michael Rogin argued that misogynistic violence which has its roots in these infantile relations was tapped into by Ronald Reagan and the representatives of the counter subversive tradition generally.
Now please say something or at least express shame that you pop off about things you know nothing.
I know that I am being baited. I just enjoy being astonished about exactly how much I do know. It is astonishing that someone throws out the name Kline and then I have actually read Melanie Klein, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Isaac Balbus, Nancy Chodorow and Michael Rogin and was actually able to give such a succinct summary of some basic tenets of object relations theory. You would almost think I am baitng myself, but no it's really just that astonishing. Just as it was when I was baited about Gramsci by a Gramsci 'expert'.
So I take it that you are not going to admit that you are acting shamefully? As I said, I don't see how you are ever going to recover from doltish blowhardism unless you do this.
Personally, I'm constantly astonished at how unimaginative you are, hartal. You really are Spock with a chip on your shoulder. A trollbot! I don't quite understand all this stuff about you being a failed academic. Are you? And what's that got to do with the Unabomber?
No. Nothing. And perhaps you could give us a shining example of your imagination. Sorry you did not like my comments on Revolutionary Road or post on Ernst Junger's glorification of extreme war experiences. But you should admit that they're a lot better than taking shameful pot shots at someone from which you have a lot to learn about Fordism, Gramsci, object relations theory, etc. And I'll take being Spock. My wife tells me that he was her first crazy crush as compared to the blowhard captain, the intergalactic inseminator James T. Kirk. America would have been a lot better off if it gave equal or more value to Spock's good attritubes as it glorified the irrational highly emotional and rigtheous intuitionism of Captain Kirk. It took Bobby Fisher's victory in the Cold War chess match to show us Americans that logic and reason are highly valuable traits.
Your imagination is so weak you don't even understand the critique. And I'm sure your wife loves your pointy ears and dull didactic style. Good for you. Now, please, let's hear your view of LaSalle's pathetic Oedipal revelations. Ignore Klein's revision, if you wish. But come on. Flame on LaSalle for a while. Remember, he's the reason you're stuck here, asswipe.
You're so mentally challenged that you can't articulate the critique. What is it that you have offered? Let's hear your exciting thoughts.
oh, by the way, trollbot, the "master" and "who" were intentional.
Meanwhile, unimaginative one, go back and review the themes. Maybe something will click. Maybe you finally will engage in a discussion, instead of launching into a mechanical recitation. Maybe.
You think I am coming across as a lunatic with my calm, patient prose as compared to your incoherent rantings. Someone twinned Klein with hostility to women of one's own ethnicity. One way to connect them is to use Klein the way Dinnerstein, Chodorow, Balbus and Rogin did. That is analyze the loss of *pre Oedipal unity* as a cause of misogynistic violence. This is a revision of Freud, and you simply can't read--I did not talk about the Oedipal crisis.
You use a lot of abusive language, and you make no sense.
A don't forget that you come across as a pathetic idiot for calling me a coward while posting under no identifiable handle
Are you the one who flunked the Gramsci exam?
hartal, your stuff is pedestrian. Come up with your own analysis. For once. Or shut the fuck up.
wv: beast
time to quit, when you get a tip like that. (Imagine a cookie fortune that says, "you've wasted too much time toying with hartal's psychosis."
No shame.
no imagination
Hartal...are you arguing with yourself again?
WV:petoffe
Well, my god, Hartal, it kinda looks that way.
I mean, if you're not able to be contentious with someone in reality, you seem like the type that would invent someone to fight with...just sayin'...
No the sad truth is that there are people who think and write and abuse like the anons here. There are people who accuse people of ignorance on topics about which they know nothing and feel no shame for doing so. There are people who viciously criticize when they offer nothing of their own. And again feel no shame for doing so.
These people exist; they are not internet personalities that I created. They are just the run of the mill racists who inhabit America; the anons thought that they could talk down culturally to a progressive Indo American and exploded in racist rants after they found out that they could not.
Hartal, dear, you were the first one to inject race into the dialogue, beginning with MLS's blog. You accused him of it. It has been my experience that if you look for something in others, you will succeed in finding it. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Relax, everyone is capable of shortcomings, including yourself. You once said ad hominen attacks were your modus operandi. Who can have a civil conversation with that? That's not discourse that's engaging, it's just a waste of time. The idea is to exchange ideas and hopefully come away with some new and beneficial idea. Study Socrates--it may help you get a glimpse into western culture and civil discourse.
