I Don't Understand

Can someone read J. Kirchick's attack on Kay Steiger and explain it to me. Basically, he seems to have seen that a liberal group was running an article about Che Guevera, so he flipped on the Conservative Pundit Autopilot and started attacking her. But Kay's piece isn't favorable to Che! But the Autopilot can't be disengaged so the attack must go on! Bizarre. At any rate, given the quality of work being done at Commentary by the likes of Kirchick and Schoenfeld, the J-Pod Accession will almost certainly improve the average quality of the personnel.

UPDATE: Turns out Matt Duss made the exact same J-Pod joke.

Comments

"What's all this I hear about violins on TV?"

"Oh, never mind."

Posted by z adura | October 26, 2007 12:45 PM

Well, the Steiger piece is kind of a weird work of criticism of Che; paying more attention to his bigotry, and mistreatment of domestic help, as opposed to the fact that ol' Che really liked murdering people. When the piece does focus on Che's proclivity for murderous violence, it spends more time on the purges among the Communists Che pursued. Sort of like mentioning most prominently Stalin's party purges, instead of a few million kulaks.

Posted by Will Allen | October 26, 2007 12:59 PM

Of course, treating perceived enemies and traitors brutally and disrespecting women are considered virtues to the more knuckle-dragging sections of the right. Maybe Kirchick thought that these sections were meant as compliments.

Posted by rufustfyrfly | October 26, 2007 1:05 PM

Well, it seems he's attacking her perceived audience rather than Steiger herself, mainly because the tone isn't anti-Che enough for him. Obviously, the fact that she needs to write this at all, and that she tones it down by not calling Guevara "evil," is evidence of the fact that Campus Progress readers are mindless Che Guevara worshipers.

This sort of reminds me of the McCain ad from yesterday, i.e., some folks don't understand that the 60's are over. As Steiger points out, Guevara is mainly a marketing symbol and wearing that one silohuetted image (a different image of him wouldn't necessarily have the same meaning, would it?) isn't about following Guevara specifically, it's a representation of standing up to authority. If some people do that in ignorance of who Guevera was, well, frankly, who gives a crap? It's an interesting piece about what the man whose image has become an icon was really about for those who may not have already known, but it certainly doesn't signify some liberal revelation that Che Guevara wasn't a saint.

Posted by ibid | October 26, 2007 1:18 PM

Willie Allen lying as always. Always a moron liar.

Posted by Jennifer | October 26, 2007 1:21 PM

Jennifer, you're kinda' weird....

Posted by Will Allen | October 26, 2007 1:35 PM

When the piece does focus on Che's proclivity for murderous violence, it spends more time on the purges among the Communists Che pursued.

More time on his purges than on what? Che was a sincere fool. But he didn't kill or cause the deaths of millions of people and there's no evidence he particularly lusted for murder or was truly paranoid (like Stalin and his minions, for instance). He honestly believed in his crazy marxist bullshit and was willing to put his and other people's asses on the line for it - in this and other respects, he was terribly vain. Why is that not enough? Why does a somewhat dangerous fool have to be inflated to a gory mass murderer demon?

The question that comes to my mind is: is a sincere fool worse than a cynical asshole? We hear often that Bush and Cheney are at least sincere. Is that really a compliment? How many people will die - utterly pointlessly - if these guys act on their dangerously foolish goal to start a war with Iran? Since when were 'good intentions' a conservative value? I always thought that one of conservatism's main reasons for exsisting was to point out that good intentions are not only inadequate, but can actually be dangerous.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 26, 2007 1:47 PM

If only Latin American had more of Reagan's influence and less of Che's it would have been better off.

Posted by Rickm | October 26, 2007 1:48 PM

That's a joke of course. But the right seems to suddenly care about a handful of Latin Americans dying when discussing Che, but when it comes to Reagan... they can't find a junta they don't love.

Posted by Rickm | October 26, 2007 1:51 PM

Doesn't Kirchick know that Kay Steiger is pretty? Matt, tell him.

Posted by Harry | October 26, 2007 1:59 PM

good intentions are not only inadequate, but can actually be dangerous.

Of course I mean 'good intentions are not only insufficient...'.

the right seems to suddenly care about a handful of Latin Americans dying when discussing Che, but when it comes to Reagan... they can't find a junta they don't love.

