The funny thing about the broadside KC Johnson fired in my direction about two months ago (yes, I’m finally getting around to it) is how noncommittal it is. Sometimes his defense is solid, other times not so much. For instance, urging Duke to conduct an “impartial investigation” may not “strike [him] as the response of someone unwilling to engage in ‘critical self-reflection’,” but the usual idea of self-reflection is that it’s done by, you know, the self, not a committee. What’s weakest, though, is his blustering offense. There’s an attack on my blogging ethic that looks strong but turns out to be largely illusory, and at the end of the post there are some strong words about a number of things I’ve written and one thing I failed to do. It has all the makings of a counterattack except for the actual attack. He’s left it up to the reader to figure out exactly what I’ve done wrong, and as a reader myself I’m happy to oblige.
After connecting the dots, it looks like the unspoken complaint behind all that vehemence is that I’ve been terribly unfair to KC Johnson. And I thought it was about me! Or, if not, it was about students who were hounded by an unethical prosecutor and betrayed by their professors. But no, when Johnson strikes back at my criticism, the issue that comes up again and again is how harsh and unfair I’ve been to him. It’s an unseemly complaint, especially coming from a man who regularly puts other people down for acting like they’re “the victim.” So he writes around it. In the past he’s played up what he sees as an unreasonable discrepancy between my criticism of him (too strong) and my criticism of other more villainous figures (too mild). This time he invokes the whole lacrosse-case catastrophe in its tried-and-true Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW) packaging — students railroaded by a rogue DA while a rush-to-judgment faculty thanks protestors, etc. In relation to the points of mine he was responding to, it’s like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. But that tableau has always been a weapon, and he’s used it so many times against his enemies that it really has become little more than a flyswatter. It seems that at this point no purpose is too trivial or self-serving to give it a whack. That makes me feel just fine about criticizing him so harshly.
Before I get into Johnson’s weirdly self-centered way of dealing with criticism here’s a quick and more current example of his habit of flirting suggestively with facts and issues without taking a stand. The bulk of his post about “‘Diversity’ and Duke Admissions” is a table of data collected at Duke, from an academic study relating to affirmative action. Johnson takes no position on the significance of the numbers in his handy table, but he does urge readers to “Recall that under federal law… private universities (such as Duke) that receive federal funds cannot use racial quotas in admissions policies.” Given a study attempting to shed some empirical light on the subtleties of a complex and thorny issue, it’s impressive how Johnson whittles it down to some “quite striking totals” that he leaves uninterpreted and a mealy-mouthed suggestion that Duke is breaking the law. It’s a textbook example of partisan hackery and also a warm-up for the exposé on Duke’s Campus Culture Initiative (CCI) that he recently finished. He has a cache of documents that he apparently picked up on the sly, and he’s been grinding them through the mill of his willful ignorance. Every now and then he packs the result into a little poison pill marked “in other words” or “Translation:” or “i.e.” (1). The CCI warrants close, critical scrutiny and the assumptions about diversity that informed it should absolutely be fair game for debate. Johnson has nothing constructive or intelligent to contribute on either level, though.
What Johnson writes about the CCI might, conceivably, have some real-world impact. What he writes about me, on the other hand, is inconsequential, and Johnson seems to put even less thought into it than he puts into the hatchet jobs he does on the bigwigs of the so-called “Group of 88.” It’s reflexive and so, I think, quite revealing. Since my post goes on way too long, I’ve divided it into sections. Hopefully that will make it easier to scan and to browse. And I’ve moved some of the digressions into notes (2).
If some people jumped off a cliff, would KC Johnson end up with a broken leg?
According to Wiktionary, ad hominem is “a fallacious objection to an argument or factual claim by appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim,” or, in plain English, “an attempt to argue against an opponent’s idea by discrediting the opponent himself,” and there’s no denying that KC Johnson did exactly that when he ended a comment rebutting an earlier post of mine by pointing out that, back in 2006, bad things happened at Duke and I was silent. Our exchange is embedded in a sprawling controversy that’s relentlessly focussed on people’s characteristics and beliefs, so a little ad hominem is really no big deal. Still, when he gets around to really unloading on me, it’s entertaining to see him reiterate the same point about my silence, not once but twice, in order to show how hypocritical it was of me to accuse him of ad hominem in the first place.
Finally, Prof. Zimmerman’s new material in the post faults me for engaging in ad hominem attacks against him and the Group of 88, by writing that the DA was trying to “railroad three innocent students… [while] Prof. Zimmerman… was silent about their fate….”
I note that Prof. Zimmerman—while labeling my statement “lazy and cowardly,” an approach that “is especially effective with the thoughtless and bigoted,” part of a seeming tendency to write “bullshit” (some people might consider that an ad hominem attack!)—doesn’t in any way challenge the factual accuracy of what I said: [Zimmerman was silent, etc. etc.].
In those two paragraphs of fussing and fuming it seems like Johnson is criticizing me in no uncertain terms, but really he isn’t. It’s a collection of facts and references delivered in a tone of righteous indignation — it puts me in a bad light, for sure — but the closest he comes to actual criticism is the weasel-worded suggestion that “some people might consider that an ad hominem attack!” Is he one of those people? Does he really believe that it’s ad hominem when I describe things he’s written as bullshit? Is he saying that I’m wrong when I “fault[ him] for engaging in ad hominem attacks”? What does it matter that I haven’t “challenge[d] the factual accuracy of what [he] said” about the circumstances three years ago? What does it say about me that I didn’t speak up for those students? And what does my silence back then have to do with anything that I’d put on the table in my post? I doubt that he’d deny making a countercharge of ad hominem, but otherwise those are all open questions, and he’s free to accept or disavow any answer you come up with.
This kind of writing, full of implication and insinuation with few if any explicit statements about the meaning or significance or seriousness of things, is not at all unusual on DIW. The folks who read their prejudice and spite into it get a lot out of it, and I really am convinced that it’s “an approach that ‘is especially effective with the thoughtless and bigoted.’” I’ve explained that opinion at length. Johnson can take it personally if he wants, but to suggest that it’s ad homimen is ridiculous — the point of it is not at all to direct attention away from his writing and onto his person. It’s possible that he’s intentionally sending ill-defined signals that are open to all sorts of interpretations. My assumption, though, is that he has a fairly specific message in mind and he’s beating around the bush. And whatever his intentions are, his failure to be upfront while writing about me is my license to interpret. Same with the ridiculous stories he’s concocted about my criticism to make himself look good.
I am put in my place
In the post that set the stage for our little war of words, I described a story he’d passed on about Karla Holloway as a foolish rumor. She emailed me and called it “an absolute and patent falsehood.” Adding that quote to my post was enough to prompt Johnson to leave his first comment here in about a year and a half. He starts it by urging Holloway to drop by DIW and air her “‘views’” there. No doubt he’d be thrilled if she took him up on the invitation, but mostly he’s grandstanding — the scare quotes give it away. In the rest of the comment he addresses a couple of points I’d made about an interview with him in the Duke Chronicle and then, apropos of nothing in particular, turns back to 2006 and my silence.
Two other points. Prof. Zimmerman claims that I used a “moderator’s veto” regarding his comments. It is not clear to me when I did so; I have regularly posted his comments at DIW. Indeed, I have publicly pointed out that, as the Group of 88 has consistently refused to defend their actions in and positions about the case, his stance as a public apologist for the Group is an important one, in that it allows neutral observers at least some insight into what might be the Group’s thinking.
Second, Prof. Zimmerman asks why I did not engage in “critical self-reflection” after a hostile Chronicle letter from Jim Coleman. While, as I noted at the time, I was curious why Prof. Coleman had chosen not to raise his rather harsh criticisms in any of the 21 personal exchanges (including a lengthy interview) I had with him before fall 2007, he and I had a lengthy email exchange following his letter. To the best of my knowledge, Prof. Coleman has never cited one specific item in either DIW or the book to corroborate his claims; he did not do so in the private email exchange, either. I should also note that he did not endorse my subsequent call for a Coleman Committee-style inquiry into how the faculty responded to the case.
Finally, a general point: this case featured a District Attorney violating myriad procedures in an attempt to railroad three innocent students at Prof. Zimmerman’s own institution. During the time those students were in harm’s way, Prof. Zimmerman, to the best of my knowledge, was silent about their fate, while 88 of his colleagues signed a public statement which (even in the peculiar claim of Charles Piot that it referred only to protesters at a March 27, 2006 campus gathering) thanked protesters who had presumed the students’ guilt. To the best of my knowledge, none of the signatories of this document have ever publicly apologized for its issuance; the two signatories who privately apologized subsequently retracted their apologies.
That final paragraph is what he cites and then rehashes in the first passage I quoted. His remark after that is, “Somehow, Prof. Zimmerman’s disinclination to challenge that assertion doesn’t surprise me.” I have to wonder, first of all, what kind of fool he takes me for, and then more to the point, what’s to challenge? It’s no secret that I was disengaged from what was happening on campus when the lacrosse case broke, since I said so in my first post about the case. I don’t blame anyone for wondering what, exactly, was going on with me when the shit hit the fan, and the main thing is simple enough — a last-ditch push to finish my doctorate. But there’s never been a good reason for me to dwell on personal details that have nothing to do with the case. There’s nothing I need to explain away or be excused for.
Putting people in their place is a constant and ongoing project on DIW, and those three paragraphs are a pretty good sample of the approaches Johnson has taken in my case. Rebuttal is one option, either of my criticism or, more likely, a pale imitation of it. The question he answered in his second point isn’t the one I asked but something more like, “how did you justify it to yourself when you shrugged off Coleman’s criticism?” (3) Another approach is to package me with the “Group,” which at this point is just a matter of applying “Group apologist” as an epithet (or maybe it’s a title). Johnson must think he’s identified one of my key characteristics with respect to the case, and the only purpose that’s served by doggedly sticking the label to my name is to influence the way my criticism is read. Isn’t there’s a Latin term for that?
That load of “factual accuracy” seemed to come out of left field when Johnson dropped it on me, but now I see that it also fits into a pattern that goes back to his earliest responses to my criticism. It’s clever the way he slips it in as a “general point,” though, and also clever to say nothing about why it’s there or what it’s supposed to signify. There must be several plausible ways to interpret it. It looked to me like an invitation to pass judgment that Johnson extended without risking an opinion on what that judgment should be. Furthermore, putting the whole weight of the scandal behind it struck me as both excessive and petty. So my first reaction was to call it lazy and cowardly — not, in retrospect, a very insightful way to put it, but I don’t think it was out of line, either. When he was challenged in his comment thread he finally managed to narrow down the implications. The business about my silence in the face of a railroading DA, it turns out, “does shine some light on [my] priorities.” It’s still up to you to figure out what’s being illuminated, but he’s left some pretty good clues.
Whatever I say, all it means is that I’m mean
In fact, now I can see that he’s been questioning my priorities for a long time, with one thing firmly in mind — my criticism of him. At first the main focus was certain harsh terms I’d used to describe DIW. In his December 2007 post about me and the “Group of 88 rehab tour,” he spends a lot of time wondering how I “reach[ed my] conclusion about the “insidiously polarizing,” “irrational,” and “anti-academic” [nature] of DIW.” He’d already suggested in an email that those descriptions might really apply to me. In the post he tried them out on a few others who, he seemed to think, deserved the harsh treatment much more than he did. First the potbangers — not only did I neglect to apply the same harsh terms, I even looked “benevolently” on their motives (but then I wasn’t criticizing Johnson’s motives, was I?). And I didn’t apply them to Clare Potter, despite her comments about “students from Zimmerman’s own university [that] were demonstrably false and arguably defamatory.” Zeroing in on a passage from a review of his book that I’d quoted with approval, he wrote in a comment on my blog that “Some people might consider calling members of the faculty ‘crackpots’ to be ‘insidiously polarizing,’ ‘irrational,’ and ‘anti-academic’.” So true, and they’d all be hacks! In context the word is completely innocuous, so once again weasel-wording is key. Finally, he asks whether I’d apply the same three terms to the lacrosse players’ defense team. I wouldn’t — unlike Johnson, I know the difference between a defense attorney and a critic.
In all the attention he gives to those noxious terms of mine, his overriding concern is who they’re applied to. There’s no sign in what he writes that I might be using them to mean something — it’s as if I picked them out at random just to make him look bad (I didn’t, by the way, and I think they’ve held up well). If they don’t have any meaning when they’re applied to him, they don’t have to have any meaning when they’re applied to anyone else, either. So, for instance, while I do fault the potbangers for their definitive contribution to all the divisiveness that followed, there was nothing insidious about them — their protest was blatantly provocative, not to mention foolish and self-defeating. Johnson acknowledges my willingness to criticize the potbangers as a welcome development, but beyond that bare fact he notices nothing in all that I wrote about them except the unfairness of it, to him.
At the end of our first email exchange he did some weasel-worded questioning of my “veracity.” I’d left a comment on Claire Potter’s blog agreeing that he deserved the turkey award she’d given him (it was Thanksgiving). He found the comment hard to reconcile with the rash claim I’d made in one email that I wasn’t describing him in unflattering terms, I was describing his blog that way. A couple of weeks later I put up a long post that portrays him as the “other prosecutor” in the lacrosse case. “Most people,” he points out, without pinning himself down one way or another, would say that “suggesting that someone [is]… scarcely more principled than Nifong is describing that person in unflattering terms.” So they would — I found the irony irresistible, and maybe I got carried away. But my main point was that, writing about the situation at Duke, Johnson was acting much more like a prosecutor than an analyst, so his blog was long on incrimination and very short on insight. He chose not to notice the analogy but instead to dwell on the unflattering nature of the criticism, not directly but by way of an apparent conflict with one prickly line in a prickly email exchange. That, I think, says a lot about his priorities, namely that creating the impression he’s suffered abuse ranks very high — well above explaining or defending his criticism.
It’s more of the same when he takes up ad hominem in his post a couple months ago — he sets aside the primary meaning of the term and instead plays up the connotation of an unfair personal attack. He seems to imply that there are three things I wrote that are “ad hominem attacks” but only one has any traction. It’s true that there’s some irony to the way I describe his “pure ad hominem” as “a lazy and cowardly response.” What I was calling attention to, though, is the “general point” at the end of his comment, which willfully shifts the focus away from my criticism and onto my actions and character. Ad hominem is exactly the right term to describe that move. The characterization I threw back may have been petty, but it wasn’t taking the place of a more substantive response, since his point didn’t warrant such a response in the first place.
