Christina Hoff Sommers On McEnroe On Williams

Right, as usual.

   I hadn't seen some of the nutty responses Sommers discusses. She's absolutely right that if people (including the media) can't handle this dead-simple, entirely clear-cut issue, then there's really not much hope for more complex ones. It's a kind of obvious point, but a really important one. Here's a completely straightforward, clear-cut issue that anyone can understand--and yet many people can't even deal with this honestly. Now imagine these same people discussing transgenderism or whatever. This is why it's so tactically important for the side with the crappier arguments to spew clouds of verbiage--people on your side want to believe. All you've got to do is muddy the waters just a little so that their contradictions are not so painfully obvious that even true believers can't swallow them... And that's almost always possible.

   And forget about handling more complex issues. Look at this one. Those criticisms of McEngroe simply make no sense at all. They're about a half-step above gibberish. Suppose that the truth about the matter suddenly became important to these people. Suppose the people trying to make this out to be some gratuitous insult by McEnroe stood to gain a million dollars if they produced a sensible analysis of what happened. Suppose their lives depended on it. Is there any chance whatsoever that they would say things like that? Nobody's that stupid. The problem is that they're so biased and intellectually dishonest--at least about this issue--that they're just making up nonsense that points in the general direction they prefer. Why? Is it because people like to have things to say back, even if they make no sense? That's a phenomenon that really ought to be studied. Is it simply an impulse to, in effect, make noises in response, no matter how idiotic? I mean...I understand people blurting out stupid things in the heat of the moment...but these people wrote that nonsense down and published it. They had time to think about what they were saying. They had opportunities to delete it. And still they said it. 

   It's downright chilling to me--despite the frivolity of the topic--that these people seem to have so little regard for the truth. It just doesn't seem to affect them in any way that McEnroe was obviously right--and not even being an asshole! Mostly, they're not even denying that--they're making up convoluted, senseless stories about how he's done something wrong by stating the fact. Though they'd be far less reprehensible if they'd at least come out and say that idiotic thing straight out: it's true, but he shouldn't have said it. That's not true either...but at least it's clear.

   That's it. I'm not going to waste any more time on these morons.