But when you're killing for an idea - sorry, the CORRECT idea - it's regrettable perhaps, but justified. Just ask Che (too bad he had the incorrect idea). Or ask OBL (too bad he kills on behalf of the WRONG BOOK).

Posted by jonnybutter | October 26, 2007 2:05 PM

Doesn't Kirchick know that Kay Steiger is pretty? Matt, tell him.

Is the fact that he's gay relevant here?

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | October 26, 2007 2:05 PM

jonny, Che wrote of the excitement he derived from killing, and if you think his murderous actions were restricted to what Steiger writes of, you're mistaken. No, he wasn't as bad as Stalin, but gosh, talk about damning with faint praise!

Posted by Will Allen | October 26, 2007 2:08 PM

johnnybutter-
I forgot that supporting repressive dictatorships that support your business interests was the 'right idea'. Thanks for admitting it.

Posted by Rickm | October 26, 2007 2:09 PM

"Is the fact that he's gay relevant here?"

I didn't know he was gay, but yes, that fact would be relevant.

Posted by Harry | October 26, 2007 2:19 PM

The question that comes to my mind is: is a sincere fool worse than a cynical asshole?

Likewise, is a well-meaning but stupid leader worse than an evil but brilliant one?

I used to think evil was better than stupid, but the thought of Cheney or Hillary as President gives me my doubts.

Posted by Shinyk | October 26, 2007 2:45 PM

Is the fact that he's gay relevant here?

Are you sure he's gay? After all, the article seems to prefer the term, "homosexual," to "gay," and its author doesn't seem to think that Kirchick saying Che was an anti-gay bigot was a very telling or adequate criticism . . .

Posted by rea | October 26, 2007 2:49 PM

Kirchick is an immature dishonest hack. Anyone ever read his blatherings about "grit"? He's a fucking tool.

Posted by Gus | October 26, 2007 2:57 PM

They can sulk all they want.

Mario Teran recently hobbled his old ass into a Bolivian clinic to get cornea surgery from a Cuban doctor. Che's opponents outviscioused and out murdered him for awhile but he won, get over it.

Posted by Ed Marshall | October 26, 2007 3:07 PM

The primary fault Kirchick finds in the piece is that it attempts to present a fair and honest criticism of Guevara, instead of simply calling him "evil."

I have generally low expectations for Commentary, and even lower expectations for Jamie Kirchick, but that's just an embarrassing display of rent-a-hack tripe.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 26, 2007 3:12 PM

I read it and really can't see what Kirchick's problem except that he is someone not worth coddling. He basically seems to be arguing that the CampusProgress piece spends too much time talking about particular incidences of sadism, tyranny, abuse of servants and complete disregard for the female sex instead of just saying OMG THUG TOTALITARIAN MURDERER STALINIST 7 BILLION KILLED LIBERAL for 200 words. I really don't see what the problem with the piece is (Steiger's) I think it's got plenty for those who like to emphasize what a sadistic and hypocritical bastard Che really was but I guess I was wrong.

Posted by DRR | October 26, 2007 3:58 PM

I wouldn't say there is any particular "problem" with Steiger's piece. It's just a little strange that, when talking about someone who actually enjoyed killing a large number of people that were insufficiently in agreement with that person's political views, that one would would initially focus on, when discussing this person's faults, the fact that he was a bigot regarding homosexuals. I suspect Pinochet was bigoted regarding homosexuals as well, but I doubt that would be the thing that Steiger would mention first if she were to write a critique of Pinochet.

Posted by Will Allen | October 26, 2007 4:51 PM

Will Allen describes Che as "someone who actually enjoyed killing a large number of people that were insufficiently in agreement with that person's political views".

Actually, Will, Che spefically was someone who thought that armed violence was always an acceptable tactic for fighting against tyrannical regimes, regardless of whether or not the people he killed were actually defenders or accomplices to the evils of those regimes. Moreover, like Robespierre,if Che deemed that you were insufficiently bloodthirsty in your pursuit of destroying said regimes, or in defending the revolutionary regime against the resurgence of the tyrannical old order, that you were branded an accomplice to the evils he was opposed to, and used that same violence against you.

