Updated confession. The "dsquared" of the post was not who I assumed it was. There are two people writing at Crooked Timber who have the initials DD. So that when it came time to reply to "dsquared" of course I sent this to the wrong one. Though now I've sent it to the right one.
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It speaks for itself, mostly. A thread at Crooked Timber, a blog I always feel like a Martian at when I write there, though I did get a nice post in on one of the their all time top 10 hit-count slow-burner threads, not that my writing was why (7th post in the thread) it was so popular. Whenever, as now, it's time to check my own shit, I'm comforted by having written things like that.
Read it, then read this, from today, and the lovely bit of rhetorical art from Daniel Drezner Daniel Davies that followed.
In response to Drezner's Davies' less than mature exercise of potency I sent this letter to him personally:
Thanks for reading this.
I'm the person writing as Lance Boyle that you just 'popped' off Crooked Timber.
I'm writing this, not so much to address that, as to correct the impression you seem to have, that from what I've said, or what you thought I said, I must be anti-Semitic. I'm not. I have posted to that point sincerely and repeatedly.
Briefly - Joseph Brodsky and Bob Dylan are as close to personal heroes as I still have. Both Jews, and both men whose lawns I would mow for free. Brodsky's death affected me more than any other public figure's has, both because I had never written to him of my admiration for his work, and because his presence in this world was a comfort to me.
The love of my life, in the sense of deepest and most intense love, was the daughter of a Jewish man.
I have friends who are Jews, and I've gone out of my way to demonstrate to people who seemed to need it the absence of anti-Semitic sentiment in my regard. I also marched with Cesar Chavez in Salinas when doing that, for a white man, was relatively dangerous. My mother was in the NAACP, my father was a leftist in the 1950's when that was not a particularly safe thing to be. I'm no stranger to bigotry.
I may be wrong, but I sincerely believe the state of Israel is far more powerful in American affairs than most people are comfortable admitting is possible.
Should you care to do some reading, Jim Lobe, writing in The Asia Times online, said something very similar to what you found so outrageous in my own views.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FH18Ak01.html
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Here's two Jewish journalists writing in The Forward, where they quote Admiral Zinni, formerly President Bush's Special Envoy to the Middle East. Zinni saying that "the neoconservatives' role in pushing the war for Israel's benefit was "the worst-kept secret in Washington."
http://www.ujafedny.org/site/News2?page=
NewsArticle&id=7203&JServSessionIdr012=y56
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You may not get this far in the letter, I honestly don't know, I was shocked at your response to what I said, but if you have, thanks for continuing.
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Ralph Nader, far more eloquently than I'm able to, answered his own accusers, in a letter to Abraham H. Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League. No matter what you think of Nader's politics or sensibility, he's hardly a racist.
http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=119
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Time will tell how right I was, or how wrong. Neither of us will suffer greatly for my absence from the pages of Crooked Timber, but we all suffer the lack of truth in our lives, especially now.
I'm willing to admit I'm wrong when I'm shown to be, but you didn't do that.
I didn't make that up, about Muslim antipathy toward Israel, it's a fact of life now, as I'm sure you know.
You can't really be trying to say that the anger at Israel that's pandemic in the Arab and Muslim world is simple racism, or anti-Semitism, can you?
I'm not sure if you are or not. Though I can't figure out any other reason for you to have blacklisted me, other than that I insisted that there is cause, and just cause, for that anger.
LB
����
Update:
"Daniel Drezner" To: tanglebum@yahoo.com Subject: RE: Crooked Timber as private/public space Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 08:04:33 -0500
�
Me too Daniel, I'm sorry too, though in my case it's less a
rhetorical device than it is genuine grief.
The letter of the law is not what will save us now.
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and finally this:
I'm the person writing as Lance Boyle that you just 'popped' off Crooked Timber.
I'm writing this, not so much to address that, as to correct the impression you seem to have, that from what I've said, or what you thought I said, I must be anti-Semitic. I'm not. I have posted to that point sincerely and repeatedly.
Briefly - Joseph Brodsky and Bob Dylan are as close to personal heroes as I still have. Both Jews, and both men whose lawns I would mow for free. Brodsky's death affected me more than any other public figure's has, both because I had never written to him of my admiration for his work, and because his presence in this world was a comfort to me.
The love of my life, in the sense of deepest and most intense love, was the daughter of a Jewish man.
I have friends who are Jews, and I've gone out of my way to demonstrate to people who seemed to need it the absence of anti-Semitic sentiment in my regard. I also marched with Cesar Chavez in Salinas when doing that, for a white man, was relatively dangerous. My mother was in the NAACP, my father was a leftist in the 1950's when that was not a particularly safe thing to be. I'm no stranger to bigotry.
I may be wrong, but I sincerely believe the state of Israel is far more powerful in American affairs than most people are comfortable admitting is possible.
Should you care to do some reading, Jim Lobe, writing in The Asia Times online, said something very similar to what you found so outrageous in my own views.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FH18Ak01.html
-
Here's two Jewish journalists writing in The Forward, where they quote Admiral Zinni, formerly President Bush's Special Envoy to the Middle East. Zinni saying that "the neoconservatives' role in pushing the war for Israel's benefit was "the worst-kept secret in Washington."
http://www.ujafedny.org/site/News2?page=
NewsArticle&id=7203&JServSessionIdr012=y56
-
You may not get this far in the letter, I honestly don't know, I was shocked at your response to what I said, but if you have, thanks for continuing.
-
Ralph Nader, far more eloquently than I'm able to, answered his own accusers, in a letter to Abraham H. Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League. No matter what you think of Nader's politics or sensibility, he's hardly a racist.
http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=119
-
Time will tell how right I was, or how wrong. Neither of us will suffer greatly for my absence from the pages of Crooked Timber, but we all suffer the lack of truth in our lives, especially now.
I'm willing to admit I'm wrong when I'm shown to be, but you didn't do that.
I didn't make that up, about Muslim antipathy toward Israel, it's a fact of life now, as I'm sure you know.
You can't really be trying to say that the anger at Israel that's pandemic in the Arab and Muslim world is simple racism, or anti-Semitism, can you?
I'm not sure if you are or not. Though I can't figure out any other reason for you to have blacklisted me, other than that I insisted that there is cause, and just cause, for that anger.
LB
����
Update:
"Daniel Drezner" To: tanglebum@yahoo.com Subject: RE: Crooked Timber as private/public space Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 08:04:33 -0500
I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?
I have no recollection of calling anyone at
Crooked Timber anti-Semitic.
Me too Daniel, I'm sorry too, though in my case it's less a
rhetorical device than it is genuine grief.
The letter of the law is not what will save us now.
-
and finally this:
dd
I actually felt bad about that and didn't do it. You're not "popped".
I would ask you to keep the rhetoric a bit calmer though.
-Daniel Davies
