A friend asked me once why I was so mad all of the time. I said that in this cruel and heartless world anyone who wasn't mad a lot of the time was pretty fucked up. Over the years I've continued to be pissed off, and sometimes someone's comments send me into a tirade. Once we were trying to save the career of a good mathematician who the president of our college had denied tenure. We had a lot of support among the faculty and we went into a faculty meeting with three motions aimed at getting the president to reverse his decision. After the motions were presented, a teacher, a good liberal, called a quorum. Such a call supercedes all other motions. There was not a quorum and we could not get our motions discussed. After the meeting, I went after this guy. Among other things, I said to him that he couldn't get his nose far enough up the president's ass. For this I was sharply chastised by another good liberal who said I had no right to insult our colleague like that. I told her that she was a fine one to talk, since over the years she had proved herself to stand for absolutely nothing. Then I heaped a pile of insults on her.
Was this a prudent way to behave? I don't regret it. Milder more collegial comments would not have made them any more likely to change their minds. Why not give them something to think about? Besides, weren't they missing the whole point? A good person was about to lose his job, and they're yakking about politeness.
I have been the recipient of pointed remarks, both in person and in print many times. Of course, this pisses me off. But if the comments had some basis in truth, I have tried to think about them objectively and to forget about the personalities. Sometimes it takes a "rude" comment to shake me up and get me thinking straight. Sometimes you just have to take it.
James Withrow has made some statements which justifiably irritated people. These people responded in no uncertain terms. Now James will either have to respond and defend his views or reformulate these views by delving into these subjects more deeply. If he quits the list because he has been offended, perhaps that will say more of him than his critics. If a working person makes a racist remark, and I call him on it in a pointed manner, so what? Will he quit the union? If so, what does that say about him? It's really interesting to notice how racists, sexists, jingoists, etc. never hesitate to voice their crude and ugly views to anyone in earshot, in the process offending mightily people like me. But if I call them racists openly, some progressive will say that I should have been more polite.
Michael Yates
P.S. I was really nonplussed by the argument that we should have treated Mark Crispin Miller more politely. Why? Shouldn't he be able to take this as a matter of course? God almighty, some of the union folks I have taught have treated me like shit. If I can't stand up to this, I'm not much of a radical.
Michael Yates
Louis Proyect wrote:
> >Engaging in more of a dialog here with Withrow might give you some
> >insight into more subtle forces at work than blatant propaganda, and
> >this in turn could make you more effective politically.
> >
> >--
> >Paul Rosenberg
> >Reason and Democracy
>
> Well, look, the Spoons Marxism list used to be visited by right-wingers all
> the time. So in the middle of a discussion about the civil war in former
> Yugoslavia, we'd all of a sudden get a dozen bright people trying to refute
> a libertarian. People didn't join a Marxism list to hear that sort of
> nonsense and they would disappear. I leave it up to Doug to decide what the
> character of LBO-Talk should be. If we end up with 3 or 4 more Withrows, I
> will sign off. This mailing-list is not unmoderated. On the second day Doug
> threw off a Trotskyist by the name of Hugh Rodwell because he got into his
> ritual incantation about the need to build a "revolutionary party." I can
> put up with Max Sawicky and Brad DeLong because they represent important
> trends in mainstream thought and are sharp debaters. Withrow I have no use
> for and this will be the last thing I say about him.
>
> Louis Proyect
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)