Che was not someone who killed people who disagreed with him over issues such as gay marriage or abortion. Saying then that Che killed people who insufficiently agreed with his political views is not correct then. Rather, he was the epitome of an ends-justifies-the-means self-proclaimed freedom fighter; he argued that violence committed by tyrants was immoral, but violence committed by self-proclaimed freedom fighters like himself was moral.

Sounds a lot like today's neoconservatives and their supporters like Kirchuk, doesn't it?

Posted by eltoro | October 26, 2007 5:55 PM

Someone can't say Guevara was a bigot without adding he killed people, lest she be accused of being an apologist for his violence (which is what Kirchick is doing, while Will Allen just chooses to call it "strange")?

The key here, I think, is that Steiger is not giving a moral accounting of Guevara in general, as Will suggests she is. Again, this is about the image and the legacy, not the man himself. People don't display his image to show that they are opposed to violence, they display it as a symbol of revolution. If anything, the image represents violence as opposed to pacifism, to the extent that violence is associated with revolution in general, and that Guevara favored violent revolution in particular (it would be difficult to take an image of someone famous for being a guerilla and use as a symbol for pacifism). So, the fact that violence was part of his ideology doesn't conflict with the image, and I would guess that most people who use his image for non-aesthetic reasons tend not to be pacifists (and those who do are probably ignorant of his history). But people who wear his image might be concerned with the fact that he opposed equality for gays and women, even if he was more egalitarian when it came to the underprivileged. I'm not saying his views on violence should be irrelevent to his legacy or that those views are necessarily correct (although as eltoro points out, it seems pretty consistent with anyone who sees fighting a war for a good cause as just), but it doesn't conflict with what his image generally represents. Bigotry, on the other hand, does conflict with the image as a symbol of revolution in the name of left-wing causes such as equality. That is why Steiger focuses on this in a piece that questions what his image means, not what his greatest faults were.

If, however, you think it isn't valid to examine historical figures without addressing their personal morality, we have a completely different disagreement.

Posted by ibid | October 26, 2007 7:38 PM

"The precious, explanatory manner in which this is written (”Hey guys, Che wasn’t exactly a great dude”) characterizes Steiger’s entire article, seen here in the surprise she evinces towards her own discovery that Guevara was violently hostile towards homosexuals"

This is by far the most laughably insane sentence written in this piece, which is saying quite a lot.

The truth is that many people - the audience Kay is presumably attempting to educate - are unaware of Che's feelings toward and treatment of homosexuals. Not that it would matter, in any case. The phrase "in fact" does not necessarily connote - as Kirchick fatuously thinks - a reaction of suprise. You can use the adverb "Suprisingly" or "Unexpectedly" for that.

And it would be a suprise for many people. Socialism is associated, at least in perception, with progressive attitudes on cultural issues. Kirchick knows this perception to be often false. But that doesn't mean he should sneer at people who don't.

Perhaps she should have written "OBVIOUSLY, CHE HATED QUEERS, LIKE ALL COMMIE SCUM."

P.S: Since when is explanatory a pejorative? Kirchick seems to think so.

Posted by Neal Murray | October 26, 2007 10:36 PM

johnnybutter-
I forgot that supporting repressive dictatorships that support your business interests was the 'right idea'. Thanks for admitting it.

Sense of humor much, rickm? I was being rather bitterly sarcastic. Humorlessness was another fault of Che's, BTW. Since you can't grok humor, eltoro makes, at 5:55, the same point I was doing.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 26, 2007 11:43 PM

OK, I've been offline all night. Brian Beuler makes the same point here:

[Kirchick] seems not to have noticed that the flawed hyper-idealism that endears Guevara to some young leftists is the same feature--supposedly, though not actually the guiding feature of America's current foreign policy regime--that endears people like Jamie Kirchick to a whole generation of hawkish, interventionist thinkers."

Posted by jonnybutter | October 27, 2007 12:13 AM

In other words, eltoro, your rationalizations aside, if Che didn't think you adhered to his views closely enough, you became a good candidate for one of Che's favorite hobbies, a pistol shot to the head. Also, I missed the headlines when Cheney shot Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul to death.

Posted by Will Allen | October 27, 2007 1:57 PM