The answer to this question is, "Maybe not."
Okay, this is a post in which I'll let off a bit of steam. You're warned.
I receive a lot of emails from people asking me to do things. Some of these offer me work on a professional basis - as a writer, a speaker, or an editor. In many cases, I am not offered money but at least there's the possibility of good PR if (for example) the outcome is a reputable publication of some kind. All those offers are welcome, even though I can't accept them all.
Many other emails basically ask me to do the writer a private favour. It might be reading a manuscript and offering editorial advice, putting in a good word with a publisher for someone trying to start a writing career, or even helping a kid with his or her school assignment. There are many categories, I don't have any hard and fast rules about how I respond.
I don't resent these emails. I try to answer them all, and sometimes put in hours of work doing what I feel I can.
However, I do ask the people who send such inquiries to understand a few things. First, you are not the only one. If I only ever got one email asking me for a favour every blue moon I might be able to put in more time and effort in these cases, but I actually get quite a lot - enough to keep me occupied full-time if I wanted them to. So if I don't do as much for you as you hoped, maybe you could bear that in mind.
You might also bear in mind that I am not a literary agent, do not have any particular clout with publishers, and don't have time to do manuscript assessments (a proper manuscript assessment is pretty much a full week's work, and the people who do this work are entitled to some reasonable payment for their efforts).
If you have a book coming out from a reputable publisher, I may well give it a review if you send me a review copy. I love getting review copies, though alas it's rare that I get review copies of the books that most interest me. (But, yay, I currently have an advance reading copy of Philip Kitcher's new book, and I'm enjoying it and thinking about it.)
If your reputable publisher is looking for blurb writers, again I might be able to help if the book falls within my obvious interests and your publisher contacts me. But I can't set aside the time to do work on your unpublished manuscript, or to read your unpublished manuscript on the off-chance that I'll love it so much that I'll try to get whatever publishers I know to take an interest in it.
Still, I do answer all email inquiries if I possibly can (I may miss some by oversight, and some are sufficiently crackpot that I am at a loss as to what to say). I put some thought and time into each one.
What I do resent is when I put in some time to be as helpful as I can ... and I don't even get a thank you in response. I suspect that a lot of people are disappointed by my replies - someone who thought I could give free editorial advice or put in a good word with a publisher, or whatever, may be disappointed to receive just some general advice about publishing, or maybe a pointer to the submission guidelines of a possibly relevant publisher, or whatever.
Well, if that's the case ... I'm sorry to disappoint you. But perhaps I don't have the time or the energy or the clout, or whatever, that you think I have that could assist in your particular case. I will, however, have taken some time out from my own projects, and my own life in general (yes, I do have a family, etc.), to give you whatever assistance or advice I could.
This is just a word to the wise out there. Perhaps some people who come to me asking for help with their projects are not thinking about how it is from my point of view - having all-consuming projects of my own and a steady stream of such requests coming in from the public.
The same applies to other writers, editors, etc., whom you might approach. Generally, we're stretched thin, forced to concentrate on whatever activities actually put some food on the table or at least generate worthwhile PR, and are being as polite and helpful as we can. I'm sure some people think that writers are rich in money and free time, but exactly the opposite is usually the case.
As I said, just a word to the wise. I'll continue to treat all inquirers as well as I can, but it's a two-way street.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Friday, October 07, 2011
The most obvious reason not to be sorry for Andrew Bolt...
... is that so many findings of fact made by Justice Bromberg in Eatock v. Bolt make Bolt look like a bully who is reckless with the truth. Again and again, the judge makes findings like the following about particular people whom Bolt attacked in print:
It's likely the individuals concerned could have vindicated their reputations by suing for defamation. Although I think defamation law needs to be constrained so that it doesn't chill legitimate speech, I don't have a problem with some basic law of defamation remaining in place to protect people from false allegations that are damaging to their good repute - especially when those allegations are made by people such as Bolt who command huge audiences.
We are social animals, and we cannot flourish as individuals if our reputations are successfully trashed. If I am (explicitly or implicitly) called a liar or a dishonest opportunist, or anything of the sort, by someone who has credibility with a large and relevant audience, that is highly destructive to my ability to function as a social being.
Put simply, one reason not to be sorry for Bolt is that he could probably have been sued for defamation in any event, possibly with a large damages award to the people he defamed. People who are defending Bolt's freedom of speech need to keep this in mind. They might also keep in mind that the operation of populist bullies can intimidate others into silence. His publications must have at least some intimidatory effect on fair-complexioned people wishing to identify publicly as Aboriginal.
