I turned off commenting on the Alice Walker thread, since I was very afraid it was veering into excusing Walker’s anti-Semitism. I’ve had a while to think about it.
a. On process: As editor, I’m certainly within my rights to circumscribe discussion that damages the reputation of this site.
b. On the merits, I think I’m right to call it what it is: Making excuses for quite blatant anti-Semitism. And we’re not going to have that here.
(Moving that discussion to another thread is cute, but I will get rid of that too, in due course.)
With regard to a.): There are many things I don’t agree with, but which I think are worth debating, contextualizing, etc.; and then there are things that are just out of bounds and not deserving of any oxygen at all. It’s my judgment that this discussion falls into the second category.
“Alice Walker is a great and beloved author” is context. “Alice Walker’s got a good point in this anti-Semitic poem” is not a discussion we’re going to have.
We do this on a volunteer basis, and at great personal cost in time and money. If this decision isn’t OK with you, Twitter et al are happy to host you, and might be more your speed.
Take it or leave it, as always.
On a broader point, I am afraid — in fact, I know from personal experience and my conversations with others — that the overzealous participation of a handful of people here has driven away good commentary and participation from this site. These folks are the ones most prone to call upon the supposed principles of open debate; even as their own pomposity, verbosity, and hostility shuts down, rather than invites comment in a spirit of inquiry. It’s called sea-lioning, in the parlance — the need to jump into every discussion and inject one’s precious opinion. (I know because I have been accused of such, myself.) It also takes the form of mansplaining, whitesplaining, general know-it-all behavior. And it makes this site suck.
So I ask you to consider if expressing your online opinion requires you to invest your ego; get into protracted fights with strangers; use absurdly overblown invective; and need to dominate a discussion, rather than learn something.
Certainly there is a lack of good front-page, well-informed, highly-sourced commentary on Massachusetts politics here, which is supposedly our role. I blame myself partly for that; it takes me a long time to put together what I consider to be a well-sourced post. But that’s what we need. Not this.
Bad commentary drives away good. And right now, it’s not good here. A re-thinking is in order.
SomervilleTom says
Indeed. The characterization of “bad” and “good” commentary lies at the base of editorial control. Editorial control has always been your prerogative, I haven’t heard anybody challenge that.
In my view, your commentary about the Alice Walker material epitomizes the consequences of unrestrained white privilege. I note the preponderance of white commentary here (never mind male).
I strongly suspect that my own commentary falls rather squarely into what you characterize as “bad”. You have made your choice, I’ll make mine.
Christopher says
Given some of the exchanges you and I have had over the years regarding what constitutes racism I can hardly fathom how your commentary can be construed so negatively in this context.
Christopher says
Are you the only editor left or is hesterprynne still around? We know David announced his withdrawal and Bob seemed to disappear at some point. I’m just curious since I have made comments and posts regarding the overall slowdown of activity and specifically the seeming lack of participation from formerly very active participants, but since BMG is set up to take diaries from all participants we should not rely on editors for all the content. Even a recent diary of mine about a new presidential candidate got no comments whatsoever, which I don’t need for my ego, but you would think people would want to talk about a presidential race. I hope I am not one of the ones you refer to above and that someone would tell me if something is being taken more harshly than I intend. I have said all along that agree with me or disagree my comments are always made in good faith and that the most generous interpretation is probably also the most accurate.
Regarding the current controversy I am really trying to understand and am looking for some real answers, but it keeps getting cut off. I do not see anybody excusing anti-Semitism and wonder why you seem so much more sensitive to this than other things. Surely you know that much worse has been said on BMG over the years – remember JohnD and DanFromWaltham? What am I missing?
bob-gardner says
If the issue was bad commenting, this was a strange time to bring it up.
pogo says
I stand with Charley. I’ve been on this site since…2005?…and I greatly appreciate all the time, effort and money you, David and Bob have put into it.
petr says
That other thread was NOT an attempt to move the discussion but to address the fact that A) I feel as though I have been slandered BY YOU (which slander you have, still, not addressed) and 2) the abrupt termination of the discussion was not righteous: in fact, peremptorily shutting it down was exactly the wrong thing to do. Now you’ve shut down that discussion, which is even cuter…
I will make several points and drop the matter:
– I continue to feel that I have been slandered with an accusation that anything I wrote was an attempt to ‘excuse anti-semitism.’ You’re all big on what we’re not going to do here, Is that something we do here?
