« Learning From Belfast | Main | Age and the War » Media-as-it-Is11 May 2007 02:19 pm Michael Kinsley's article on Christopher Hitchens is, I think, a must-read. Less for what it says about Hitchens than simply because Kinsley is being infinitely more insightful about the media business -- and that's what it is, a business -- than is the usual journo-stew in which, as Duncan says, "When pressed about their craft, journalists, and especially print journalists, generally retreat into some sort of Platonic Journalist Ideal." UPDATE: Here's a free link to the article. Comments (27)
Wonderful! Wonderful article! How the hell am I going to read it, it's on TimesSelect! 
anyone with a school email address can get times select for free.
I found it: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/10/arts/IDLEDE12.php You just take a sentence from the article, enclose it in quotes and Google it. If it's not on google, then you can usually get it on google blogsearch. I liked this bit: *****The big strategic challenge for a career like this is to remain interesting, and the easiest tactic for doing that is surprise. If they expect you to say X, you say minus X. Consistency is foolish, as the man said. (Didn't he?) Under the unwritten and somewhat eccentric rules of American public discourse, a statement that contradicts everything you have ever said before is considered for that reason to be especially sincere, courageous and dependable. At The New Republic in the 1980s, when I was the editor, we used to joke about changing our name to "Even the Liberal New Republic," because that was how we were referred to whenever we took a conservative position on something, which was often. Then came the day when we took a liberal position on something and we were referred to as "Even the Conservative New Republic." As this example illustrates, among writers about politics, the surprise technique usually means starting left and turning right. Trouble is, you do this once and what's your next party trick?**** "Party trick," eh?
and that's what it is, a business Funny, I remember when it was a profession.
Kinsley has given away the store! Now anyone can be a Slate-caliber intellectual.
Kinsley's article says nothing about Hitchens whose book is a throwback to the 18th century. Reading Hitchens you would never know that bonafide atheists like Dr Mengele and Nikolai Yezhov murdered millions. Need one bring up all the Communists and Nazis who also were atheists? In addition, Hitchen's essentialist concept of rationality is too narrow. His appeal to classical Greek rationality is not convincing since the Hellenic Greek were among the most superstitious people on the globe. We do need a conversation on religion but Hitchen's Voltarian approach is not the way to go. It did after all lead to modern totalitarianism. Better appeal to Kant who thought that we should think of religion within the context of reason and not reason within the context of religion. Hitchens merely postulates a binary opposition between religion and reason.
In addition Hitchen's book is deeply anti semitic in the Voltarian sense.
Kinsley and Hitchens are kindred spirits. There is, however, more to being a public intellectual than slaloming daringly between prefab x's and minus-x's. Sometimes the things one says compel interest because they appear to match or explain the world, or signal a direction for intellectual inquiry or moral commitment, and not simply because they were expected or unexpected. David Halberstam never wrote the book in which he decided the Vietnam War was a good idea after all. What Kinsley seems unaware of is that while whipping your byline one way or the other is a good way to maintain people's interest for a while, you ultimately exhaust its elasticity, and people begin to regard you as a washed-out old media whore. Two institutions that bear Kinsley's mark, TNR and Slate, show signs of precisely this phenomenon. And what people are demanding from Hitchens these days, I feel, is not another "twist". It is a return to the critical intelligence and honesty he used to possess, before his ballooning rage over having placed a bad bet on Iraq drove him gradually into the land of vengeful fantasy and intellectual dishonesty.
E.g., Earth makes a circle around the Sun; the Sun doesn’t do a complex roller coaster ride around Earth. Calling an ellipse a circle is just ignorant. Not recognizing the symmetry of the situation--that the Sun describes the same path around a fixed Earth that the Earth describes around a fixed Sun--that's stupidity. Why should I take anything that either of these people say about the nature of the universe seriously?
It's a bit rich for Kinsley to be making such sport of Hitchens' contrarianism.
J. Dyer:
"This will be my long rambling response to various things which have been floating around with respect to Chait's TNR article and other related things.:" Yes it was, long and rambling.
Umm, I'm pretty sure Kinsley is being ironic. He's mocking the people that have attacked him his whole career as being a self-serving contrarian. Turns out, sometimes people write things because they believe them. Sincerity is the new irony.
Reply to Bill:
I wasn't defending religion. I was merely saying that Hitchen's attack didn't go any further than an 18th century attack. Most of what he said might have been written by Voltaire. Did you ever read Voltaire.
Oh yes they did. Trotzky famously put "God" on trial after the revolution and Bolsheviks went after religous people in the name of progress which is to say anti-religion. You either don't know your history or you are shamming. "C) many of the so-called atheist totalitarianisms were positively shot through with the religious mindset (superstition, idol worship, etc), which real atheists abhor." This is the atheist variant of "they really weren't good 'Christian, Muslims, Jews, etc.'" It doesn't wash. Lenin and Trotzky et al didn't have a "religous mindset" unless you consider any belief "religious." Stalin may have been a seminarian at one time but he wasn't religious in any meaningful sense of the word. Neither is Castro.