I accept that freedom of speech in the strict sense is a freedom against government interference with what we want to say, so I am not suggesting that Bolt denied anyone freedom of speech in the strict sense. Nonetheless, we do have reason to fear individuals who are in a position to intimidate others into silence. If they use their power irresponsibly, we have every reason to respond with hostility and harsh criticism.
Again, none of this means that the legislation under which Bolt was pursued is flawless. Indeed, this is a case where it would have been cleaner and more straightforward if the individuals concerned had sued for defamation to clear their reputations and obtain compensation for the damage their reputations had suffered. That's what defamation law is for.
Instead, they took action under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act. That immediately creates a problem, because it immediately looks as if they are seeking some restriction on Bolt's freedom of speech above and beyond that imposed by a properly constrained defamation law. I have no idea what their real motives were in invoking this Commonwealth legislation - perhaps they thought the Federal Court provided a cheaper and more user-friendly jurisdiction than the state courts, or perhaps they wanted to send some kind of political message, or perhaps there was another reason. I don't know, so I won't speculate. (If anyone does know what they may have said about their decision to invoke the Racial Discrimination Act rather than to sue for defamation, I'll be interested.)
Under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, Bolt was not sued directly for his damaging falsehoods about individuals. These became relevant at the stage of whether he had a good defence.
He was pursued under a provision that makes it unlawful to say things in public that are reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a class of people, where what is said is wholly or partly because of the race, colour, or ethnic origin of those people.
Alas, that provision is a can of worms - it is open to numerous interpretations, and there is the possibility that it could extend to forms of speech that go far beyond the obvious ones, such as abusing someone on the public street with racist epithets ("Get out of our way, you fucking cockroaches!"). Indeed, Bolt's articles in the Herald Sun, however unsavoury they may be, are quite remote from that sort of situation. The reasoning used to get them to fall under section 18C has a rather procrustean look about it to me. Even the humble word "because" is difficult in the context of this legislation. I'm not going to say that the judge got it wrong in law - he seems to do a pretty good job of wrestling with the language of the statute - but the case will very likely be appealed to test the scope and meaning of section 18C.
Bolt's slurs against individuals really became relevant when he ran the legal defence that his conduct in writing the articles was done reasonably and in good faith for a purpose in the public interest (consult the judgment for the nuances and difficulties of this). The underlying idea in the judge's reasoning is that Bolt could hardly claim that he had acted reasonably and in good faith when he was so reckless with the truth about the people concerned.
Again, the meaning of the words in section 18D, which provides the statutory defence, will very likely end up being tested in appeal proceedings. Similar provisions appear in other statutes, so it's not just a problem about the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act. We need such statutory provisions to be interpreted broadly - i.e. so that the defence is not too difficult to make out - in order to protect freedom of speech.
Unfortunately, the judge took into account not just these aspects of Bolt's articles but also their "inflammatory and provocative language" - that is unfortunate, because we should not be told that our speech is unreasonable or in bad faith merely because it is snarky or satirical, or passionate or denunciatory. There may be cases where speech is so hateful ("For these reasons, I conclude that Canaanites are basically rats and cockroaches...") that any attempt to dress it up as a good-faith contribution to discussion of a matter of public interest is clearly a sham. But we should not be so quick to draw such a conclusion that legitimate satire or denunciation is thought to negative reasonableness or good faith.
Here is where I part company with any people on the Left who think there's nothing to worry about. I submit that the judge's discussion goes further than was necessary. It has too great a tendency to undermine the reasonable/good faith defence wherever it appears in legal statutes. Given Bolt's actual behaviour, the outcome may be correct on the facts, even if a broader interpretation of the defence is adopted, but all the same... Hopefully this aspect will be addressed in any appeal.
More generally, I am not absolutely against laws that attempt to curtail Nazi-like racial hate propaganda. We know from recent history how damaging this can be. Arguably, some of the state laws address that, though it is also arguable that some of those are poorly drafted and go further than is necessary. In any event, laws such as these forbid a person A from saying such things to audience B as "people who fall into class C are rats and cockroaches - let's exterminate them!"
However, the Racial Discrimination Act is not drafted in this way. Perhaps it should be. It is not a law about incitement of third parties to racial hate and possibly violence, but a law about saying things that are offensive to a second party. Perhaps there is still a place for such a law, but it will have to be a limited one. The starting point should be that we generally don't have a right to be protected from offence. Something more is required.
That is an important, if vague, ethico-legal principle, and it creates a problem when a provision of this kind is drafted and whenever it is interpreted by the courts: how far do we really want to go to protect people from being offended, as opposed to having their reputations damaged or having people incited to hate them?
