"We have literally doubled in the number of hate groups have since 1999."
Maya Wiley in a discussion on the resurgence of white supremacy on MSNBC the other night.
If "more speech" worked, that wouldn't have been the result of the most more-speechy period since the invention of electronic mass media with more more-speechy venues than ever before. "More speech" as a tactic to produce or even protect egalitarian democracy is a notable and total failure.
The speech has to be true to be safe for egalitarian democracy, lies only serve crooks and fascists and dictators. Though I repeat myself, twice. Ideology so often is little more than a cover for gangsterism, gangsterism with an intellectual pretense is still gangsterism. Even when they call it "Marxism" or "classical liberalism" or "civil liberties". Jesus knew that.
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them. Matthew 7:15-20
Fundamentalists who are Trump supporters (or, in fact the supporters of Republicans) should have remembered this. Atheists, of course, reject it. Not because they don't know it's true but because Jesus said it and they just hate them some religion. But religious people, especially the ones who call themselves "Christians" don't have any excuse. The college credentialed class just feel embarrassed by anything associated with the declassé and unfashionable thing, religion, so they'll probably have stopped reading before they get to this. For so many of the credentialed class, it's more a matter of fashion than anything else.
That "free speech" has to serve egalitarian democracy to be safe, it can't preach inequality or racism or or sexism or be a come-on by con men to con the connable. "Free speech" serves ends which are sought, the ends are the only reason for it to be freely spoken. Those ends matter in whether or not it is safe to allow it to be amplified through the mass media. Whether or not the audience likes it is beside the point.
OR, RATHER, IT IS THE POINT! People who got conned by Hitler liked what they were hearing or they wouldn't have accepted it, con men succeed by playing on what their marks like to hear. That goes for politics, you can steal suckers' democracy from them, probably more easily than when you're trying to rob suckers of their money. The courts certainly won't do anything to redress that, or not enough. Certainly not the Roberts court as amplified by another Trump - Federalist-fascist pick.
When you let them lie in the mass media, masses of people will be gulled by it,they will buy the lies and the lies, under electoral government and rule by Supreme Court, will eventually enslave us all. It doesn't have to work more than an effective majority of the time, under the idiocy of the American system with the electoral college and corruptable state-run elections, you don't even have to get a majority of people conned, that's something Putin certainly understood but which Americans lulled by the cult of the Constitution are easy marks for, unable to see the cons that use our system against us.
I think the college-credentialed, free speech absolutists will probably be the last to see that, certainly those who will bleat "more speech" as they're being led to the slaughter. That the slave owners and their co-conspirators in the Northern commercial interests who wrote the Constitution didn't spell that out in their golden calf, the First Amendment, might have been done through their total inexperience with setting up a government that they wanted to be free for themselves and those like them. I suspect, not really caring about it that much, they indulged a touch of the poet and got all 18th century poety, aping Latinate terseness when they should have written it like a contract. If they really cared about it, they'd have spelled it out. The Second Amendment is as dangerously non-specific. The history of the timing of the first ten amendments, the unenthusiastic adoption of it by the "founders" because they didn't think legislatures would buy their brilliant scheme without something they could ironically call "A Bill of Rights"* says a lot about the defects that are contained in the text, defects that the Republican-fascists on the Supreme Court used to hand Bush II the election of 2000 and which left us vulnerable to Putin suckering us into Trump in 2016.
Or it might have been because they didn't want the people they wanted to continue to enslave and to gull to know the truth because it would free them from slavery and would allow them to see through swindles advantageous to their class. So they didn't specify that people should be free to tell the truth but lies had a lesser protection under the Constitution, which was invented by men to do what those men wanted or envisioned, it isn't an expression of the benevolence and wisdom of God.
You should never, ever forget that the men who wrote the Constitution were predominantly slave owners and sharp businessmen as well as lawyers who served their class interests. Though, even if that were not the case, in effect, for us today, that latter case if not present in the Constitution by the intent of the founders was imposed on us through Supreme Court fiat at the behest of lawyers working for the media and the wealthy, going back to the beginning of Supreme Court rulings. And by the middle of the 20th century, there was no excuse because Europe and the Soviet Union had so recently shown us how fucking dangerous the mass media could be when it spouts lies. THAT is something that we have obviously not learned, even yet. No one in the deputed liberal media who doesn't realize "more speech" is a fascist-Nazi promoting failure is either really stupid or they're no kind of liberal who you'd want to have in power.
* Update: As I said, never forget these were men who held massive numbers of people in slavery and who were enthusiastic genocidalists and land thieves. Roger Taney was probably speaking nothing more than the truth when he said they never intended Black People to be covered under their Constitution or their Bill of Rights. One reason to be skeptical of the thing even as fundamentally changed by the Civil War amendments. The Supreme Court, under the guise of not even a "Justice" but a clerk to one, used one of those Civil War amendments to grant "personhood" to corporations, something which we still live under and which is one of the greatest danger to the rights of real people under the Constitution.