I’ll give full credit to Johnson for one thing — he’s found the greatest way ever to duck criticism. It’s especially suited to narcissists with a persecution complex. All you have to do is notice nothing except how inappropriately harsh your critic has been to you. If that’s the only issue, the counterattack is dead easy. You skim off the tone and a few unflattering implications and leave the rest alone — in this case, he doesn’t even have to read all this verbose stuff. The only trick is that you can’t be upfront about what you’re doing or you’ll look like a whiny lightweight.
Anyway, the most recent message about my priorities is not how dare Prof. Zimmerman not speak up for those students being railroaded, it’s how dare Prof. Zimmerman criticize me, KC Johnson (another excellent reason for me to keep it up). This message isn’t reserved for me, of course. When he and Stuart Taylor responded to the Coleman-Kasibhatla letter with their own letter to the Chronicle, their general reaction was that the criticism coming from Coleman is puzzling. You can still see the puzzlement in the quotes above. Why had Coleman “chosen not to raise his rather harsh criticisms in any of the 21 personal exchanges,” etc. etc.? Why me? Why now? (4) That’s a natural reaction — if I was in their shoes I would probably have felt the same way — but as the basis for a reply it’s pretty feeble, especially when the critic you’re answering is one of your primary sources of credibility.
A most peculiar form of weasel-speak
There are a few vague, euphemistic adjectives that Johnson habitually uses when more precise ones are called for. It’s another way he has of not saying what he means, and sometimes he’ll even make a show of it. For instance, he obviously thinks I did something pretty manipulative to the text of my earlier post. But when it comes down to it, the best he can do, or the best he wants to do, is to show how very difficult it is to find the right word.
Prof. Zimmerman responded to those comments by eliminating his allegation against me from his post, without indicating that he has altered his post—an … unusual … approach to blogging.
The gesture with the ellipsis only makes sense if the word in the middle is suggestive — it wouldn’t work to write that I’d taken a … dishonest … approach to blogging. With “unusual” it’s like a line from a B-movie. We have … unusual … ways of making you tahhhhlk, Mr. Bond!. When Johnson starts a more recent post by alluding to the “two … intriguing … items” he’s going to critique, the impression is more of hands rubbing together in anticipation. Her Majesty’s forthcoming visit to my charming little island offers such … intriguing … possibilities, Mr. Bond! Unless it’s tongue-in-cheek, and I don’t see any sign that it is, this is an awfully flaky affectation to be dropping into a supposedly no-nonsense analysis. If insinuation wasn’t so constant on DIW it would stick out like a sore thumb.
The words “unusual” and “peculiar” are vastly overused on DIW. Like my approach to blogging, my decision to criticize Johnson after being silent is also unusual. The last post I wrote is about an “unusual take on the legacy of the lacrosse case.” (5) Look back at Johnson’s “general point” and you’ll see that a certain claim made by Charles Piot isn’t far-fetched or questionable, it’s peculiar. Search DIW for “peculiar” and you’ll find a post about “The Times’ Peculiar Corrections Policy,” three posts about Peculiar Motions by Duke and Nifong, and a couple more about the Herald Sun’s Peculiar Policies.
It’s not that precise characterization is beyond his grasp. Much of his writing about Mike Nifong is fairly direct — the reference to “a rogue DA [who] railroaded three innocent students” is a description that takes a stand — and so is his latest harangue about Selena Roberts. Perhaps that kind of writing is as common on DIW as the vague and insinuating kind. (6) I really don’t know, but for the record, I’m not claiming that Johnson is never forthright. When he’s not, though, it seems to be a matter of choice — there’s nothing I can see about all those unusual and peculiar things that kept him from finding more precise and descriptive terms.
There’s a schoolmarmish quality to the way Johnson lapses into euphemism and also to his apparent aversion to strong language. (7) When he was carping about Stuart Rojstaczer’s crackpot crack, Johnson remarked that he “never used such a term to describe any faculty member at Duke.” It’s a good thing, too, if he’s really as clueless as he seems about the word’s connotations. When Debrah called attention to one of my posts late last year, he commented that I “often employ[] expletives in [my] posts” — a prim allusion to “bullshit,” though the word isn’t actually an expletive (it’s not ad hominem, either). Expletives are meaningless exclamations. It’s true that the word bullshit can be used that way, but most of the time it means something. I’ve spelled out what I mean by it, anyway (not that mere explanation will stop Johnson from acting as if I’m just flinging a dirty word in his direction). After a few years worth of hints and allegations about the moral degeneracy and dangerality of a certain contingent of professors, Johnson has shown that its quite easy to telegraph crude judgments without using any crude language. So while I assume that his sense of propriety is genuine, in practice it comes across as a way to avoid taking any responsibility for his messages he’s sending.
If he doesn’t say what he means, does he mean what he says?
Because the real problem with all that vagueness and indirection is clearest if there’s more at stake, I’m going to set aside the little squabble between Johnson and me and look at one of the most inflammatory elements of his “Group of 88” crusade — the connection he draws between those professors and the potbangers’ “Castrate” banner. It’s couched in an artfully indirect formula that goes something like this: “The 88 “said ‘thank you’ to protesters who, among other things, had carried ‘CASTRATE’ banners….” (there was only one such banner, so that time he slipped in some exaggeration). It looks to me like that slogan was not widely reported at the time of the protests, so the only legitimate connections that can be drawn to people who weren’t on hand to see it are oblique ones — naiveté or failure to investigate, for instance.
If Johnson wants the linkage to be part of his case against the 88, he should be able to translate it into more specific claims relating the professors to that particularly foolish and revolting banner. With that in mind, in my “other prosecutor” post I raised some questions about what he thought those professors knew about the banner and at what level they approved of it. The questions were rhetorical but Johnson ostentatiously took them up anyway. “My answer to these questions is a straightforward one,” he says, and then proceeds to answer none of them: “I believe… that the 88 signatories to the statement… meant what they said, and said what they meant.” Their “thank you” was unqualified, so it applied to anyone labelled “protestor.” Johnson, unlike those foolish signatories, carefully avoids saying what he means. In this case he may not have much choice, because when he recites the lines about how those professors thanked protestors who displayed a “Castrate” banner, it seems that all he means is that they can be criticized for thanking protestors who displayed a “Castrate” banner. They’re extreme left-wing race/class/gender zealots, after all — what more do you need to know?
When pictures of that banner surfaced months after the protest, Johnson put the image to work straightaway as a blunt instrument, handy for rhetorical thuggery. For it to be evidence and not just an ignorant tool there would have to be some effort to put it into context, ideally an effort that grew out of genuine curiosity about how it fit into the protest and why it emerged into the lacrosse-case discussion only after such a long delay. But the culture-war polemic is an agenda-driven enterprise that has little if any use for curiosity. Without any interest in things that don’t serve the narrowly-defined case at hand, we should at least be able to expect a self-appointed prosecutor to be forthright about the charges, and that includes making specific and meaningful connections between the accused and the evidence of their wrongdoing. I can’t point to any authority to back me up on this, but it seems like a minimal standard to meet if you’re going to hold people who aren’t public figures up to public scorn.
Moderator’s veto?! Of course not! That apologist leaves such valuable comments!
The diatribe blasting me that Johnson posted on DIW is basically an expansion of the three paragraphs I quoted near the beginning of this post, with extra emphasis on my “serious allegation” that he once cut me off at the end of an exchange of comments. One thing — maybe the main thing — that provoked him to move the complaint from my comment thread to his blog was his mistaken impression that I’d just modified my post in order to misrepresent his position and cover my tracks (that’s my “… unusual … approach to blogging.”). He has a point about misrepresentation — it was cavalier of me to read his claim that “It is not clear to me when I did so” as “he doesn’t know,” and I should have changed the characterization when his position became, “To the best of my knowledge, I have cleared every comment.” But the update he objects to was added to the post on April 22, when I cleared his first comment. He left a couple more before he noticed the update on May 2. And my line about a moderator’s veto was never part of the post — it’s always been in the first comment.
I’ve written twice before about that exchange back in April 2008. Both times I made it clear that there’s no way for me to know for sure why my last comment didn’t appear — I have no argument with Johnson’s list of five conceivable explanations. But my experience fits a pattern. Two recent exchanges on DIW ended with Johnson posting what he had decided was the last word and then cutting off the commenter. In the second one, his parting shot was basically “thank you for making my point.” The subsequent comment — the one that wasn’t cleared — politely disagrees about having made Johnson’s point and then it highlights a factual error, debunking the revisionist theory Johnson had been building on it. Whatever reason Johnson had for not clearing that comment — there aren’t any good ones — the effect is to insure that his heavy-handed reinterpretation stands as the last word. That was my experience, as well, so I think that whether or not Johnson actually rejected my comment, I drew the right conclusion — Johnson is as manipulative in his moderating as he is in his reporting (I think that, rather than the lack of “college-level comprehension skills,” is what’s behind the confusion that Johnson addressed a few days ago with this bit of world-class condescension.) That’s not, as he seems to think, a claim that he has “a disinclination to debate [me],” it’s a claim that he’s disinclined to engage in what I would consider a worthwhile debate (I never claimed that my “viewpoint was excluded at DIW,” either — that’s just a straw man).
It’s funny how he reacted to the charge that he’d offed one of my comments — he started arguing that the things I’d written about the lacrosse case had value. Not in a complementary way, of course, but still, “[Zimmerman’s] stance as a public apologist for the Group is an important one, in that it allows neutral observers at least some insight into what might be the Group’s thinking” (he claimed that he’d made the point before — if so, I can’t find it). It’s hard to reconcile that line of reasoning with the extremely sparse attention he’s paid to my blog since I finished the first batch of posts about the case back in late 2007. (8) I’ve written about “Group members” Tim Tyson, Cathy Davidson, and William Chafe without, it seems, providing any insight worth taking note of. The same goes for my long pieces about Karla Holloway and Mark Anthony Neal, which would surely qualify as “apologia” in Johnson’s book. Maybe it’s only the half-dozen comments I left on DIW that provide insight. (9) The first one I left was useful to him, for sure, and in fact it’s the only thing I’ve written that elicited an informative response from him. Or it could be that he doesn’t direct his readers to my blog for insight because he knows that there are no longer any “neutral observers” reading his.
Fighting groupthink with bullshit
He found it useful to bring me and my comments up again, a few weeks later, when a commenter asked about whether groupthink was a problem on blogs. Johnson’s answer cites the value of my perspective in a somewhat more plausible way, though the answer still doesn’t reflect very well on him.
[Bauerlein’s law of group polarization] would apply, in theory, to any entity in which alternative views are excluded or silenced (one reason I am very careful not to discriminate on the basis of content in clearing comments, even if that means clearing comments very critical of me, such as those of the Group apologist, Prof. Zimmerman).
To see what’s going on in Johnson’s comments about my comments it helps to break them down into what’s said, what’s implied, and what’s left out entirely.
- Explicit. He clears my comments, and furthermore they’re “very critical” of him. In his post he gets a little more specific the insight my comments afford — I “play[] an important role in communicating the basic mindset of Group members.” I assume this is the essence of being what I most explicitly am, a “Group apologist,” though Johnson doesn’t exactly say so.
- Implied. What I’ve written has some value, since it provides “at least some insight.” But this isn’t on the strength of my arguments, because I’m nothing but an apologist, and for a group that deserves nothing but scorn. So I’m basically a specimen of a wrongheaded mindset who happens to be more communicative than others who share it (I have always treated Johnson as a specimen, too, so in that respect we’re even). (10)
- Left out. There’s no example of an insight that was gleaned from something I wrote. There’s no description of the kinds of insight that can or have been gleaned. There is no reference to any comment or argument I’ve made. There is, in short, absolutely nothing concrete to back up his claims. And he’s never explained how it is that I’m an apologist and not a critic.
What that tells me is that Johnson’s remarks about my important role are largely bullshit. The effort and attention goes, first of all, into the explicit message (he clears my comments) then into the implicit message (those comments have value). Add the two together and you have a handy little refutation of that odious charge I leveled at him: of course I clear Prof. Zimmerman’s comments, I wouldn’t deprive my readers of valuable insight, would I? Like a senile uncle or a man who’s protesting too much, he repeats the point about my (unintentional) public service in three successive comments and a post. While it’s worth repeating, it’s not worth substantiating, not even a little teeny-weeny bit. So what really matters here is making the right impression. Establishing that there’s some truth behind it isn’t worth the bother. If Harry G. Frankfurt is right that bullshit represents a “lack of connection to a concern with truth” while “making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say,” then Johnson’s priorities here are exactly what you’d expect from a bullshitter.
Johnson’s remark about groupthink and blogs is tangential to the topic he was supposedly addressing in a funny and revealing way. If he wanted to distance his blog from groupthink, presumably he’d point to critics who challenged his arguments in a way that sharpened them or broadened his perspective.(11) But no, he dredges up a mere apologist who has apparently never laid a glove on his analysis. I am, in fact, just another piece of evidence that Johnson has been dead right since the moment in April 2006 when he found a smoking gun covered with the fingerprints of 88 perfect offenders. That’s some priceless irony, and a fine illustration of the role alternative views play in DIW, which is to be ignored unless they’re fodder to be dismissed and attacked. So, if the message isn’t really about groupthink, what is it about? What he says outright is (a) he always clears my comments and (b) they are oh so critical of KC Johnson (and not, or instance, good or bad or sharp or dull or right or wrong). Those seven comments must have been quite a burden. The same goes for the three or so email queries I’ve sent him. (12) I would never have guessed that being a responsible demagogue was such a strain.
The victim game
One of the prefab criticisms that Johnson trots out most frequently is that so-and-so claims s/he is the victim in the case (in two recent posts, so-and-so has been first the Trinity Heights Action Committee and then Selena Roberts, in the past its been various “Group members” — Karla Holloway, for instance). With respect to my claim that he didn’t clear a comment of mine, he points out that it’s possible that “[Zimmerman] never wrote the comment, and is now presenting himself as the victim.” As a hypothetical I have no problem with that, but it’s still an indication of how ready he is to think in terms of “the victim.”
