The New Republic’s Gregg Easterbrook is now being slimed. He wrote a couple of sentences that, taken out of context, might sound anti-Semitic. In context, they are an appeal to leading Jewish citizens to take their faith seriously, as Gregg has also written, in an identical context, about Christians. He is an extremely decent fellow; and a superb writer and thinker. He has worked for many years at The New Republic, testimony in itself that he is hardly anything even close to anti-Semitic. Yet it seems as if some are now out to destroy his reputation and his career. Here’s part of Gregg’s apology:
I’m ready to defend all the thoughts in that paragraph. But how could I have done such a poor job of expressing them? Maybe this is an object lesson in the new blog reality. I worked on this alone and posted the piece–what you see above comes at the end of a 1,017-word column that’s otherwise about why movies should not glorify violence. Twenty minutes after I pressed “send,” the entire world had read it. When I reread my own words and beheld how I’d written things that could be misunderstood, I felt awful. To anyone who was offended I offer my apology, because offense was not my intent. But it was 20 minutes later, and already the whole world had seen it.
Looking back I did a terrible job through poor wording. It was terrible that I implied that the Jewishness of studio executives has anything whatsoever to do with awful movies like Kill Bill.
I fully understand. And I see the deeper point about personal responsibility – Christian, Jewish or other – he was obviously trying to make. Blogging is, indeed, a high-wire act. Looking back, I write about a quarter of a million words a year. The notion that I will not write something dumb, offensive or simply foolish from time to time is absurd. Of course I will. Writing is about being human. And blogging is perhaps one of the least protected, most human forms of writing we have yet discovered. It’s like speaking on air, live. Yes, bloggers should take criticism. But they should be judged on the totality of their work, not their occasional screw-ups. Gregg has been attacked enough.
A READER ON FRUM: This just about sums up the case:
Marriage-lite breaks down the institution, but it is the political conservatives who force marriage-lite instead of the real thing. So the story goes: same sex marriage mught be a social good if it were a real marriage, but since it won’t be, and we won’t let it be, it is bad.
Yep. That’s the nub of it. The other part of it is: please go away. We like our society without you in it. If you can’t disappear, at least shut up. More feedback on the Letters Page.
The Dish 