Who defines what a "hate group" is? Are the numbers of members increasing or just the number of groups? Pardon the skepticism but the press made such a big deal about the KKK endorsing Trump you'd have thought they'd at least have enough members to fill a minor league baseball stadium. I'm reminded of Bill Hicks's routine about the Hare Krishna's having "the fifth largest army in the world."
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but when you insist that free speech must serve egalitarian democracy, "it can't preach inequality or racism or or sexism..." you're forgetting this is a double-edged sword.
Note the recent remarks made by Sarah Jeong and the verbal contortions being made to qualify them. Various voices from the progressive left have insisted that "racism" doesn't mean what any one of them can read in the dictionary ("hatred or intolerance of another race or other races") but their own Humpty-Dumpty version. Because, you know, then they'd have to admit her very racist jokes were, well, racist.
Jesus also warned us, in the same Gospel no less, about seeing the mote in our neighbor's eye but ignoring the beam in our own. (Matthew 7:3)
As flawed as those white, slave-owning land thieves were and the alternatives, I'm reminded of Augustine's view of children - we think them helpless and gentle because we judge them not by their behavior but their capabilities.
I'm thinking that the invention of automatic weapons and the idiocy of putting them into the hands of deranged people makes the numbers in hate groups a lot less important than it was in the age of flint locks and muskets. One hater with a gun is able to kill enough people to be concerned about, and when they get together online, as in the incel phenomenon, they don't even have to be in shape to go on maneuvers, they only have to egg on the more active and degenerate of their boys club.
DeleteThe Southern Poverty Law Center has a good record of identifying hate groups and studying the phenomenon, so has the Anti-Defamation League (though I think they are rather too inclined to include the criticism of Israel as hate these days) and other such groups. If they say the number of such groups is increasing, I believe them. For crying out loud, we depend on experts for collecting statistics on so many less discernible things, I'm not going to question the SPLC's ability to tell a hate group when they see one.
Certainly there is a difference between the kind of gossipy fault-finding in individuals that Jesus, in fact, addressed in that long list of glosses on what we were to pray for and why in Matthew and organized hate groups bent on destroying equality and democracy. Jesus was addressing the requirement to forgive individuals not to advocate the moral equality of Nazis and the KKK and the Trump regime, the manifestation of Satanic force in the world. He was certainly not addressing the political encouragement of organized hate, which is what the disgusting and irresponsible pose of lawyerly and judicial agnosticism and equal treatment of hate groups and hate speech is.
The founders were more than merely flawed, their Constitution is the greatest danger to equal justice, in the full meaning of the word "justice," today. It's many intentionally drawn flaws, in the words of Madison and Hamilton and John Jay and the rest, drawn up for the benefit of the slave owners, primarily and through the many tactics of blackmailing by the slave powers of the Southern States but with the full cooperation and participation of the Northern commercial interests, Hamilton's real specialty that that ass Lin-Manuel Miranda didn't read about in what was apparently the only book he consulted to write that idiocy, a lying hagiography. And what they didn't install the corrupt "justices" of subsequent Supreme Courts, perhaps none so corrupt as those chosen by the fascist Federalist Society, cemented into place.
“I'm thinking that…locks and muskets.”
DeleteI’m thinking that you’re missing my point about the term “more hate groups” being used as a jump scare than a meaningful breakdown of what the groups are, their size, their actions, etc. Furthermore, I’d rather there are myriad small hate groups with virtually no political/social influence than a single, large, focused one.
“One hater with…their boys club.”
But that's the rhetoric of the times. I don't approve, but for crying out loud, all of the anti-police, anti-white, anti-American rhetoric does the same thing. As the Micah Xavier Johnson incident reveals, even progressive-approved groups like Black Lives Matter can light unintended fuses. Or in the case of Eric Clanton, deliberate ones. We should seek understanding, not self-righteous posturing and virtue signaling.
Of course, the eager embrace of identity politics plays no role whatsoever in any of this. Telling people who are overworked, underpaid and generally unappreciated that they have “privilege” because people with similar skin tone once owned slaves certainly does not serve to further divide and isolate. St. Jerome warned about the dangers of cutting oneself off from others and becoming enamored with our own prideful lamentations. Not much as changed.
“The Southern Poverty…other such groups.”
I asked what defines a hate group. Not who. The SPLC calls the ADF a hate group, so I’d rather they give their reasons and methodology than just insist we trust their authority and judgment. You might not like them, but to lump them in with the KKK is about as meaningful an exercise as comparing Britney Spears to Aretha Franklin.
“If they…I believe them.”
I’m less interested in numbers than influence, power and how the term is defined.
“For crying…they see one.”