– Not every criticism of Israel is anti-semitism but it might as well be if hypersensitivity to anti-semitism is the correctness that rules our political speech. You’ve succeeded in normalizing the idea that we cannot criticize Israel. This is a disservice to the debate, this blog and to Israel.
– Ayanna Pressley is owed an apology for a deliberate (if conditional) and false accusation publicly made against her on extremely specious grounds: If I applied the same tenuous logic (sic) to the attack on Rep Pressley as is used in connecting the anti-semitic dots towards her, the OP could face an accusation of racism. And that is something you would, also, not countenance. It would be wrong to accuse the OP of racism. One must ask, however, why it’s 1) not wrong for the OP to make such tenuous connections in accusing Pressley and B) why you support and protect the OP in doing so? Is a charge of anti-semitism more important than a charge of racism? If anything, the kerfuffle proves that the charge of anti-semitism itself has a power beyond any ‘reality-based’ blog to counter. Ayanna Pressley’s condemnation of anti-semitism does not validate the falsity of the charge made. Patting yourself on the back for your attentive policing of the blog for anti-semitism, in this instance, is giving a pass to a calumny you otherwise would not countenance…
spence says
^^^It used to be rare to spot a sea lion so far north this late in winter.^^^
hesterprynne says
Greetings BMG folk. It’s been a while since I have posted on the site. Multiple reasons for that, including that the day job, representing low-income individuals and communities, is busy in the Trump era, as you might imagine.
Another reason – last fall I read an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates in which he lamented that the social media universe is coming under the thrall of what he called “profane cynicism.” Profane, as in temporal or worldly (as well as in the more obvious sense of proliferating f-bombs), and cynicism, as in a negativity that is rigid and willfully impervious to contrary evidence or argument, His observation struck me as both true and depressing, and it contributed to my current time-out
But although I haven’t been posting, I’ve still been helping Charley curate the site and pitching in financially. I was aware of Alice Walker’s shout-out to David Icke (one of the heroes of the Charlottesville alt-right) and thought of that right away when I read Ayanna Pressley’s shout-out to Walker. Fortunately Pressley distanced herself from Walker’s and Icke’s anti-Semitism, which gave me a big sense of relief.
I agreed with Charley, particularly after Pressley’s later comment, that the thread was heading in a dangerously unedifying direction and support his decision, which we recognize was unprecedented, to cut it off (in recognition of the singularity of that decision, Charley initially shut it down instead of deleting it),
Where does “profane cynicism” come into this? Social media, particularly during this presidency, is making us turn on each other instead of turning to each other (h/t Deval Patrick). Many comments have struck me as gratuitously angry and negative, as though vehemence has replaced thoughtfulness as the primary point of the exercise. Those comments are not a lot of fun to read. A re-thinking is in order.
scott12mass says
It seems like the site is having it’s “I paid for this mike” Ronald Reagan moment. Good for you. All of that egalitarian stuff never takes into account that some people do work harder than others and deserve to have more, whether it’s input or general success. I was always a limited commentator but enjoyed hearing widely different views from political spectrums I seldom run into in real life.
It’s unfortunate it’s happening at a time when the lefty fringe is establishing themselves in the political game. The “Tea Partiers” in many ways exposed the Republicans who drifted too far to the right. Now the Dems are going to go through a similar period and it’s going to be fun to see Pelosi fight with Ocasio-Cortez. Medicare for all, OK, then why don’t we just buy everyone a house to cure homelessness.
