The objection is to the game of being offended by some quote and demanding an apology. tneloms on October 11, 2007 at 12:01 PM

I hear that. The better thing to do is to expose him, to gather quotes, or clips, together, and put them all in one place, spread them around the blogosphere, play them over and over, get copies into the hands of churches all over, and then get serious about replacing him. The problem with the “we demand an apology” game, is that once you sign on to it, you’ve lost the ability to refuse to do it as a matter of principle, as opposed to simply refusing to apologize on the merits of the issue at hand, as Rush has done recently. I hate it when Sharpton does it, I hate it when Abe Foxman does it, and I hate when that CAIR mouthpiece does it. They demand apologies, and they get them, because of the cowed posture of the PC’d intellegentsia out there. That’s the dynamic that the “we demand an apology” game is based on, and we shouldn’t have anything to do with that. Plus, once you’ve gotten the apology—since that’s all you asked for, that’s the most you’re going to get. Not a substantive change.

Anyway, Sharpton’s forcing Imus out a job didn’t change anything, and anyone who thinks it did, is deluding himself. The way to deal with Imus would have been to attack the problem of vulgar speech in general–instead of apologizing, he could have been a spearhead behind that effort–a much more sincere (and substantive) demonstration of regret than a mere apology, assuming the contrition he did manifest was real. The reason people want an apology is because whoever said the offensive thing is taken to be speaking for a whole group of people who hold that view–as we assume Ried is doing. That’s understandable. But even if we succeed in hectoring him into making some kind of bogus apology–”I’m sorry you were offended by your misunderstanding of what I was saying”–that group of people for whom he speaks have no regret. So jumping on Ried doesn’t accomplish anything–the idea itself has to be challenged intellectually, in books, in the media, blogs, videos, wherever possible.

Look at what Horowitz is doing with the Academic Bill of Rights. That is what I mean by a substantive reaction to a noxious idea (anti-American propaganda passing as education on college campuses). Let’s say every teacher who got caught on tape saying stupidly anti-American things could be forced to apologize. Their acolytes would rally around them, the apology would be unsatisfactory–nothing would be accomplished. But when Horowitz creates a counter-concept, he forces people to grapple with, or at a minimum to recognize the very existence of an issue that they would rather ignore. Now it comes before congress as a piece of legislation–the counter-concept has reach and legs, beyond anything a mere apology can accomplish. So in this case, Christians would have to join together in significant numbers, and present a characterization of themselves that is different from the one Ried is offering, as well as pointing out the absurdity of his position. At that point, not only is Ried being brought to account, but so are all those for whom we presume he is speaking—the authors of all these paranoid ” the religious right is taking over”books, and the lefty droids who distill their “analyses” into talking points that they parrot around. No one’s talking abouto letting Ried off the hook; there’s just a better way to respond.

smellthecoffee on October 11, 2007 at 1:34 PM