You certainly are allowed that faith in institutions. I’m a bit more skeptical. Especially when they get sued and settle. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with questioning how statistics are gathered nor the meaning of the terms being used. If I ask how, I don’t want to hear, “trust us, we’re experts.”
“Certainly there is…equality and democracy.”
But again, how “organized” are these groups? Do they have any influence? Considering our pound-of-flesh culture and the progressive-approved, selective doxing that occurs, I’m just having trouble accepting that these organizations aren’t paper tigers meant to dwell on past offenses and justify the very real discriminatory and divisive rhetoric I hear tossed around so cavalierly from both sides of the aisle.
“Jesus was addressing…hate speech is.”
But he was also speaking to our inability to see our own flaws and foibles at the expense of others’ imperfections. To be outraged by Donald Trump, but not Bill Clinton. Or vice versa. Christians are called to be held to a higher moral standard beyond the ephemeral cultures and bodies political we reside in. In the world, not of it.
And to repeat, we are living in a culture where the Progressive Left is trying to redefine the term “racism” so that prejudicial and vulgar statements about (white) people are acceptable because that’s not what racism means regardless of the OED, and Merriam-Webster, and common sense.
“The founders were…word ‘justice,’ today.”
DeleteI doubt that. No. Cancel that. I know that’s not the case. My friend’s wife is Chinese. My cousin lives in Montreal. They’ve told me about their experiences living in those places. I’m as eager to move to either and away from the horrors of the Constitution as I am to drive drunk down Lombard Street in a tank truck full of nitroglycerin.
“It's many intentionally…Northern commercial interests,”
Yes, politics is complicated and often a messy endeavor. But the great thing about that is slavery is no longer an issue for the United States in the way it was in 1776. That the document can be and has been altered is a testament to their understanding of the passage of time and changes. This is a point you make about free speech. The trouble is, you've given nothing to replace it.
And I must insist that human slavery is a very real problem the world over, and often without the support of the US Constitution. They often have slavery and no freedom of speech.
“Hamilton's real specialty…cemented into place.”
It's a musical about Alexander Hamilton done to hip-hop. For crying out loud man, that Miranda doesn't focus on what you think he should is your problem, not his. Write your own musical about Hamilton. Nothing is stopping you. But he told the story he wanted to tell. If you have another, line starts over there. But like your 'Shakespeare In Love' obsession, I think you fear the idea that somewhere, someone doesn't understand it's just a play/movie. This least common denominator approach to art won't leave us with much. Or at least much that's any good.
Despite its flaws and omissions, it’s still more accurate than Diana Price’s book about Shakespeare.
Your last comment about Diana Price proves to me you never read her, she fully documented ever single thing she claimed in her book and in her papers and in things like reviews and responses to criticism. LMM's musical spectacle is full of bald-fasced lies about history that real historians have shown to be real by looking at the documents that Hamilton, his wife's family, etc. left behind. "It's just a play" is a crap excuse BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE, EVEN THOSE WITH COLLEGE DEGREES OBVIOUSLY MISTAKE "JUST A PLAY" FOR REAL, FACTUAL HISTORY.
DeleteThe rest of your comments are unsurprising to me, coming from a conservative, straight, white male. I will point out that I've answered all of those in one form or other over the years, as I generally do when I write about things, I back up what I say with documentation from credible sources and with what I take pains to make sure are logical arguments.
My comments about the danger that the American Constitution are, today, under the billionaire-libertarian regime of conventional Constitutional dogma and doctrine. Though, as can be seen from such things as the imposition of Bush II-Cheney by "originalists" and "strict constructionists" and other such Federalist-fascists, the consequences for the world can be enormously bad. The features of the Constitution I have been most critical of, the sloppy writing of the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the anti-democratic composition of the Senate, the Electoral College (on which the anti-democratic composition of the Senate directly impinges, as well as the generally anti-democratic nature of it) the other schemes that Madison, Hamilton and John Jay cooked up for their personal enrichment and empowerment, the empowerment and enrichment of their fellow aristocrats, their hampering of egalitarian democracy as they cooked up something just not horrible enough to sell it to state legislatures, etc. are ways of extending the regime they empowered, including the resurgent American-apartheid push. The Civil War amendments didn't correct those and lawyers and judges and justices have found ways to negate the intent of those, "corporate personhood" was only one of the early ones. Defacto slavery under Jim Crow was an enduring and potent force in American politics even with those corrective amendments in place, that's reality, the highs-school civics textbook bull shit is proven to be bull shit by that very real history and the attempt by those in power to negate the further efforts to correct the sins of the founders in the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.
You have real problems with People of color and Women. You are not going to be happy with the future.
Documenting one's sources is not proof that the conclusions drawn from them are accurate. I have written, more times than I’ve fingers, and you have ignored, that it is in her methodology where Price reveals her lack of training and competence. Nothing she documents is unavailable to the entirety of Elizabethan historians and critics, yet the vast majority reaches a different conclusion.
