In a word, “no.”
I received an e-mail from a reader asking me to respond to a recent item in Scott Adams’ blog. (I have to admit that the foul language of the item is very offputting. Adams has talent, why he can’t express himself without an excess of 4 letter words is beyond me.)
It appears that this is the offending sentence:
Aren’t there any Iranian words for saying a set of historical facts has achieved an unhealthy level
of influence on a specific set of decisions in the present?
I’m sorry but I didn’t read this the way my correspondent did. Here was the previous sentence:
Furthermore, why does an Iranian guy give a speech in his own language except for using the English word “myth”?
Adams’ complaint wasn’t about the Holocaust. It was about Ahmadinejad’s use of the term “myth” to describe the Holocaust. Adams was noting that is was convenient for Ahmadinejad to use the English word myth, but not very convincing. So he mocked him, in the next sentence with his “historical facts” line. (I’m not sure when Ahmadinejad actually said “myth” in English, asAdams said.) But that’s Adams’s point, Ahmadinejad says myth; Adams, in his rant, says “historical fact” and then uses the phrase “unhealthy level of influence” to describe Ahmadinejad’s beliefs, not his own.
The construction is awkward, but I can’t make the inference that my correspondent made.
In a follow-up post Adams – mercifully free of expletives – wrote
With your indulgence, allow me to clarify.1. I am not happy that Hitler killed your relatives.
2. I do not support the killing of Americans
3. I do not support nuclear annihilation of Israel
4. I do not support the stoning of virgins in Iran
5. I believe the holocaust happenedI also don’t argue there’s a moral equivalence between Iran and the United States, or Israel and the Palestinians, or anyone and anyone else. Groups pursue their own perceived self interest. Arguing relative morality is an idiot’s game. Pointing out similarities in policies, and shaking the box, is good clean fun.
The tone is snarky and non-apologetic, and the politics are muddled. There’s a lot to disagree with. But I just don’t see him providing the comics version of Walt and Mearsheimer?
Am I being too generous? Let me know in the comments and if you blog and wish to comment on it, e-mail me and hopefully, I’ll link to you.
I see a couple of bloggers (at least) have registered their views what Adams wrote. Ranting to /dev/null seems to agree with me. Dossy’s blog OTOH, agrees with my correspondent, but unlike my corresponent, finds those views admirable.
UPDATE: via memeorandum
Daimnation reads Adams the same way my correspondent (Balashon – see below) does:
Yeah, Syria would be the new Singapore if it wasn’t for these pesky Zionists keeping them poor. And Israel’s need to control as much territory as possible explains why they gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt. Reverse psychology, you see.As for a Palestinian “Gandhi,” I’d like to think Adams is saying he’s come under fire from Hamas or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. But I have my doubts.
UPDATE II: Treppenwitz weighs in with his own thumbs down.
The post is such a well written bit of irony / sarcasm, and so disarmingly charming (despite the gratuitous swearing) in its mock rage, that one doesn’t immediately ‘get’ that his deadly serious intent is to criticize Israel and Jews.Reading the piece through the first time was like being a lone American at a dinner party amidst a bunch of Brits… grinning along with the well-bred banter for ten or fifteen minutes before realizing with dawning horror that the ‘colonial’ they’ve been making jokes about all evening is you.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
scott adams
I saw that first post as snark. He’s parodying the people who don’t want Ahmadinejad to speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech. Pretty much gives it away, as does I thank Jesus I do not live in a country led by a man who believes in that sort of bullshit.
The foul language is part of the parody.
In his second post, he sounds like a fellow who’s decided that one nation is no better than another, in that they are all amoral and will do whatever is necessary to maintain their status. This is what many “progressives” claim to believe, though they fail to see that this means that if no nation is better than another, no nation is worse than another. Therefore, the US (or anyone) can do whatever it damn well pleases without moral stain.
Adams seems OK with that view. I suspect, however, that he’s just one of those guys who believes that his own mighty intellect elevates him above the mundane reptile-brained squabbling over whether the pot or kettle is blackest. (Or, in other words, he’s afraid his mighty intellect is not equal to the task of sorting it out.)
Trying an experiment. When I comment, the comments system asks me if I want to download something. Let’s see what it is.
While Adams may not be an antisemite, he certainly exhibits what seems to be a common trait on the left these days: sensitivity to all people except Jews, and to all nations except Israel. (Of course, whenever Jews complain about this treatment, they get accused of oversensitivity.)
Adams clearly intended this to be an anti-Bush Era screed. (An era of muffled freedom of speech, etc. — which he sought to prove by incorrectly stating, in a phrase that he since changed on his website, that Columbia wasn’t allowing Ahmadinejad to speak.) So in his sarcastic way, he asserts that Ahmadinejad didn’t really deny the Holocause, and doesn’t really intend to wipe Israel off the map — assertions that to him don’t really even need proving, because all they represent are straw men for the right wing to utilize in its attempt to dominate the world.
What he doesn’t think about, and doesn’t care about, is that these are issues that Jews (and, one would hope, other people) care about intrinsically. And his snarky attitude about them, which just says that he doesn’t give a sh-t, represents a slap in the face to everyone who does care.
By the way, did you notice when he published that post? Yom Kippur. What a nice guy.
Oh, and if you read his blog today, he’s basically saying that anyone who read that first post and accused him of being antisemitic has a “mental problem.” Actually, he seems to think anyone who doesn’t agree with every word he says is basically an idiot.
Personally, I agree that he isn’t necessarily an antisemite (at least, based on what he wrote in these posts). But I do think he’s an a–. And I’ve lost any desire to continue reading his comic strip and make him even richer than he already is.