I'm not very familiar with your writing. Your description of the right's sudden shift to "whining and shallow" seems rather vague. Could you explain in exactly what way?
-----
Shallow: the rise of Ann Coulter. See my recent letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review about how no conservative who makes claims about liberals ever INTERVIEWS liberals, whereas liberals who write about conservatives (like me) try to give their writing depth by interviewing conservatives all the time.
My letter:
To the Editor:
In his review of Thomas Frank's ''What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America'' (June 13), Josh Chafetz partakes of a rhetorical maneuver fit only for blackguards and illiterates.
It goes like this:
Ann Coulter is a vitriolic right-wing pundit. (Examples of Coulter's notoriety are likely to pop to the forefront of the reader's mind: averring of Muslims, ''We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity''; fantasizing about the incineration of The New York Times Building; accusing those she disagrees with of treason.)
Tom Frank is a vitriolic left-wing pundit.
Q.E.D.: Tom Frank must be like Ann Coulter.
He isn't. Frank did something Coulter never, ever would do -- something no conservative ever does: patiently, respectfully, he sat down with people he disagreed with and listened to them. That he did not prefer what they had to say -- for reasons he illuminates with a sustained, subtle and learned argument, something Coulter has never managed to do -- is a writer's prerogative. It is not, however, a reviewer's prerogative to invent a case for guilt by association.
I suppose Tom Frank is vitriolic: ''bitter, scathing, caustic,'' reads my dictionary. But he is also a responsible intellectual, careful and thoughtful, and deeply humane. Nothing in his book is unsupported by evidence and logic, disagree with it though you may -- including those ''dry statistical studies'' for which Chafetz ''searches his book in vain.'' The book groans with them. Search not in vain, Mr. Chafetz: one of them, from the Center for Rural Affairs, is cited in the first paragraph.
---
As for whiny--well, I just interviewed a conservative leader in Portland who said that conservatives were "opressed" by gays. Maybe you agree, but he also said conservatives were "opressed" when liberals called them names. It is an interpretation that Thomas Jefferson, for one, would have disagreed with. When he entertained foreign visitors as president he would always pile high a stack of the most scabrous anti-Jefferson pamphlets and newspapers in the waiting room (back then his enemies called TJ the "Nigger President" and the "Atheist President") in order to demonstrate that in America, it was precisely //not// an insult to anyone's rights, even a president's, to call them names.
We are all oppressed by gays, when gays try to sexualize the society according to their agenda. I don't really care what people do behind closed doors, but don't tell my kid that Heather Has Two Mommies. It's my job to decide what moral compass my kid follows.
Oh, honestly. You found one conservative who whines about being called names, and you use this as evidence that conservatives are generally like this?
You HONESTLY think that liberals are not the majority of people whining in our society about being "oppressed"? You HONESTLY don't see that liberals are the majority of those who want to make laws so that no-one is ever called a name? Isn't it the liberals on campus who are writing the speech codes to punish the name-callers?
So Ann Coulter single handedly shifted the entire right to a place where they are "whining and shallow"?
You are more paranoid than Eric Alterman if you believe this.
From one interview you extrapolate it to describe "Many". nice piece of work.
I'm mainly watching, but this jumped out at me:
"Shallow: the rise of Ann Coulter."
Fellow FReepers, don't fall for it - he's trying to make you angry. Silly debate tactics.
Interesting.
So you formed your opinion of millions of people by statements made by one individual? Without context, your assessment of even that one individual has no weight, except to you because you were there.
As for shallow, your lettr to the editor proved only that you think Ann Coulter is vitriolic. One man's interpretation of "vitriole" is another's acid wit. In fact, I would consider your accusation that NO conservative EVER sits down and talks with someone they disagree with to be vitriole. You're talking to us aren't you? Not person to person, but you already stated that conservatives speak with you about issues in person - i.e.: the Portland "whiner".
I'm still waiting to hear why you assess all conservatives as "shallow"
"how no conservative who makes claims about liberals ever INTERVIEWS liberals, whereas liberals who write about conservatives (like me) try to give their writing depth by interviewing conservatives all the time. "
That claim is factually false. In fact, it is the reverse of the truth.
Every night, practically, conservative pundit Sean Hannity is on Fox News Hannity and Colmes - interviewing Liberals.
Last week, O'Reilly had the Fat One - Moore. Typically, thees shows have almost as many liberals as conservatives. Heck, I'd bet O'Reilly would book you if you had a good story.
Rush has made a career out of taking liberal views, liberal editorials and liberal politicians' statements and commenting on them - MUCH AS FR IS A FORUM FOR CONSERVATIVES TO TALK BACK TO A NARROW-MINDED ELITE LIBERAL MEDIA.
Liberals have no curiousity - with rare exceptions (yourself?) - about what really makes Conservatives tick. Probably why their biased slams about conservatives are so off-based. Most conservatives otoh face liberal views constantly in their newspaper, news, etc.
Now, Mr Perlstein prove yourself right and me wrong: Show me the extensive record of liberal shows and magazines interviewing Conservatives Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and David Horowitz?
You can't! They never do!
Liberals are far *less* interested in conservative views than vice versa.
PS. Wasnt Joe McCarthy more right than wrong about the threat of Soviet spying in the 1940s? Can you name a single Liberal interviewer/reviewer who examined Coulter's Treason book long enough to study that question *seriously*?
PPS "But he is also a responsible intellectual, careful and thoughtful, and deeply humane. Nothing in his book is unsupported by evidence and logic, disagree with it though you may -- ..."
The same can be said for Coulter's Treason, which groans with facts about 50 years of Democrat malfeasance in foreign policy. Do you actually dispute Coulter's recounting of the McCarthy era? or the Vietnam war?