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A couple commenters thought I went too easy on Eli Lake’s NIAC piece because he’s my friend. I’ve thought about it a lot, and not just because I got shithammered with Eli last night.
I don’t think my take on the piece was equivocal at all. Eli certainly didn’t see it that way, and we have the email back-n-forth to prove it. But I thought I steered away from gratuitous comment bashing the piece, and criticized what I thought went a bit far. And that’s really what the heart of the criticism is: would I have opened both barrels on a piece like that if a friend of mine hadn’t written it?
Well, in all honesty, probably, yeah. But that shouldn’t make me beat up on my friend. It should give me pause for when I go all-out on people who aren’t my friend. There should be one rigorous standard — no euphemism, no pulled punches, no intellectual sloppiness, but no unfairness either. Doesn’t mean I have to treat bad-faith arguments as good-faith ones, nor does it mean this blog can’t have fun. It certainly doesn’t mean this blog can’t have friends.
We’re all naturally inclined to look favorably on our friends and protect them. I thought I threaded the needle pretty well in criticizing a friend’s work when I considered it wrong-headed. But I get weary of comments that are like, “How can you be friends with that so-and-so.” Well, easily. I want friends who agree with me and share my values and so forth. But I don’t only want friends who do. I like the fact that a friend of mine with similar interests — this was a drinking session that covered the conversational distance between NIAC to Patti Smith to women to DJ Premier to Jimmy Gestapo’s guest appearance in Grand Theft Auto 4 – simply does not see things the way I see them. We give each other a respectful hearing, and sometimes a disrespectful one, too. Life is good that way.
There is a real problem if journalists tilt what they write to protect their friends. To some degree, as Janet Malcolm observed, journalism is best practiced by inherently disreputable and untrustworthy and socially maladjusted people, who feel no personal allegiances. I have more than my share of vices, but I’m not that person. It’s a balance, and I’ll stumble at times. But I’m working on it.
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Well, if you were getting too soft, you made up for it with the dog custody post.
I do kind of feel that your friends, the people you most respect are most deserving of your criticism; if they’re really your friends, they will listen and forgive. But people are weak, so you do have to coddle them a bit. In the end, though, how nice you are or aspire to be in general is irrelevant: your transgression is political, the fact that it was a friend you went easy on is only included to give the criticism legitimacy.
[W]ould I have opened both barrels on a piece like that if a friend of mine hadn’t written it? … Well, in all honesty, probably, yeah
I think it’s great that you’re not the type to only have fellow Liberal Fascists as friends. But you need to come out with at least one barrel with something as egregious as the article in question. When your friend does the editorial bidding of the Moonie Times (racism and innuendo), that shit cannot stand. If Eli Lake is your friend, he should know not to take things too personally. I imagine you wouldn’t hold back in personal conversation, so why should you here? The whole thing like some kind of younger, hipper Village within a Village situation in which you hold the Establishment media in contempt but don’t hold your buddies to the same standards.
It should give me pause for when I go all-out on people who aren’t my friend.
I sure hope it doesn’t. But as a fan, I already know that when you mildly criticize someone like Eli Lake or Tom Ricks, it is safe to assume they deserve heaps of scorn.
What would Greenwald do?
He’s the gold standard. Against the Iraq debacle from jump, which should count for everything.
Okay, the editing tool is behaving very weirdly, so I’m reposting my above comment as it was meant to be (readable):
[W]ould I have opened both barrels on a piece like that if a friend of mine hadn’t written it? … Well, in all honesty, probably, yeah
I think it’s great that you’re not the type to only have fellow Liberal Fascists as friends. But you need to come out with at least one barrel with something as egregious as the article in question. When your friend does the editorial bidding of the Moonie Times (racism and innuendo), that shit cannot stand. If Eli Lake is your friend, he should know not to take things too personally. I imagine you wouldn’t hold back in personal conversation, so why should you here? The whole thing like some kind of younger, hipper Village within a Village situation in which you hold the Establishment media in contempt but don’t hold your buddies to the same standards.
It should give me pause for when I go all-out on people who aren’t my friend.
I sure hope it doesn’t. But as a fan, I already know that when you mildly criticize someone like Eli Lake or Tom Ricks, it is safe to assume they deserve heaps of scorn.
I’m not really convinced by the defense of the defense of Eli, and I hope you’ll think some more about the piece and the effect it’s having on a real mensch like Trita. But I understand your predicament, and I respect the honesty in thinking out loud about such a conflict.
And I will say that one of the things that makes your blog interesting is the real talk, so I hope you’re not going to decide that you should treat everyone like Eli.
It’s disingenuous bullshit to act as though those who question your friendship with Eli necessarily want you to only have like-minded liberals as friends. They’re NOT objecting to Eli because he disagrees with the policy positions of NIAC. No one would care about Eli Lake or your friendship with him if he were an intellectually honest neocon who wrote an article in good faith either disagreeing with NIAC’s policy positions on Iran, or an article in good faith exploring NIAC’s work in light of lobbying/advocacy regulations. But he did neither. Precisely because he disagrees with NIAC’s policy positions on Iran, he joined in a disgusting, dishonest campaign to undermine them – NOT by writing an opinion or analysis piece arguing why their policy approach is flawed and that another approach is superior, but rather, by attacking them in a pathetic, intellectually dishonest hit piece full of innuendo, selective quotes & evidence, omission of undeniably relevant information, etc…
If you are a decent person of any integrity, then you will not want to have friends – liberal, neocon, or otherwise – who stoop to writing shit like this and calling it journalism. If you consider yourself Eli’s friend, you owe it to your friend to tell him plainly and directly, in public and in private, that his NIAC article is morally corrupt, disgusting drivel, just as you would have said publicly if anyone else had written it.