It should go without saying...
....that we condemn the scummy prat who called Liskula Cohen: "a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank"
But I disagree with Kate Harding, (in my view a pseudo blogger), posting her blog in the Guardian attacking bloggers. It's a case of set a thief to catch a thief. The mainstream media is irritated by bloggers because they steal its thunder and so they comission people like Kate Harding, people with nothing to say for themselves, apparently, other than that they are feminists, to attack bloggers.
I'm black. So I can legitimately attack "angry white old men". I'm a feminist, so I have carte blanche to call all anonymous bloggers "prats." Because yes, that is her erudite response to bloggers.
No I don't say that the blogging medium can't be used to attack progressives in whatever context. Of course it can. But to applaud the censorship of a blogger by a billion dollar corporate like Google, and moreover from the vantage point of a US legal system that allows aberrations like the death penalty and Guantanamo Bay is a bit rich, to say the least.
And yet the Guardian, schizophrenic as ever when it comes to the United States, posts Kate Harding up as if she were one of their own and one of our own probably because - get this - she is a "feminist". So that's alright then. Talk about a Newspaper in an identity crisis. The Guardian flails around lashing at the very medium that promises to be its salvation.
One word covers up a whole range of sins. Is Kate Harding also a believer in the freedom of people to express themselves as they see fit in a public space. I very much doubt it. Because she uses the hyperbole in her blog, layers it on thick, to extrapolate from the misogynistic outpourings of one single blogger to all bloggers in all cases.
She may not be an idiot, but she is, as the saying goes, possibly, a "useful idiot". In other words she is being used.
Of course politics in the US is infinitely dumbed down to the level of identity and it shows in Kate Harding's blog. Big daddy Google and the US legal system and the Guardian editors all come out to fight for the right to shut bloggers up on the basis that one blogger is acting like a twat.
In this dreamland Obama is wonderful primarily because he is black. And the people who oppose him according to a recent blog on Cif are awful because they are mainly "angry white men". The simplistic politics here are taken down here to the level of complete nausea.
But where do you get such a license to insult bloggers? Call yourself a feminist and a fighter for women's rights and you can get away with all sorts of reactionary shit. What is your response Kate? Anything? Feel free to answer in anyway you like here - I won't hold my breath.
My fellow blogger, Wordy, not gendered and an ardent supporter of Obama, has a lot of interesting things to say on this subject. A lot more interesting than the inflammatory tosh that passes for Kate Harding's blog, anyway.
http://acacciatura.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/bloggers-can-be-choosers-2/
....that we condemn the scummy prat who called Liskula Cohen: "a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank"
But I disagree with Kate Harding, (in my view a pseudo blogger), posting her blog in the Guardian attacking bloggers. It's a case of set a thief to catch a thief. The mainstream media is irritated by bloggers because they steal its thunder and so they comission people like Kate Harding, people with nothing to say for themselves, apparently, other than that they are feminists, to attack bloggers.
I'm black. So I can legitimately attack "angry white old men". I'm a feminist, so I have carte blanche to call all anonymous bloggers "prats." Because yes, that is her erudite response to bloggers.
No I don't say that the blogging medium can't be used to attack progressives in whatever context. Of course it can. But to applaud the censorship of a blogger by a billion dollar corporate like Google, and moreover from the vantage point of a US legal system that allows aberrations like the death penalty and Guantanamo Bay is a bit rich, to say the least.
And yet the Guardian, schizophrenic as ever when it comes to the United States, posts Kate Harding up as if she were one of their own and one of our own probably because - get this - she is a "feminist". So that's alright then. Talk about a Newspaper in an identity crisis. The Guardian flails around lashing at the very medium that promises to be its salvation.
One word covers up a whole range of sins. Is Kate Harding also a believer in the freedom of people to express themselves as they see fit in a public space. I very much doubt it. Because she uses the hyperbole in her blog, layers it on thick, to extrapolate from the misogynistic outpourings of one single blogger to all bloggers in all cases.
She may not be an idiot, but she is, as the saying goes, possibly, a "useful idiot". In other words she is being used.
Of course politics in the US is infinitely dumbed down to the level of identity and it shows in Kate Harding's blog. Big daddy Google and the US legal system and the Guardian editors all come out to fight for the right to shut bloggers up on the basis that one blogger is acting like a twat.
In this dreamland Obama is wonderful primarily because he is black. And the people who oppose him according to a recent blog on Cif are awful because they are mainly "angry white men". The simplistic politics here are taken down here to the level of complete nausea.
But where do you get such a license to insult bloggers? Call yourself a feminist and a fighter for women's rights and you can get away with all sorts of reactionary shit. What is your response Kate? Anything? Feel free to answer in anyway you like here - I won't hold my breath.