I don’t think it’s hard to understand how aggravating lacrosse-case-related complaints can be when they come from people who publicly prejudged the team’s guilt or who piled on with social and political agendas at the team’s expense. It’s fair to expect some awareness of the difference between being vilified in blogs and being charged with a felony and then thrown under the bus by the legal system and your own college. In a series of comments he recently left here, Michael Gustafson wrote about a group that undercut its credibility by “trying to use a narrow-focused presentation of the case to their advantage” without confronting its “big deals,” namely “rushes to judgment coupled with severely unethical behavior on the part of appointed and elected officials, fanned by a media unable to restrain itself from exploiting a story that was, in fact, too ‘good’ to be true.” The specifics don’t apply here, but Gus framed the general issue quite well. Johnson, on the other hand, doesn’t frame anything when he writes about how someone is claiming to be the victim. It’s just a cheap shot, reflexive if not envious.
Nobody writing about the lacrosse case has gotten more mileage out of victimization than Johnson. He’s made the lacrosse players into poster boys for a crusade — their victimization is not so much acknowledged or analyzed as it is enshrined. Johnson’s sensitivity to the injustice done to him is, in some contexts, dominant to the point of blotting out everything else. (13) The sense of victimization, which is generally an undercurrent and rarely forthright, is a great way to nurture grievance but it has nothing to contribute to rational criticism or debate — yet another indication of Johnson’s dismal priorities.
Afterthought: the May pile-on
Not long after Johnson said his piece about my criticism he took a fair amount of heat from both John in Carolina and Joan Foster — two people who are usually far friendlier to DIW than I am. I can’t resist commenting on a few things that came up in the pile-on.
The standout from John in Carolina is that he chose to call Johnson to the mat for “sliming” Wahneema Lubiano. Johnson had described an innocent passage in an interview as “[i]nformation about Lubiano’s drinking habits.” That’s typical of the way he reads anything written by a “Group of 88 stalwart” — like a drug-sniffing dog, he’s fixated on the search for incriminating evidence. John’s reaction is direct and cogent — “You took an innocent remark by Lubiano and used it to slime her at the outset of your post. A thoughtful person wouldn’t do such a thing.”
And yet, out of all the things Johnson has written about Lubiano, it’s odd to see this one singled out for such strong condemnation. It’s trivial compared to his casual suggestion that “she has used [her] position to rally opposition to her own institution’s students, the ‘perfect offenders’ whose conviction she believes will advance her pedagogical and ideological agenda” (my emphasis). That looks to me not so much like sliming as outright defamation. But we all have our sensitivities — I’m sure there are plenty of things that I’ve gotten irate about that seem silly to others (in this post, even, I bet).
Johnson also tangled with the indefatigable Joan Foster — in fact the two disputes bled into each other. Joan posted their correspondence to LieStoppers. Somewhere in the middle (would it be too much to ask for a little formatting?), he lumps her in with a collection of nefarious figures, including yours truly:
…at various points in the case, figures such as Bob Ashley, Duke administrators or Group of 88 members, and even Group apologists such as Charlie Piot and Robert Zimmerman have suggested that the opinions expressed in stray, vile, anonymous emails should be considered those of the authors of the blog on the case. I have consistently stated that this line of attack is patently unfair.
I agree with him — it’s a facile argument, and it’s unfair. Maybe that’s why he hears that particular argument whenever a critic turns their attention to his comment threads — he’s well practiced at construing things as unfair to him. Some of his critics might have claimed that his commenters’ opinions are simply echoes of his own, but I haven’t, and neither has Joan. Her complaint is about personal attacks against her that he’s cleared, despite his comment policy. Her point (as I see it, anyway) is not that Debrah’s caustic ravings represent Johnson’s opinion.
My angle on the DIW comments is that they are a window into his message, not his opinion. Knee-jerk ridicule is staple in his comment threads, and it often lapses into caricature and various shades of bigotry. The majority of these commenters are registering strong agreement with Johnson. Whether or not they share Johnson’s opinion is irrelevant. He’s had years to separate his message from their opinion and he’s made no effort to do so. Quite the opposite — at times he’s egged them on. But the real problem is more fundamental. Wonderland is a construction in black and white, so by design it caters to a knee-jerk mindset.
NOTES
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Johnson may well be right that “the CCI already had the answers to their questions, before even going through the motions of compiling the data,” or at least what they’d answered the fundamental questions without the data and all it added was some fine tuning. He’s approached his project in much the same way. That makes for a pretty good head-to-head comparison that shows in a nutshell why I’ve been so much more critical of Johnson than of the so-called “Group of 88.” On one hand, there’s an agenda-driven initiative that, based my experience of the school, connects to real people and real issues on a real campus, even if the connections are selective and self-serving and sloppy. On the other hand, there’s someone a few states away taking small-minded, vindictive potshots at the Wonderland he’s created just for that purpose, continuing a three-year-long record of treated the few people at Duke that he notices as either heroes or pawns. Fair or not, to me Johnson’s agenda-driven analysis is the more offensive of the two — it’s really no contest. (back)
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Like this one. (back)
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This is exactly why I wish the student interviewer in the Chronicle had raised the question. I already knew that the only answer I’d get would be a legalistic brick wall. (back)
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The three paragraphs of Taylor and Johnson’s response (it’s mostly Johnson’s, I think) to the Coleman-Kasibhatla letter boil down to this (my paraphrases in italics take a great deal of interpretive license, so make sure you read the real thing before you draw any conclusions):
- Why me? (but… but… I just said something nice about President Brodhead!)
- Why now? Also what seems like the most substantive response in the letter, that Taylor and Johnson had quoted the sections of the committee report that detailed the lacrosse team’s alcohol-ralated problems.
- The counterattack. First a mealy-mouthed line that lumps the surprise attackers from Duke with “defenders of the academic status quo.” Then a demogogic exercise in turning the tables by “invit[ing Coleman and Kasibhatla] to join us in calling for a comprehensive review… of the faculty’s response to the lacrosse case.” It’s a sincerity test that Coleman and I have both failed, and Johnson even feels that it gives him points for “critical self-reflection.” (back)
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The response from Taylor and Johnson points out a couple of unusual/peculiar things about the criticism Coleman and Kasibhatla dished out (the peculiar word choice is one sign that Johnson did the writing). It was, first of all, “peculiar” of Coleman to criticize them for misrepresenting his committee’s report when they quoted the relevant part in their book. Also, “it seems unusual to portray a book with more than 1,000 sourcenotes as based on a ‘tragic rush to judgment’ regarding faculty activists’ behavior.” Johnson got the wrong culprit, but his word choice isn’t so bad — the judgment in question was rendered in April 2006, before a book was in the works, so Johnson’s diligent effort to sourcenote his rush may be genuinely unusual. (back)
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Johnson’s sense that he’s nailed the extremist mindset of the “Group” means that he is sometimes much more forthright when he’s putting words in their mouth than when he’s speaking for himself. For instance, writing about the Campus Culture Initiative, he can distill the words of extremists down to forthright nuggets of bullshit (“Translation: Most male students at Duke are sexists”). The misplaced clarity is ironic but it shouldn’t be a surprise. One of Johnson’s most effective polemical techniques is to reduce “extremist” views to clear-cut caricatures. Another is to avoid taking stands that have to be defended. Together they keep the extremists in the hot seat and Johnson out of it. (back)
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Charles Piot put it well when he wrote that, compared to the DIW commentariat, Johnson “maintains a certain decorum.” (back)
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It’s my impression that Johnson leaves the actual reading of my blog up to Debrah, and that turns out to be a pretty good arrangement for all of us. From Johnson’s perspective the stuff I write is, I expect, either impenetrable or just annoying. It gives Debrah a way to feel useful. And it’s fine for me, too — if Johnson leaves comments I usually feel compelled to write some kind of response, but Debrah’s I can usually toss. (back)
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At the time Johnson wrote about the comments of mine that he’s “regularly posted” on his blog, he was referring to a grand total of 6 of them. The first 4 were in one thread. The fifth and last one I wrote for that thread is the one that never showed up. That experience, as I said, cured me of writing comments for DIW, aside from a couple of short tweaky ones nearly a year apart. So, of the 7 comments I’d written, 6 appeared online — 86%. More recently I posted a correction about those “unusual” blogging techniques Johnson accused me of. He felt compelled to note at the time that it “was cleared by me—as has been, to my knowledge, every comment Prof. Zimmerman has made at DIW.” Did I ever suggest that he systematically rejected my comments, or in fact that he rejected more than one of them? No. But some of those comments are very critical of him, so let’s give the man credit — he’s done the right thing with 7 of them, and it’s a good thing he didn’t have to OK that other one because it was really mean. (back)
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Another way to say this (that Johnson and I treat each other as speciments) is that we treat each other as part of the problem, not part of a debate — as “Group apologist,” what I write is symptomatic of the mindset behind the group, while to me, Johnson is a fine specimen of an especially adept culture-war hack. That makes it very unlikely that anything resembling a worthwhile debate will happen between the two of us. And it makes me think that, in general, ad hominem isn’t an issue we should get too wrapped up with. The lacrosse case is a scandal, not a debate — the focus of it is not a proposition but the behavior of the people involved. (back)
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He might have brought up Timothy Burke or Scott Eric Kaufman or Claire Potter, but there’s barely a peep about their criticism of DIW in DIW. Potter figures in DIW, for sure, but like me she’s a specimen. And of course there’s a couple of paragraphs from Coleman and Kasibhatla that weren’t specific enough to be taken seriously. (back)
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At the beginning of an email to Joan Foster, Johnson noted that “I even have been willing to respond to all email requests for information from me from figures such as the Group of 88 apologist, Duke professor Robert Zimmerman.” It’s a little odd that he puts it that way after writing about how John in Carolina might have “done me the courtesy of emailing me with his recent list of questions about my posts.” In the same spirit, before he answered my questions about the “Castrate” banner he pointed out that “[Zimmerman] did not e-mail for a response to these questions before posting them.” Looks to me like he’s having some cake and eating it too.
Anyway, I’ve sent him two requests of information. One of them, about Kerry Haynie, generated a brief exchange. (back)
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I’m getting very close, here, to an argument that I’ve tried to resist. Here it is in the words of the anonymous author of The Truth about KC Johnson, for instance:
Johnson was initially denied tenure at Brooklyn College, and blamed this in part on the forces of political correctness and the supposed left-wing domination of American universities. The Duke lacrosse case gave him his chance for revenge.
My question is, why does his motivation matter? With enough intellectual integrity even someone motivated by revenge can write an incisive critique. And what seems to have happened in practice is that people have dismissed not only the critic but some of the very legitimate issues that he’s taken up. It’s the product that matters, not the motivation. And the excessive attention to victimization is right there in the product. It’s entirely plausible that revenge is the motivation, but it really doesn’t matter. (back)
{ 55 } Comments
It’s always good to hear from Prof. Zimmerman. Since (to my knowledge) not even one member of the Group of 88 or the “clarifying” faculty is willing to speak on the record about their conduct in the case (except, that is, to Prof. Zimmerman), Prof. Zimmerman’s position as the most loquacious of the Group apologists provides us with the closest thing to the Group’s unvarnished thinking.
That said, I’m puzzled by Prof. Zimmerman’s continued reluctance to share the documents and upon which he bases his conclusions. For instance, in my recent series on the CCI, I relied on documents from the CCI’s archive, and I reproduced several of these documents so readers could draw their own conclusions. While Prof. Zimmerman, in this post, uses a lot of harsh adjectives and verbs about me, he didn’t produce any documents to question my conclusions.
That reluctance to share information has, of course, been a pattern with Prof. Zimmerman since his first posts on the case, in which he suggested that he had obtained heretofore-unreleased evidence that I had ignored “efforts when the [Group of 88’s] ad was written to make much different points in a much different way than the protestors.” Yet Prof. Zimmerman has refused to produce this evidence, despite repeated requests that he do so.
A cynical person might believe that Prof. Zimmerman, in fact, never had any evidence, and he chose to willfully mislead his readers. But I’m not a cynic, and I continue to hope—perhaps naively—that Prof. Zimmerman will share his secret evidence with the blogosphere. I realize that his doing so might weaken or even undermine my portrayal of the Group and the Duke faculty, but since I am committed to the marketplace of ideas, I would prefer that Prof. Zimmerman’s evidence see the light of day, and then let the chips fall where they may.
Accordingly, I renew my request that he return to his sources in the Group and ask for their permission to release this still-secret cache of evidence; and that, if his Group allies continue to refuse the request, he join my oft-stated call for an independent inquiry into the response of the Duke faculty to the case.
I have no “heretofore-unreleased evidence.” I have never had any, I have never claimed to have any, and I’ve never drawn any conclusions that presumed any.
I am not sure what KC is talking about in his reply, Robert. Perhaps you were correct and Debra gave him a false summary of your post. If not, his response is simply peculiar.
I now see where you thought this was odd back in the beginning:
It seems almost as if he just rehashed his first exchange with you in order to avoid having to respond to completely different points you make in your latest post. I am certain that he understands the difference between your opinion about the ad and later articles and any secret documents you are (not) hiding. Maybe it just a “I have secret documents and you don’t, therefore I am right and you are wrong” type of thing?
I really don’t know what’s stonewalling and what’s a lack of understanding. It’s pretty odd, though.
Professor Zimmerman,
I have often posed the question: what accounts for the silence of the Duke faculty, the Durham ADAs, the fair minded members of the NCNAACP, Gottlieb’s honest partners on the DPD, the majority of good citizens in Durham…people like that?
Lately I think the Fates have conspired to give me that answer. I believe one hesitates to call out someone who has served as a champion of ideas and ideals we share, for fear our criticism will open the doors to others to attack the excellent work product, the larger important issues, and NOT the errant “wunderkind” himself.
We also fear that we will be perceived by others pursuing the “cause” or wearing the tee shirt… as less than “collegial” if we don’t, day after day… march in solidarity and pretend we don’t see. But I have cut no slack, nor entertained any excuse for those who failed to confront their own “colleagues” and say “This is wrong”, or, at the least, “Here you go too far.” or “You are beginning to undermine the legacy, the larger more important stuff here.” Indeed I have said in many places, many times that I believe we all have a duty to speak up and, when necessary, call out our own.
And additionally, I have asked myself..do we really best serve these things we believe in by maintaining this uncomfortable collegial silence?
So in an attempt to remain true to my own “rules for others”, I need to say the following.
I came to this Blog last summer…on a mission to defend someone I so greatly admired …KC Johnson. (Anyone who wishes to…can read the history of my adoring comments back then.) To this day, I stand in awe of his efforts in support of these kids. I consider him to have played a great role (along with fine attorneys) in saving three real lives. In the past weeks, I’ve reminded myself over and over of those early days of the case…when, but for his Blog…there was a scarcely a voice to be heard in defense of these innocent kids. In the fear and pain of those moments, Johnson was a lifeline to the families and to everyone outraged with this case. I don’t know the man. I don’t know his motivations. I just know WHAT he did…and the results…and that is sufficient for much gratitude.
