When Lance Mannion gets going, he doesn’t stop until he’s done. Kind of like Tom Wolfe, only he gets to the point faster and doesn’t irritate you. Me, anyway. Lance on Tom, above. Go read.
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brian stouder said on November 18, 2004 at 8:49 am
It didn’t irritate you that Lance Mannion recounts a story of some adulterous friends and automatically ascribes all blame (or willful, self deluded and repressed lust) on the WOMAN – while he blithely seems to excuse the man as some sort of rudderless fool, at the mercy of the elements?
And btw – his regard for Matthew Yglesias was also unimpressive.
I recall, back during the Great Democratic Primary Election Rut, when he attacked the journalist (I forget the guy’s name) who wrote a long profile piece on Wes Clark for the New Yorker as having written a one-sided hit piece. Ol’ Julio Yglesias decried the unfairness of the writer not even having bothered to speak to, let alone quote any of Clark’s supporters, such as Richard Holbrooke.
But the problem was, I had read that New Yorker piece, and knew that not only was Holbrooke repeatedly quoted, but the damned article ENDED with a Holbrooke quote.
Yglesias was reviewing an article he had never read.
I then looked him up on Google, and saw a picture of the quintessential sun-deprived 20-something internet geek. If TAP is paying him anything at all, he’s over-paid!
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Danny said on November 18, 2004 at 9:53 am
Too funny, Brian. This sort of thing you catch Yglesias in is pervasive, though (but inexcusable when one is writing a review and for which one is being paid).
Admittedly, I sometimes don’t get past a byline before I’ve made up my mind about the content of an article. BTW, thanks for the Cliff notes version of what Lance said. Saves me the time.
Just joking, Lance.
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first-time caller said on November 18, 2004 at 11:28 am
Interesting that you ding “Ol’ Julio Yglesia” (it’s funny to mix and match the Hispanics!) for poor reading comprehension, given your problem with Mannion’s piece.
The plural of “adulterous friends” is a misreading of Mannion’s anecdote. He only seems to have known the other woman in that situation, so how he could possibly speak to how complicit or otherwise the married man believed himself to be?
I’d end with a Holbrooke quote, but I don’t have one handy.
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brian stouder said on November 18, 2004 at 11:45 am
Mannion said
“I watched a friend, a nice person, well-meaning, basically good hearted, destroy someone else’s marriage, the whole time telling herself she was behaving well, that she wasn’t doing what she was doing, stealing another woman’s husband, because she was not that kind of person.”
etc etc
So I concede your (snippy!) point about my ‘reading comprehension’ regarding the singular “friend” (and we’ll ignore the little ‘racist’ canard you threw in there).
Do YOU concede that the passasge above sounds like a bit of misogynistic twaddle?
With judgemental “friends” like Mr Mannion, who needs enemies, eh?
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first-time caller said on November 18, 2004 at 12:00 pm
>
See, that’s where my snippiness comes in. I would have said “enemas.”
Yes, it takes more than one person to destroy a marriage, especially if the party of the first part isn’t even one of the married two. So the first sentence could have been modified to read “help destoy” or “had a part in destroying.”
But no, I don’t concede the inherent misogyny.
What can I say? I’m a chick and you called my point “snippy,” but I’m going to assume that you meant it in the Gore-to-Bush election night sense, rather than clutch my pearls and accuse you of being a pig.
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brian stouder said on November 18, 2004 at 12:16 pm
“What can I say? I’m a chick and you called my point “snippy,”
hahahahahaha!!
Ashley got huffy when others thought he was female because of his name, and you think I’m possibly a “pig” because I used the term “snippy” and, as it turns out, you actually ARE a woman??!!
Well, I got my laugh of the day!!
btw – and to continue the farm animal thing – you’re being a particularly “chicken chick”, hiding behind your anonymous handle; plus it’s no fair to relegate me to swine status for not somehow discerning that “First Time Caller” and “Dragonfly ridge” necessarily denote proud womanhood!!
ps – indeed, I was going for the Gore-esque effect with the use of the word “snippy”; so 5 points for you there!
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first-time caller said on November 18, 2004 at 12:31 pm
I assumed there was no way of your knowing my gender — that for me to ascribe misogyny to your post would be as absurd as your doing the same to Lance’s.
Well, you got a laugh (albeit a self-satisfied one) out of it anyway, so it’s all good.
Not sure why does it would matter that I don’t put my real name on a blog? It’s not like I’m Ann Coulter or something.
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Nance said on November 18, 2004 at 1:20 pm
Not to pile on here, Brian, but I thought your summation of Lance’s point was pretty…curt. He had a lot of points that weren’t about sex, but I think his overarching one — that Tom Wolfe is a prig who wants to rail against a culture he only dimly comprehends while simultaneously playing pocket pool in his nice white suit — remains undisputed.
Plus, he’s right: Wolfe does think he’s the new Balzac/Dickens/ etc. And he ain’t. I’ll give him his props as a decent popular novelist, but he’s gotta turn down the ego. A lot.
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brian stouder said on November 18, 2004 at 1:47 pm
“I thought your summation of Lance’s point was pretty…curt. He had a lot of points that weren’t about sex, but I think his overarching one — that Tom Wolfe is a prig who wants to rail against a culture he only dimly comprehends while simultaneously playing pocket pool in his nice white suit — remains undisputed.”
Agreed.
I liked Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, and I enjoyed Bonfire; but nothing else has pulled me in.
But I will say that being “a prig who wants to rail against a culture [he] only dimly comprehends” pretty much applies to every pundit, right or left, yes?