My fellow blogger, Wordy, not gendered and an ardent supporter of Obama, has a lot of interesting things to say on this subject. A lot more interesting than the inflammatory tosh that passes for Kate Harding's blog, anyway.
http://acacciatura.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/bloggers-can-be-choosers-2/
... people with nothing to say for themselves, apparently, other than that they are feminists, to attack bloggers
ReplyDeleteBe fair, Phil. She's not just a feminist. She's written a book. A book about diets.
Hated that article. Hated Conor Foley's response to it. Calling for stuff you don't like to be banned isn't the answer, I'm amazed there can still be people who think it is.
Perhaps nyou should write a considered and erudite response to her on your blog too mi'lord.
ReplyDeleteLet's show them the power of this medium!
As for Conor - well his case sounds in extremis. But he should be embarrassed to sign up to this censorship agenda of someone who uses one single case of a twat and then generalises to everyone.
ReplyDeleteI am just this guy you know. But I can respond on my blog and so can you and that is what worries the mainstream media.
Well let's worry them a little more.
Politely
I have no blog, Phil. I am one of the blogless.
ReplyDeleteCheck out Kate's Blog if you haven't already, particularly the comments policy. Quite amusing.
I'll say no more on the subject. I don't want to diss Kate, I'm sure she's a great person and means well, but she's just so hopelessly wrong on this issue that it's painful.
Love this Phil Hall, thanks.
ReplyDeleteBut you can get a blog in ten seconds mi'Lord go for it. Make yourself voice heard in your own realm.
ReplyDeleteThanks Corcoran - Do you have a blog?
Thanks for posting this, and for displaying one of too few sensible POVs in that thread.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure.
ReplyDeleteAh … thanks, Phil. As you imply, Kate Harding is a poor debater. (And @Lord Summerisle, thanks for that information about her oeuvre. ;))
ReplyDeleteShe says at GU:
=== And the more we argue about online harassment from a strictly legalistic perspective, the more we ignore the fundamental issue: cowards who use a veil of anonymity, however flimsy and easily shredded, to launch attacks on their enemies, really ought to be silenced. ===
Yes, slander is bad. Misogyny is bad. But regular readers of the Guardian books blog for the last year or two all know about the blogger who set up a web site solely to attack a fellow-blogger who happens to be female. Day after day for nearly two weeks, he ripped into this woman’s prose style without acknowledging that English isn’t her first language and that she was never educated in Britain.
Now here’s the important point for the Kate Hardings of this world: HE DID ALL THAT UNDER HIS REAL NAME, NOT A PSEUDONYM. .............(Please excuse the flaming caps, Phil, I don’t have time for the hypertext codes.) .........He told us where he lives, gave us a complete account of his family history and the name of his wife and cat.
… Those of us who have blogged on the GU site and been extremely critical of the Guardian’s moderation policies have known from the beginning that GU has our real names and email addresses.
Pseudonymity only equals cowardice for the simple-minded – a class in which Ms Harding has proved she belongs.
She says:
=== What those people forget is that defamation laws were around in some form long before the US constitution was written. ===
It might interest her to know that Benjamin Franklin, who helped write that constitution, used at least TWO DOZEN pseudonyms as an anonymous pamphleteer in the course of his life. He often mocked himself, behind his invented names, and eventually this ingenuity helped him and his countrymen get rid of us -- their evil British rulers. . . proving anonymity's constructiveness and great power.
Anonymity focuses attention on the argument, not the person … Franklin unerstood that well. He used stereotypical thinking about gender and identity against his opponents. Some of his most brilliantly effective attacks were in the guise of a female Puritan, Silence Dogood – his first pseudonym.
We bloggers are today’s electronic pamphleteers. Viva!
Viva!
ReplyDeleteViva! Indeed. They just get more and more ridiculous in their attacks on blogging as they realised there days as arbiters of what we should know and how we should think come to a glorious end. This from the Chairman of News Ltd, John Hartigan, "In return for bloggers free content we get what we paid for, something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernable from massive ignorance." Imagine that, New Ltd defining 'intellectual value'. Rage on, Phil!
ReplyDeleteDo one on your blog too Paul. Viva!
ReplyDelete=== They just get more and more ridiculous in their attacks on blogging as they realised there days as arbiters of what we should know and how we should think come to a glorious end.===
ReplyDeleteQuite so. Why is there never any acknowledgment from Old Print people that blogging is taking us closer than we've ever been to serving the ideal of the Fourth Estate?
