Easterbrook II

Jeff Jarvis announces:

I'm officially bored with the Easterbrook flap now.

He has commenters who disagree.

The American Mind has additional thoughts on the matter that deserve a reading.

As i read the new posts about the fallout i couldn't help remembering this quote from The Great Gatsby:

"I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done, was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made...."

Also, i believe that many bloggers proved McLuhans point: " Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity."

I was rather surprised that so many in the blogosphere now endorse the theory behind the Hollywood blacklist. For example, Daniel Drezner wrote:

Maybe the cost of Easterbrook's speech in this incident was excessive. But to extend his analogy, if a bookstore has the right to not promote a book, then ESPN has the right to not promote Easterbrook.

Not everyone agrees with the "serves him right" view. Outside the Beltway got it right:

But we, of course, have the right to criticize them for the decision. For a journalistic enterprise to fire someone for ideas expressed in a column is rather dubious; this is all the more true when it's at another venue on a topic other than for which he's employed to write there.

And since we now have a zero tolerance approach to careless speech, let's return to Virginia Postrel. Early in this controversy she wrote:

Of course, the slope from hating commerce to hating (or killing) Jews is one of history's most slippery.

This was a cruel thing to write about Easterbrook on the basis of one poor argument. But it also over the top. Are all of us who do not worship at the alter of Tarjay potential murders? That is a rather hideous libel to introduce into a discussion of bigotry.

The Junk Yard Blog was also on the mark:

I cannot express strongly enough my outrage at ESPN for firing him, and pushing his great TMQ columns down the memory hole. Bastards. They've lost this viewer for good. Due probably to Disney's totalitarian ways, ESPN has become a bastion of thought police. I am also plenty annoyed with lots of bloggers right now. The bandwagon mentality, the hunt 'em till we bleed 'em ethos that permeates much of the blogosphere, has cost a decent man his job. I hope you're happy. I'm sure not.

Oh, and one more thing. If you folks want to play this game, fine. I demand an apology from Andrew Sullivan and anyone else who has ever used the term theocrat or any other perjorative to describe evangelical Christians as a group. You folks who talk about us as though were some form of American Taliban may not realize it, but you sound far more bigoted than Gregg Easterbrook ever did. Really. So fess up, or I might just start chronicling your offenses. How would you like that?

On his second point check out Margaret Cho's blog entry for 10/10/2003 (you'll have to scroll down, she doesn't seem to have permalinks)"

Abstinence

The Pope is one press release away from selling indulgences to buy space in heaven, like in the days of Martin Luther - not the King, the father of Lutheranism, Catholicism Lite. I am so angry, I don't want to just rip up a picture of the pope. I want to rip him a new asshole, wearing a condom, and I don't even have a dick, but this is the one time I wish I did.

It gets worse from there. I choose not to quote further because i don't need the traffic that will result from loading this entry with the f-word. But, nonetheless, i doubt that the blogosphere will go out of its way to make sure that Cho is vilified, fired, or condemned.