ReplyDeleteGarry Wills, whose work you dismissed, also documented his claims. I know, because I provided you with the list. There is rich humor in someone so anti-Trump, so outraged by dishonesty amongst the press, embracing with both arms a disproven conspiracy theory, and insisting that the near-entirety of academia in the fields of literature and history are promulgating “fake news.” You really have a problem with people who don’t agree with you. Argumentum ad hominum, ad infinitum.
Your claim was that the basically inaccurate, frequently factually untruthful musical bilge, "Hamilton" was more accurate than Diana Price's book, that is a false claim. It is rather grossly dishonest.
DeleteI didn't ignore your attacks on the methodology Diana Price used, I pointed out that she, herself, addressed methodology and proved that she was following the prescribed methods of academic research in the relevant areas, you are the one who ignores that. In her book, in her articles, reviews, responses, etc. Diana Price goes into extensive documentation of THE SCHOLARLY STANDARDS HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS USE when they are writing serious, scholarly history and biography, she quotes experts on those issues on the standards of judging the evidentiary value of different forms of primary evidence and the lesser evidentiary value of impersonal, second-hand, posthumous, etc. forms of evidence. She gives some of the best summation of the stated scholarly standards used to conduct non-ideological historical and biographical writing and claims.
Everything I've read on the issue exposes the fact that it's the Bard of Avon industry that fails to practice the highest form of weighing and evaluating evidence, it has to, there is no evidence linking the Stratford man to the work from his lifetime, something that even some of them will admit if forced to. Diana Price did a masterful job of showing that the Stratford man is the only one of 25 authors from the lifetime of that man and the author of the works in question who didn't live a single piece of evidence linking him to the works or, in fact, to writing of any kind. She established that in one of the best programs of research into the authorship question that anyone has ever done. As I recall, without having time to locate our argument on that point, I was able to point out that Garry Wills didn't really deal with the evidence, he made some rather far fetched and, I would say ridiculous arguments by analogy when argument by analogy doesn't work to make the argument he wanted to. I think in so far as the authorship issue goes, Diana Price is, by far, the more qualified and honest scholar.
So many of the industry scholars are up to their necks in peddling lies (the Stratfordian theme park with 19th century buildings peddled as relevant to the life of the Stratford man, older houses in the area just assigned, on the basis of nothing as having things to do with his wife and him. A fraud that is so well established that one of the 19th century custodians of it quit because his conscience couldn't allow him to lie on behalf of the fraud, something that so many esteemed scholars have had little trouble with being part of. I'm not surprised you don't respect her superior level of scholarship, since you're so willing to buy into that.
Thinking about this, Wills was the one who made the argument based on boy actors, wasn't he? As I recall when I checked his extensive claims about that there is no evidence that a. the Stratford man was associated with the company during the production(s) Wills made the claims about, b. that he was involved with the company (or even in London) during the time when the specific boy actor he made the claims about was a part of the company. As I recall, there was no evidence at all that either Shaksper met or even knew the name of the boy actor or the boy actor had ever laid eyes on the Stratford man.
DeleteTell me if I'm wrong about that. I have a fairly good memory but I answered a lot of claims you presented.
Rice was John Heminges's (or Heming or Heminge - remember, spelling, even of names, was not consistent) apprentice. An editor of the First Folio, Rice is listed as a "principal actor."
DeleteI think that sufficient evidence he knew Shakespeare, as Shakespeare wrote the plays, and was involved in their production.
Now, let me repeat, I'm willing to listen to evidence, but I need evidence to listen to. And by that, I mean something direct and positive. Not "well, where is X if he was a writer?"
[Before you even start - the idea that Shakespeare was a front, and therefore the process was done in secret, assumes that no secrets about that era exist. That is untrue. We know plenty of such information based on remarks and asides found in diaries and letters from the era and within living memory. If you can provide something to make your case, please present it. I am willing to listen, but please, no "whataboutism" about signatures or lack of paperwork or an interpretation of a particular play or poem].
Rice was identified as a boy actor in the period after which Shaksper can be identified as involved with the acting company or, as I recall, even have been in London to have seen him. There is no evidence he ever saw him, knew his name, or that the boy had ever been in the presence of the Stratford man. In order for that argument to even any validity at all there would have to be some evidence that they had been in the same town at some point and, as I recall, there is none.
DeleteWhat Garry Wills did in that argument is make up a pretty tale which has no evidentiary foundation. You can't create that kind of specific evidence out of the corpus of the plays and poems because you would need specific facts to support it and there is none that I could see. The fact of the documentary evidence that is positively identified as referring to Wm. Shaksper of Stratford is the strongest evidence of his life and there is nothing in it to support Wills' contention. It's as accurate as Tom Stoppard's tales. It's not history, it's not even a real theory because a real theory has to have some evidence to support its contentions.