So, yes, there are good reasons not to be sympathetic to Bolt. But that is not a reason to assume that the statute itself is unproblematic. It is not a reason to be relaxed about how the courts decide to interpret it. There really are freedom of speech issues here, even if the particular speech at issue was meretricious and the speaker is an unpleasant individual.
The evidence given by Ms Heiss was not contested and I have no reason to not accept it as truthful. In particular, I find that by reason of Ms Heiss having been raised as Aboriginal she has and does genuinely self-identify as Aboriginal. She has Aboriginal ancestry and communal recognition as an Aboriginal person. She is an Aboriginal person and entitled to regard herself as an Aboriginal person within the conventional understanding of that description. [...] She did not consciously choose to be Aboriginal. She has not improperly used her Aboriginal identity to advance her career. She is a person committed to her Aboriginal community and is entitled to regard her achievements as well deserved rather than opportunistically obtained. I accept that she feels offended, humiliated and insulted by the Articles or parts thereof in the manner outlined by her evidence.Insofar as Bolt has accused numerous individuals of, in effect, opportunism, dishonesty, and greed, he has defamed them. He has done so from a position where he commands an enormous mainstream audience whose views he is capable of influencing. A journalist in his position will tend to be believed by large numbers of people on matters of fact, so we need him to be careful with the truth, however extreme his political values or opinions may be. This isn't just a matter of political correctness: it's basic to a healthy culture of public debate.
It's likely the individuals concerned could have vindicated their reputations by suing for defamation. Although I think defamation law needs to be constrained so that it doesn't chill legitimate speech, I don't have a problem with some basic law of defamation remaining in place to protect people from false allegations that are damaging to their good repute - especially when those allegations are made by people such as Bolt who command huge audiences.
We are social animals, and we cannot flourish as individuals if our reputations are successfully trashed. If I am (explicitly or implicitly) called a liar or a dishonest opportunist, or anything of the sort, by someone who has credibility with a large and relevant audience, that is highly destructive to my ability to function as a social being.
Put simply, one reason not to be sorry for Bolt is that he could probably have been sued for defamation in any event, possibly with a large damages award to the people he defamed. People who are defending Bolt's freedom of speech need to keep this in mind. They might also keep in mind that the operation of populist bullies can intimidate others into silence. His publications must have at least some intimidatory effect on fair-complexioned people wishing to identify publicly as Aboriginal.
I accept that freedom of speech in the strict sense is a freedom against government interference with what we want to say, so I am not suggesting that Bolt denied anyone freedom of speech in the strict sense. Nonetheless, we do have reason to fear individuals who are in a position to intimidate others into silence. If they use their power irresponsibly, we have every reason to respond with hostility and harsh criticism.
Again, none of this means that the legislation under which Bolt was pursued is flawless. Indeed, this is a case where it would have been cleaner and more straightforward if the individuals concerned had sued for defamation to clear their reputations and obtain compensation for the damage their reputations had suffered. That's what defamation law is for.
Instead, they took action under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act. That immediately creates a problem, because it immediately looks as if they are seeking some restriction on Bolt's freedom of speech above and beyond that imposed by a properly constrained defamation law. I have no idea what their real motives were in invoking this Commonwealth legislation - perhaps they thought the Federal Court provided a cheaper and more user-friendly jurisdiction than the state courts, or perhaps they wanted to send some kind of political message, or perhaps there was another reason. I don't know, so I won't speculate. (If anyone does know what they may have said about their decision to invoke the Racial Discrimination Act rather than to sue for defamation, I'll be interested.)
Under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, Bolt was not sued directly for his damaging falsehoods about individuals. These became relevant at the stage of whether he had a good defence.
He was pursued under a provision that makes it unlawful to say things in public that are reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a class of people, where what is said is wholly or partly because of the race, colour, or ethnic origin of those people.
Alas, that provision is a can of worms - it is open to numerous interpretations, and there is the possibility that it could extend to forms of speech that go far beyond the obvious ones, such as abusing someone on the public street with racist epithets ("Get out of our way, you fucking cockroaches!"). Indeed, Bolt's articles in the Herald Sun, however unsavoury they may be, are quite remote from that sort of situation. The reasoning used to get them to fall under section 18C has a rather procrustean look about it to me. Even the humble word "because" is difficult in the context of this legislation. I'm not going to say that the judge got it wrong in law - he seems to do a pretty good job of wrestling with the language of the statute - but the case will very likely be appealed to test the scope and meaning of section 18C.