Robert K. Merton's concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy stems from the Thomas theorem, which states that "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."[2] According to Thomas, people react not only to the situations they are in, but also, and often primarily, to the way they perceive the situations and to the meaning they assign to these perceptions. Therefore, their behavior is determined in part by their perception and the meaning they ascribe to the situations they are in, rather than by the situations themselves. Once people convince themselves that a situation really has a certain meaning, regardless of whether it actually does, they will take very real actions in consequence.
No I did not 'inject' race into the dialogue. It was already there. I said Hillary Clinton was playing into racial prejudice in her 300am ad, her calling out of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, her accusations of plagiarism and her insinuations that Obama was not being promoted on the basis of merit. I said that Bill Clinton was toying with nativist sentiment, something dsg denied but it was later revealed that Mark Penn and Bill Clinton were consciously in favor of nativist arguments against Obama.
By the way, I said all these things at SF Gate before Pulitizer Prize winner David Shipler said the same things in April in the LA TImes and Betsy Reed in the Nation.
I said that MLS was blind to all this, and I was right. He did not in fact discuss any of this.
Now to the extent that one does not want to see how race and nativist prejudice does work in our society, then one is prejudiced to a degree.
It is beyond remarkable that you would ask me to model myself on Socrates given the abusive trash that the anons post here. Even Thrasymachus soared above these troubled people in terms of a good faith attempt to discuss matters. You should read ten Platonic dialogues before you lecture me;
I once knew the Dialogues backwards and forwards.
I have been insulted in such a grotesque way on such hypocritical grounds that one has to understand where such dehumanizing animus comes from and where silence comes from.
I was insulted for not knowing Gramsci and object relations theory by people who do not know them. There was no reason for the insults.
I draw my conclusion that I am dealing with racists.
I never said ad hominem criticism was my modus operandi. I showed how my criticisms on anti choice issue were NOT ad hominem. You are making self serving things up.
Hartal...seek and ye shall find...
Why don't you seek and find the place where I putatively said that my modus operandi is the ad hominem argument? And please note the differences between ad hominem argument as it understood commonly today and Ludwig Feuerbach's understanding of the term (by it, he meant to trace human estrangement, alienation, oppression and evil to humans themselves--that is, he did not mean a vicious attack on any one person) and person directed argument (this is the idea that an argument even if correct still fails if it is not couched in terms the interlocutor can understand).
Look another lesson for free. Hope it helps you all to think clearly. You do need help.
You don't think clearly. You don't even crib clearly. You're a googlin fool.
The ad hominem argument most people are familiar with is the one Cicero and Quintillian et al. analyzed in their treatises on classical rhetoric. You're a tool. You're a phony. You a fountainhead of effluent, hartal.
And it wasn't hartal who admitted that the ad hominem attack was the sine qua non (sorry, couldn't resist) of a hartal post, it was me, in a parody of hartal, who said it. A convincing, imaginative, and hilarious parody! Take that trollbot!
Because I'm too effin' lazy?
You drop names but there is no substance at all to what you say about the classic form of ad hominem argument.
I however compared the well known form to Feuerbach's much neglected idea of an ad hominem criticism (a radical criticism reveals that the root is man, a famous follower said) and the idea of a person directed argument (that is argument failure happens not just because of invalidity or falsity [and I can explain that difference to you] but because an argument is not couched in terms that an interlocutor can understand).
I gave as concise a statement as to the differences among them as possible.
And why would I do this? Just so clear thinking people don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Feuerbach's idea and the idea of a person directed argumentation are crucial to social criticism and clear thinking.
Now let's see what you wrote:
"The ad hominem argument most people are familiar with is the one Cicero and Quintillian et al. analyzed in their treatises on classical rhetoric. You're a tool. You're a phony. You a fountainhead of effluent, hartal."
As usual there is absolutely nothing here but a name drop and abuse. There are no clarifying distinctions and there is no evidence that my modus operandi is the ad hominem criticism.
You have got nothing but bombast.
I don't know how you live in that head of yours. I would be ashamed. As you obviously are of yourself--you won't use an identifiable handle after all.
I am sorry that you are so uneducated and illogical not to know that you are being schooled.
As for how an abusive ad hominem argument works, all you have to do is look at what just happen. One anon says that I introduced race into the discussion. I said that I pointed to the racial and nativist subtexts and reception of HRC's campaign. I then gave some examples and referred to places where the argument is elaborated.
No anon responds to what I said. But then one anon lets off a stream of abuse.
Yet I am accused of ad hominem argument!