So…how many times have I said this or something like it? I sincerely mean it. THAT WILL NEVER CHANGE. But there’s more.
You know that my opinion of the Listening Statement, of the 88 signatories and of the callous intellectualizing and pet-issue-inflating efforts of certain Duke faculty (at the most critical and dangerous time for certain of their own students) is pretty dead on in agreement with the Wonderland blog. When KC writes about professors treating students in their classrooms as POW’s in the culture wars, when he writes of grade retaliation, when he brays about the real people being targeted to advance someone else’s agenda, when he says he believes in the “marketplace of ideas” …he does this so stirringly, so brilliantly, so compellingly that those of us that DO believe…miss the fine print written in invisible ink at the bottom of his Blog: these tactics are only objectionable to him if applied to certain topics.
That’s the Wonderland Secret I learned one Sunday: with KC..it’s TOPICS not TACTICS.
KC only disagrees with the 88 Listeners on their TOPICS: if its KC’s agenda …all those TACTICS he thunders about are …A-OK.
Furthermore, all constraints on PC imposition are apparently thrown to the wind for peons like me who live and work outside the academic bubble. KC does not deign to care if one is brought to his knees to bow to the factory foreman’s viewpoint, the political sensitivities of some random HR director or a judge in a national competition….particularly if KC AGREES with the issue. Out here in the real world, we lesser beings fall beyond the scope of The Champion of Free Thinkers’ benign outrage: i.e. “It’s ONLY the Academy, Stupid!”
ALL along, as I learned in the Perez Hilton/Miss California debate disaster…KC apparently reserved the right for anyone pursuing HIS pet agendas to impose their cultural biases on a class of people KC describes as “not to be rewarded” (see notes),to engage in “grade retaliation”, and to extract real penalties in real people’s lives. In high fiving the actions of that great civil rights activist Perez Hilton (who called another man a “faggot” last week, I understand)…KC, in one single afternoon cut the heart out of everything I believed that HE believed. And whether you agree with him or me in this specific instance, the TACTICS that KC employed are the larger story.
And the disturbing experience of watching these TACTICS, and being SUBJECTED to these tactics, and seeing OTHERS subjected to these tactics…and the accompanying comment area charades… has led me to this post today. Those TACTICS of his threaten all the good work he does and all the good sense he makes. One cannot sell, for example, an Environmental message driving through neighborhoods with a bullhorn, broadcasting from your big gas guzzling SUV.
For in the course of our non-debate, KC held my comments for hours while clearing others, refused to stay on point, twisted my words, ignored my arguments, became increasingly sarcastic, finally told me my comments were not welcome in Wonderland, and Professor “Free Expression of Ideas” …closed the thread.
Imagine that.
The “marketplace of ideas” was no longer open for business.
I have thought about this for weeks, hoping for an alternative explanation. In his refusal to stay on point, his dodging of relevant oppositional points, his use of sarcasm and disrespect, KC executes a clumsy but not ineffective dodge. But if he has better arguments, serious arguments…I don’t know them because he believes sarcasm will suffice. Emails this week added no additional clarity. (more about that later.)
This bothers me because he is such a brilliant, gifted and exceptional advocate. But even those of us with limited reading comprehension (as he lately bemoans) can figure out that Wonderland’s ” free Marketplace of ideas” has essentially become a one man cigar stand. You can stand there and cheer him while he peddles his stuff…but don’t show up there with your own basket of apples. Lately, although he allows anonymous comments, anyone with an opposing thought and no name is skewered sarcastically for…being anonymous. I await the day an anonymous poster who comments on his overwhelming genius…receives a similar response.
These tactics are beneath a man of his abilities and certainly beneath a man who spends most of his time castigating others for their closed-minded attitudes.
But you know where I’m going with this: calling all handmaidens who wish to maintain their spot at the Master’s feet….read my story…it’s a cautionary tale.
Yes, I am now persona non grata in Wonderland. Why you may ask? Well, the Perez Hilton dust-up is never to be referenced…so-o-o… in a series of terse emails just this week I was told it was because I am a False Alleger. To be precise, both John in Carolina and I have made “false allegations.” I’m not sure if we rise to the level of False Accuser, like Crystal Mangum, but, in some minds (or one mind), a False Alleger who insinuates that KC JOHNSON banned a “commentator” (that would be me)….has “slimed him” and therefore generates a torrent of pique and obnoxiousness equal only to Houston Baker on a rockin’ New Years Eve.
Indeed, just this week, Professor Johnson lashed out at John and me AGAIN in a blogpost so bizarre I have not seen the like of it since Nifong took on the Animal Control Board.
Professor, I realize you have been deemed a “Group Apologist” and I don’t know if that is better or worse than a “False Alleger” but my instincts tell me I may be one step further out into the darkness. I have been now additionally described as a “Crazy Housewife.” by Ms. Debrah, who, for you James Bond fans who might not read over there… is the blog’s “Odd Job”…both assassin and servant to KC’s “Goldfinger.” Re-reading the comments section these last weeks, I can see the Master snicker as some poster falls afoul of him. Suddenly, the “No Ad Hominem Attacks” rule is lifted and “Odd Job” Deb blasts the opponent into oblivion. The Master smiles and rubs his “clean hands” together but the Mission is accomplished. Poor ole John in Carolina was “Odd-Jobbed” over and over and over again. But we are told these are all….accidents of moderation…the “cold finger” missed the delete button. (How did those lyrics go…”Such a cold finger..it’s the kiss of death from Mr. Goldfinger.”)
Just funnin’ here.
Anyway, in addition to the false alleging, the craziness, and the lack of a career path, there was another sin of mine articulated by or under the auspices of Professor Johnson…almost too astounding to relate. In no uncertain terms, KC accused me…indefatigable Joan…of (are you ready) ” trivializing to a disturbing degree the conduct of the Duke faculty.”
Take that in for a moment.
I’ve been accused of hyperbole all over the Internet…but, Good Lord…”trivializing?” Maybe I’m too sensitive, folks, but ever since I disrespected that great icon of civil rights, Perez Hilton, nothing I do is good enough in Wonderland.
Anyhoooo…anyone who wishes to read the details of my downfall, may view here a series of Email exchanges between Johnson and myself posted (with his permission) to LS. Please use anything you find there as reference material to the stylistic “debate” tactics outlined by our Host in the original post. And if you should be one of the Lucky Ones…summoned to appear in Wonderland to submit your “retorts” to the Master…tell him you’ll come the day after he answers.,..civilly and ON POINT the issues in my last Email.
One last comment:
By virtue of our presence here, one might assume many of us remain fixated on the Duke Lacrosse saga. It was a tragedy that fascinated the public with seemingly endless drama, some unusual characters and constant breaking news. If you feel that you find yourself experiencing a bit of withdrawal… I urge you to continue reading Professor Johnson’s blog.
Why?
Well, you may never again see Dr. Meehan squirming on the stand, but, with luck, you may see KC replicate similar verbal maneuvers trying to avoid conceding a point to KRDDurham.
You may miss the dramatic news clips of Victoria Peterson exhorting the Potbangers to burn down the Lacrosse house, but, with luck, you might just see KC defy his own NO AD HOMINEM rule to clear Debrah’s comment flaming another poster as “ugly”, a “piece of (fecal matter)” and “mentally unstable.” (see footnote)
And God Willing…you will never again see the arrogance of Nifong at the Bar…but any day of the week, you can see KC do a good imitation..in dealing with anyone who stumbles into HIS Marketplace of Ideas and presumes to be a little too “free” with any idea… that “the Great Free Thinking Advocate” does not like or approve or deign to entertain.
FOOTNOTE 1: KC’s comment…
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P.S. (He no longer calls me “Joan” by the way…sort of like that German “sie and du/ihr” thing. Cold, no?)
P.P.S. ( I will award an original signed copy of my “Brodhead Morning Briefing Poetry Series” to anyone who can diagram that truly amazing last sentence. Watch the sentence construction, Professor Zimmerman, everything you want to know about the level of Johnson’s agitation is in the sentence structure.
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FOOTNOTE II
Sample of NO AD HOMINEM attack rule in action at DinW…
Debra posts…
It’s quite a saga. I’ve gone through and fixed or added a few links and formatted some of the quotes. For anyone who’s curious, here’s the beginning of the “history of [her] adoring comments” on this blog. It amazes me that Johnson couldn’t find a way of agreeing to disagree amicably with Joan on this beauty pageant thing. What resonates most with me is that part about “TOPICS not TACTICS.” The way I’d put it is that he has remarkably little interest in living by the standards he holds others up to.
The part that I have the most reservations about is his “great role (along with fine attorneys) in saving three real lives.” It’s true that Johnson mounted a vigorous and compelling defense of the players, but he also hitched that defense to narrow and vindictive personal agenda. So, for instance, if Johnson hadn’t inserted so much antagonism to “extremist” professors, it’s possible that more academics would have followed Jim Coleman’s fine example. I’m not going to make a big case for that, because I really don’t know what would have happened if Johnson hadn’t inserted himself into the case. But if you want to argue hypotheticals, you have to try to take into account the entire impact his writing had, not just the positive part that you appreciate so much. I personally have no doubt that the self-serving spin he brought to the case had some negative consequences — what he does best (“so stirringly, so brilliantly, so compellingly”) is to make arguments against and at the expense of people he disagrees with. He offers very little that’s positive, least of all by example. So it’s not a foregone conclusion that the only difference, if Johnson is taken out of the picture, would be that the players and their family had one less defender. (At the beginning of this post I look at an editorial Johnson published early in the case and wish that critics of the team at Duke had taken it up as a challenge. They didn’t, and they didn’t chime in with Jim Coleman, either, and that is very much to their discredit. There was a failure to take a broader position on justice that left a huge vacuum, and Johnson has been happy to fill it.)
Anyway DIW doesn’t need an “Odd Job,” it needs a way to get some of those smart-mouthed folks to choose their next witticism more carefully…
I’ve had very limited internet access this weekend, and in the short time I was on wireless and cleared that comment from KC Johnson I didn’t fully realize how pathetic it is. Conjure up a bogus “still-secret cache of evidence” and then, at the risk of having it “weaken or even undermine [his] portrayal of the Group and the Duke faculty,” urge me to make them public. The sacrifices he’s willing to make in the pursuit of Truth are awe inspiring.
But, just to be clear, I have always been looking at exactly the same evidence as Johnson. The “efforts when the ad was written to make much different points in a much different way than the protestors” are the subject of a post from a long time ago. I told him in an email at the time that it was a matter of interpretation, not new documents.
For good measure he calls on me to “return to [my] sources in the Group,” aka my “Group allies.” I have no sources or allies (whatever that’s supposed to mean) in “the Group.” With the exception of Michael Gustafson, I don’t consult with anyone at Duke about the case. What I get from Gus is not inside information but perspective, as our recent online exchange shows. I’ve heard from other faculty members, both in and out of “the Group,” but they don’t pass on secret documents or tell me what to write. I did relay one line from Karla Holloway denying a fresh rumor that Johnson circulated in April. That doesn’t address her “conduct in the case,” and the rumor was not based on any document I could refer to. I also quoted a faculty member who wrote from personal experience about being “castigated and shunned” for disagreeing publicly with the prevailing opinion about the lacrosse team. Those are the only times that I can recall drawing on a source other than the public record.
All of this has been perfectly clear since my first post about the case. RedMountain is right that Johnson is recycling some very old stuff, and it was already obtuse when it was new. I guess he has nothing better, or at least he doesn’t want to put any effort into coming up with anything better.
An unrelated note: I just cleared a couple comments on the post before this that ended up in my spam folder. That filter is not working as well as it used to for some reason. I’ll keep a closer eye on it.
Terrific post, Joan. I am almost willing to agree even with the things you said that I don’t agree with. I finally saw your comment on the previous topic and I will respond to that one soon. For now, I am just going to enjoy the one moment in time that the Fates have conspired to give me an understanding of where you are coming from.
Anyone care to reflect upon the whole “tribalism” thing, comparing & contrasting LS (Joan Foster’s) version of tribalism vs Johnson’s version of the same?
Through the looking-glass, indeed.
Quack.
OK, here’s a few quick points. I never doubt that Joan is sincere, while I often doubt that Johnson is. Unlike him, Joan is not engaging in vindictive workplace politics. Also unlike him, Joan is a person I can have a productive disagreement with, and I think she’s even learned a thing or two from the ones we’ve had, as have I.
Incidentally, as I’m clearing this I’m also putting up a longer response to her comment from yesterday.
~~~~~~~~~~
I believe that at least one component of sincerity is the absence of hypocrisy. And frankly, over the course of the last three years Joan, has repeatedly demonstrated - via her posted comments - her apparent proclivity for existing (at times) in what appears to be a rapt state of hypocrisy.
That in the very recent past, the blinders she wears may have been lifted when it comes to matters relating to K.C. Johnson, does not demonstrate to me that she is willing to recognize just how hypocritical many, many, many of her comments or lack of comments, have been over the course of the last three years.
For example; when her compatriots on LS publicly proclaimed someone guilty of a crime - which incidentally, NEVER HAPPENED - then went on to post what s/he/they believed to be the personal information of this person (you know, name, address, phone number, etc.) did Joan publicly take ANY of those posters to task for their “rush to judgment”?
Answer: Nope.
To this day, has she ever publicly taken these people to task for behaving in exactly the manner of those she has spent so many months er, years, railing against?
Answer: Nope.
In MY humble opinion, the above example alone tells me all I need to know about someone’s sincerity.
Sorry if I sound less than forgiving in my opinion in re: Joan Foster. Maybe in one small way I am a bit like her, in that I would like to see some apologies publicly offered for the false accusations and deliberate smearing of an innocent individual.
Until such time, her hypocrisy reigns supreme.
While I have my differences with KC Johnson and probably come down politically closer to Joan, I see no value or anything positive from her keeping this rift going. Even some at Liestoppers have advised her to stop but she persists.
I agree that Johnson shouldn’t have used the pageant as an example in one of his posts, but the matter was trivial compared to what has been made of it. Just like John in Carolina used a trivial issue so is this one compared to others that could be stoked.