Bolt's slurs against individuals really became relevant when he ran the legal defence that his conduct in writing the articles was done reasonably and in good faith for a purpose in the public interest (consult the judgment for the nuances and difficulties of this). The underlying idea in the judge's reasoning is that Bolt could hardly claim that he had acted reasonably and in good faith when he was so reckless with the truth about the people concerned.
Again, the meaning of the words in section 18D, which provides the statutory defence, will very likely end up being tested in appeal proceedings. Similar provisions appear in other statutes, so it's not just a problem about the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act. We need such statutory provisions to be interpreted broadly - i.e. so that the defence is not too difficult to make out - in order to protect freedom of speech.
Unfortunately, the judge took into account not just these aspects of Bolt's articles but also their "inflammatory and provocative language" - that is unfortunate, because we should not be told that our speech is unreasonable or in bad faith merely because it is snarky or satirical, or passionate or denunciatory. There may be cases where speech is so hateful ("For these reasons, I conclude that Canaanites are basically rats and cockroaches...") that any attempt to dress it up as a good-faith contribution to discussion of a matter of public interest is clearly a sham. But we should not be so quick to draw such a conclusion that legitimate satire or denunciation is thought to negative reasonableness or good faith.
Here is where I part company with any people on the Left who think there's nothing to worry about. I submit that the judge's discussion goes further than was necessary. It has too great a tendency to undermine the reasonable/good faith defence wherever it appears in legal statutes. Given Bolt's actual behaviour, the outcome may be correct on the facts, even if a broader interpretation of the defence is adopted, but all the same... Hopefully this aspect will be addressed in any appeal.
More generally, I am not absolutely against laws that attempt to curtail Nazi-like racial hate propaganda. We know from recent history how damaging this can be. Arguably, some of the state laws address that, though it is also arguable that some of those are poorly drafted and go further than is necessary. In any event, laws such as these forbid a person A from saying such things to audience B as "people who fall into class C are rats and cockroaches - let's exterminate them!"
However, the Racial Discrimination Act is not drafted in this way. Perhaps it should be. It is not a law about incitement of third parties to racial hate and possibly violence, but a law about saying things that are offensive to a second party. Perhaps there is still a place for such a law, but it will have to be a limited one. The starting point should be that we generally don't have a right to be protected from offence. Something more is required.
That is an important, if vague, ethico-legal principle, and it creates a problem when a provision of this kind is drafted and whenever it is interpreted by the courts: how far do we really want to go to protect people from being offended, as opposed to having their reputations damaged or having people incited to hate them?
So, yes, there are good reasons not to be sympathetic to Bolt. But that is not a reason to assume that the statute itself is unproblematic. It is not a reason to be relaxed about how the courts decide to interpret it. There really are freedom of speech issues here, even if the particular speech at issue was meretricious and the speaker is an unpleasant individual.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
One reason why it's hard to feel sorry for Andrew Bolt...
... is that he did not stand up for Bill Henson's freedom of expression. Quite the opposite.
One thing that I'd like to know is how many of the people who are rallying to support Bolt also supported Henson when the going was rough.
That's not to say that the law under which Bolt was pursued is all fine and flawless, just because Bolt has unclean hands regarding freedom of expression issues. Freedom of expression should apply even to people who are not committed to it. I think that the provision is flawed and has been interpreted in a very broad way to capture a mixture of speech that should be legally tolerated and speech that is better regarded as defamation. However, Bolt does look pretty hypocritical here - he defends free speech when it suits him and attacks it when it serves his illiberal social agenda.
We should actually have a broad debate about freedom of speech in Australia and look at all of the laws that impinge on freedom of speech and expression, including defamation law. Even if some of the defenders of free speech who are coming out of the woodwork seem hypocritical, a debate about free speech issues - and the never ending attacks on free speech - is overdue.
All the same, it would just be nice to know who (besides me) has stood up for freedom of speech and expression in a principled and consistent way through all these debates.
One thing that I'd like to know is how many of the people who are rallying to support Bolt also supported Henson when the going was rough.
That's not to say that the law under which Bolt was pursued is all fine and flawless, just because Bolt has unclean hands regarding freedom of expression issues. Freedom of expression should apply even to people who are not committed to it. I think that the provision is flawed and has been interpreted in a very broad way to capture a mixture of speech that should be legally tolerated and speech that is better regarded as defamation. However, Bolt does look pretty hypocritical here - he defends free speech when it suits him and attacks it when it serves his illiberal social agenda.
We should actually have a broad debate about freedom of speech in Australia and look at all of the laws that impinge on freedom of speech and expression, including defamation law. Even if some of the defenders of free speech who are coming out of the woodwork seem hypocritical, a debate about free speech issues - and the never ending attacks on free speech - is overdue.