There are many other things that could destroy the validity of Wills' contention, one being that the true author of Anthony and Cleopatra, etc. had seen another boy actor who was good or that the inspiration of the character was, in fact, some woman the author knew or one he'd made up that he wished he knew. Which is a basic problem of creating evidence out of literary texts alone, with no evidence to support that theory. Once you start making up stories there is no limit in what you can make up, as the enormous corpus of "scholarship" on the question of how the Stratford man learned all of the things the author of the plays would have had to have known. He couldn't possibly have done all of the different things, held all of the different jobs that the "scholars" have made up for him to have held because a real person's life is limited in time and place in a way that the "Shakespeare" of even academic assertion has created.
A lack of paperwork is not a "whataboutism" it is a hard fact. It is extremely clueless about you accusing me of basing what I'm saying on the "interpretation of a particular play or poem" when that is exactly what this argument of Wills' that you make recourse to is, his contention about a few of the female characters in support of the entirely undocumented literary career of the Stratford man.
If you ever come to Arizona, call me. I’d like to introduce you to my coworker. A Vietnam Vet, he thinks I’m “too liberal.” I’d love to record the discussion you (pl) have.
ReplyDeleteI also have a friend, a gay Republican, who offered that I was one of the few liberals (his term) he could talk politics with, because when he told me he was voting for Trump, I disagreed but didn’t insult, demean, or dismiss him. I don’t think you should talk to him, though.
So, I gotta admit, I think it funny someone thinks I’m “conservative.” Also a good thing. I try to remember what Jesus warned, “My reign is not of the present order.” (John 18:36)
Yes, I am straight. Yes, I am white. Yes, I am male. I had as much control over those things as I do my eye color, and I give them about as much consideration in myself as I do in others. It’s people like you who seem to dwell on and can’t stop talking about and have a problem with those traits.
You don't appear to believe in egalitarian democracy. You cannot believe all people are equal and then consistently bring up skin color, sexual orientation and gender as a means to dismiss opinions and arguments. Noam Chomsky once noted that as long as you manipulate the terms you’re using, you can argue you are “for” any position regardless of your actual point of view. Stalin, as he noted, supported free speech…that he agreed with. You are against racism…from white people. You believe people have the right to make their own decisions…provided you approve. You believe straight white people (mostly men) are always at fault…and that’s it.
Per the founding fathers, they were politicians after all, and like politicians today, could be extremely self-serving in their actions. It didn't stop me from voting for Hillary, nor does it stop me from admiring them.
"Real problems?" Says the man who lives in one of the whitest, oldest states in the Union!
I grew up in Southern California, as cosmopolitan as any locale on earth, and spent two years in El Paso, where I was a minority racially, linguistically and culturally. I currently live and work in Tempe, a college town with a vast influx of foreign students and in a profession that is largely female. So, if that were true, I should never have even made it to where I am now, and even then, should be terribly unhappy with the present!
The fact that I don’t view people through the patronizing lens of identity politics does not mean I have “real problems” with them, and you offer that libel whenever I am critical of someone you deem beyond criticism because of melanin levels, political affiliation, genitalia, or some variation thereof.
As I said, you clearly have a problem with people who disagree with you, and you look, actively and eager and desperately, for prejudice. I don't know why, but you do it. All. The. Time.
"It’s people like you who seem to dwell on and can’t stop talking about and have a problem with those traits."
DeleteWell, isn't that ironic in the context of your comments.
I would, if I had the time, answer every point in your comment and refute what you said, except about your friends in Arizona, I'd need primary evidence to talk about that and it's unavailable to me.
No irony, no jokes, no barbed commentary.
DeleteI am truly serious in asking this, why on earth do you constantly call me a racist and misogynist?
"Your claim was that the basically inaccurate, frequently factually untruthful musical bilge, "Hamilton" was more accurate than Diana Price's book, that is a false claim. It is rather grossly dishonest."
ReplyDeleteA musical that stars a Puerto Rica as Alexander Hamilton done to hip-hop isn't accurate?
Hyperbole - "exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally, often for humorous effect."
When you write the "the Bard of Avon industry," you fail to remember that the vast majority of Shakespeare (and Renaissance Literature, and History) scholars are not directly involved in "Anne Hathaway's Cottage" or any of the other touristy claptrap. They using the same standards of research, the same documents, and unsurprisingly reach the same conclusion that yup, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. So, despite lacking a financial motivation, and even and especially tenured professors (who say all sorts of crazy nonsense) who have job security, you can't say they haven't had time to be exposed to Price (her book is almost twenty-five years old) nor that they have a financial interest in maintaining the lie, so I'm afraid that is not a convincing argument to me.