Let me just say that it is clear to me that you people are just sociological evidence for me. I have to remind myself of the low level at which so many of my fellow citizens think. You wouldn't believe me about whom I having lunch and dinner with tomorrow. So I won't tell you. But it's good for me to be reminded of the seething irrationalism that can be found in large segments of our population.
Anyone interested in the question can google cicero and quintillian and "ad hominem" and get the drab details. You, hartal, are a fraud. (I've read both; they're here on the bookshelf. I consult them, time to time (although the web makes rhetorical, uh, questions, easier to answer these days).)
What a fucking tool you are, hartal.
Oh, by the way, asswipe, people get invited to lunches and dinners with famous people all the time. I do. Sometimes, if I have nothing better to do, I go. Generally, however, I dislike those affairs.
Wear your best bad shoes, asswipe.
Dropping names again loser. Who cares what you have on your bookshelf. Let's see you say something interesting. You can't.
Yet I can write with fascinating examples about the history of dialectics (I gave you an introductory lesson Hegel, Marx, apoptosis), the complexity of Revolutionary Road, the aesthetic nature of Junger's fascism, differences in types of argument, and the way in which race and nativism played a role in the nomination race.
Everything I said was backed with example and explanation.
And you?
All you can do is say that you have books on your shelves and that you know how to use google.
What an empty mind? How do you live with yourself?
Seriously answer my question?
Are you the guy who failed the Gramsci exam?
Cmon tough dude don't tee something up for me. You write something interesting about Klein or Revolutionary Road or the nature of dialectics or Gramsci or anything. Let's hear it. But 486 posts from you and your contribution to the discussion remains zero.
That little brain of yours must rattle around in that head a lot.
How do you live with yourself? Do you have to drink yourself drunk? That's my guess.
Another good joke is that I mentioned the word Fordism, then an anon says that I am an idiot because I don't know anything about Gramsci's theory of Fordism, I then tell him that I was not relying on Gramsci and then ask him the basic questions about Gramsci's theory I had to answer when I read him, and the anon disappears. But I get accused of ad hominem argument after being called an idiot by someone who accuses me of ignorance of a theory about which he knows nothing.
Again keep the sociological evidence coming. It's totally fascinating.
ok, ok, hartal, wear the bad shoes that you feel comfortable in. Everyone will ignore you, anyway.
That's it. That's the extent of your wit?! This is it? This is what we have been made to wait for. I have had to listen to someone assert without reason but with pathological confidence that my interpretations and arguments are incompetent. It's been really taxing to hear someone act as if he is educated even though he does not know the difference between assertion and argument. That kind of mistake usually does not get you passed the freshman year. But still there was hope that that there was wit at the end of the tunnel. And now it turns out that anon is anon because he is truly nothing.
I am sorry for your pathetic and doubtless painful existence.
My guess, Hartal, that anon is using his brain and choosing not to engage in pointless arguments created by a man to simply justify his not-so-hidden bigotry against whitey. All based on the irrational fear that he might indeed be intellectually and culturally inferior.
And what would race have to do with the discussion about Fordism, Gramsci, object relations theory, dialectics, and ad hominem argument. All this was introduced by the anon(s) who proved not able to say a single coherent sentence about any of this, much less engage in a discussion about them. Yet I was shamelessly charged with ignorance about these things in the most abusive terms as the anons conflated the assertion of incompetence with an actual argument.
Oh another thing. Think about it this way:
bunch of anons: shamelessly and abusively calling me an ignoramus about topics on which they cannot even write a single coherent sentence
is to
hooded Klansmen: shamelessly lynching a colored man on false charges in order to preserve a hierarchy of group based identities.
The cowardly anonymity facilitates in both cases the shameless behavior.
Who are our hooded bloggers? Gavone, xootsuit, twinfan, lefty?
And the shameless behavior is motivated by uncomfortable historical shifts in both cases--in the first case, the globalization of the economy and the threat of outsourcing given the return of Asia to global power, and in the latter case, the threat of Reconstruction and the rise of the black population
But thanks for the sociological evidence about American unreason.
So you think you and your fellow anons are representatives of all that is infinitely valuable in American and European culture? You're not. You would not be interesting or rational in any culture.
And you you think you are?
Reading your crap is like trying to choke down stale bread...without any liquids or spreads to soften the blow.
Stale bread is better than none at all. Where's your offering? On dialectics, Gramsci, Fordism, object relations theory, race in politics, etc. I did not introduce those topics-- anons did. But you all got nothing. That's why you remain hooded bloggers. I told you I would forgive you if you gave to Haiti--did you?
I'm broke. I sent good thoughts their way. That's all I had to offer.