All the same, it would just be nice to know who (besides me) has stood up for freedom of speech and expression in a principled and consistent way through all these debates.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Oops!
Apparently some more of the debate - including my speech - was shown on Big Ideas today. I didn't know until a pal phoned me to say she'd seen it, so I missed it and didn't advertise it. Damn!
Never mind, you know that you can go to the program's site to see the whole debate.
Never mind, you know that you can go to the program's site to see the whole debate.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Well, you got to see me blow my nose...
... and shuffle my papers.
Jane Caro was good, though, wasn't she?
Jane Caro was good, though, wasn't she?
Monday, October 03, 2011
IQ2 debate tomorrow
The ABC 1 television program Big Ideas is showing last month's IQ2 debate on "Atheists are wrong" ... tomorrow, 4 October, at 11 am.
Presumably it's only extracts or a heavily edited version, as there are other stories on the program, so you'll have to go to the Intelligence Squared Australia site to watch a video of the whole thing when it's available. Still, if you're in Australia and free tomorrow morning you can at least sample the debate.
Presumably it's only extracts or a heavily edited version, as there are other stories on the program, so you'll have to go to the Intelligence Squared Australia site to watch a video of the whole thing when it's available. Still, if you're in Australia and free tomorrow morning you can at least sample the debate.
Eatock v. Bolt ... just a quick comment
As previously mentioned, the judgment of the Federal Court in Eatock v. Bolt is the length of a short novel. I'll have difficulty treating the issues properly in the space of any number of blog posts. This post is just to say that I spent most of today reading it and trying to get few things about it clear in my mind. I'll comment in more detail soon.
Currently, I still have rather mixed thoughts and feelings about it: I have little sympathy for Andrew Bolt or The Herald Sun. It seems to me that they defamed a number of individuals. On the other hand, I'm also not entirely happy about how this case and the judgment were framed, or about the provisions under which the case was conducted.
Currently, I still have rather mixed thoughts and feelings about it: I have little sympathy for Andrew Bolt or The Herald Sun. It seems to me that they defamed a number of individuals. On the other hand, I'm also not entirely happy about how this case and the judgment were framed, or about the provisions under which the case was conducted.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Sunday supervillainy - countdown of top 100 Marvel and DC characters (2)
Back in this post, I was talking about a countdown of the top 100 DC and Marvel characters (i.e. the top 50 from each company) that was underway, based on votes from "nearly 1400" fans.
At the time, the list was still counting down and listed the 15th to 50th most popular characters from Marvel and the 15th to 50th from DC, based on the voting. Since then the countdown has concluded and the lists are now complete.
How did I go in my prediction of the final 14 Marvel characters? Not that badly. Here is my prediction, from the earlier post:
1. Spider-Man
2. Wolverine
3. Captain America (Steve Rogers)
4. Iron Man
5. The Hulk
6. Thor
7. Doctor Doom
8. Magneto
9. Professor X.
10. Galactus
11. The Thing
12. Mary Jane Watson
13. Cyclops
14. Doctor Strange
And here is the actual list:
1. Spider-Man
2. Captain America (Steve Rogers)
3. Thor
4. Wolverine
5. The Hulk
6. Daredevil
7. Iron Man
8. Doctor Doom
9. Cyclops
10. Hawkeye (Clint Barton)
11. The Thing
12. Magneto
13. Nightcrawler
14. Doctor Strange
Some observations. First, I totally forgot about Daredevil (I knew I was forgetting someone important), who certainly should be in the top 10. On the other hand, I'm surprised to see Hawkeye and Nightcrawler ranking in the top 15 - both are important characters, but I wouldn't have said they were all that iconic or all that important from an in-world viewpoint. So I've learned that those two characters are more popular than I would have thought.
Second, I'm surprised and a bit concerned that Professor X has not only not made the top 10 or 15 characters - he has not made the top 50 at all! Yet, he is surely one of Marvel's most iconic characters and is very important from an in-universe viewpoint as well, as founder of the the X-Men (and their leader through much of Marvel's history). Something has gone wrong if such an important character is not getting ranked highly in a poll like this (conversely, his arch-rival, Magneto, ranks 12 ... not quite as high as I predicted, but still very high, and despite being primarily a villain; this disparity suggests that something really is askew in the marketing of a major character).
Third, a couple of wild-cards that I threw in didn't make the overall list at all. One was Mary Jane Watson. Well, she's Spider-Man's main (over the decades) love interest: though she's a somewhat iconic character, MJ is not a superhero or a supervillain, so perhaps it's not a great surprise that she doesn't make the list. Moreso since Marvel retconned away her marriage to Spider-Man. I'm actually a bit more surprised to see the important and iconic villain Galactus not make the top-50 list at all. I still think he should be up near Doctor Doom and Magneto.