"Atheism is a negative doctrine; it doesn't have precepts to abuse." In principle, perhaps. In Practice atheism as preached by Hitchens et al does have a positivistic agenda. Many are usually scientifists which is different from being scientific.
Then there are critiques of religion from religious people themselves.
And that's what it is, a business Oh jeebus yes, the media has stop being anything one would want to give a shield law too long ago, starting in with "anything goes" and "I'm getting my too (access, fucking anything else)". Frankly, I think sheild laws should apply only a few bloggers bend on find the truth in this new world feeding frenzy media crapy that no longer gives a damn about what the facts are any more.
Kinsley in a nutshell: Hitchens is a world class prostitute, savy in all the ways of Washington media filth. But still, a pig by any other name is still just a pig.
in the future, the times has that handy permalink feature for blog linking under the 'share' item in teh print, save grouping. not sure how it works with opinion pieces though, so disregard as necessary. i do use the permalink feature to save articles to del.icio.us, not being a times select person
Re: Stalin may have been a seminarian at one time but he wasn't religious in any meaningful sense of the word. Stalin was however superstitious. People who rule with and by fear usually are (Napoleon and Hitler both were noted in this way as well). Indeed, many atheists allow their devotion to Reason to take the place of religion. The Jacobins even did this quite explicitly, setting up a formal cult of Reason in place of Roman Catholicism.
"Indeed, many atheists allow their devotion to Reason to take the place of religion. The Jacobins even did this quite explicitly, setting up a formal cult of Reason in place of Roman Catholicism." Yes, I agree. Hitchens' critique though can't address these issues. This is why I think it's a very shallow critique.
JDyer: This is the atheist variant of "they really weren't good 'Christian, Muslims, Jews, etc.'" Just as you're not defending religion (my mistake) I'm not defending Communism or Nazism from impure advocates. I was trying to hint at what the fundamentlisms have in common. I'm annoyed by the repeated insinuation that abandoning religion will lead to Hitler and Stalin just as easily as anything else. What did those movements need to succeed? A lot of credulous people who would accept outrageous claims sans evidence. We can agree they're both bad, but I would argue that religious fundamentalism and atheist fundamentalism are not interchangeable mindsets. If atheism has a precept it's don't accept things without evidence. Marxism was a giant house of cards in that sense. I'm interested in what you think Hitchens' "positivistic agenda" is. He is not, for example, in favor of taking active steps (beyond mere persuasion) to eradicate religion. It doesn't wash. Lenin and Trotzky et al didn't have a "religous mindset" unless you consider any belief "religious." I consider actively scapegoating, condemning and persecuting people who disagree with your a priori worldview to be a religious thing to do. That's where reason ends and religion begins. The Jacobins were justified in calling themselves "reasonable" until they started butchering people who disagreed.
Before you say the obvious, that many religious people don't butcher people, I'm not equating "persecution" which can take many insidious forms, with butchering. And I'm not equating "reasonable" with "good" since there's good and bad reasoning. It's my opinion that if people truly followed their religions' teachings as written they would all be fundamentalists. That is what I mean by "where reason ends and religion begins" and I realize that's a polemical thing to say. Religious moderates live as though it isn't important enough to them to act on it, in my view.
His appeal to classical Greek rationality is not convincing since the Hellenic Greek were among the most superstitious people on the globe. You mean, like the people who murdered Socrates? Let's have an argument about whether Socrates' daemon was ironical or not. We do need a conversation on religion but Hitchen's Voltarian approach is not the way to go. It did after all lead to modern totalitarianism. Really? So are you also blaming Rousseau for Robespierre, and Nietzsche for Hitler, and Marx for Stalin? Voltaire's crime wasn't to think out loud, and neither is Hitchens'. We're both acknowledging that any set of ideas can be abused; your mistake IMO is to equate atheism with a set of actionable ideas. The masses, who enable any mass movement don't read Voltaire or Rousseau; they do read the Bible, which is more often than not philosophy for dimwits. If they're inspired by someone who has misread some philosopher, chances are appeals are being made to something other than their sense of the contingency of all philosophical thought - something Voltaire or anyone else would freely acknowldedge about their own ideas.
That wasn't a book review by Kinsley. It was a blowjob.
Bill IS God.
Bill IS God.
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Heads in the Sand
Kinsley's article is really quite wonderful -- and coming from the great contrarian himself it demonstrates a remarkable bit of introspection.
Posted by IP Guy | May 11, 2007 3:21 PM