Frum as Concern Troll

A couple of people have sent me this David Frum article in The National Interest, presumably because it mentions me. I'm sort of disinclined to even bother linking to it, because it seems like something they ran specifically in order to piss liberal bloggers off, thus generating "buzz" and traffic for their website. But this description of the piece from one correspondent was worth sharing, "David Frum is very concerned about the implications of people like you for the Democratic Party, an institution about which he is known to care dearly."

Right, exactly. Meanwhile, I have a hard time seeing past the part of the piece that's about me. Frum characterizes something I said as "personal" and "rude" but I really think it was neither. There seems to be something about attacking "bloggers" that makes it okay to just avoid the merits of whatever point has been made and instead complain about bad matters, whether or not bad manners were really exhibited.

Comments

He is evil inhuman slime. Insults from the likes of him are a compliment.

What I can't understand is the concern for "civility" that so many people seem to have. We are living in a nation run by monsters. Why be civil to monsters? Rudeness and personal attacks are not just permissible, but mandatory.

Posted by LarryM | December 19, 2007 11:57 AM

Your tone in this post is quite personal and rude, Matthew.

-----

I actually think that you're really upset about Frum's accusation of imperfect grammar.

Posted by Petey | December 19, 2007 12:01 PM

In what sense is David Frum a "suit-wearing" "member of the foreign policy community"? He's a speechwriter who is now at AEI.

Posted by Joe Strummer | December 19, 2007 12:04 PM

His perspective, he says, is that Washington is “a corrupt town.” From that perspective, he says that “the political-intellectual arena is essentially a cartel”—a cartel that’s become extremely timid and risk-averse in the face of a neoconservative onslaught—and “blogs allow smart people to break the cartel.” That all seems very true to me, and I’m not sure what I have to add.

Since he starts of the article with this, the rest of the article is pretty bizarre. Basically, he acknowledges that the criticism is true, but then says bloggers are being rude about and that they won't influence the FPC that way. The thing is, I don't care what O'Hanlon or Frum think. I just want everyone else convinced that they're a bunch of idiots.

But then it gets even weirder. Because he ackowledges that the influence from the bloggers is working . At this point, you don't know what to think- where can he possibly be going with this?

His conclusion is that the net effect will be positive. So all I can say, is why all the hate towards the bloggers in the middle of the article? Just crazy.

Posted by mpowell | December 19, 2007 12:05 PM

What I can't understand is the concern for "civility" that so many people seem to have.

What?! Jim Keane (aka MoeLarryAndJesus or LarryM) doesn't care for civil conversation? I am shocked.

Posted by Mark Adams | December 19, 2007 12:10 PM

The foreign-policy community (henceforward, “FPC”) values moderation of views and modulation of tone.

I had a hard time getting past this. Maybe if he took out "moderation of views" and just left "moderation of tone" it might have some truth.

Posted by mq | December 19, 2007 12:12 PM

Frum is on the low-end of the whole opinion journalism gig. He's the hit man they wheel out to police the right-of-center against people who might be skeptical of war - http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum031903.asp - and, to much less impressive effect - the guy who wants to share his advice on manners with the left-wing bloggers, too.

But does anyone read a David Frum column and say, man I learned something? That's why he's writing for the National Interest.

Posted by Joe Strummer | December 19, 2007 12:15 PM

One of Frum's tropes is to make tactical errors of fact - that he can clarify at a later date in a way the allows him to tell his tale again.

Here's one example:

"The blogosphere of 2007 is a predominantly liberal and Democratic place. This was not always the case: As recently as 2005, former Vice President Al Gore castigated “digital brownshirts” who bullied and intimidated critics of George Bush."

-Now Frum knows that is false - He is aware that the phrase "digital brownshirts" comes from Paul Krugman. This was just a small error that he made on purpose so he can say he made an mistake and that his larger point yada yada yada Krugman yada yada yada Brownshirts blah blah blah

Posted by Comment | December 19, 2007 12:15 PM

Conrad Black probably reads Frum for amusement. WIth friends like this ....

