Another Unfair Nation Piece on Clark

Well, I quit supporting Clark (must...not...support...Clark...must...resist...) when he came out in favor of the anti-flag-burning amendment. (I spoke with the Oracle of Chapel Hill recently, and he made some important points about that. Maybe supporting that amendment is an excusable error after all--though I'm not prepared to conclude that yet.) But just because I'm not supporting him doesn't mean that this piece by Matt Taibbi in The Nation doesn't tick me off. I don't have time to go through the thing in detail, but it's a complete piece of crap. It's the kind of intellectually dishonest hogwash you'd expect to see in, say, The Weekly Standard. The Nation can stoop pretty low from time to time, but this piece may represent a new low for them.

O.k., look, here's how the thing starts off:

"You can see something in the eyes of most all the Democratic candidates: the pugnacity of Howard Dean, the idealism of Dennis Kucinich, even (surprisingly) the elaborate sense of humor just under the surface of Joe Lieberman.

Not Wesley Clark. His eyes are blank. Like a turtle resting on a rock in the middle of a pond, he simply seems never to move, no matter how long you stare. But then, just as you're about to pack up your picnic basket and go home, you catch him: His head pops out, and he slides off into the water... " [elipses in original]

Now what the heck does that mean? I've got to say, I really have no idea. I mean, I get the part about how what you see "in the eyes" of the other candidates is good, and about how Clark's (dead) eyes are like those of a reptile...though a reptile that is secretly observing you... But usually there's a point to an analogy that's that clumsy and inept... And there's nothing in the story to suggest that the analogy is in any way an apt one. This is just an aimless ad hominem.

But I'm not going to waste my time going through this piece. Oh, well, look, there's also this part:


"The Clark people were nice and well-meaning enough, I suppose. But it was hard not to notice that the fastest way to bum them out was to ask a question about the candidate's platform. At one point, when Yoken was talking to the "media committee" (I had joined a group whose job involved writing letters to the editor of various newspapers) about Clark's "New American Patriotism," I interrupted him.

'What does that mean, exactly, 'New American Patriotism'?' I said. 'Is that as opposed to the old foreign patriotism?'

'No,' Yoken said. 'The New American Patriotism sees patriotism as something where dissent and civil liberties are encouraged.'

'I thought that was the old patriotism,' I said.

The committee fell silent for a moment. 'Well, whatever,' Yoken said. "


Now this is absurd. Or, rather, it's dishonest. Does Taibbi think that, since those Clark folks didn't actually give the obvious and sensible response to his dopey question that that makes his question a good one? There are several ways to put the point, but let's do it this way:

Well, there seem to be two conceptions of patriotism. According to one version, patriotism involves more-or-less blind acceptance of whatever the country does; according to the other, dissent is patriotic. The former conception has, it often seems, been the dominant conception; but that conception makes patriotism stupid and wrong. The latter conception is the one that makes patriotism admirable. Now, we might choose to say something like "hey, dissent is and always has been patriotic! The latter conception has always been the true conception of patriotism!" Or we might choose to say something like "fine, have your old dominant conception of patriotism; but we favor a new conception of patriotism, one according to which dissent is patriotic." There are differences between those two ways of putting things, of course, but the main point gets made either way. (I actually favor the other way of putting it, truth be told, but that doesn't really matter.) Which thing we choose to say probably doesn't matter that much. If "the new American patriotism" has some rhetorical punch, well, fine then, let's put it like that.

See, Matt? This isn't really that complicated.

Let me also note that Taibbi is scoring his little verbal victories at Clark Meetups while--for no apparenent reason other than to discombobulate the participants--pretending to be a director of porn movies (e.g. Anal Asian Vixens VI or something like that). At one point he brings along a female friend who dresses like a porn star; they both wear neck braces and pretend to have been kicked by a donkey during the filming of their last video. This is really loathsome. There's a good chance that the Clark folks took them to be dangerous psychopaths and didn't want to upset them by engaging them in debate...

Anyway, there is some stuff in the Taibbi piece which, if true, could be interesting and would count against Clark. But frankly I don't trust the messenger. When Taibbi does say enough for the reader to be able to assess his credibility, he scores low to say the least. The rest of the time, of course, we're asked to take his word for things. Which, of course, we soon realize that we shouldn't do. And a lot of his criticisms of Clark are extremely impressionistic, so those are completely untrustworthy coming from this guy.

It counts against The Nation that they would print something like this, and, I have to say, though the piece only takes about ten or fifteen minutes to read, I recommend that you not waste your time. If you do choose to read it, and if I'm wrong about this, please do let me know.