Kristof on Darfur
Kristof nobly trying to do some good again. I've seen him ridiculed a good bit on lefty sites, but I've never understood why. But you know how those people are. Anyway, he's on the job again here, and good for him.
Interesting to note the quote from a reader he starts off with. It's funny that one is as likely to hear Americans say that Americans are the most generous people in the world as one is to hear someone say that we need to quit worrying about these little brown people elsewhere and do for our own. In fact, you often hear the same people say both things. (The former is more common if the breeze is being shot, the latter if actual money or action is being asked for.)
Can't really have it both way, friends....not without seriously tortured reasoning.
Kristof nobly trying to do some good again. I've seen him ridiculed a good bit on lefty sites, but I've never understood why. But you know how those people are. Anyway, he's on the job again here, and good for him.
Interesting to note the quote from a reader he starts off with. It's funny that one is as likely to hear Americans say that Americans are the most generous people in the world as one is to hear someone say that we need to quit worrying about these little brown people elsewhere and do for our own. In fact, you often hear the same people say both things. (The former is more common if the breeze is being shot, the latter if actual money or action is being asked for.)
Can't really have it both way, friends....not without seriously tortured reasoning.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:11 AM
7 Comments:
Colour me puzzled: of course you can note that X is the most generous while thinking that X shouldn't be generous beyond degree Y, without incurring contradiction (think: vice of excess, badly expressed).
If you like a sharp normative/non-normative distinction, you can point out that so-and-so is very generous (a non-normative claim) and still decry it (a normative claim) completely without fear of contradiction.
(Oh, and my take is that Kristof gets ridiculed by those who think his self-directed ocular beam detector is faulty, while his externally-directed ocular splinter detector is set on a hair-trigger; another reason given is that he's often guilty of 'on-the-onehandism', to borrow Eric Alterman's phrase; more illuminating? discussion of the issue at explananda; granted, it goes way too far, it seems many reserve the harshest criticisms for friends who they feel have betrayed them).
Actually, as a percentage of gdp, Americans are really stingy - and it's a falling percentage.
As to your other rhetorical question, there's many problems with Kristof. For example, according to Kristof, the problem isn't that Bush is a lying psychopath; rather the problem is when the left descends to the level of accusing Bush of lying. He smugly suggests that polarization is the problem, not the symptom. Kind of like death is a symptom of being shot through the head.
Just so you know, that tends to really piss people off. You don't seem to understand why, but trust me. It does.
You can lose respect for someone because they do a lot of minor mistakes or you can lose respect for them because they one really big mistake. In the case of Kristof, his one really big mistake is claiming that people shouldn't call Bush a liar.
Well, there's far more. Certainly, the whole poo poo'ing those uncouth enough to point out the emperor has no clothes is bad. But what really grinds me is when he claims that - for example - women's rights groups aren't doing anything about the sex trade when, in fact, they are doing huge amounts. It seems that he's just using a tragedy to further his own agenda against women's rights groups that he finds "distasteful".
Or when he lectures democrats about evangelicals. Somehow, the democrats aren't the ones who are - you know - trying to help the poor, level the playing field, etc. Nope. It's the right wing evangelicals that are the real pros here and that the democrats should just lighten up on their gay bashing because - you know - if you just gave in and admitted they were right, they might tolerate their existence. If gays stopped being so bold as to demand equal treatment under the law, they might give in and deign to allow them some circumscribed segment in society where they can be productive and make a living.
Mighty white of him.
How did genocide in Sudan become gay marriage?
Dim or just purposefully dense?
I've seen him ridiculed a good bit on lefty sites, but I've never understood why. But you know how those people are.
I mean, what? Genocide in Dafur isn't happening because Democrats aren't making an issue of it. It's happening because - um - we're wasting our time, lives, money and political capital in Iraq.
Or have you another theory?
Oh, and let's not forget who's platform in 2000 was anti interventionalist and nation building.
Just a hint. It wasn't the democrat's.
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