Posted by Comment | December 19, 2007 12:19 PM

I think it pretty clear there's actually an underlying Marxian factor dominating this antipathy.

Frum and all his numerous friends have regular print columns in WashPost, NR, TNR, Weekly Stardard, etc.

I'll bet all the old parchment-scribes really hated everyone connected with the new-fangled printing press in much the same way.

Posted by RKU | December 19, 2007 12:25 PM

No prob, I can make relevant comments without actually reading the article. It's a special gift.

Posted by MattF | December 19, 2007 12:27 PM

Disagree with Joe Strummer above - Frum is actually at the higher end of the rightist food chain. When Rush or Sean say they think Scooter Libby is innocent , they usually are sincere -driven as they are by their prejudice and ideology.
However - if Frum says that he thinks Scooter is innocent, most people would interpret that differently - Frum "thinks" he is "innocent" -- so as to propel a certain pov. Does anyone really think he is being sincere? That's the point.
He's actually quite good at this - Incidentally, Frum is also very witty - His negative review of Al Franken's latest book was a classic.

Posted by Comment | December 19, 2007 12:28 PM

An idiot says: "aka MoeLarryAndJesus or LarryM"

I'm not LarryM, chuckles. Your bizarre man-crush is leading you into the paranoid realm.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 19, 2007 12:28 PM

Frum is an absolute nut and a hypocrite, no disagreement there. However, I still do not get the netroots undifferentiated crusade against the think tank world.

(1) It simply ignores commentary from the foreign policy community that was skeptical or critical of the Iraq War -- see, e.g., Walt and Mearsheimer, An Unnecessary War, FP Jan/Feb 2003. (2) It equates -- typically by selectively quoting a single line or consideration of longer piece -- folks who thought that Saddam was a problem and analyzed what might be done (including war) with neocons who were hell bent on a war that was justified by lies and distortions and without any adequate planning for the aftermath whatsoever. And (3) Inflates the the importance of the chattering class well beyond reality.

Bush and his cohort drove this war and a supine Congress let it happen because of 9/11, Vietnam and Democratic opposition to the original Persian Gulf War. That dynamic would have played out whether Pollack wrote a book or not.

My only guess as to why otherwise level-headed bloggers like Matthew have taken this issue on as a crusade is that they read these experts (unlike the vast majority), were persuaded by those who concluded that the war was a good idea and are angry as a result. If I am right, fair enough. But it doesn't mean that the entire community is worthless and corrupt.

(As an aside, I place in a different category the attempted re-writing of history by Holbrooke, Bill Clinton and others. They are simply lying now for political purposes, which is scuzzy but not particularly surprising. As one of the comments to the Holbrooke post states, however, it does not mean that HRC is a neocon at heart. I say that as an Obama supporter.)

Posted by Chunche | December 19, 2007 12:31 PM

No, I'm not Jim K or MoeLarryand esus.

Actually, I'm not a huge fan of Moe, not because of the lack of civility but because of where it is aimed. He has a bug up his ass about the religious right. There is a lot bad you can say about the religious right, but, contrary to what many commenters here seem to believe, they are less implicated in the current madness than most political factions (deeply inplicated, yes, but then so are most of our political factions, right and left). He also trolls a lot on Ross' site, which bugs me, as Ross, for all his many faults and wrongheadedness, really doesn't merit the rudeness and incivility that so many people have earned. Nor do most of his commenters; the raving right wing loons and spineless apologists for the Dems seem to camp out here, while Ross seems to attract some of the more polite and reasonable social cons. Because of this, you guys would hardly recognize me if you read my comments on that site.

Posted by LarryM | December 19, 2007 12:33 PM

The really asinine thing about this article is that Frum was too lazy to find any good pull quotes that actually illustrated his point, and he was too lazy to actually address the points made in his pull quotes.