Fourth ... now here's something worth talking about. The highest ranking female character turned out to be Emma Frost, at number 17. Ouch! That's a bit of a concern. Sixteen male characters before we finally get to a female character.
Some of the X-women have done quite well, with Kitty Pryde at 19, Jean Grey at 20, Storm at 21, and Rogue at 23. But She-Hulk is at 26, Ms Marvel languishes at 29 (despite getting lots of push from Marvel on an ongoing basis), the Scarlet Witch is at 31, Invisible Woman at 47 ... and the Wasp, who is one of the great classic superheroines from the Silver Age, does not appear at all.
A few others - the Black Widow, X-23, She-Hulk, Psylocke, and Spider-Woman - appear on the lower half of the list, but it's a poor showing overall for female characters. Worse, so many of those who do make the list are female variants of more popular male characters (She-Hulk is a variant of the Hulk, Spider-Woman of Spider-Man, and X-23 of Wolverine). And female villains do very poorly indeed - even Mystique does not make the top-50 list, despite her considerable exposure (in more ways than one) in the X-Men movies.
I'm not sure what Marvel can do about this. You can't force the readers to adopt a character and give it the sort of popularity that makes the character iconic. Marvel sometimes seems, to me, to be trying to force things with Ms Marvel, who clearly has a great name from the company's viewpoint, as well as a cool costume design and a classic power set - but with only limited success.
There's a limit ... but I can't help feeling that Marvel has made some bad decisions with female characters. Think about it.
The Wasp has been sort of dead for some time now, and there's no real push to bring her back. The Scarlet Witch was rendered unusable some years ago, when she was turned into an overpowered deus ex machina type character, though Marvel seems to be doing something about that problem in the current Children's Crusade mini-series. Jean Grey (a.k.a. Phoenix) has been considered dead for years, but still manages to hold down position 20. It seems crazy that Marvel has not yet found a way to bring her back to centre stage.
The move to destroy the Spider-Man/MJ marriage may have made commercial sense, restoring the Silver Age status quo of a bachelor Spider-Man with a troubled love life. I'm not so critical of that, though many others are (many fans are almost obsessed about it). But MJ is a well-loved character, and surely there are better ways to use her than as a relatively unimportant member of Spider-Man's support cast, i.e. just as an ex with whom he broke up amicably and who is still his friend.
As I say, this sort of thing can't be forced, but some of Marvel's decisions look, well, almost like the company has gone out of its way to sideline its great female characters. I'm sure that's not true, but it could also put a bit more thought into avoiding these bad scenarios.
Finally, my list doesn't look very different from the list as it actually eventuated. I had a few characters in exactly the same slots (the Hulk, the Thing, Dr Strange) and some others very close. I was a bit surprised at little things such as Wolverine coming out at number 4 rather than number 2, and at Thor doing quite so well (and I thought Iron Man would have done slightly better, given the success of the Iron Man movies), but all in all the outcome was fairly predictable.
At the time, the list was still counting down and listed the 15th to 50th most popular characters from Marvel and the 15th to 50th from DC, based on the voting. Since then the countdown has concluded and the lists are now complete.
How did I go in my prediction of the final 14 Marvel characters? Not that badly. Here is my prediction, from the earlier post:
1. Spider-Man
2. Wolverine
3. Captain America (Steve Rogers)
4. Iron Man
5. The Hulk
6. Thor
7. Doctor Doom
8. Magneto
9. Professor X.
10. Galactus
11. The Thing
12. Mary Jane Watson
13. Cyclops
14. Doctor Strange
And here is the actual list:
1. Spider-Man
2. Captain America (Steve Rogers)
3. Thor
4. Wolverine
5. The Hulk
6. Daredevil
7. Iron Man
8. Doctor Doom
9. Cyclops
10. Hawkeye (Clint Barton)
11. The Thing
12. Magneto
13. Nightcrawler
14. Doctor Strange
Some observations. First, I totally forgot about Daredevil (I knew I was forgetting someone important), who certainly should be in the top 10. On the other hand, I'm surprised to see Hawkeye and Nightcrawler ranking in the top 15 - both are important characters, but I wouldn't have said they were all that iconic or all that important from an in-world viewpoint. So I've learned that those two characters are more popular than I would have thought.