As you didn't even send five dollars--and how easy would that have been given how much time you are on the internet--my peace offering is now withdrawn. So let me say again that you have no redeeming qualities. You aren't charitable, witty or interesting. You have nothing to say except juvenile insults of me (stale bread, tool, moron, etc.)
I might however feel sorry for you if you really hate yourself as I much as I supsect you do.
A song was enough for the Christ child.
Wow you don't understand Christianity either and the Book of Matthew in particular. You knew it was time to show us that you know something, not to dig yourself deeper in the pit of ignorance from which we must now fear you will never extricate yourself.
"As usual there is absolutely nothing here but a name drop and abuse. There are no clarifying distinctions and there is no evidence that my modus operandi is the ad hominem criticism."
See, here's the problem, dipstick. You think it's all about you. And it's not, because you're boring.
Cicero, Quintillian, classical rhetoric -- see, dipstick, that was the point. Ad hominem discourse is an age old thing. So most people mean to refer to it when they refer to ad hominem attack.
So, dipstick, your attempt to redirect attention on such terms to your googled exoticisms -- well, they're pathetic. As usual. You're a fraud. A disgustingly bitter failed academic. You will snap. Get help.
Nobody should refer to "ad hominem attack" because an ad hominem is by its very nature an attack.
The point is not whether it is well known that responding to an argument by attacking the character of the person who made it is often an effective, but almost always a logically invalid, form of response.
One of you anons said that the ad hominem was my modus operandi, but no evidence has been presented that this form of argumentn is characteristically availed of by me.
For example, I have said that no evidence has been presented that I generally rely on this kind of argument.
And to this argument against the proposition that I characteristically use ad hominem arguments, you respond by calling me a disgusting and failed academic.
But, you see, that abuse does not prove that I rely on ad hominem arguments. It shows that you do.
Again I am not asking you to pay me for the schooling that I am providing you gratis. I am just asking you to make a contribution to Haiti. I'll take that as repayment and forgive you.
You're a petty fool. Oh, that's redundant, too. But it's common usage. And apt. Now let's see you miss the point on this one. (And your teaching fantasy is very revealing, oh failed academic.)
I register your cry for help, i.e. your lamentation that I shall not desist from making an ass of you every time you launch an ad hominem argument against me.
Now notice your hypocrisy. You ask for license with the expression that you used--ad hominem attack-- but then refuse to give it to 'petty fool'. If you think the first is a perfectly tolerable common expression--though note that ad hominem in your classic sense actually means an ATTACK on character or motive-- then why not petty fool? Do you care about making sense? You want license for your redundancy but not for others'--though do note that I did not use the expression petty fool.
I am also sorry that you can see that petty fool is not redundant in the same way as your expression "ad hominem attack" is.
One may want to emphasize that behavior that is concerned for trivial matters in a spiteful way is also foolish, i.e. silly or imprudent. Or that what makes a particular person a fool is his petty behavior. In both these ways petty fool is not redundant.
Note moreover that you make yourself a fool by trying to be concerned about grand matters beyond your mental discipline to grasp, e.g. dialectics, Fordism, Gramsci, Sotomayor's stance on class action lawsuits, the aesthetic critique of corporate capitalism, the nature of Conrad's art, the significance of Solis' appointment.
So you can see that it makes sense to separate out the some fools from you, a doltish blowhard completely out of his league in discussing matters of actual importance.
Where are you dear friends? You know that we use reason for the purposes self-conceit--to make ourselves richer or appear smarter compared to someone else. We are thus put in the company of people we cannot do without but also cannot stand. Many great philosophers have recognized this aspect of the human condition.
Now such competition can lead to social benefits. Better products, better or deeper ideas, more daring art, clearer reasoning--all that can result.
The problem of course is that when our competitive urges make us suspend rules for ourselves by which we would like others to abide.
It takes virtue not to do this, and the anons here are clearly lacking in it.
Where are you people? Rehab? It seems that LaSalle's blog died.
oh,oh xootsuit did you notice whom Obama just appointed to the NRLB?! He made a special appointment of the most radical one of them all. Weren't expecting that, were you?
Where are all of you?
I see that dsgonzale6 is still writing his tepid and spineless criticisms of nativism.
wow did you catch that flame war
having trouble accessing old comments
xootsuit please check out tc's blog at city blogs sf gate asap.
Hard to believe this site died two years ago. I was really disappointed to learn that Jean was only an alternate personality. The internet is bad for mental health.
Thank you Lord for showing revealing the tricks of Maya.
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