I often get annoyed at the tone and hyper-partisanship at sites like DKos and Eschaton. It's not hard to find examples on liberal blogs of unfair and histrionic criticism of the Democratic foreign policy establishment. But what comes across clearly in Frum's piece is that these people can't handle criticism at all. They expect deference to their credentials and experience, but much of their writing is logically unsound and consists primarily of long-winded excuses and rationalizations for politically expeditious policies and lend them a veneer of wonky credibility.

To hell with that. I'd love to have a liberal internationalist foreign policy establishment that spends time studying complex issues and publicly advocating a prudent course of action. Such people do, in fact, exist. But they get much less media exposure than the hacks whose raison d'etre is to dress up a candidate's pre-existing political agenda in official jargon. Count me on the side of the people who make rude comments about Michael O'Hanlon.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 19, 2007 12:42 PM

The really asinine thing about this article is that Frum was too lazy to find any good pull quotes that actually illustrated his point, and he was too lazy to actually address the points made in his pull quotes.

I often get annoyed at the tone and hyper-partisanship at sites like DKos and Eschaton. It's not hard to find examples on liberal blogs of unfair and histrionic criticism of the Democratic foreign policy establishment. But what comes across clearly in Frum's piece is that these people can't handle criticism at all. They expect deference to their credentials and experience, but much of their writing is logically unsound and consists primarily of long-winded excuses and rationalizations for politically expeditious policies and lend them a veneer of wonky credibility.

To hell with that. I'd love to have a liberal internationalist foreign policy establishment that spends time studying complex issues and publicly advocating a prudent course of action. Such people do, in fact, exist. But they get much less media exposure than the hacks whose raison d'etre is to dress up a candidate's pre-existing political agenda in official jargon. Count me on the side of the people who make rude comments about Michael O'Hanlon.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 19, 2007 12:42 PM

I don't see Frum's piece as a hit on Yglesias. He's almost welcoming Yglesias as a future member of the Foreign Policy Community (which is true, in 15 years, Yglesias will be a respected member of the "establishment" FPC -- we all get old and successful).

Actally, Frum is usually an excellent, trenchant writer. This piece meanders, stops to smell the flowers, calls Walt and Mearshiemer modern day McCarthy's, and then and goes nowhere.

Posted by Ikram | December 19, 2007 12:43 PM

Pretty much OT:
When I try to view Atrios today in Firefox (latest version), I get gibberish characters filling the screen. This has never happened before today. The site is fine in IE7.
any idea why this could be?

Posted by guyx | December 19, 2007 12:45 PM

Apologies for the double post. I blame The Man.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 19, 2007 12:47 PM

Frum was lazy - that article was not his best work. He's prbably exhausted by having to engage in so many meme wars at one time.

But you have to give him credit - While everyone knows that his "concern" for others is bs, he still managaged to get away with pretending to be concerned with a serious policy journal.

As a Candian and a neocon - Frum's bold attack on "unpatriotic conservatives" was quite a stunt.

No one would take any American seriously if they moved to Ontario one day and started attacking Stockwell Day and his followers as anti-Canadians or Canadian hating rightists.

Yet - Frum managed to pull off something similar in this country and be taken seriously by rivals and medua. His book about Bush was filled with a number of howlers that no one in the mainstream media called him on too.

If a liberal blogger like Matt of Josh tried to pretend to be concerned about Instapundit or Malikin or Frum, they would not be able to get away with it - It would be laughed at.

But Frum gets away with that kind of thing, albeit in a limited way.

Posted by Comment | December 19, 2007 12:56 PM

Traffic on participatory conservative sites like Free Republic and Red State has plunged, and as this election cycle opens, one senses greater energy and sees more comments on big liberal blogsites like TalkingPointsMemo.com and the WashingtonMonthly.com than on their conservative counterparts.

Does David Frum think TalkingPointsMemo has comments?

Posted by washerdreyer | December 19, 2007 1:06 PM

Frum went to Brown University and Yale Law School, both in the US. His mother, Barbara Frum, was an American citizen, and his children are too. He is now in the process of obtaining American citizensip. So his US connections are not shallow.