You insist, over and over, that her standards are better that the conventional scholars, but I disagree. She often engages in special pleading, anachronistic reasoning, and clearly, by her own admission, thinks she can recognize where the "real" author of the play speaks directly to the audience, which makes no sense, considering even she admits she has no idea who the author is! Only that he wasn't William Shakespeare.
You yourself make that claim, as you reference, constantly, Hamlet's instructions to the players. But we don't know that is Shakespeare speaking, that is Hamlet, a character in his play. It COULD be his thoughts on presentation, but we no more know that than we do Dostoevsky was secretly an atheist because of Ivan Karamazov's dialogue. Part of dramatic invention is creating characters, and sometimes dialogue for them. They do no have to be autobiographical.
I should note, much of your bile is focused on the Shakespeare Tourism Industry that surrounds Stratford. This is something I have never endorsed, defended, or even brought up. Honestly, why do you keep mentioning it when it has nothing to do with the issue of authorship? It's like using the Creation Museum in Kentucky to argue against Christianity. I think the evidence sufficient to conclude Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Until presented with actual, positive data that he was a front (and no, "Poet Ape" doesn't count) or another author wrote the plays, there is no reason to imagine our vague picture of the man the product of time's ravages. As a librarian who took a class in archiving, I must repeat I think you, as most people are, unaware of just how much data we've lost to the elements and neglect.
"Poet Ape," by the way, is one example of Price's poor scholarship. She notes that Jonson wrote only a handful of poems in "Shakespearean Sonnet" form, and perhaps that was a hint as to the "Poet-Ape's" identity?
Trouble is, the adjective "Shakespearean" wasn't attached to that form until after Jonson shuffled off his mortal coil, making her conclusion impossible and poorly researched.
So, to repeat: I don't defend the tourism industry, I have seen zero evidence Shakespeare was ever a front, I'm certain the vast majority of scholars have no connection nor receive any benefit from Stratford, and gave one example of Price's shoddy methodology. There are more. If you cannot answer, directly, those points, there is no need to continue this discussion. But for me, those are the mountains in the way.
Again, I could answer everything you've said in this comment and, in many of the particulars, I have answered them. You just don't like the answers.
DeleteIt is ironic that you're accusing Diana Price of using a posthumous denotation in regard to Jonson as Jonson's entire and entirely ambiguous attribution of the works to someone who might have been the Stratford man was posthumous. It's more than just a little possible that Jonson's "Poet-ape" poem was one of the few literary records of the Stratford man to come during his lifetime. I've read Diana Price, I've read lots of the standard Shakespeare scholars and point for point, in fact and methodology, she supports what she says AND SHE ALWAYS MAKES A DISTINCTION BETWEEN WHAT SHE SPECULATES MIGHT BE AND WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS. She always lays out a bright line between her conjecture and what can be taken as solid fact when hardly any of the academically standard Stratfordians do that.
I do think you demonstrate that you've got a problem with women and people of color in your comments. If it is at the level of racism and misogyny isn't something I've given a lot of thought to.
LMM's use of people of color to represent the lily white slave owners and their allies in the Northern commercial class (by the way Hamilton and his wife and her sister were all slave owners) is based on his bad taste, muddled thinking and ignorance of the alleged topic of his musical's book. That someone so basically wrong about it would come up with such an appalling production concept doesn't surprise me. I'm hardly the only one who has pointed that out, some actual scholars of Hamilton and the period have said it was disgusting. I doubt that one in a hundred of those who go to groove on the rapping and boogying get anything like an intellectual engagement with history. No, make that one in a hundred thousand.
Respectfully, you have mentioned this before that my “comments” cause you to conclude that I have “a problem” with women and “people of color” but never expanded on what that means.
ReplyDeleteWhat causes you to think I have a “problem” with anyone based on their appearance or 23rd chromosome rather than their actions and ideas? I’ve said Diana Price (for example) is a poor scholar. I’ve never said she should be barefoot and pregnant, nor have I said that her poor scholarship is because she’s a woman. Or anything resembling that. I have commented on her lack of credentials and her statements about subjective, backwards reasoning (she has said she believed Shakespeare wasn't the author when she began her investigations, and as a twig is bent and all...) but would say the same about her is his name was Daniel Price.
I used the ‘Hamilton’ comparison as hyperbole, but truth to tell, I used it because it’s a show you have pulled your hair and gnashed your teeth at multiple times. Hence, a point of reference. But truthfully, I don’t really care at all for the musical and care even less about its anachronisms. But I still think it’s more accurate. [Hyperbole - Joke]
Regarding “Poet Ape,” you are misrepresenting the argument I made.
The issue isn’t that the poem is posthumous. The issue is that the structure, which Price takes pains to point out as being a potential clue to the subject, was not described as “Shakespearean” until AFTER Jonson died. Meaning there is no way Jonson would have associated the term "Shakespearean" with the sonnet form. Even if she was just speculating, that is a basic, freshman-year mistake historians are trained NOT to make.