Professor Zimmerman seems to be a measured man and does not jump off a cliff when making his points, which is why I wonder why he allows Foster to paste old comments over and over as she has on other blogs. Those tactics show those of us who would like to come down on her side that her motivations are primarily self- serving. Not to mention beating a dead horse.
And while those pasted comments are harsh, I seem to recall that there are reasons behind that exchange that Joan and none of us would know about. So I prefer to keep my nose out of such exchanges. Many other issues deserve all our attention as they relate to this case.
I admit to having a grudging respect for the Diva and I believe that she has genuine love and admiration for Johnson. She’s even made him “king” of her blog it seems. (Grin)
There’s a synergy there. She’s a talented wild child and Johnson is about the only one who can control her. While I think she’s probably a spoiled brat I remember well her excellent writing in area newspapers when the lies from Nifong were being foisted on the public.
People have been banned from Liestoppers for even disagreeing with prominent commenters. It’s funny to see Foster in such a huff over this trivia. Johnson has said that she was not banned. But if she acknowledges that her show will be over.
We can all voice our differences but I like to keep my eyes on the real goal. Politically I am in disagreement with Johnson, but his work for three years has been mainly without partisanship. I won’t nitpick if he chooses to voice his opinions once and a while on his own blog. He’s the best his profession has to offer, in my opinion.
And I thank Professor Zimmerman for making this comment section available.
I would like to add that among many other issues that need to be discussed and examined are a few at Duke outside of the 88-ers. This website here is one that has been linked on various blogs.
After spending some time going through the pages I think there is a real problem. Much of this story has yet to be told.
Why can’t some of you talented bloggers see that people like this who did so much damage to Duke students are examined and criticized?
If this all is true, Tyson is a real fraud.
Joan is, as far as I can tell, pursuing her disagreement with Johnson in the same way she’s pursued her disagreements with some on the Duke faculty, the Durham ADAs, the NCNAACP, etc. That’s what you get with Joan, and if you liked and encouraged it in the old days I think you should find a way to tolerate it when she chooses a target that’s not so much to your taste. It’s true that she reuses material quite a bit, and her posts can be overlong and overdramatic (on the first count I’m not in a position to be too critical). But again, that’s always been what you get with Joan, and it’s OK by me — I’m glad she drops in here to speak her mind.
As far as Debrah’s talent and Johnson’s quality, I don’t think I could be less in agreement, but that should be obvious from the post. If Johnson is really “the best his profession has to offer” then it’s a very good thing that I never really made it as an academic — the profession must be full of spectacularly petty and insecure people.
That site about Tyson’s book is interesting, and I have no reason to dismiss it. For the moment, I’ve said all I have to say about him, and anyway it’s unlikely that my criticism of him will ever be one-sided enough to satisfy Johnson’s fans.
Joan wrote:
“TOPICS not TACTICS” was never a secret at LieStoppers.
More from Joan:
Where was Joan when the LieStoppers were declaring me guilty of a crime?
Was she dusting off her stilts and painting THANK YOU FOR NOT WAITING and SUNDAY TIME TO CONFESS banners?
I had wondered how the LieStoppers were going react once they discovered the bitter truth - they were wrong about my involvement in their board’s implosion and they had committed the same malefaction they had been railing against for two years.
Was abb going to offer his heartfelt apology for posting, “we should have hunted imho down long ago and shot her like the mad dog that she is…”?
Was “anonymous” Tony going to come forward and say, “I was wrong about imho hacking the board - here is my real name, here is my address, by phone number and my birth date?”
Was maggief going to admit she was wrong to disseminate personal information she believed belonged to “the accused?” Was she going to reveal her name, address, phone number and birth date to atone for her transgressions?
Would Quasi write a book about the Blog Hooligans’ declaration of my guilt?
Too bad some of the most fitting titles are all ready taken:
A Rush to Injustice
It’s Not About the Truth
Until Proven Innocent
How would the the rest of the LieStoppers react?
Would they decry the injustice that had been done or would they remain silent?
I’m still waiting for Joan Foster write another parody of Ruth Sheehan’s “The Silence is Sickening” column.
Hey Joan, “in an attempt to remain true to [your] own ‘rules for others’” how about an apology by email? I promise to keep it private. You’ll be the first of your tribe to apologize.
It seems that there’s no getting away from all the messy interpersonal history of liestoppers once the door is open to its current and former regulars. What I’ve decided is that it doesn’t make sense for me to try to hold people who comment here accountable for the things they’ve written in other places. It’s sort of an exception when I bring up some of the really crazy stuff that’s been posted on liestoppers or DIW because it’s a good example of caziness. I guess once the door is open, issues like the ones raised by BeMused and Immy will come up, and that’s ok, but I don’t feel any need to reconcile my impression with theirs.
I’m not unsympathetic to the issue being raised here. The story about how liestoppers was hacked has always struck me as very fishy — when software fails catastrophically, hacking is very rarely the reason. On the other hand, it seems like there’s a presumption that if folks deplore one rush to justice they should deplore them all in more or less the same way. I don’t think many of us work that way.
This seems like stuff that could be worked out, anyway, so for the moment the floor is open, as long as things don’t get too ugly.
Robert Zimmerman wrote:
I am not suggesting that four books and several blogs be dedicated to the injustice of the LieStoppers Hacking Hoax. I don’t even expect an apology or public acknowledgment of their own “rush to judgment” in proclaiming my guilt, but one would hope even a modicum of introspection would result in Joan tempering her stunningly self-righteous comments.
I’m looking at KC’s comment and I believe he ‘s simply throwing a Wendy Murphyesque standard issue enabler argument at you. A little sample of the crap he’s had to put up with (there’s a scratch!). He’s jerking your chain.
I’ve never given a moment of my attention to Wendy Murphy, so I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at here. I also doubt that the crap he’s had to put up with — and I’m sure there’s been plenty of it — has been anything like that comment. I don’t think anyone else was likely to use that particular trick. He might be jerking my chain, that’s true.
I’d like to ask Kantian to think about why he appreciates your comment section… exactly what he’s thanking you for. Because therein he might find an understanding of the essence of my complaint with KC. You and I, Professor Zimmerman, initially agreed on hardly anything….but, over time, speaking for myself, I’ve gained a perspective here I certainly would have missed and for which… I am now most grateful.
How did that happen? I think because this Blog is a much better example than Wonderland..of a “marketplace of ideas”…and though you are not always “buying” what any of us are “selling”….you do not run any of us off or run us down…as long as our comments are not so obnoxious as to be” scaring off the customers.”
KC Johnson could learn from you that it IS possible to have civility without surrender.
So, in my fashion, I believe I am defending those larger issues Kantian, KC, and I agree on. (I even agree with KC on Gay Marriage!) Just as I believe the “Listening Statement” proved to be an egregious example of something… that somehow displayed a bias in its authors… that they had hoped to instead expose in OTHERS… KC’s blog and comment section does the same for “our cause.”
I read over there and imagine KC at the lectern (his blog post) and a classroom discussion following (the comments). Does he answer his students with the withering sarcasm we see there? Does he dodge their points and demean them by his rhetorical twists (“If I were a cynic….”)? Would he allow a “brilliant” favorite in his classroom to denigrate non-favored students with personal attacks as he indulges Debrah? Would that be conducive to learning? Would you place your child in that situation? Are you, Kantian, giving your approval to THAT? How does all that work to promote our ideal of a free marketplace of ideas?
I would be interested to have your perspective on those specific points.
Speaking of other perspectives…. unfortunately, I cannot add anything new to Emmy or Immy’s comments that I have not said many times before. And since I must agree that Kantian’s criticism on my repetitiveness is very well founded, I must refer them back to those old threads.
The classroom analogy is a good one. Some readers might want to go back to the post in which Claire Potter described Johnson as a great teacher and wrote about how that came through in DIW. Those features have been receeding ever since the blog went on “hiatus” in Dec. 2007 (remember that?). For what it’s worth, I doubt that he does that stuff in the classroom.
Can you point to one of those old threads about Immy and the hacking of liestoppers? There’s at least some possibility that this thread will be read by someone who’s new to the drama.
The adorable imho said:
I would instead describe Joan’s self-described musings as an on-going process. One that leaves open the possibility that such a revelation regarding your treatment in reference to the implosion at LieStoppers may eventually happen. That is more than I can say for some, and something I consider to be a good thing on her part. She has obviously directed her comments toward the unfair treatment she received at DIW and is explaining her reasons for speaking out in that regard.
Questions for Kantian:
When you say “trivial issue,” who or what are you talking about?
Joan Foster? Or someone or something else?
Regarding Joan Foster - - -
KC Johnson did post at my blog saying he never banned Joan Forster.
But that was only AFTER I’d called him on it.
I don’t believe KC ever posted an “I haven’t banned Joan Foster” statement BEFORE he was called?
If you can link to a source where hedid, I’ll promptly update my post with a correction.
If you can’t, I and others will continue to ask why, with Joan and many others reasonably believing he’d banned her, KC never posted a simple statement saying he hadn’t until AFTER I’d called him on it.
John in Carolina
Are folks really arguing about whether Johnson banned Joan or not? I was incredulous about that when the trouble started and I still am. His standards are nothing if not flexible and self-serving, so why would he box himself in with an outright ban?
For what it’s worth, I’ll offer my opinion about what KC Johnson meant by his reply. This is my opinion only and Johnson and anyone else is free to disagree. I’ve probably disagreed with Johnson in my comments at DIW more than any other regular commenter there.
When you began commenting on the lacrosse case professor Zimmerman, I think Johnson and others, myself included, rightly or wrongly concluded that you as a faculty colleague of the Group of 88 might offer some new insight or new information in order to explain or even justify their unprecedented, craven, and tortious actions directed against their own students.
In all of your very wordy commentary, that has never happened and to me (and I believe Johnson and others) you’ve become a “One Trick Pony,” or, to strike a musical metaphor, “Johnny One-Note.”
So to me, and I believe others including Johnson, your commentary has become a collection of extrinsic points that do not even approach ad rem arguments about the salient points that Johnson has made.
Permit this hypothetical example. Let’s say Johnson makes a reference (which he has done) to the glaring lack of scholarship and achievement in tenured professor Lubiano’s CV. An appropriate counter to Johnson’s argument would be to list links to the CVs of say, 10 white male tenured Humanities or English professors at Tier1 American universities who have the same or less scholarship (if that’s even possible) than Lubiano.
To me, your typical response to that argument would be not to offer such counter evidence (which admittedly would be impossible to find), but rather, accusing Johnson of picking on Lubiano for some extraneous reason – his tenure battle; his acerbic wit; his argument style; etc. etc, ad nauseam.
And, incredibly, you again offer as an argument against Johnson Charley Piot’s laughable essay where he bases his entire argument on the false premise that “the [listening] ad in question was neither about the lacrosse players nor about the party they hosted in spring 2006,” when in fact, the ad’s principal author e-mailed the ad draft to her fellow travelers with the written admonition that it was “about the lacrosse team incident.” A high school debate team member would not have made such an egregious error, yet you use Piot’s intellectually dishonest essay as a valid criticism of Johnson.
Thus professor Johnson’s reply is a “where’s the beef?,” “where’s your evidence?” retort.
But now you write:
I have no “heretofore-unreleased evidence.” I have never had any, I have never claimed to have any, and I’ve never drawn any conclusions that presumed any.
I am glad to know that. I never believed you had anything and that is why I, and I believe many others, quit following your Blog.
So, it now appears that your Blog has become a gathering place for folks to vent on the subject of “KC Johnson-Done-Me-Wrong.” Perhaps a name change is in order.
I have to admit that Spook gets a few things right here. There’s no question that I’m wordy and that I’ve wasted way too many of those words on KC Johnson, to an extent that most sensible people think that either there’s some ulterior motive or there’s something seriously wrong with me (I’m leaning towards the latter).
And I can’t really blame him for wanting me to produce a more useful (to him) kind of writing about the case. It’s been clear from my first post that I didn’t have the slightest intention or the right connections to produce it, though. Spook does a great job, in fact, of showing what drudgerous work it is to be a good little “Group apologist.” I really should yoke up and give Johnson a hand pulling Lubiano’s CV through the mud. And then I should hold up my side of the worlds most arid argument, over what it means to be “about the lacrosse case.” I’ve got an 11-year-old daughter to play semantic gotcha games with if I really want to, though, so no thanks.
I can see why he’s disappointed, anyway, because in place of what he wants me to do is stuff that he can’t make any sense of at all. Not only does he push me (hypothetically) into a stupid and dreary debate that I can’t win, he puts two ad hominem counterattacks in my mouth that I would never use. “Acerbic wit” would be a silly comeback even if Johnson had an ounce of it. And as for “his tenure battle,” I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to comb through all those verbose posts I’ve written and find the few times that comes up. What does my attitude towards using it as a counterargument seem to be? Turning from what I should write to what I’ve actually written, Spook is indignant that I mention Charles Piot in note 7 without turning up my nose in disgust, as right-thinking people have been trained to do. It’s one of the most disposable lines in my post, but still, it cuts right to the heart of the whole feeble enterprise.
Criticism this clueless is kind of depressing. Maybe Spook, like Johnson (according to Wayne), is being sly and jerking my chain. It looks to me more like one drug-sniffing dog defending another. No, sorry, these dogs just want some beef, and who can blame them?
Perhaps if someone wishes to exercise some responsibility instead of coddling the desperate and loud Joan Foster and the archaic and envious John in Carolina as they go about screaming from the gutter of fabrication and unethical behavior…..
…….one can read this fine analysis by Chris.
He destroys the credibility of both by reminding everyone of the facts.
I don’t usually clear Debrah’s comments, but nobody’s really banned here in the “Harmony Zone.” I think everyone should have a chance to admire the fine selection of adjectives, and the link is apropos, too.
(Debra has done something good: pointed me to this blog. I know DIW has referred to it occasionally, but reading about some “group apologist” never interested me enough to follow the link.)
I had been following DIW for years but had no idea about all this llama-drama until a week ago. And I feel no smarter for now knowing about it.
Prof Zimmerman, KC is clearly tweaking you. His post after you made this one used the … ellipsis … method.
It’s sad to see KC become so much like the politically-correct targets he’s attacked. I realize that it’s possible that he’s using some kind of irony that I’m not in tune enough to appreciate.
I may not be in tune enough with Johnson’s sense of tweakage to appreciate the slyness of his reaction to my post. I really don’t think he’s paying that much attention.
