Bill Simmons smites Scoop about the head...

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

The stuff about not wanting Bonds to pass Ruth is still bullshit. If anything, baseball wants to keep him from passing Hank Aaron. Think about what Aaron means to Bud Selig.

Of course, that takes race out of the equation, doesn't it?

And Jason, to answer your question about your assault on Fenian, I just thought it called for more telling him he's full of shit and puffing out your won chest. But now that I think of it, I can't fault you for it.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

My family was able to make the rise through American society -- beginning in 1919 -- at least in part because a good piece of the population was forbidden by law or inhibited by culture from doing so.
1920 - My grandfather walks off the boat and into a job with the local PD, starting us up the ladder.
1972 -- Same PD hires its FIRST African-American patrolman.

No, we're not all guilty of anything. But the white folks among us were advantaged for an awful long time by virtue simply of being white.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

2007 - Pac man Jones walks into Vegas mens clubs and tosses a garbage bag filled with $81,000 up in the air so that the bills rain down on dancers.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

Well, for one thing, Whitlock doesn't really believe the truth is fluid based on his responses here and elsewhere. He thinks he's got the market cornered on truth. He shoves it down people's throat as much as anybody. He claims this approach as his message board persona. One of many.

At any rate, the label fits the rationale. When somebody admits they wrote two columns that seem to contradict one another, and the summary statement is, "the truth is fluid," that's Glass territory. Glass wrote about relative truths, things that could be true, or, given the state of the world, should be true even if they're not. And he wrote definitively, crafting his stories on the edges of beliveable culture. Even if Whitlock isn't making stuff up out of thin air he deliberately polarizes debates, using strong, poorly chosen language, to create a flashpoint. I don't like it, but whatever. But the contradictions...the track record of flip-flops, bold proclamations one week and equally bold denunciations a couple weeks later...they're a little old, and clearly the work of a contrarian. That's why he explains his differing views as personas, or as headline mix-ups, or as somebody else trying to attack him. His critics are fools, idiots, haters and losers in the whitlock game.

Do you want somebody preaching situational ethics, writing personas and fluid truths to budding journalists? Do you think talent is bend and shape the rules is greater than the collective conscience the "rules," fluid as they may seem, are bound to?

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

In the black churches there is a name for this when someone got alot out of what you wrote.

PREACH!!!!!!

On another note: Vegas turned into a BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD. That is all. Nothing more - nothing less. The things that happens in everyday life in a black neighborhood - happened in Vegas.

Why is everybody still shocked?

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

Sounds like CJR should be looking inward:

From editorial in todays NY Post

NEIGHBOR POLICY


February 26, 2007 -- At Columbia University, the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow.
If at all.

It's going on five full months since a flying squad of Columbia students and some hooligan allies stormed a stage at the university's Roone Arledge Auditorium, physically attacking an invited speaker whose views happened to displease them - thereby bringing disgrace upon themselves and their university.

And they appear to have gotten clean away with it.

It's impossible to say with certainty, of course, because the university's disdain for the free flow of information is exceeded only by its contempt for academic comity and freedom of speech - and for the city of New York.

Columbia say it has ID'd seven of the perps - but won't reveal what punishment, if any, it has in mind.

This is relevant for all the obvious reasons, but also because Columbia is seeking vastly to expand its footprint into the surrounding neighborhoods - and, indeed, to harness the city's powers of eminent domain to do so.

The principal victim in all this was one James Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen - a group strongly supportive of strict enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.

Gilchrist, an invited Columbia guest, had barely begun his address last Oct. 4 when a band of thugs stormed the stage. Gilchrist got roughed up, then hustled from the hall for his own protection.

The attackers' rhetoric was unremarkable - sophomoric, self-righteous cant of the sort that has been in vogue for decades now - but the violence was something else.

Nobody, invited guest or otherwise, should be subject to physical attack on the grounds of a great university.

It was not, to put it mildly, Columbia's finest hour.

It was to get worse.

Columbia honchos, expressing "regret," promised to do the right thing by Gilchrist - but first, they said, they needed time to sort things out.

Weeks passed.

Then, late on Friday of Christmas Eve weekend, Columbia President Lee Bollinger's public-relations office issued a "letter" to the university "community."

Bad things had happened, this conceded (no kidding), and Columbia felt, well, bad about that. But any disciplinary action taken against Columbia students (or not taken, as the case might be) was nobody's business but Columbia's.

And if Gilchrist was waiting for an apology, he could just keep on waiting - because it wasn't in the letter.

Nor was it forthcoming from Bollinger.

This is odd. At the time of the incident, Bollinger himself described such anti-speech violence as "one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur at a university."

As it was, a Columbia spokesman claims the university sent a letter expressing regret to one of Gilchrist's lawyers (but, we would note, that occurred only after repeated prodding from The Post.)

So there you have it:

An ideologically inspired mob attacked an invited speaker at one of America's great universities. Months pass, and no meaningful punishment is meted out, and the university's president - whose own academic specialty is the First Amendment - has yet to extend a personal apology to the victim.

And this same university - which clearly is unwilling to police its own grounds - seeks to extend its reach into surrounding neighborhoods by using the government's power to condemn and seize private homes and businesses.

City Hall needs to consider this proposition very closely indeed.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

Martin Luther King wept.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

I am not being flip or rude--can you say this again, because I don't understand it.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

good god. no shit dooley. kinda spells out the approach, eh?

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

No.

Because I didn't change my mind. Because the columns don't contradict. Because the columns ran in two different publications. Because I stand by all three columns and would do the exact same thing the next time. Because I have the right to be human and react to new information.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

His critics are fools, idiots, haters and losers in the whitlock game.


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no, it's really just you and FB