July 20, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:That's not funny!
A number of people have assumed that in titling my post "Tee hee" I was inviting laughter at Glenn Greenwald.
I wasn't. Honest. I was inviting laughter at James Joyner's rather deft deadpan. Is there a distinction? In my mind, yes.
I hate laughing at people. Even people I disagree with, like Glenn Greenwald. Even imaginary people -- I often turn sitcoms off just before the climax of a comedic scene, because I find it excruciating to watch people being embarassed. If Glenn Greenwald created a sock puppet, I wouldn't want to spend time making fun of him; I would feel bad for him that he got caught. I root for movie villains. I even feel bad for Deb Frisch, whose lunatic and morally outrageous comments have now cost her her job and probably her mental health. I am ever saddened by the fact that we live in a world of permanent consequences. Just look at what I wrote about Michael Bellesiles when he got caught, years ago. And I REALLY despised what he did.
So one can say he tried to lie his way to fame and fortune, and got a much-deserved comeuppance. And yet, I feel sorry for him. Just as I feel sorry for Monica Lewinsky and everyone else who sought fame and fortune, and found it in very public humiliation. We've all had the feeling, I imagine, of not being quite able to make it. We've all been tempted to push the envelope, go out on a limb, do something maybe not quite right just to put ourselves over the top. Thank God we didn't. We found a job or a field where we were more qualified, or we learned to compensate, or we accepted that we weren't ever going to win the Nobel Prize. But is it really so hard to imagine yourself taking that first step -- making up a couple entries in a table, maybe, to make your case look a little better? And when no one caught it, to make up a little more, so your case was really dazzling? And when people responded by showering you with praise for your results, is it hard to imagine how intense the pressure must have been to keep serving them up? People on HNN have been jumping all over a history professor for suggesting that this is a tragedy for Bellesiles -- that the peer review system served him as badly as it served us -- but really, couldn't we have saved ourselves a lot of grief by catching this the first time? Bellesiles might have been spanked and sent back to do better research, instead of rewarded in a way that demanded he produce ever more outlandish results. And how hard is it to imagine the hell he has been living in over the past few years, desperately lying to cover his previous lies, breathing a little easier as the questions receded for a time. . . but then the noose inevitably closing in? He didn't behave well, and he doesn't deserve mercy. But when we see a man destroy himself by inches, I hope we can muster up some compassion. His life is effectively over. He will never work again in his chosen field. He will never publish again. He stands revealed to everyone whose opinion ever mattered to him as a liar and a fraud. Frankly, I find it hard to imagine what he will do, since professors rarely have a lot of money, and their skills are somewhat rarified. Most of the professors I've worked for couldn't even type or file well enough to work in an office.Posted by Jane Galt at July 20, 2006 4:32 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links
I think it was pretty clear that your “Tee Hee” was directed at Joyner’s deadpan which was pretty funny. That being said, while I too don’t like to see people humiliated on sitcoms or in real life, for some reason I have a tough time feeling sorry for Deb Frisch and Glenn Greenwald who both by their behavior seem kind of creepy.
Barry Bonds was a star who got pissed that others were getting more attention than him. So he went heavily into steroids and became the best baseball player of his generation, maybe ever. But it was illegal, and almost nobody thinks of his records as legitimate. Now, he gets routinely booed.
Barry, meet Michael. Michael, meet Barry,
I cannot comment on Greenwald since I know little about the particulars and care even less. But I did read the comments that Frisch wrote and posted for all to see.
Frisch gloried in imagined violence against an innocent man, and even fantasized about someone sexually abusing a child. I think some humiliation and a ruined professional life is the very least that she deserves. In fact, I wouldn't mind if she had to stand up in front of a judge and try to justify her remarks.
You might be uncomfartable with the humiliation heaped on Frisch, but I look at it as an admirable way to discourage this kind of behavior. It certainly is a better solution than helping the survivors try and put their lives together after violent fantasy evolves into horrifying action.
James
"I often turn sitcoms off just before the climax of a comedic scene, because I find it excruciating to watch people being embarassed."
Or those horrific telephone pranks DJs play on the radio... I can't listen to them.
"Married With Children" (1987-1997) got me through high school, college, and grad school.
What's wrong with laughing at him? He did something idiotic and surely deserves it. Actually, what he deserves is to slide back into obscurity, which hopefully he'll do after this dies down.
I'm a wuss compared to you tough people. I find sitcom embarassment so traumatic that I have been avoiding watching them at all since I Love Lucy was in its first run.
Jerry Lewis movies have that effect on me.
I'm stunned that I actually have something in common with Jane: I am also stressed out for fictional character's embarrassments. I also feel awful about watching characters do sneaky, shady things, like Julia Roberts' machinations in 'My Best Friend's Wedding.'
I only cringe at fictional embarassments when I see myself in them. I could never watch "The Wonder Years" because that Savage kid was like a smoother, more sophistcated version of myself at that age.