One Spook, to rework a phrase, I did NOT come here “to bury Caesar but to praise him.” But enough about KC for now.
What others see in Professor Zimmerman’s writing as certain weaknesses…I have come to see as compelling, but infuriating virtues…the very same qualities…that long before my KC dust-up…caused me to begin to defend him on LS. This is someone who seems to have the annoying quality of trying to require people on all sides of any argument to consider the viewpoint and value of “the other.” Oh, not ALL the time…he’s human…but much of the time. . . just read his response to various comments in this thread: if I use a classroom analogy against KC, he chides me that KC is indeed reputed to be a fine teacher. (That is true.)
Something in my nature, even when I am mid-rant…admires that.
Professor Zimmerman will never be appointed any group’s “apologist.” He is too irritatingly oppositional in his fairness to ever keep that job. When I finally decided to stop taking another’s assessment of him as WORD OF GOD…and read for myself… I discovered he has blame and praise enough for both sides. I began to see that his annoyance with KC…his description of KC as “the Other Duke Prosecutor” …was because KC seems so set in absolutes. Professor Zimmerman rejects the easy disposal of others as just…enemies…who then have nothing, nothing at all, of value about them. To the orthodox, this is outrageous. To me, it’s sort of the opposite…it appeals to me because it’s challenges ME to challenge my assumptions…with an underlay of (dare I say it) compassion.
KC makes up his mind and stops listening unless it’s echoes of his own words. He’s looking for acolytes. . It’s easy to get comfortable there if one knows the chants. OddJob Deb drives off the troublemakers who….question or query.
Professor Zimmerman won’t allow himself… or any of us… the privilege to get that comfortable. This place is chaotic…but it evolves…there’s real interaction here.
I disagree that this is a Gathering Place for People that “KC Done wrong”…though in certain instances, it may be a Refuge for Rogues WHO “Done asked KC a Hard Question.” KC doesn’t tolerate hard questions; Zimmerman won’t accept anyone’s simple answers. Likewise I find some of Professor Zimmerman’s answers irritating but never, never unkind.
Yes, I hardly ever agree with our Host, or he with me…but I highly recommend this place on all counts.
I better not say much about this except thank you — it’s very gratifying to know that some of those things come through. I have to argue with one point, though, because if I don’t someone else surely will. Joan made me think about my sarcasm when we went head-to-head last year, and that was a good thing, but I don’t think that after my answer to One Spook it’s right to say that I’m never unkind.
“I may not be in tune enough with Johnson’s sense of tweakage to appreciate the slyness of his reaction to my post. I really don’t think he’s paying that much attention.”
I’ve never really thought that Johnson was very good at being sly, but rather I find him to be almost pitifully obvious, in both his agenda and his tactics.
I think the job of an “historian” is to study all the data surrounding an event and extrapolate the actual facts, not simply to pick & choose what data to use in order to create a “history” which fits ones agenda or pet theory.
Over time, it has become painfully obvious that Johnson has failed to be an accurate historian with regard to the Duke LAX matter. And I believe it was (and is) Johnson’s agenda which has clouded his ability to compile the facts - all of them - and let those facts speak for themselves, and not through the filter of Johnson’s agenda.
All & all, rather disappointing.
Yes, this is how he strikes me — transparent about signaling what he’s up to. But it could all be an elaborate deception. You just never know.
Robert Zimmerman replied to Joan Foster:
Joan had this exchange with BeMused whom Joan had mistaken for inmyhumbleopinion:
Duke’s perfect storm-too much bullshit, too few bullshit detectors
Joan posted:
Is she implying her comments “calling out her own” over their rush to judgment concerning their board’s meltdown have been blocked or deleted by the owner or moderators?
Joan posted:
Joan, of course, does not know if Tony or Baldo have ever lied to her. If anonymous Tony or anonymous Baldo “ardently believe” they have come to the correct conclusions about their suspicions is that enough to publicly declare a real person guilty of a crime?
Joan posted:
The integrity and credibility of Tony Soprano who before he posted that I lived in San Jose, CA had declared that I was a Trinity Park activist who was “sure as a cat has kittens” registering Gays to vote? I would guess Tony was KC Johnson’s source for the rumors about me that were published as fact in Until Proven Innocent.
Joan posted:
When you publicly declare someone guilty of a crime and post their full name, address, phone number and birth date, yes Joan, it is terribly important to be right.
Joan posted:
Yes, I was logged into LS as getdownboogiewoogiewoogie and I did send you a PM just before the crash. It contained a link to a post on EZDUKE written by inmyhumbleopinion. Boy, I sure know how to cover my tracks! hahaha. I did not hack into the LS board - I merely logged in using a screen name that had been registered, but (I thought) not yet approved. I have a theory on what caused the board to crash. I’ll get around to posting it here.
Joan posted:
Almost all of my mockery was directed at the defenders of the lacrosse players, not the players themselves. That is why the hacking episode was such a joy. The LieStoppers’ false accusations against me have caused me no pain or frustration. As I posted over a year ago, I thought it was funny as Hell. Nothing could have made me happier than for so many of the LieStoppers to be revealed as pot banging hypocrites. I have thanked them for not waiting many, many times. hahaha.
BeMused posted:
Joan responded:
BeMused never claimed anyone was raped nor did I, but had we made those claims would that justify Joan not calling out her own when they declared me guilty of a crime?
Joan posted:
Hmmm? Did Joan not want to jeopardize the integrity of an active investigation? I haven’t heard from the FBI or the DOJ, not even the invisionboard or zetaboard admins. You’d think they would be interested in one of their boards being hacked. Last I checked I still had active invisionboard/zetaboard accounts under the name inmyhumbleopinon. I’m not hiding from anyone. No purple wall of silence here. Joan posted that almost a year ago. Surely, she can give us an update on the progress of the investigation… or perhaps an apology?
In response to both Joan and John in Carolina I would only ask that you read Spook’s reply on the View-from-Wilmington blog that has been linked here.
If only both of you adults would take at least some of that advice and please move on.
One Spook (and DaninZa)…I’ve read and considered that excellent post…here’s my reply:
The issue has never been to me about “The Banning” alone but it’s useful to Johnson and Friends to keep the focus there…and my willingness to be sidetracked and “out of sorts” has helped him greatly. Absent the insult, I hardly ever posted there. I do not “need” his approval, nor go there enough to make any use of it if I had it. If I were looking for approval, I would hardly choose to hang out here.
Nor is it about politics, because on the issue of Gay Marriage, once again Johnson and I are in agreement. Nor is it about his right to moderate his Blog as he sees fit…of course he can.
No…instead it’s really about whether a man who moderates his Blog as Johnson does… can be an effective advocate for the VERY things that Blog purports to promote: a free exchange of ideas and civil debate.
Why should any of his Targets in Academia take seriously a man who yaps about “free thinking” but cannot field a challenging comment without biting sarcasm? How does sarcasm create an atmosphere there in the ole “Marketplace” where everyone feels free to exchange, consider, learn, morph or grow? Sarcasm stiffens backs and closes minds. But it’s served up daily over there like some poisonous soup du jour.
Johnson does not engage anyone else’s ideas. He tries to make anyone who challenges him uncomfortable so they will take that bad idea away. If all else fails…unleash OddJob Deb. It is Johnson who appears needy to me…needy and nervous or such tactics would not be necessary.
You want to make it that he hurt my itty bitty feelings. More importantly, he hurt his own and our BIG BIG CAUSE.
But, scurry back, devoted fans..just don’t fool yourself that his stirring rhetoric is achieving serious converts where it really counts. I’ll repeat myself to say, you cannot sell an environmental message riding through neighborhoods with a bullhorn while you throw trash from your gas guzzling SUV. The real KC is revealed in his moderation. It’s tough work but he cannot hold others to a standard he does not try to adapt himself in his own little fiefdom.
If words alone are enough for you…then, enjoy, enjoy. But a once ardent admirer can twig to how he blares one thing out to his adversaries, then bullies at will…I assure you…so can those academics his blogpost assails.
And, by his example…they are motivated to change…how?
This is the comment from One Spook. I don’t know what the reference to DaninZa is about. Scrolling through the comments I couldn’t help noticing Bill Anderson’s theory that it all started with an argument over whether I am “an ‘enabler’ of the radicals on the Duke faculty.” He must be getting his arguments mixed up. [I think Wayne’s right that Bill is thinking of the argument was between him and Johnson — I missed that the first time.]
On second thought, after reading the excellent and irrefutable comment at a View-from-Wilmington from Moo Gregory I have to ask that others read it as well.
Then go back and read his referenced comments from Joan and others on the thread at issue.
After doing so I am sure that, like me, you will feel a little disgusted that all of us have been bombarded with these ridiculous falsehoods John and Joan have used.
Joan had her say and more on Professor Johnson’s blog and she used ad hominems like an alcoholic uses a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Almost nothing they have accused Johnson of is true.
Review it for yourself and read Gregory’s fine analysis.
Both Joan and John should feel very ashamed of themselves and apologize, but I don’t think they have it in them.
Here is the comment section.
Yes, I think once he invokes “Winston Churchill’s decision to deal with the devil” in the first paragraph, Gregory become irrefutable. Nonetheless, like the desperate but indomitable rat-nourished defenders of Leningrad, Joan has answered. Over there. I think that means that the theater of operations has shifted (hint, hint).
Oh c’mon, I find this entire drama highly entertaining. I’ve literally found myself laughing out loud at some of the exchanges. Nothing like one hypocrite calling out another on his hypocrisy.
Great theatre.
What is this Kantian so huffy about? Didn’t he get the Wonderland memo that I am a False Alleger? Keep up with things over there… there’s a new title bestowed on someone every week.
Did any one of you check out the ad hominem bruiser I landed on KC, according to ole Greg. I wrote that I was sending an emissary to…”the Court of St.KC.” Whoa, I was a vicious mood that day!
Wait till I get back from my six week seminar at the Debrah Institute for Ad Hominem Attack.
They will learn to fear me.
Foster continues to fabricate to make herself look like a “victim”.
I should set the record straight. This fabrication will not continue.
This message was sent to all the Liestoppers commentariat; however, Joan would have readers believe it was sent only to her.
My original email is also sent to Chris:
[The email is now posted at Debrah’s place.]
I don’t know what part of Joan’s “fabrication” this letter speaks to, but since I’ve been letting her and others comment freely on the family feud, it belongs in the hopper too. It’s certainly evidence of all sorts of things, and the reference to the hand of God sets a high water mark, for sure.
One thing that comes up over and over, going back to the beginning of the lacrosse case, is people being criticized for things because they didn’t do or say something. Usually it’s something like “if you think what X did is so bad, why didn’t you criticize Y for the same thing.” “You spoke out for X so why didn’t you speak out for Y” is another form. I think it’s a fair criticism sometimes — I’m sure I’ve indulged here and there. I try to avoid it, though, because it’s one of the easiest and most reliable ways to stoke an argument just for the sake of argument, and I don’t want to be another Professor debating badly. Maybe Debrah’s helping me make the point.
If you want to know just how slow things are in North Carolina judicial system regarding the Duke Lacrosse case, you need only consider that when Professor Halkides returned from his Blog sabbatical…the issue first to be addressed was the then dormant Wonderland family feud.
Wonderland Potentate KC Johnson, no doubt verklempt by the constant rebuffing of his invitations to the Wonderland manse(extended regularly to his targeted friends in Academia)…chose to link to that post and, subtly imply that he remains a man more sinned against than sinning.
And then the real fun began.
Debrah, finally found her bra over there in the DivaWorld cottage and rushed here to Harmony House…wherein the must-be-mad Professor Zimmerman conducts his ongoing daily experiments to see if Bats, Liestoppers and Potbangers can occasionally play nicely together.
Debrah was in a state of divine exultation over these new posts…but ALAS! before she could gather enough signatures here for her “I’m listening-to-all-this wretch-has-done” statement …Professor Halkides had removed her three favorite paragraphs. Vowing never to return after this infamy, Debrah slunk back to her room above the “KC Shrine and Old Photo Mausoleum” wherein she passes her time by reading her Thesaurus and awaiting her next summons to excoriate any Wonderland misfit-du-jour.
Now comes Wonderland’s star legal counsel, Gregory, who evidently has lately been immersed in the Sarah Palin drama, and immediately perceives parallels to Joan Foster’s abandonment of her post. Joan, he announces in his opening statement, has grander plans beyond the stifling confines of Wonderland and the Lacrosse case. The Family Feud, he deduces, has its basis in these broader ambitions as she sees opportunities to launch her conservative agenda of toppling Perez Hilton as prelude to…well…ummm…well…he had to hurry to court on other business but he’ll get back to us later.
And true to his word, Gregory, madly searching for Joan before she hits the campaign trail, seeks her out later at John in Carolina’s country estate. There are gathered other Wonderlanders to bemoan how tiresome it is that John and Joan should have the temerity to defend themselves and to bear witness to the damning evidence the Wonderland legal whiz has yet to reveal.
Gregory (the Law business in the real world being what it is today) has counted her posts, words, and calculated how many times her fingers hit the keyboard… as evidence of all the space so generously afforded her by the Potentate in the Free Marketplace Square. And, for his closing statement, he has tacked up for easy reading his own Readers Digest edition of the Sunday Afternoon Scandal, so that Wonderlanders may leap to the state sponsored free-thinking conclusions.
Then… in a breathtaking Perry Mason moment, Gregory astounds Wonderland by producing the most damning evidence yet to come to light…Crazy Joan’s own deployment of a vicious unprovoked ad hominem attack….yes, right there in Wonderland she did this…
“Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By 9 AM the morning Fog had flown,
Don’t let it be forgot, that once…there was a spot
Before that Hag dissed Hilton
That was known as….
Yes, Gregory thunders… there it is for all to see, Joan clearly breaking all Wonderlaws of decorum with the outrageous “Court of Saint K.C. Attack”
Oh, the infamy.
The natives, particularly recent transfers from Liestopperland, are exultant. Ding Dong…you know who is dead.
Gregory rests his case.
Back at the Diva cottage, Debrah reads Joan’s feeble retort and smirks. No matter how Joan’s political ambitions fare, the Diva is confidant her job as Wonderland’s attack dog is one gig this Babe can never touch.
Meanwhile out in the hinterlands, IMHO, sensing blood about to flow, flies out of the Bat Cave to demand her issues with Tony Soprano be re-addressed….and well they may be…if the North Carolina justice system continues to move at its current pace. In fact, I understand the Lacrosse Blogs are soliciting old feuds and arguments for just such an emergency situation.