Everyone “only dimly comprehends” the puzzle palace/free fire zone/playground/dungeon of a world we inhabit; whereas some people make a living posing as cultural fortune tellers, reading our collective palms and imparting murky ‘truths’ upon us.
So I won’t complain if you toss Wolfe to the wolves, even as you can’t, when his leftist blue-state counterparts get found-out
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Lance Mannion said on November 18, 2004 at 5:40 pm
Brian,
Probably I should have said that the woman “helped” destroy the marriage or was a party to its demise or something. But, you see, I don’t know that, because First time caller is right, I didn’t know the husband. I only knew her. And I knew what she thought because she told everybody around her, over and over again. From the outside it looked as though she set out to break up the marriage, but you’re right he wasn’t an unwilling party.
I did put in there an implicit criticism of the guy but maybe I should have made it clearer, since your complaint here isn’t that I’m judgmental but that I wasn’t judgmental enough.
Matt is a very smart guy who is probably taller than you and can beat you up so watch with the cheap insults. His blog is one of the best around, and yes it’s often full of errors, because it’s a blog! He writes it on the run off the top of his head. I think he does pretty well with the givens. He also acknowledges his mistakes. So if you pointed out to him the problems with his take on the New Yorker piece he’d post it and thank you. Or show you up as being the one who got it wrong.
Either way he doesn’t make a habit of insulting the people who disagree with him as you do. It’s First Time’s prerogative to use a nickname. It’s also kind of an internet tradition.
By the way, my real name’s Dave Reilly. Pleased to meet you.
And The Right Stuff is a fine book.
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brian said on November 18, 2004 at 6:35 pm
“Probably I should have said that the woman “helped” destroy the marriage or was a party to its demise or something. But, you see, I don’t know that, because First time caller is right, I didn’t know the husband.”
Fair enough; it just seemed to me that after ALL that elaborate pre- and post-election straw-man construction of the twin effigies –
Big Hearted, Liberally Sensitive, Open-Minded, Compassionate Blue State Enlightenment, on the one hand –
versus
Benighted, Small Minded, Puritanical, Bible-Thumping, Repressed and Judgemental Red State Dogmatism, on the other –
that your crushing judgements about your star-crossed friend truly took me aback. It seemed to me that the worst Jerry Falwell wannabe in the most nondescript trailer park in Red State America couldn’t have put the blame more squarely onto the woman, nor held the man more harmless, as in your original text.
As far as Yglesias goes – I used to get a steady diet of copy/pasted articles of his on another forum, and indeed – he’s a fine writer (afterall, I DID read his stuff, rather than scroll past!); but that Clark one was so egregious that I really couldn’t take him very seriously thereafter.
“Either way he doesn’t make a habit of insulting the people who disagree with him as you do.”
Or you, for that matter. When you begin ruminating about what sordid things might cause people YOU disagree with to become sexually excited, it undercuts your own white glove test of how others argue, eh?
btw – I DID like your riff on what really motivates people. Lincoln was an adherent to the Doctrine of Necessity; even after he was elected (but before he was inaugurated) he never could really believe that the southern fireaters would actually go to war to protect slavery…it so obviously ran counter to their own self interests.
further btw – 10 points to anyone who can say what big Lincoln thing occurred 141 years ago tomorrow (November 19)
http://www.davereilly.com/
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Lance Mannion said on November 18, 2004 at 6:55 pm
Nope. I’m not that Dave Reilly.
I’m also not the Dave Reilly who’s a cop in Australia or the one who used to sit on the town board in some little town in Ohio or the one who is the computer expert and author of several java textbooks.
Which is why my site isn’t named after me.
I looked over my post and I can’t see where I blamed that woman. I described what she did, truthfully, and I said that she couldn’t judge her own actions, but I didn’t blame her. I don’t even say whether or not she was wrong to break up that marriage. Or if I’ve broken up any marriage myself. (None of your beeswax!) Any judgments you’re reading into what I wrote are more yours than mine, except to the degree that we both agree that breaking up marriages is probably not a nice thing to do.
What I was trying to say, was that Balzac wouldn’t have written judgmentally about her, he’d have made her a real person, self-deluded but sympathetic, but Wolfe would probably make a monster out of her, because he makes monsters of all his characters.
As for the Falwell remark: It doesn’t follow that because someone believes that women shouldn’t always be blamed, they are never to blame.
One of the cheapest tricks in the conservative rhetorical bag is to treat every liberal position as an either/or statement. If it’s not this, it must be that, and if we don’t accept that, we’re hypocrites.
Cheap. And easy.
Anyway, if you want to continue this we should take it outside—over to my site. We shouldn’t waste Nance’s bandwidth and I need some controversery over there.
Tomorrow’s the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Thanks for reminding me.
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Lance Mannion said on November 18, 2004 at 7:22 pm
Brain,
I forgot to acknowledge that you are apparently the only person in the whole world who read my Red State/Blue State rants. Thanks. But I wish you’d left your objections in my comments section. Like I said, I need to stir up trouble there.
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brian said on November 18, 2004 at 8:26 pm
OK – at some point I’ll stir up the residents at your blog!
Nance is an old time newspaper fave of mine from 20 years back – and my inadvertant stumbling into her blog was a genuinely happy occurrence, a few weeks ago!
As far as internet pot-stirring goes, I tend to be a one-trick pony, but I see your point about avoiding running up Ms Telling Tales’ bandwidth bill.
And indeed – excellent catch on the Gettysburg Address! But for my money, the Second Inaugural gives it a run for the greatest of Lincoln’s speeches…
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TSO said on November 19, 2004 at 1:20 pm
A novelist turn down their ego? Isn’t that the secret of their success? What would Norman Mailer be without his ego?
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