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DEFENDING JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE WITH COLONIAL-ERA RACISM.
I hope you're enjoying the NROBS saga as much as I am. If not, go read about it. Tom Edsall has done some great work here. (Greenwald and Sullivan also have some good follow-up.)
In what I can only hope will come to be remembered as the most regretted post of her career, editor Kathryn Jean Lopez sort-of apologizes for W. Thomas Smith's fabrications with an appeal to the bigotry of National Review's readership. The Arab, you see, is very crafty:
"[W]e “should have provided readers with more context and caveats” – the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn’t always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.As one of our sources put it: “The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas.” While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him." (emphasis added)
Jonathan Schwarz responds:
"It's not often these days you see this kind of raw, open prejudice in American publications. And certainly you can only get away with saying it about Arabs. You won't be reading about the Asian or African or Jewish or Buddhist "tendency to lie" anytime soon."
...At least not until the U.S. decides to go to war against any of those groups, at which point National Review will be among the first to inform us that lying is simply "part of the culture" of our new enemy.
Now, I think it's one thing (though still an indefensible and atrocious thing) for Ralph Peters to call Arabs "shiftless and violent" in in the op-ed pages of a tabloid that no one takes particularly seriously anyway, quite another for the online editor of the flagship publication of American conservatism to traffic in the same sort of unreconstructed bigotry. Or am I unrealistic to imagine that there's any difference? Probably.
Just as disturbing as the fact that Lopez would endorse such a view is the idea that a substantial portion, probably a solid majority, of NR's audience considers it perfectly reasonable.
--Matthew Duss
COMMENTS (23)
Yet the Bush administration lies and exaggerates about our enemies all the time. She ran another ironic stop sign.
Posted by: Mudge | December 3, 2007 12:27 PM
Lying and exaggerating enemies? You mean like the lies and exaggerations about Saddam during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq? Or the current lies and exaggerations about the Iranian regime now?
Posted by: kidcharles | December 3, 2007 12:29 PM
You won't be reading about the Asian or African or Jewish or Buddhist "tendency to lie" anytime soon."
No, but you can read the right-wing tendency to lie every time you click on an NRO link.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 3, 2007 12:41 PM
Fucking wetback!
Has anyone checked her green card?
Posted by: Habib | December 3, 2007 12:47 PM
“The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies..."
American bedwetters' ability to self-project their own neuroses onto their enemies without a single hint of irony always astonishes me even as it reminds me that we are so screwed.
Posted by: bdr | December 3, 2007 12:51 PM
W. Thomas Smith, Jr. ... [is] the co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design.
you just can't make this shit up.
Right-wingers: keeping professional comedians and comedy writers employed since 1993!
Posted by: r€nato | December 3, 2007 1:06 PM
Buddhists don't lie
Posted by: balzar | December 3, 2007 1:33 PM
Clearly, mr Duss, you have spent Zero time in the middle east.
Posted by: PNut | December 3, 2007 1:33 PM
On TAPPED's road to becoming ThinkProgress, let me suggest attempting to understand what she was probably refering to. For instance: answering-islam.org/Index/L/lying.html
Posted by: TLB | December 3, 2007 1:34 PM
First off, TLB, not all Arabs are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arab, so even your site *was* a legitimate source, it wouldn't be a defense of outright racism like "Arabs have a tendency to lie." Jesus God. You do understand that's despicably racist...don't you?
Answering-islam.org! That site's a completely reliable source on Islam! And not a compilation of racist right-wing lunacy! Wow! Glad we have such helpful people like TRB to inform us!
Posted by: G | December 3, 2007 1:53 PM
Then, of course, there's the currently resurging "Bell Curve" stuff about people with dark skin being less intelligent, promulgated by former New Republic editor, former Atlantic contributor, and conservative faux-liberal Andrew Sullivan.
Posted by: darrelplant | December 3, 2007 1:58 PM
For ignorant fools like TLB, whenever pro-American Christians are accused of lying, it's STILL the fault of Arabs.
Remember, the full quote is this: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas."
Lopez was saying basically that you can't trust any Arab, even the Christian ones. She got called on out that for racism, and TLB replies with something about Muslims.
Amazingly stupid defense.
Posted by: Kynn | December 3, 2007 2:01 PM
Have you checked out Brad DeLong's reprints of 1950's-era NR writings, bashing the civil rights movement and defending segregation? As far as I know, they've never retracted or apologized for this. There's nothing new about this stuff at NR.
Posted by: beckya57 | December 3, 2007 3:02 PM
Gee, I thought the flagship publication of American conservatism was The Weakly Standard.
Posted by: Flamethrower | December 3, 2007 3:16 PM
It reminds me of reading Paul Bowles. Of course, he was writing about Morocco, not Lebanon or Syria. I'm not going to make any claims about how monochromatic Arab-influenced societies are. But according to Bowles, only a fool gave up his information willingly and easily. A strong and successful man was one who could tell just how much of anyone else's claims were exaggerated, and one who knew how to give it back even better, more convincingly.
But yeah, this is really something to read on the day we hear that in the NIE that Iran quit the majority of their efforts at building a nuclear weapon and the Cheney administration has been pretending the opposite for at least the last year.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 3, 2007 4:54 PM
Screw you Habib, although she's way wrong it doesn't give you the right of questioning her citzenship.She's a nitwit but she's a US citizen. You sound like Lou Dobbs, anyone with a Hispanic surname is considered an alien. Screw you again pendejo.
Posted by: el loco | December 3, 2007 5:15 PM
"...he couldn’t always be sure of what he was witnessing." Are you going to trust what he sees or what he wants you to know?
Posted by: Stillonmt | December 3, 2007 6:04 PM
Actually, I just looked at the beginning of the link I posted above; I found it in a search for the Arabic term and, as I prefer to do, I decided not to link to Wikipedia.
However, for the children, here's the Wikipedia page:
tinyurl.com/n7xtn
As for the differences between Arab and Muslim, I'm sure KLo misspoke and knows those differences.
This site should really, really, really take a long look in the mirror and wonder whether they want to become like ThinkProgress and similar sites or whether they want to think before posting.
Posted by: TLB | December 3, 2007 6:08 PM
As for the differences between Arab and Muslim, I'm sure KLo misspoke and knows those differences.
Well, first of all, it was a quote, so she didn't actually say it, she just repeated it. But even so, by your explanation the passage should have read:
The Muslim tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas.
Christians are exhibiting the Muslim tendency to lie? Does that make any sense?
Posted by: ibid | December 4, 2007 10:13 AM
Is TLB some kind of parody, or are conservatives really becoming that stupid?
Posted by: dai | December 4, 2007 10:43 AM
“The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies...
Ah, yes of course. Because a major world power would never, NEVER lie and exaggerate about their enemies....
(See Bush, George W. and WMD, Iraq, Iran, North Korea ... oh hell, just look up Bush, George W )
Posted by: Robert D2 | December 4, 2007 1:53 PM
W. Thomas Smith, Jr. ... [is] the co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design.
Coming Soon:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Irony.
Posted by: tech98 | December 4, 2007 4:57 PM
wholly cr@&!! That explains a bit. ID apologists must, by their very nature be adept at making stuff up.
Posted by: Robert D2 | December 4, 2007 7:57 PM