Second, I'm surprised and a bit concerned that Professor X has not only not made the top 10 or 15 characters - he has not made the top 50 at all! Yet, he is surely one of Marvel's most iconic characters and is very important from an in-universe viewpoint as well, as founder of the the X-Men (and their leader through much of Marvel's history). Something has gone wrong if such an important character is not getting ranked highly in a poll like this (conversely, his arch-rival, Magneto, ranks 12 ... not quite as high as I predicted, but still very high, and despite being primarily a villain; this disparity suggests that something really is askew in the marketing of a major character).
Third, a couple of wild-cards that I threw in didn't make the overall list at all. One was Mary Jane Watson. Well, she's Spider-Man's main (over the decades) love interest: though she's a somewhat iconic character, MJ is not a superhero or a supervillain, so perhaps it's not a great surprise that she doesn't make the list. Moreso since Marvel retconned away her marriage to Spider-Man. I'm actually a bit more surprised to see the important and iconic villain Galactus not make the top-50 list at all. I still think he should be up near Doctor Doom and Magneto.
Some of the X-women have done quite well, with Kitty Pryde at 19, Jean Grey at 20, Storm at 21, and Rogue at 23. But She-Hulk is at 26, Ms Marvel languishes at 29 (despite getting lots of push from Marvel on an ongoing basis), the Scarlet Witch is at 31, Invisible Woman at 47 ... and the Wasp, who is one of the great classic superheroines from the Silver Age, does not appear at all.
A few others - the Black Widow, X-23, She-Hulk, Psylocke, and Spider-Woman - appear on the lower half of the list, but it's a poor showing overall for female characters. Worse, so many of those who do make the list are female variants of more popular male characters (She-Hulk is a variant of the Hulk, Spider-Woman of Spider-Man, and X-23 of Wolverine). And female villains do very poorly indeed - even Mystique does not make the top-50 list, despite her considerable exposure (in more ways than one) in the X-Men movies.
I'm not sure what Marvel can do about this. You can't force the readers to adopt a character and give it the sort of popularity that makes the character iconic. Marvel sometimes seems, to me, to be trying to force things with Ms Marvel, who clearly has a great name from the company's viewpoint, as well as a cool costume design and a classic power set - but with only limited success.
There's a limit ... but I can't help feeling that Marvel has made some bad decisions with female characters. Think about it.
The Wasp has been sort of dead for some time now, and there's no real push to bring her back. The Scarlet Witch was rendered unusable some years ago, when she was turned into an overpowered deus ex machina type character, though Marvel seems to be doing something about that problem in the current Children's Crusade mini-series. Jean Grey (a.k.a. Phoenix) has been considered dead for years, but still manages to hold down position 20. It seems crazy that Marvel has not yet found a way to bring her back to centre stage.
The move to destroy the Spider-Man/MJ marriage may have made commercial sense, restoring the Silver Age status quo of a bachelor Spider-Man with a troubled love life. I'm not so critical of that, though many others are (many fans are almost obsessed about it). But MJ is a well-loved character, and surely there are better ways to use her than as a relatively unimportant member of Spider-Man's support cast, i.e. just as an ex with whom he broke up amicably and who is still his friend.
As I say, this sort of thing can't be forced, but some of Marvel's decisions look, well, almost like the company has gone out of its way to sideline its great female characters. I'm sure that's not true, but it could also put a bit more thought into avoiding these bad scenarios.
Finally, my list doesn't look very different from the list as it actually eventuated. I had a few characters in exactly the same slots (the Hulk, the Thing, Dr Strange) and some others very close. I was a bit surprised at little things such as Wolverine coming out at number 4 rather than number 2, and at Thor doing quite so well (and I thought Iron Man would have done slightly better, given the success of the Iron Man movies), but all in all the outcome was fairly predictable.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Another kerfuffle among atheists - the Stefanelli and Hale dust-up
These kerfuffles among atheists don't prove much - only that atheists have human limitations, like everyone else, and that atheist organisations are all-too-human constructions. Since they don't claim otherwise (they don't, for example, claim to be divinely founded or guided), in a sense there's nothing to see here. Still, every such incident provides a teachable moment if we're willing to see it that way.
Here's a fairly recent post by Al Stefanelli, Georgia State Director for American Atheists, in which he calls for "taking the gloves off" against Christian fundamentalism and radical Islam. It has attracted well over 100 comments and a great deal of additional controversy on the internet.
An initial difficulty with the post is that it calls for "intolerance" of certain beliefs. That, however, goes against the grain of liberalism ... which values toleration and social pluralism.