Good luck with your site, I’ll just have to watch ABC, NBC, CBS and alternate that with Fox to hear differing ideas.
petr says
There’s lotsa ‘differing ideas’ in an insane asylum. Maybe you should check that out…
Mark L. Bail says
Alice Walker is off her nut. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t produced some good work that also had social value. Ezra Pound was one of the great poets of the early 20th century. He went off his nut, celebrated Mussolini, and embraced anti-semitism. I could go on, but you get the point: great art is not immune from the flaws of the humans that produce it. Societally, we have yet to figure out what do with art produced by awful people from R. Kelly to Woody Allen to Kevin Hart. The court of public opinion is a flawed jurisdiction, and there’s always a taint of unfairness even when we censure people who deserve it.
(Anyone who has anything to do with David Ickes is out of their F-ing minds. There is no excuse for endorsing anything by him. No excuse. He believes in lizard people).
I’d bet money that Ayanna Pressley googled quotes about dancing, found one by Alice Walker, a respected black author, and used it. I’m sure she’ll be more careful next time.
Blue Mass Group has gone downhill. I suspect this has more to do with the rapidly changing media landscape. What does BMG offer that can’t be gleaned from Twitter? Massachusetts news? I read the MASSterlist, which provides a good index to what’s happening. Opinion? There’s rarely anything that isn’t obvious or can’t be found elsewhere. Commenting? I almost always know what people are going to say and constantly have to resist being snarky.
As a technical application, blogs may not be disappearing, but the blogosphere as it was, I think, is going. Fifteen years ago, there was an urgency and an ethos to BMG and other blogs that now seems to be passing. We needed a platform to express our opinions and talk to each other and publicly interpret the news. Newer platforms–Twitter in particular– have eroded the need for blogs to carry out these functions. I suspect BMG’s decline has more to do with this changing landscape than anything anyone else has done.
SomervilleTom says
Regarding your last sentence, I’ve been wondering about how BMG has been changed by the surrounding political landscape.
When I became a regular at BMG (2007? 2008?), Deval Patrick was our newly-elected Democratic governor. We were about to elect our first black president, and his chief primary opponent was vying to be our first female president. I came to BMG because of a reference to it in the Boston Globe (which was my daily read then).
I was attracted to BMG in those years because it was influential. It was read by Democratic political figures that I respected and supported. It was read, frequently, by key staff members of those figures. Doug Rubin was a power player in Massachusetts government and a frequent BMG participant. BMG was thus, for me, different from a run-of-the-mill blog.
By 2008, I frequently heard and saw my Governor, my President, and my Representatives and Senators making and echoing perspectives and exchanges that were happening on the front page of BMG, some by me. I felt that through my participation at BMG, I was an active participant in my government. I do not have that sense today.
Today, we have a GOP governor. Our “Democratic” legislature is paralyzed. We have an incompetent and demented Russian puppet in the White House, and a Senate dominated and controlled by his Collaborators. I no longer see any evidence that BMG is read by anyone outside of our relatively limited online community, in no small part because of the enormous changes in the external political landscape.
The editors have made it clear that they will not tolerate any exploration of black anger towards Israel and American Jews. I am reminded of how white America refused to listen to Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and similar “polarizing” black voices during the civil rights movement. I am reminded, as we approach MLK day, that Mr. King was reviled by white America during his life just as enthusiastically as he has been lionized after his murder.
I hear black voices reminding me of resonances and rhymes between the words of sitting Representative Steven King (R-Iowa) about White Supremacy, Donald Trump about “Making America Great Again” and Mr. Netanyahu (“This is our state – the Jewish state. …Today we made it law: this is our nation, language and flag.”). I hear the editors of BMG suppressing that observation — directly, by turning off commentary (including my own) and indirectly by summarily blocking a prominent black literary voice.
I am reminded that so far as I know we have no regular black participants here at BMG.
Against this context, I see our editors front-paging a complaint from a pro-Israel white male who echoes the attacks I’ve heard against radical black voices my entire adult life. I see our editors shut off criticism of that complaint, reconsider that decision, and then double down on it. The editors have chosen to silence opposition to their point of view.