And I was kind of hoping it would all blow out to Wilmington. But that’s ok — once the floodgates are open, they’re open.
There’s one quibble with Joan that I’ve been holding onto for a while. I don’t think that Johnson unleashes Debrah. I’m pretty sure she does that all by herself. Obviously it’s still his choice whether or not to clear comments she posts to DIW.
Joan said…
I agree, Joan. However, I also think this blog is a “much better example…of a ‘marketplace of ideas’” than the gated community that you call home — LieStoppers. Given that LieStoppers employs the same tactics that you’re criticizing KC for, your argument is a bit hypocritical. Why are you holding KC and his blog to a higher standard than LieStoppers? Would you like to discuss “the topic of free thought and banning…over there”?
Btw, in another comment thread, you said…
http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2009/04/wonderland-rumor-mill/#comment-2259
Could you elaborate on what it was that I posted, that you interpreted as “derogatory or obscene,” the night LieStoppers was allegedly hacked?
Debrah’s email was forwarded to me at her request. I may have posted it on LS, not sure. I’m no victim. My cyberlife is sort of chaotic but my real life is quite lovely. I never forget which is real.
I have been part of a small group since almost when this case began…before there was a LS Blog or Board. I will never speak against them here or anywhere. I have no reason to. They are amazing, compassionate people. I believe what they tell me. I believe in them.
You can jump up and down, and maybe that’s hypocrisy, but I’m not changing that.
So bring it on. I won’t discuss them.
Joan said:
That is a good thing, in my opinion. Thank you Robert
Things are hoppin’ around here. Two quick notes relating to Debrah: (1) she doesn’t want her last name used, so please don’t (I’ve removed the one instance here) and (2) the email she submitted as a comment here is now on her blog, so I’ve replaced the text of it with a link.
And speaking of names, the blogger in Wilmington is Chris Halkides (note the k).
Robert Zimmerman said…
In defense of Joan, contrary to Kantian’s claim that Debrah does not use her last name on the blogs, there are dozens of examples of Debrah doing just that. If you google her full name and the word “blog” you will see she has used her full name at the N&O editors blog, at DIW, FUDU, Star News Online, wral.com and others.
Thanks for clearing that up. I think Kantian was repeating what he’d heard from Debrah — what she wrote to me is “I do not use my full name on the fora.” I think her request to not use her last name is reasonable and I’m happy to honor it, and I haven’t thought about it before but it seems like good netiquette to refer to people by the name they commonly use even if the full name is well known. But the idea that Joan deliberately breached some understanding in order to “get revenge” is a quite a stretch given that Debrah identifies herself by full name on quite a few forums (and incidentally, according to both my ear and my dictionary that is the correct plural of the English word “forum”).
Thank you, Immy. I appreciate that.
Actually Debrah’s full name is in a complimentary post I did for the main blog during the case. It concerned a conversation with one of the newspaper editors. We were very impressed with her writing…and thought very highly of her. Maybe I can find a link. Once, in comments under one of my posts I invited her to come in and join LS.
Thank you as well to Mark. I think your summary of my “issues” with KC is spot on. I’m going to be sending you and Immy original signed copies of “Kerry Sutton’s Eyes”, which while I am reminiscing here…is not only Immy’s favorite, but how we two met. (really, thanks to both.)
And, news flash. There is rejoicing in Wonderland tonight. I have conceded ONE point. One Spook provided a reasonable explanation of my post clearing charge. Since, that COULD be the case…I’ll concede that one point and apologize to Professor Johnson.
Goodnight all.
The Diva wishes to have on record that she and Professor Halkides are on good terms.
He has provided a great service to all with his latest post.
I see that many have been able to give their opinions and the issues have been explored and the truth exposed.
Professor Halkides fully explained to me why he extended such a kind gesture of removing a few paragraphs from his post and I have come to realize that doing so was a better course.
Every effort was made by him to extend largesse. Most would not have been so kind.
The Harmony Zone has also provided a forum for illumination.
You heard it here first, folks. Or at least second, or third…
I’d like to thank IMHO again and Mark again and make this clarification:
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/lay+out+in+lavender:
lay someone out in lavender
Fig. to scold someone severely. She was really mad. She laid him out in lavender and really put him in his place. If you ever feel like you need to lay me out in lavender again, just forget it.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/222725.html
https://www.eons.com/groups/topic/597200-Laid-Out-In-Lavender?page=1
I regret that anyone at Liestoppers or elsewhere was unaware of that old idiom and saw it in any other way.
The incredible “MOO Gregory” has done it again.
His latest wondrous summation can be read…..fresh from Professor Halkides’ blog.
Such a clear outline of the facts of this matter.
JinC and others (whom we all know so well) have used politics and their own envy and need for attention—-undeserved—-to attack KC when they have been virtually impotent on the very issues they supposedly find so “important”.
You can’t make this stuff up.
LOL!!!
LOL!!!
What slays me is the incredible Gregory’s incredible typography. I mean, “Numb3rs”! That says it all!
(LOL!)
[For reasons I’ll explain in a separate comment, I want to clarify that Joan’s point here is not that Debrah is a homophobic gay-basher. There’s an implicit invitation to find fault with Debrah, no doubt about that. But in the two sentences Joan wrote, what’s explicit is a comparison that’s supposed to shed light not on Debrah but on “the interesting dynamics in Wonderland.” The bulk of what Joan posted is the full text of a comment that Debrah is proud of. If you think that’s an outrageous and unfair attack against Debrah, you’re reading an awful lot into it. -RZ]
Here’s just one of the interesting dynamics in Wonderland: my use of the phrase “laid out in lavendar” can cast upon me suspicions of homophobia BUT…meanwhile, back at that N&O, Odd Job Deb can post comments like this and remain in the fold.
Wonder why?
http://tinyurl.com/nzl5dp
[Debrah posted this response to Joan’s comment a couple days ago. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to do anything about it. Debrah got so frustrated waiting that she told me to just forget about it, but it’s good stuff, and it’d be a shame to keep it to myself. I’ve taken the liberty of adding some annotations — the indented text in italics is mine. -RZ]
The woman who uses several pseudonyms, one being “Joan Foster”, will stop at nothing to keep her embarrassingly idle show going.
But this one is quite a whiplash strategy for a far-right spewer.
Right now I am laughing my tight and toned a$$ off at the feeble attempt above.
Poor, poor desperate-for-a-fight “Joan”.
She must have kept those crinkly fingers busy looking for “Debrah” comments. LOL!!!
I love it.
Nothing better for the Diva soul than this brand of nonstop attention.
The comment above is one about which I am quite proud. To recall with such accuracy the behavior of Gurganus and Tyson back in the Spring of 2006 has served justice well.
And let this idle woman “Joan” know that grown adults who identify themselves as being “gay” will be proud that you have illuminated them inside the Harmony Zone.
Even though this pin-pricked relentless housewife has lost much of her luster and many of her “following” on the lacrosse blogs, she’s still good for an attempted slam……while she and her buddies go after the admitted child molester Lombard on the other fora……is she sympathetic toward him inside the Harmony Zone?
LOL!!!
What desperation!
The fact remains, as I have clearly stated: The only reason that the Gang of 88 and their anything-goes buds at Duke have not lambasted Lombard and made themselves heard on this matter is because some of them are also gay and their politics, far left.
Many see going after Lombard, publicly, would hurt their cause.
I’m quite dispassionate about which side of the sexual veranda someone swings…..unless they continue to make it an issue and have it instruct the fairness of how they conduct their lives.
Many thanks to the woman who goes by the pseudonym “Joan” for bringing the lustrous Diva pearls to this forum!
An inevitable but weak objection will be that Joan is totally hypocritical because of the reference to “Odd Job Deb” — a personal attack just like the ones she’s complaining about. I’d say that Joan has gotten into a bad habit there, using “Odd Job” as an epithet for Debrah much like KC Johnson uses “Group Apologist” for me. Ultimately it’s name-calling, a quick and dirty way of pigeonholing someone that doesn’t reflect well on the person doing it. But Joan invokes “Odd Job” to reinforce her point about how Debrah functions in DIW comment threads. You may think Joan’s point is silly or overblown or whatever (I think it’s basically sound), but it’s still a point that relates to the case she’s trying to make about Johnson’s lack of integrity as a critic. When Debrah describes Joan as a “pin-pricked relentless housewife,” it’s nastiness for the sake of being nasty. It makes no point that relates to any issue being debated.
Debrah topped herself with a follow-up comment a few minutes later. All Joan did (at least all she did here) is quote Debrah and suggest that anyone bothered by the supposed homophobia of Joan’s “lavender” reference should be at least as bothered by Debrah’s N&O comment. What I see in Debrah’s comment isn’t so much homophobia as the reflexive opportunism of a dedicated hack. Either way, it’s creepy to be running people down because they’re people you like to run down and their sexual preference (or they sister’s) happens to be the same as a person whose revolting and abusive behavior is in the news. Debrah prefers to read a much more heretical message, though, so she tacked on this ridiculous accusation:
Debrah’s obviously been studying the Master’s playbook — when annoyed by a critic, write them off as a friend/defender/apologist of the “Group.” It seems like it would have been enough to suggest that Joan was sympathetic to the child abuser. She quite obviously wrote nothing (nothing I’ve seen, I guess I should add, just to be safe) about Lombard or about
HardtSigal and his outrageous classroom imagery [concerning Sigal vs. Hardt, see below]. But maybe that’s evidence of friendliness, because after all, she didn’t denounce them, did she?Joan, please give it a rest. Are Professor Zimmerman and John in Carolina the only ones kind enough to put up with your comment pasting?
Have you considered how this all looks? For you?
[snip]…
Your attempt to make an issue out of Debrah’s very truthful comment makes you look even more pathetic than before.
And Joan try to keep on topic.
Debrah didn’t criticize some at Liestoppers because they might harbor negative feelings about gays.
She criticized them because they were suggesting that KC was and saying that is why he didn’t agree with your very bad analogy you tried to push on the D-i-W crowd.
You and JinC have damaged yourselves because of untruthfulness and these kinds of false comparisons when you’ve lost the argument.
I’ve got to hand it to Kantian, he’s doing yeoman service as Debrah’s echo. His full comment, which is here, is an invitation to turn this into a pontificating-about-Frank-Lombard thread, and that’s not something I want to moderate.
So, the reason for the disclaimer up on Joan’s comment is that I’ve cut off discussion of the Frank Lombard scandal. Debrah feels that she can’t adequately defend herself without getting into it, but it’s absolutely not something I’m going to dabble in as part of an unrelated feud. It’s natural to wonder why I cleared Joan’s comment in the first place. I thought about refusing it, but I didn’t (and don’t) think that Joan’s point depends on the specifics of Lombard. Anyway, if there’s not going to be any discussion of Lombard, then there’s also not going to be any bashing of Debrah for gay-bashing. If Debrah needs to defend herself on her own terms, she’s welcome to host it and I’ll put up a link.
Joan’s point is that “the Wonderland crowd is ‘selective’ in their outrage.” That’s how I read it originally, and I’m quoting her confirmation. She’s suggesting that anyone who’s bothered by the supposed homophobia in her passing reference to ‘lavender’ ought to be bothered by Debrah’s unflattering references to certain gay people in that comment she posted to the N&O. Speaking for myself, I’d say that if you jumped straight to “gay-basher” in either case you must care a lot more about getting Joan or Debrah than you do about homophobia. That’s exactly the conclusion I draw about the self-described snitch who dredged up Joan’s reference to lavender.
(Continued below…)
Debra(h) particularly likes the guilt by association innuendo. She’s played that card on me a couple of times. For the record the Floating Phallus (singular) wasn’t an image used by Hardt. You were right to share this Robert, nobody should withhold a comment as revealing as this.
Oh well Debra(h), Now I suppose there will a volcano venting molten hot adjectives on me. If you’d indulge me I’d like to make a personal request. Try to do better than your average comment which I’ll post in a truncated form below.
Opening insult often a diminutive, little man wet behind the ears etc.
Follow up insult, usually some thing about class.
KC great
You jealous
Deb LUUUV KC
LOL!
Thanks, Wayne, for the fact-checking. It’s a good thing Joan didn’t write anything about Michael Hardt and “floating phalluses” (and I’m disappointed that Debrah didn’t write “phalli”). The actual “Gang of 88 member” that was on Debrah’s mind is the one floated by Peter Sigal.
Somehow I doubt that you will be indulged.
I will close with only these remarks.
It was a mistake for me to have even acknowledged the limp comment made days ago with a reply since it was heart-wrenchingly clear that some needed—-so very badly—-to try to find a diversion.
Even if it didn’t work. Even if it didn’t fit the scenario.
Some poor souls spend their days truffle-hunting on a barren landscape.
“Mr. Fontes” has had a history of hiding in a corner and sending emails to KC in the past, which he has discussed himself.
How did that work out for you, “Mr. Fontes”?
Quite an excitable individual you are……playing the game anyway you can to stay alive inside the blogosphere.
And for such stiff people to prance about on blogs which host written and visual obscenity, and then attempt to talk about “standards”, are behaviors which not only amuse, but nauseate.
The redneck backwardness with which the Liestoppers clan sometimes operates—-as a few tried to go after KC—-is all any observer needs to know.
Let me ask “Mr. Fontes”—-before his time is spent on more idle hypocrisy—-to review a page or two that’s allowed on the blog he joined recently.
Then let me advise him to go to Liestoppers and read all the filth that was written—-as he and the other stooge just sat there among their friends—-about the blogger at “Pam’s House Blend”.
Most of us don’t live in the kind of world where some of you reside.
Since so much has been exposed about KC’s detractors, it is no surprise that they flail about in desperation attempting to project all their “phobias” onto others.
Hardt’s forte was using the “orchid” analogy. The “phalli” (LOL!!!) trip was, indeed, that of the ever-intriguing Petey Sigal.
Sometimes it’s difficult for even the Diva to keep up with all the torrid and loin-draining sex in the world.
But I try.
Happy truffle-hunting!
I believe that the “blogs which host written and visual obscenity” is a reference to one blog in particular — the EZ Duke forum, aka the cave.
It’s not a bad idea to do some rechecking before slamming people for this and that. Based on the thread I know about, Debrah is wrong about how “[‘Mr. Fontes’] and the other stooge” reacted when “Pam’s House Blend” was being kicked around on Liestoppers — see my next comment.