=== Here’s Thomas Carlyle, writing in 1841 (if the Wikipedia date is accurate):
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,–very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing [. . .] is equivalent to Democracy [. . .]. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. [my emphases] ===
I had a bit to say about that a few months ago:
http://acacciatura.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/since-when-was-a-newspaper-a-mercantilist-tool/
... Why does the Guardian never answer these points?
Kate Harding is suffiicntly clueless that she cannot distingush between libe (written word) and slander (spoken word). She also connot get her head around the concept of vulgar common abuse, which is not libel.
ReplyDeleteUltimately she and Conor Foley further the idea that the thin skinned should be protected from naughty boys saying naughty things as opposed to growing a spine and either responding with a sharp riposte or ignoring it. In doing so, they further the agenda of those whou would silence dissenting voices.
I commented on this story before I saw Kate's risible piece in CiF.
http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/now-this-could-be-worrying/
I wouldn't say that I personally am an arch libertarian, like you Longrider, but in this context I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for vulgar common abuse, as Lordsummerisle said, just take a look at the commetn policy on Kate Harding's blog. Here is a serious case of banging saucepans calling clanking pots loud and black.
Follow Wordy's linkls for an excellent discussion on democracy and empowerment and blogging.
ReplyDeleteHaving visited the KAte Harding blog, I must say I agree with you Phil, her own moderation policy is an excellent example of cyber-bullying, although not anonymous; 'I know best, anybody I dislike will be punished'. It would appear she would like to add potential legal muscle to underwrite her dislike of posters who disagree with her. I said as much on the CIF thread, but it was removed, as have been many other posts that pointed out the hypocrisy of Kate's position. Nice to be able to say it here.
ReplyDeletePresidentGas
Feel free PresidentGas. I wonder if Kate Harding can say the same.
ReplyDeleteActually, Harding's policy is not so different to those used by most of us, mine included. It's just that when writing them, most of us avoid behaving like arrogant, self-righteous arseholes in the process ;)
ReplyDeletePhil, I tried commenting on a rather important subject on the Gruan's books blog, and after I had a notice about pre-moderation, the post simply disappeared. The whole story is here:
ReplyDeletehttp://acacciatura.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/bloggers-can-be-choosers-2/#comment-4511
... Damn! I thought, re-reading this entry in your blog -- I should have found some persecuted minority as a platform for myself (eg., Kate Harding, 'feminist'). ;)
I’ve got to read with care so I get this right Wordy.
ReplyDeleteSo now they are censoring intelligence. Why don’t you have a word with Sarah Crown. Perhaps it’s just a biased moderator flipping a switch.
Let’s see what response you get.
sarah.crown@guardian.co.uk
I've also replied to you on my site, Phil.
ReplyDeleteI saw that the mods ('sitelife') had popped in at acciaccature and clicked on both Obama threads. So it isn't as if my post wasn't read -- or slipped between the cracks.
There's a serious problem with a so-called liberal newspaper stifling dissent and dissenters.
from today's NYT ... a review of a novel, but never mind -- it has remarkable resonance, today:
ReplyDelete=== Leftist political outrage is a tricky mode ... lending itself to platitudes and the verities of liberal self-righteousness.'
@ Lord Summerisle (top comment)
ReplyDeleteWritten a books? My god, I thought she was the fit blonde from Girls Aloud.
@ISA/Phil, censorship by the Guardian is getting curiouser and curiouser… Here’s what I’ve just been obliged to attempt to post on the books blog. … Of course my new comment -- a protest -- has also been held up for moderation.
ReplyDeleteSo a substantive contribution to a discussion on a critical topic is only allowed to appear when the thread is, for all practical purposes, stone dead? ... And this on the site of a _liberal_ newspaper in a western democracy?
===
... er, ..... Dear Guardian Mods,
In finally letting part of the comment submitted here at 10.33 am BST on the 23rd through your filter, three days late, you have somehow added words I never wrote.
Would you please remove the remark addressed to @nuges at the bottom of my post -- since I never said any such thing?
Also, why have you removed the links I put in the comment to lead Aaron Akinyemi (and anyone else) to the discussion on my acacciatura site of Will Barack Obama bring back heroism? and A bit more on heroism: Barack Obama's odyssey, part 2 -- ?
I see commenters linking to their blogs all over CiF. Is this a new policy? ... And I hope it's in order to ask why my comment was held up for so long -- with extra text tacked on, written by someone else?
===
Yeah, Guardian Mods - what Wordy says. Answer if you are big enough and serious enough about Socratic dialogue.