But in a remark reported in Jeffrey Simpson's book "Star-spangled Canadians", Frum said that he had no intention of becoming and American, as citizenship was not something you change like shirts.

Obviously, he's decided to change his shirt.

Posted by Comment-Reponse | December 19, 2007 1:12 PM

For some reason, Frum's argument for the enduring nature of the Foreign Policy Community reminded me a lot of Andy Sipowitz's comment that New York City has never had a shortage of whores.

Posted by Don Williams | December 19, 2007 1:19 PM

You know something is happening when Mr. "Axis of Evil" writes this.

Posted by JJ | December 19, 2007 1:30 PM

RKU's Marxian analysis really is part of the picture here. A technological shift in media production threatens the position of professional commentators and think tank "scholars" and increasingly empowers the broader chattering classes. While this is definitely good for democracy, I don't celebrate it in the spirit of populist triumphalism. It's just a fact of socioeconomic history.

Posted by AJ | December 19, 2007 1:32 PM

Barbara Frum was a famous CBC presenter - Very highly regarded. Frum's dad was a developer in Canada. Nothing wrong with being Canadian. Indeed Conrad Black probably wishes he never relinquished his citizenship.

David Frum is definately one of the smartest guys at NRO - But his presumptuous attack on "unpatriotic conservatives" was just ludicrous. A couple of years at Brown or Yale? Come on!

Posted by Comment | December 19, 2007 1:38 PM

re Star Spangled Canadians - Maybeb Frum's Canadian "shirt" was a bit like Mushareff's "second skin" (his military uniform).

Incidentally - Frum would be a good host for a cable show. MSNBC should fire Tucker Carlson and give Frum a show with an open neocon edge. It would be good business decision. Frum would elevate the debate over Tucker-levels and as abonus he would give Chris Matthews agita. That would be a blessing.

Liberals benefit too - having foils like Frum is much better than having all these self hating liberals in the media yaking all the time about John Edwards haircut or Matthews hatred of Hillary.

Posted by Comment | December 19, 2007 1:51 PM

It was definitely unfocused, even for Frum, but I think the weirdest part was where he was contrasting the desire for Dems to get elected and the desire for moving Dems to the left.

I don't think it even occured to him that a lot of Dems don't need to "triangulate" to win elections, and that the bloggers' main goal is proving that by helping progressive-slash-liberal candidates get nominated and get elected.

That's pretty bizarre, considering all that really consists of is taking a cue from the SoCons, but there you go.

As for the FPC stuff, one guy saying the sky is blue and another guy saying the sky is red doesn't make the damned thing purple, now, does it?

Posted by Demosthenes | December 19, 2007 2:41 PM

You mean calling Ivo Daalder an idiot over at TPM was not acceptable?

Meanwhile, he has Zionist thugs like "Bar Kochba" and "Davai" posting over there - and the rest of the posters calling for them to be banned - while he's banned me for "despising Israel" and "being eliminationist". (An aside: what the fuck is "eliminationist", anyway? Is that like "Israel should be wiped off the map" - which nobody - including Ahmadinejad - ever said?)

Cry me a river, Josh Marshall, you hypocritical POS.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 19, 2007 3:28 PM

Wow. When one is forced to lean on Joe Klein for support, the argument is lost.

Call it a corollary to Godwin's Law.

Posted by Jamey | December 19, 2007 3:43 PM

I think the netroots disagrees within its ranks all the time; we do share an anger at the facile consensus or groupthink of the MSM and of many foreign policy experts, and this anger gets the most attention. Our internal arguments will be invisible to anyone who relies on Frum's account for an understanding of liberal blogging. He paints with such a broad brush in his critique of the netroots and in his defense of the foreign policy intellectual establishment that one senses he would prefer that his readers not actually read and judge left-wing blogs for themselves.