(Continued from above…)
Selective outrage does loom large in what Joan calls “the interesting dynamics in Wonderland.” It’s the all-purpose Achilles heal, the charge that’s forever going around and then coming around, since we all seem to find it remarkably easy to get outraged when our enemies do today exactly what we or our friends were doing yesterday. In her “few observations about the woman who uses the pseudonym ‘Joan Foster’” on View-from-Wilmington, for instance, Debrah complains about how Joan is out foraging for unflattering material to paste into whatever blog will take it. (I believe Debrah is referring to the same thing as “truffle-hunting on a barren landscape” in her latest comment. I think it was Kantian who introduced the theme of “past[ing] old comments”, though what he was objecting to at first seemed to be the recycling.)
Of course on DIW Debrah is the queen of pasting — it seems she’s pasted half the editorials that run in the Herald-Sun or N&O into a DIW comment. At the tail end of the thread on Johnson’s recent post about me, Debrah pasted several year-old comments she googled up from an obscure blog. She once pasted some obnoxious remarks I stupidly saved in the comment moderation queue but never published. I wonder how many of the comments from “the Group apologist, Prof. Zimmerman” that have been so onerous for Johnson to clear were actually posted by Debrah. I’d like to think that he’s had to grit his teeth every time she does that. Probably not, though — I think he barely reads most of them.
In her off-the-record harangues (and her latest puts it on the record) Debrah is as quick as some other commenters here to point out Joan’s own selective outrage. She thinks I really ought to confront Joan about the shabby treatment that gay blogger Pam Spaulding got on Liestoppers. I don’t need to, though — Michael Gustafson did it for me last summer. Joan, who appears in the Liestoppers thread as “deleted user” (but not, I think, the “deleted user” who started the thread), was not complacent about the nastiness, though she wasn’t irate about it, either. Wayne Fontes pops up with objections that are especially direct and cogent, which in my book is better than irate. Liestoppers has shed a whole lot of collective credibility as it’s become more insular and more vehemently right wing. It’s not hard to find the same sprinkling of repulsive comments in a DIW thread, though — this one, for instance, which doesn’t focus on homosexuality but has other obvious parallels with the one on Liestoppers (including some strong objections to the nastiness).
Johnson frames his big complaint about me and my priorities as a selective outrage thing — maybe that’ll give you second thoughts if you’re tempted to play that particular card. And I do think it’s overplayed. That might be a good topic for a post someday, but for now I’m sure I’ve gone on long enough.
Thanks for, if not doing better at least not giving me the standard short form response.
KC never did do anything about you Debra(h). The tone of DIW comments has bothered me for quite a while. As a matter of fact KC initiated comment moderation in response to a comment of mine at Liestoppers. OTOH my prediction that you would become a millstone around his neck looks pretty good right now. For the record my comment which was posted in the open for you to see says I emailed KC once. Not multiple times or through many avenues as your distortions would have others believe. KC can send you the email if you’re curious and he still has it.
But why did you double down on your guilt by association? For any one who’s curious my first comment at the cave was a defense of KC followed by 5-6 insulting comments directed at a poster who uses the same expletive over and over. In Debra(h)’s world this becomes either “putting down roots” or prancing (note to Debra(h) your adjectives should agree). By stripping out the content of what I say it gives her an opportunity to manufacture a comment. I can understand why the place offends you since they did have an entire thread mocking and displaying the pictures of your breasts you put out on the net.
Robert; thanks for pointing out that Debra(h) didn’t even read the thread she attempted to tar me with (how’d that work out for you Debrah?). I don’t think Debra(h) reads LS, but if she did she know it wasn’t the only time I defended Pam Spaulding. In fact, in my view, I am the single most contrarian member of LS. For Debra(h) it’s just an opportunity to conflate me with something negative. A fine example of Debra(h)’s sloppiness and inability to grasp the substance of what was said. What exactly have you exposed about me Debra(h)?
Finally Debra(h) could you tell me why you perceive me as idle, (Deb LUV that insult) when you are probably the single most prolific commenter in the course of the Duke Lax Hoax. Since I’m barely “staying alive in blogophere” am I really putting that much idle time (insults should also agree) into it?
PS No Debra(h) I wasn’t the person, as you felt so free to speculate, who posted as you in the Chronicle threads. I do think they captured “the Diva spirit” pretty well
Robert Zimmerman wrote:
Thanks for the shout out, Robert. hahaha.
imho
You know, I do what I have to do, and yet it’s never good enough. It seems that the main page doesn’t fully reveal the degenerate filth that you guys wallow in over there, so I’ve been requested to provide this link instead.
Dear “Mr. Fontes”,
Let me try to explain…..very s-l-o-w-l-y……that my interest in you as a commenter has never been as keen as your interest has always obviously been in following the Diva.
Anything I read on another blog, and you happened to have been there, was just a case of coincidence or bad luck.
I don’t know you.
I have never attacked you without provocation and always wonder about people who go to other blogs and try to instruct the author of that blog.
For instance, I don’t agree with Zimmerman about much; however, I realize that this is his blog and when he makes a decision, I don’t spend days fighting with him and demanding that he yield to my views.
I don’t email him and tell him that he should….how did you put it over at Liestoppers?…..”stomp” on someone?
People like you and your ilk are alien to me….and yes, idle……to believe that you can direct traffic on another blog.
And “Mr. Fontes”, there is much you do not understand about the Diva…..even as you seem to follow her every move, as well as in “buddy Foster fashion”, gossip and relive every episode of the Diva mystery as you wait for someone to hand you a new drool cup.
What on earth does a man find so intriguing about keeping track of a stranger or strangers on blogs and what relationship they might have with another blogger?
For me, people like you are just plain….odd.
Did you really—-even in your wildest dreams—-expect KC to listen to your advice about how he runs his own blog?
[snip…]
Lastly, a keen observer might ask, “Why are some so caught up inside the Diva and KC issues? If KC isn’t bothered by anything, why are they?”
Good question!
It looks to me, “Mr. Fontes,” like you’re trying to squeeze blood from a turnip, and this particular turnip seems to enjoy the attention.
I snipped out the part about “the Diva breast shot” and how proud she is of it. The whole thing is on the extras page, which is the best way I have of letting Debrah say her piece and also signaling that in this thread this particular aspect is a dead end, even if the material is solid gold.
I think, with that last dose of Diva, we’ve had enough of her feud with Joan for a while. She’s put in quite a performance here. The highlight for me was the part about the two “stooges” — Joan and Wayne — who sat back while their Liestopper buddies trashed an innocent bystander. Except they didn’t, and after building up this heinous gay-bashing thread, Debrah quietly set it aside. Has she ever been such a stooge as to push back when the DIW commentariat has taken to kicking around some fringe-to-the-case figure like Pam Spaulding? As I pointed it out in my last comment, she’s had at least one opportunity, but it was Amac who put his foot down in that one (for his trouble, incidentally, he was anonymously denounced as “a Cash Michaels and 88 apologist” and “self-righteous pussy”). Somewhere in that sea of comments Debrah’s done things like that, I’m sure — if anyone finds a really good example, send it to me so I can give her credit.
I don’t know whether she’s inclined to criticize people merely because of who they are, but when she’s inclined to criticize someone, who and what they are is all-important. Judging from my recent sample, anyway, ad hominem is the norm for her. That’s nothing to stop her from accusing others of outrageous ad homimen — to be “the Diva” is to be free from the standards that the rest of us plebes are supposed to live up to.
Even considering all that, I’m amazed by what I found when I followed the DivaWorld link in the most recent comment she left here:
The problem is Joan’s conciliatory comment urging John in Carolina to “respect Chris’ wishes and actions” and “show him kindness” now that Chris Halkides has announced that’s he’s taking a break from blogging. This is, for Debrah, absolutely intolerable coming from a “filthy piece of phony scum” like Joan, a woman who had just “sent Chris two ‘vile’ emails.” I guess basic etiquette is another thing that’s for plebes but not for Divas. Otherwise, why are we hearing about these emails from Debrah but not from Chris?
What passes between Joan and Chris is not my concern — they’re both grownups and they’ll work it out or not. The dynamic is interesting, though. There’s the professorial blogger who admonishes commenters about the “difference between saying that person X did a bad thing and person X is a bad person.” And then there’s the leak, acting as if on the blogger’s behalf, denouncing person X as a “bloviating harpy” who’s “filthy,” “phony” and “creepy,” which I believe is a fancy way of saying that she’s a bad person. Funny, isn’t it — that’s just the dynamic that “the woman who uses the pseudonym ‘Joan Foster’” has been complaining about. Debrah seems to be the crucial ingredient, doesn’t she?
The Diva schtick is in full flower in her slow-speaking to Wayne. For Debrah, divahood is about saying the right things, looking the right way, and being associated with the right people. On the flip side, it’s about obsessively deriding the wrong sort of people for, among other things, how they look and who they hang out with, and then being gratified that they’re still paying attention, in spite of all that condescension and hatefulness. What other explanation could there be but plebeian jealousy?
That’s the high school cheerleader kind of diva — an older and more venemous version of Sharpay. But the term is from the world of opera, and as an antidote to Debrah’s trashtalking there’s nothing like the real thing — a woman who inspires reverence because of her supreme talent and the way she lays it on the line, and of course beauty and style are a plus, too. I’m not sure if I’d find the movie Diva as great now as I did when I saw it in 1982, but I know they got this part right — Wilhelmenia Fernandez singing “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana”, from Alfredo Catalani’s opera La Wally:
As far as the battle of Debrah and Joan, if anyone has something to say on their own behalf and they can say it without attacking anyone else, I’ll probably post it. Otherwise I probably won’t. Write about yourself, in other words.
The “deleted user”, who started the LS thread you reference, is the moderator of the board, Lodge Pro 345/Tony Soprano. This particular thread is mild in comparison to some of the Pam Spaulding threads that were on the old LS discussion board.
To Joan’s credit, in the past, she has spoken out against some of LieStopper’s resident racists…
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Liestoppers_meeting/topic/907361/3/
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Joan to condemn every outlandish, offensive and/or ignorant comment posted on LieStoppers. It would be a full-time job due to the sheer number of them.
As for LieStopper’s credibility…what credibility?
Check out the 18 page deep, birthers’ thread…
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Liestoppers_meeting/topic/1959390/1/
Some “LieStoppers” are peddling the conspiracy theory that President Obama is not a natural born citizen even though there is no evidence to support their theory. Nothing at all. Their “credible” sources for this information comes from theObamafile.com, World Net Daily (WND), Phillip Berg (9/11 truther, turned birther), and dentist/real estate agent/lawyer, Dr. Orly Taitz. This is a lot like citing justice4nifong.com, The Herald Sun, Irving Joyner, and Crystal’s cousin, Jakki, to support the theory that “something happened” at 610 N. Buchanan, on March 13, 2006.
At one point in time, LieStoppers did not tolerate unfounded, ridiculous accusations. That time has passed.
This comment was actually left before I posted mine asking folks to write about themselves — I adjusted the timestamp on mine so that it would come right after Debrah’s. And anyway, it’s tangential to Debrah v. Joan.
I would like to differ one thing Debra(h) said in regards to not understanding her. In my experience people reveal quite a bit about themselves if they write enough. I realize some people adopt personas on the net and say things that are totally out of character from how they behave in real life. I don’t think Debra(h) is one of those people. I would be shocked to learn that Debra(h) was a mousy woman who had nothing interesting going on her life.
During the course of following the case I’ve spoken to six or seven other commenters on the phone. My experience was that every one of them were exactly the way I expected the to be. Remarkably so, even down to the cadence with which they spoke. I was struck by it so much I even emailed Robert a short comment when three of the people i spoke to popped up in the same thread.
If I try to apply my sense of how well I know someone to the principals of this blog and DIW I would say this. I agree with KC’s opinions much more but if the President offered me an opportunity to have a beer with one or the other I would pick Robert.
PS For the record my favorite beer is Molsen Canadian.
I believe that all you’ve proven is that you don’t even understand what kind of understanding it is that you lack. Neither do I, of course. Setting aside the ineffable qualities of Divahood, in this big flurry of commenting that’s centered on View-from-Wilmington and JinC and spread here and elsewhere there’s some strong personalities, and I think you’re right that we’re getting a pretty clear picture of the people behind the comments.
As to the other thing, I’m a suspicious looking person, so maybe you can arrange to arrest me for breaking into my house. I assume that Canadian stuff makes its way down here…
I think you missed your true calling Prof. Z . Your music is great and all, but the personality analysis of Debrah is so right on target that perhaps you should be in the Psychology Dept at Duke.
Oddly, it does sometimes feel like I’m dabbling in family therapy.
The various social dynamics taking place recently are curious indeed. At VFW you have One Spook teaming up with the Alpha Bat, while on the same site it seems the Attack Dog and Attack Poet are facing off. Then you have the Historian doing battle with a History Buff basically over what is historically correct about certain aspects of the case. And you have the example of two members of the BatCave exchanging insults over what amounts to the definition of a falsehood compared to an exaggeration. Here you have a blogger making much fun over the lack of harmony within the “same team” and at VFW you have a blogger who has decided to go to their room and lock the door.
The only consistent thing taking place is change. Some changes may be good and some could turn out badly.
Are we looking at signs of the apocalypse?
Regardless of opinions on anything else above, CloakOfAnon’s piece is fantastic
Yeah, you’d think a person would want to claim authorship of a think like that.
I think you missed your true calling Prof. Z . Your music is great and all, but the personality analysis of Debrah is so right on target that perhaps you should be in the Psychology Dept at Duke.
This comment misses the mark. I would say Robert is more like a summer camp councilor who prevents his campers from inflicting more than minor rhetorical flesh wounds on each other.
You see the difference don’t you?
Hmmmm. My daughter’s getting to summer camp age and I’m not sure that I want to be thinking about this crowd when she’s taking off for her big week away from home.
CloakOfAnon wrote:
For the record, Red Mountain and I were having a good laugh in PMs as we gave each other a heads-up on what we had just submitted to Chris. The edited versions don’t capture the conspiratorial spirit of our exchange. Chris had us delete references to Joan’s bad poetry tattooed across my backside and Red’s use of Debrah’s breasts as his screen saver.
The events of the past few weeks have definitely acquainted strange bedfellows. At DIW, Debrah just posted a link to the BatCave. She enjoyed a joke about Joan so much she steered KC’s readers to our cavern of obscenity.
That comment indeed a strange-bedfellow moment.