Re: [Fwd: Fw: Susan Sontag and Jared Israel]

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Katha Pollitt wrote:

> > >
> > > You're full of shit, Michael. I don't give a fuck for you or your loony
> > > toons at M-Fem. This time you crossed a boundary and I won't let you or
> > your
> > > creepy androgynous friends forget it.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
>  Gee, Mark, this is the second time you've threatened someone on this
> list.  What are you planning to do to us creepy androgynous M-Femmers?
> We're so scared!

Mark, I must have missed an earlier post. I presume the Michael here
is Michael Pugliese, whose incoherent posts I have not read in months.
There is no advantage to carrying on a debate with him -- it will
only produce nonsense or worse, and the identification of androgyny
with creepiness is certainly an example of worse. The current
thread is a good instance of what happens when anyone on any
side of any issue pays any attention to a Michael Pugliese post.

You can no more blame Michael for these things than on a two-lane
highway one can blame the first car in a long creeping line. The first
driver is merely going at his/her chosen speed, but the second driver
(having overtaken the first) fails to pass, and it is too difficult for
the third driver to pass two cars. Michael P. is that first driver,
doing his thing. The villains are those who allow themselves to be
provoked by his posts. Ignore them, please. Responding to him
cannot possibly create coherent debate.

I'm only sampling this debate, but I gather you are also still on
Cockburn's case. You have to know how to read him. The beauty
of his columns is that the sheer nonsense is so obviously sheer
nonsense and the useful parts are so obviously useful, that they
are easy to separate. I doubt that very many leftists (marxist
or non-marxist) are corrupted by the nonsense. And it really
is quite easily for someone to have bad politics and still be a
good left journalist.

Carrol