Similarly, your argument about Wills is equally disingenuous. His argument is based on the size and scope of the role of Cleopatra, and that no playwright, who wrote works to be performed with a specific playing company and its collective of actors, would have written a large role for a boy actor unless he was certain he had the maturity and talent to handle such a part.
Shakespeare wrote ‘Anthony and Cleopatra.’ It is included in the First Folio. On that scholars agree.
I asked a question that you claim to have answered, but I don’t believe you have, so I’ll ask again. I am not trying to be obnoxious or facetious, but as the crux of your argument is that Shakespeare was a front for another writer, do you have any direct proof or even second-hand reference to this being the case? A letter, diary entry, aside in a manuscript. Anything? I am more than willing to look at evidence, but I've yet to encounter anything resembling proof except speculative interpretation of say, "Poet Ape" or Shakespeare being called "our English Terence." Both of which can just as easily, if not more so, be interpreted to be about another person and praise for his writing of comedies.
I am trying to have a reasonable discussion, and an open to listening, but just because I haven't reached your conclusions doesn't mind I've left the issue unexplored.
Do you hold that all of the scholars in the conventional Stratfordian establishment who began their researches holding that the Stratford man was the author and whose fathers did produce problematic research? No, of course you don't because you maintain a double standard, similar to the double standard which is always maintained by those who hold the conventional point of view on the authorship question.
DeleteDo you think that Ben Jonson would have been unaware of the poetic form of what he read or that someone, like him, among the greatest poets of that age of formal poetry would not have known if they were aping a form used in regard to works, well known to their audience to make a point about someone stealing a colleagues work? And that's not to mention it was an age of subtle poetic devises, strategies and conceits of rather stunning depth and that Jonson was one of its masters? I don't know if the point you are referring to in the matter of "Poet-ape" is accurate or not, but such an age of such devices and conceits invites that kind of speculation. That point, true or not, wouldn't do a single thing to invalidate her work in demonstrating that of 25 authors of the time, the Stratford man, who is considered the greatest of them all and was certainly claimed to be so starting seven years after his death, is the only one who left no direct evidence that he was an author from during his lifetime. If she were wrong on other and sundry points, that she was the first person to have the wit, intelligence and diligence to make that study marks her as a fine and responsible scholar as, in fact, her book and papers all do. Again, considering the mountain of speculation the Shakespeare industry is, including its purely academic wing (see Wills' use of Rice) your focus on a few speculations made by Diana Price (which, in my reading of her, she ALWAYS NOTE IS SPECULATIVE) is ridiculous.
Whoever wrote the other plays wrote Anthony and Cleopatra, on who that is the scholars don't agree. That doesn't make Wills' unevidenced claim about the role that a boy actor who was not a member of the company during a period when the Stratford man's name appears in the acting company records but after that, that he was an actor in London in a period when the Stratford man cannot be known to have visited London, anything less than another of the pretty tales of Wm. Shakespeare, in love with the boy's acting and writing a part for him, peddled by a popular historian to prop up the Shakespeare industry which pretty much runs the relevant department in academia and pop culture. It is junk scholarship which does nothing to elevate Wills' status as an honest writer. Unlike the main body of Price's work, it is dreck.
I don't want to discuss your personality any more than I have.
I should point out that the kind of use that Wills' made of Cleopatra can cut both ways. It was the disparity between the female characters in the plays, Helen, Miranda, Juliette, Portia, up to and including Lady Macbeth and the fact that the Stratford man, a wealthy man by Elizabethan-Jacobian standards in a rural town, didn't make certain that his only surviving children, his daughters or the granddaughter he is claimed to have loved, learned to read. The only one of the Shaksper family we have really good evidence could draw the letters of her name other than the famous six signatures (and they look drawn, not written) couldn't even distinguish her own husband's handwriting from that of another writer. The man who created those characters would never have allowed his daughters to grow up illiterate with all the disadvantages that illiteracy would have been known to be for the man who wrote those plays. That's a speculation, but its based in fact and it's far less speculative than what you value in Wills' tales of Shakespeare.
DeleteThe scholars who voice a traditional view of authorship provide documentation that Shakespeare was the writer that I find convincing (including references made during his lifetime, printed works that bare his name, etc.). Price's theory is that Shakespeare was a front, yet I have seen no direct evidence for this claim.
DeleteFurthermore, I am equally dismissive of the flights of fancy from Stephen Gleenblatt (to cite one example) who attempt to read the works autobiographically and wander far off the rez. I think in this case your are assuming what I think rather than asking.