ReplyDeleteIt's getting more surreal by the minute -- just like 1984 and other dark imaginings of totalitarianism. . . Now the blogger called @nuges, to whom I did not address any remark at all, has replied to something I never said. ... Such larks, Phil! ... For anyone interested in baffling censorship _by_ leading newspapers, please look up the comments section of this article on The Guardian's books blog:
ReplyDelete'Where is the good popular fiction for black men?'
Surely this is a first, even in the annals of The Madness of the Guardian Mods? ... Not just deleting posts or portions of them (as they did to mine) ... but INSERTING thoughts a blogger never had (as they did to mine). . . Imagine what contemporary equivalents of the Stasi could do with the flexibility of digital media ... [shudders]
I don't think it's a Stasi thing Wordy, I think its Kafka. These arseholes don't know what they are doing and they are making it up as they go along.
ReplyDeleteYour criticisms of the Kuwaite were an example of excellent and moderate moderation. I think they would die to have sensitive intelligent experienced people like you on board.
But they can't admit it and I think the reason why is because as I have said before Wordy. "high" culture is not really high culture at all in the UK it's just a class marker.
The blatant passive aggressive sabotage of Leyland in the seventies by workers who felt they were being exploited and who would have liked to have easy money like the Kray brothers or the Beatles brothers (because that's what they were really) was matched by the sabotage of the establishment whose response was to dis-invest in manufacturing and invest abroad and in the City.
The problem with the Guardian moderators, Wordy, is simply that they do not take their jobs seriously enough. I met one of them at the meeting Georgina and Linda and Brian arranged - sad that my father was a no show - and she was young but perhaps she was aspiring to be a museum curator or a novelist or a journalist or a writer.
BTW Wordy, can I suggest you get your Emily Bell episode out into the open. It would explain a lot.
ISA
Although, on second thoughts to actually insert things you didn't say is very odd indeed and, as you suggest, quite disturbing.
ReplyDeleteI trust you Wordy, after three years on these blogs and I know you are more sensitive and erudite than the lot of them rolled together in one big bolus.
Phil, if I leave you my vast and priceless collection of straw hats, would you scribble my epitaph, please – on the tree bark closest to where they consign me to the wind? Remember, now, that all the kind words have to be every bit as impossible to justify as the ones you’ve used here, and now I’m thanking you for the exceptional generosity (not to say outlandishness :) of your imagination.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t of course know about your meeting with Georgina, Linda and Brian – though I’ve guessed who they are. (I’m also guessing that it was arranged before the shock of TH leaving the world so suddenly.) … I’m sure that as individuals, they are immensely likeable and engaging … My problem – and perhaps yours, too – is with the institution they represent, and their behaviour not as private individuals but as representatives of that institution. . . . Institutional arrogance is often directly proportionate to the loftiness of the mission people espouse; their self-image and ideas about that mission. (‘The brighter the light, the darker the shadow,’ – is something I’ve heard attributed to Jung.)
Which brings us to …
=== BTW Wordy, can I suggest you get your Emily Bell episode out into the open. It would explain a lot. ===
I have written on my blog about a specific case of people behaving corporately that made me angry. I would rather not personalise that disagreement, focusing my ire on a single individual in the group. . . There’s a parallel with the topic of this thread …I share your disgust with identity politics; have also noticed over the years that arguing or debating from personal attributes – except when absolutely unavoidable, or when that gives an important point clinching power – tends to diminish the debater, in my eyes.
… If I want to focus attention on the lunacy of being told -- in 2006 -- about ‘the sanctity of our print archive’ as the reason for refusing to correct the digital version of an article google-able all over the world, that’s the point I’ll stick to.
Had there been any personal contact, bad chemistry, .. or any shared work history at all with the editor/manager charged with communicating this policy to me – there might have been something pertinent to ‘get out in the open.’ I didn’t much like the Red Queen line she took, … the tone she adopted, … but that’s neither here nor there. . . Perhaps she was just having a bad week … It’s my distress about the official intransigence and stunning lack of empathy for the plight of freelance writers refused the chance to correct errors before OR after publication … errors frequently introduced by editors and sub-editors … that will always stay with me. An apology, or at the very least, an ‘I understand why you feel like that,’ might have made a difference. I had nothing like that from her or her chief.
… Anyway, back to the present … More than 24 hours have gone by since my request for an explanation for the extensive doctoring of my comment on the Guardian books blog – a request made in a second comment that has also disappeared into pre-moderation.
It would be so easy to remove the remark addressed to @nuges that _someone_ at the Guardian inserted into my post. Why was it still there when I last checked, about an hour ago?
And might this be a first in censorship BY a newspaper -- adding text to a commenter's post, then refusing to remove it?
Phil, your software won't let me paste in the latest news ... so please just hop over to acc when you have a moment.
ReplyDeleteWill do.
ReplyDelete