Posted by jason | December 19, 2007 3:56 PM

The irony (and, in a strange sort of backwards way, a partial vindication of one portion of Frum's hateful screed), is that, for all of the bashing of the FPE on "progressive" blogs, most "progressives" are unwilling to question the basic assumptions of that same FPE.

So how does that (partially) vindicate Frum's analysis? The level of anger displayed,though MORE than justified, does seem a bit much coming from people who merely favor a kinder, gentler hegemony. I mean, it's true, actually, that the "sober, responsible" hegemonists favored the Iraq fiasco. The fact that they were proven wrong in retrospect doesn't justify the level of anger expressed.

What DOES justify that level of anger is the whole monsterous hegemonic enterprise to begin with. But sadly even on "progressive" blogs like this one, people like myself who suggest that the United States has zero legitimate interests in the middle east at all and should withdraw completely and immediately are shouted down.

Posted by LarryM | December 19, 2007 4:17 PM

Frum is something Henry Miller used to wipe off his shoe. A worthless little bug (a.k.a. a vuntz)someone put a suit and tie on...sat down at a desk and called "a thinker." It's not even that he's got nothing to say- a lot of people don't. It's that there is no Frum anymore than there's a 1/2 inch bug ballerina pirouetting in a dung heap.

Posted by Trevor | December 19, 2007 4:18 PM

LarryM writes: "I'm not a huge fan of Moe, not because of the lack of civility but because of where it is aimed. He has a bug up his ass about the religious right. There is a lot bad you can say about the religious right, but, contrary to what many commenters here seem to believe, they are less implicated in the current madness than most political factions (deeply inplicated, yes, but then so are most of our political factions, right and left). He also trolls a lot on Ross' site, which bugs me, as Ross, for all his many faults and wrongheadedness, really doesn't merit the rudeness and incivility that so many people have earned. Nor do most of his commenters; the raving right wing loons and spineless apologists for the Dems seem to camp out here, while Ross seems to attract some of the more polite and reasonable social cons."

Then I guess we've had very different experiences there. I don't mind Ross, generally, though I find his determination to ignore Iraq annoying. Some of his "polite and reasonable social cons" are pure racist torture-loving wackaloons, though, and I'll be incivil with those creatures all day long. There are several who post there who think George Allen got a bad rap, for example.

And I plead guilty to despising the religious right. I think you greatly underestimate the degenerating effect they're having on this country, too. I won't label you a "troll" over that disagreement, though.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 19, 2007 4:21 PM

Oh, and Richard, you're taking my prior statement more than a little out of context. My point, ultimately, is that Clinton is murderous slime either way, sincere hawk or not.

Posted by LarryM | December 19, 2007 4:22 PM

Moe,

On the troll issue, I think BOTH of us are capable of "constructive" posts, and trolling, depending upon mood and/or the quality of the post that we are responding to. Some posts/comments/issues INVITE trolling. There is nothing wrong with trolling under the right circumstances.

I do think that SOME of your targets over at Ross' place don't merit that treatment (some do). And because of that, you sometimes come off looking like an ass over there. Of course, I'm sure that many of the commenters here would say the same thing about me.

More generally, we do clearly differ regarding the extent to which the religious right has been problematic, but this is off topic enough already, so another time.

Posted by LarryM | December 19, 2007 4:29 PM

Congratulations. I think this officially makes you a DFH.

Posted by flory | December 19, 2007 6:34 PM

It is surreal that having read this entry earlier in the day I heard both MY and Frum on Marketplace tonight.

Posted by crack | December 19, 2007 8:27 PM

Jim Keane,

Fair enough. My apologies for accusing you of saying things you didn't say.

LarryM,

My apologies for calling you Jim Keane

Posted by Mark Adams | December 19, 2007 10:39 PM

Wilfed Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Posted by Nicholas Yglesias | December 20, 2007 6:05 AM

complain about bad matters, whether or not bad manners

He should have attacked your sloppy writing and your refusal to correct obvious, glaring, comical mistakes in your posts.

Posted by jim | December 20, 2007 10:25 AM