Your "Poet-Ape" comments are entirely anachronistic. Shakespeare used the form, but to say the community, literary and otherwise, associated it with him the way current scholar and writer do is incorrect. Much like Price's comments about "Our English Terence." Yes, Terence was a front, but the majority of references to him during the era deal with his dramatic output, in the same way Bach was regarded during his lifetime as an organist than a composer. To attach later perspectives to past persons is, again, not how historians work.
Per the "literary paper trail," you repeat this claim but it is not borne out by the writings of historians who have addressed the topic. To note one instance, the impresa payment made to Richard Burbage and "Mr. Shakespeare" for a performance for the Earl of Rutland would be classified by a vast quantity of scholars as a sufficient response to "Evidence of having been paid to write."
You may, nay, do find it unpersuasive. Well, that's fine, but to insist I have a "double standard" because I accept evidence like that instead of demanding more more more is disingenuous.
"Whoever wrote the other plays wrote Anthony and Cleopatra, on who that is the scholars don't agree."
I could say the same thing about any number of conspiracy theories, all of whom have their adherents, including scholars. It does not make the Shakespeare one any more legitimate than the others, nor, I imagine, would you insist those other issues are unresolved.
"another of the pretty tales of Wm. Shakespeare, in love with the boy's acting and writing a part for him, peddled by a popular historian to prop up the Shakespeare industry which pretty much runs the relevant department in academia and pop culture. "
That is 1) a gross caricature of Wills' point and 2) unfounded. What role has an 80-year-old retired professor to play in the "Shakespeare Industry?"
"I don't want to discuss your personality any more than I have."
You haven't discussed it at all. You insulted me and impugned my character, and when I asked you why, you said, "your 'comments,'" and when I asked, respectfully and specifically, what was said, you refused to go further. That is not a discussion. It is an insult backed with an oblique attempt at justification.
Price's admitted reconstruction of the role that the Stratford man may have played in the transmission of the plays is more complex than that AND SHE ADMITS AT EVERY POINT THAT IT IS A SPECUALATION but it is a speculation based, solidly, on the documentary record and not a castle of conjecture. It's more of a foundation of a building, if one wants to make that analogy.
DeleteI wasn't talking about any literary establishment associating the form with "Shakespeare" I was talking about Ben Jonson noticing the poetic form of the Sonets - which I have absolutely no doubt he would have noticed BECAUSE HE WAS THE SECOND GREATEST ENGLISH LANGUAGE POET OF THE TIME - and that if he had chosen to, he could use the form to make some kind of literary allusion to who he was identifying as "Poet-ape". That possibility grows in seeming liklihood every time you force me to think about it, considering the other poetic and literary tactics that Jonson is known to have employed for his and his most informed readers' entertainment and information.
Wills' claims to "prove" that the Stratford man had been the author based on a. his being named as an investor and "actor" in theatrical records, b. the complexity of specific female roles in plays such as A&C, c. the need to have boy actors accomplished enough to have played such complex female roles founders on him naming a specific boy actor of the company NOT HAVING BEEN A MEMBER OF THE COMPANY UNTIL AFTER THE LAST MENTION OF WM. SHAKSPER BEING INVOLVED WITH IT AND AFTER HE IS KNOWN TO HAVE EVEN BEEN IN LONDON. In order for Wills' argument to work as evidence you would have to have the boy and the merchant of Stratford in the same town at the same time and you can't do that on the basis of the documentary record of either one of them. It is another pretty tale of Wm. Shakepeare of Stratford on Avon told in order to provide him with what doesn't exist, any evidence that the man wrote the plays and poems from during his lifetime, related to the known facts of his life. When I checked the chronology I was a bit shocked to have found that Wills didn't fact check his claim to even that extent.
I said what I said about your personality. It is as far as I am going to go in that regard.
All your Authorship speculation is without any documentation to support the conclusion that he was a front. Like Sean Carroll refusing to admit science's understanding of the electron, but at least he had the intellectual honesty to admit it in plain English. You are still obfuscating the very real reality that you have none. But lots of speculation. Like Alex Jones.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes sense, as you insult me and refuse to explain or apologize and dismiss those who disagree as having a malicious agenda and have no respect for the laws and ideas on which this country was founded and prop up and celebrate any supporter of your political positions regardless of how odious and illogical their arguments.
As much as you claim to hate Trump, you are very much like him.
James 1:23-24.
First, you clearly don't understand the exchange I had with Sean Carroll. I'm the one who got him to admit that there is not a single object in the universe that science knows comprehensively and exhaustively, after more than two weeks of insisting on an answer. There was nothing intellectually honest about it on his part because he knew admitting it would make his hobby horse a Theory of Everything obviously absurd.
DeleteYou clearly don't appreciate the difference between the hypothesis that the Stratford man was a front (which, by the way, I've never claimed is more than an interesting hypothesis, I don't think D. P. has either) and the positive claims of the Stratfordian industry. Alex Jones? Trump? What are you talking about?
I don't understand your citation of James in the context of this argument.