On the other hand, Ross on "Friends" was such an incompetent loser, I always thought he deserved what he got.
Like Klug, I cringe at despicable characters on screen, which is why I can't watch "Seinfeld."
But real-life embarassments? Don't like them except in rare cases. Someone has to really piss me off before I'll enjoy watching their fall. Deb Frisch qualifies, Bellesiles does not.
As a final note, can we come up with a better word than "partner" for gay boyfriends? What, are they running a little accounting firm from home? "Sweetie, where'd you put the Intel audit file?" "It's on the dresser where you left it!"
I—fifth, is it?—the inability to watch sitcoms. I have a lot of trouble watching most comedy movies and shows because I find the stupid embarassments the characters get into excruciating. I have no problem with blood, violence, regular stupidity, or most other things. But I had to walk out of Elf because it was just too painful.
I've found that things are only funny when they come at someone's expense. I have no problem laughing at others because I have no problem laughing at myself. In the cases of Greenwald and Frisch you can't laugh at them because pathetic is not funny.
"[Professor's] skills are somewhat rarified."
More like professor's skills are somewhat limited.
Present company excepted, of course.
Sadly it looks as if we will hear little about Greece...
Okay, I'm going to be the designated contrarian here. I think laughing at someone's embarassment or humiliation can be very funny. I think intentions matter. If someone screws up trying to advance or protect their interests (i.e. Bellesiles), I can feel some sympathy even while acknowledging the need to punish their actions. On the other hand, Deb Frisch's embarassment seemed to be more of a case of open hostility. She wasn't trying to do anything for herself, she was trying to hurt Jeff Goldstein. In the case of Glenn Greenwald, everything I've seen of his writing suggests that he's basically...well...an insufferable jerk. And I think that's why so many are taking so much delight in leaving him twisting in the wind.
Yeah, this is why my wife and I can't watch "The Office" (American version -- no cable so never saw BBC show). Funny, funny, funny. But you squirm for the characters, especially the boss. So generally one or the other of us doesn't have the stomach for it. Too bad!
Jane~
I'd be curious as to what issues you disagree with Greenwald on and why. I think his positions on the Administration's overreaching on surveillance and executive authority are pretty solid, particularly after Hamdan.
I find that most of the posters on right-wing blogs who have taken after Greenwald have not even attempted to address the merits of these positions, or have done so in the "if you question the Administration, you are supporting terrorists"-style of argument.
Is Greenwald the same guy who posts at at certain websites under assumed names praising himself?
That giant whooshing sound you just heard was a stampede of single guys reading Megan's "personal ad" leaving because she can't laugh at really stupid people. Fortunately, Phil Hendrie still offers a backstage pass and years of archives to entertain us.
Speaking of watching characters embarrass themselves: last night we watched "The Germans" episode of Fawlty Towers. I had to watch the Germans part from behind my hands, as if it were a scary movie. I could not stop cringing.
I think Angie's comment may have intuited why I haven't gone to see very many movies in quite sometime: 'cringe comedy' is painful to watch.
Yet another echo for "I cannot watch characters being embarassed on TV or in movies." I find that taking a walk around the room while listening helps me get through it.
I can't do that in books, which is why something like Anansi Boys is traumatic.
Afaik, Monica Lewinsky wasn't aiming for fame and fortune. She wanted to have an affair with President Clinton and talk about it with one of her friends.
Steven asks:
"I'd be curious as to what issues you disagree with Greenwald on and why."
Hmmmm....I don't know, maybe she finds his habit of misrepresenting people (now it seems even himself) and saying nasty things about them such as:
"...just some of the violence-inciting rhetoric and hate-mongering which has become a staple of the right-wing blogosphere. It cites examples from bloggers such as Dean Esmay, Misha, Megan McCardle (a/k/a Jane Galt), and Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds...."
Yes, Glenn Greenwald thinks the lovely Megan McCardle is a violence inciting hate monger. Don't you feel a bit dirty just being on her site? This is part and parcel of what he does, and infects even the long winded posts on less personal matters. My guess is that might be an example of the kind of things she disagrees with, amongst others.
Bellesiles may be the first phoney of any note taken down by the blogosphere. I remember Clayton Cramer had a major hand in exposing him. I liked what he had to say afterwards. Excerpt:
One of the hazards with the political homogenity of the professoriate at the first rank schools is that they don't get a chance to find out what people outside their narrow circle think, and they tend to underestimate their political opponents.
I suspect that if Bellesiles had written a book in which he claimed that there were few, if any, privately owned printing presses in the United States prior to the 1860's, and thus the 1st Amendment really didn't apply to individuals at all, but rather only to government agencies and maybe a few very large companies, etc. then things would have been different for him.
But, of course, "Arming America" didn't affect anyone working in Manhattan with its deliberate, and numerous lies, merely those unwashed, marginally literate, easily swayed militia-nuts out somewhere west of the Hudson in flyover country so...no harm, no foul, right, Jane?
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