The editors have made their choice. I have no choice but to respect that clearly expressed editorial viewpoint.
It’s their site.
Mark L. Bail says
Charley can certainly speak for himself, but I think he’s struggling to find front page material. Some days the best we get is a one-sentence post, so people can comment.
As the moderator of a town politics Facebook page, I’ve made unpopular decisions about content as well. People start to bring up free speech, etc., all of which is crap in a private context. The community can’t police itself; there’s no vehicle for doing so. Right or wrong, someone occasionally has to. And not everyone will agree.
Charley on the MTA says
Naw, you can speak for me Mark, you do great! 😀
The role of a blog has changed. It used to be good enough to post hot takes on the front page. That role has been taken over by Twitter and Facebook. Now it has to be a higher quality of content — or at least *longer* to be a blog post.
In any event, I’m really looking for highly informed, *on the ground* commentary — down to the State Rep district level if not city/town council in some cases. And also people who have lay- or professional expertise in a particular policy area. Tell us what you know!
Christopher says
I’ve definitely been guilty of the short and sweet if it’s big political news and nobody else has said anything yet since that gives people an opportunity to comment. I can continue to post institutional party news. Watch for caucus and convention information after the February 4th DSC meeting. Unfortunately I do not follow public policy or have an area of policy expertise, but enjoy asking questions and engaging others.
petr says
You might want to re-think your use of the ridiculously feeble (not to mention slow) post editor. It hurts, physically, mentally and psychically to (attempt to) use.
I daresay it is the single biggest impediment to higher quality content. So if you want higher quality content ditch the low quality editor.
SomervilleTom says
It sounds as though you’re interested commentary from members of two groups:
1. Elected officials and their staff (“down to the State Rep district level if not city/town council”)
2. People who have lay- or professional expertise in a particular policy area
That’s a pretty select group of people — I’m pretty sure I don’t now and never have met that criteria.
I don’t do Twitter or Facebook. First, because I’ve never liked them. Second, because since 2014 I used their API professionally and know first-hand all the implications of doing anything with either platform.
It sounds to me as though the door to BMG for people like me has been closed.
If that’s what you intend (and I understand why), I think it perhaps merits a higher-profile announcement than a concluding paragraph of a comment buried in a metadata thread.
Christopher says
I think BMG still has a good combination of being MA-centric, allowing full participation (ie comments AND diaries) by users, and providing a platform for more thorough analysis than social media (microblogging in particular). I get both the PoliticoMA and MASSterlist daily emails (which actually don’t seem much different from each other), and they just aggregate news stories and often link behind a paywall with no opportunity to comment. Twitter is good for very brief comments and to share pre-created content. We have had some great discussions on BMG and even when we disagree passionately I think we mostly respect each other. I’m also thankful for the sense of community and the opportunity I have had to meet some other BMGers in person. While certain elements can be found in other corners of the internet, I think BMG still offers a unique combination of elements which I’m not sure where else I would find.
petr says
How about the actual requirement that an effort be made? Seriously, a lot of ‘tweets’ are either quickly-dashed-off unthinking snark or an amen link to an longer article wherein an earnest effort is undertaken. I subscribe to Mark Twain’s sentiment about writing and length: “I apologize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
petr says
Interestingly, I just now came across a Leonard Cohen quote I’ve not heard before:
” I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.”
I think this sums up both the appeal of twitter and the fear of longer media…
Mark L. Bail says
I guess it depends on who you follow. I’m mostly following Twitter for stuff on Russia and Trump, but I use it, like half the sites I visit, as an index to the news rather than a place to consume a lot of content.
My Twitter go-to’s are Seth Abramson, Renato Mariotti, and Paul Krugman. Locally, I follow @MSzafranski413.
I follow more people, but those are the people I seek out. Almost no one follows me, which is fine. I’m not really looking for much interaction there.