Philosophical atheists are usually notable for endorsing and advocating liberal tolerance: this does not mean that we welcome or esteem every viewpoint, but merely that we do not attempt to crush rival viewpoints by the use of state power. Prisons, guns, and the like - swords, the rack, and flaming torches in earlier times - are not, according to liberal tolerance, to be employed as weapons to crush disfavoured ideas or ways of life. Not, at least, without some compelling reason for state interference, such as a pressing threat to someone's health or safety.
Doesn't Stefanelli actually agree with this? Perhaps he does, but he says as follows:
Does it refer back to "fundamental Christians and radical Muslims" (as individuals)? Does it mean these as two groups, i.e. fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam? That's plausible, since the final sentence of the quote speaks of groups existing only because we "as a society" allow them to ... as if these groups should not be allowed to exist.
Or does the pesky pronoun "their" refer to "bigotry, discrimination, hatred, coercion, terrorism, slavery, misogyny" (and perhaps also to "everything else that is part and parcel of fundamental Christianity and radical Islam")? Or what?
If it refers merely to intolerance of the existence of bigotry, discrimination, hatred, coercion, terrorism, slavery, and misogyny, then why is this intolerance described as an "extremist" viewpoint? Surely there is nothing especially extremist about not tolerating those things (though it may be a good question whether all "hatred" and "discrimination" can/should actually be dealt with by the law).
If the intolerance is supposed to extend to the unnamed other things that are "part and parcel of fundamental Christianity and radical Islam" the situation is less clear - for what are these things? Surely there are some things that are part and parcel of fundamentalist Christianity, to use that example, but should be tolerated in every sense. Consider private prayer - this is surely "part and parcel" of fundamentalist Christianity, as it is of various other belief systems, but it's something that should be tolerated in every sense. I imagine there are also many things that are part and parcel of radical Islam but should be tolerated (belief in the existence of Allah, for example).
Overall, the post is emotive and confusing; and I don't think anyone who struggles to make sense of it is thereby suffering from a lack of reading comprehension, as Stefanelli has since suggested. I wonder, in fact, why it had to be written in such a way that it purportedly calls for "intolerance" (whatever exactly that is, in this context) and "extremist points of view". Why adopt this sort of language, which either identifies you as an extremist, a fanatic, or (if you are not one ... and I don't think Stefanelli is) merely causes confusion?
It gets worse: near the end, after talking about various organisations and their members, and why atheists and others rightly criticise them, Stefanelli says: "But the underbelly of fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam does not operate in the legal system. They don’t respond to lawsuits, letters, amicus briefs or other grass-roots campaigns and they must, must, must be eradicated."
Here, the word, "they" as in "They don't respond to lawsuits..." apparently refers back to the expression "the underbelly of fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam" - but why say "they", rather than "it", if that is intended? In any event, what is this "underbelly" that he speaks of? Does the expression refer to certain groups, organisations, individuals, ideas, or what? Whatever it is, we are told that "they" do not respond to lawsuits, etc. That wording implies that we are talking about groups or organisations (or, less likely individuals) that must be "eradicated". After all, an idea is not the sort of thing that is even a candidate for responding to a lawsuit.
And what form is the process of eradication supposed to take? It can't take the form of sending letters or initiating lawsuits, which are the very actions that we are told are ineffective. Some other action is evidently being urged, in order to eradicate whatever is supposed to constitute the "underbelly" ... but it's not clear just what action.
In the end, when you boil it down, Stefanelli mainly seems to be making a point with which I (essentially) agree: the law should apply the same secular standards to actions done for a religious reason as to the same actions done for some other reason. E.g., if we have a law in place forbidding murder, that law should apply just as much to ritual human sacrifices as to bumping off a rival lover or a pesky business competitor.
However, when Stefanelli talks of some-or-other "they" which doesn't respond to lawsuits, letters, etc., and so must be eradicated, this starts to sound like he is talking about eradicating organisations or groups or movements (again, I do think it's stretching things to imagine that he's talking about eradicating people ... but still, any use of words such as "eradicate" and its cognates is dangerous).
Miranda Celeste Hale has thought about all this ... and written a blog post that has also received over 100 comments, including at least one angry one from Stefanelli.
I don't agree with every point in her post, but I do agree with her that Stefanelli's post suffers the fault of using inflammatory language while being quite fuzzy as to what is intended by it. What's more, there was no need to employ such inflammatory language ("intolerance", "extremist"), since the strength of the post is a good, solid point - a point about the need to subject religious adherents and organisations to the same laws, and the same kinds of criticism, as everything else. This point could have been made without talk of intolerance or the need for "extremist points of view", or anything else of the kind.
This point could also have been made without seemingly wild over-generalisations about how fundamentalist Christians and radical Islamists "want us to die" - no doubt, some do. But I happen to know a lot about fundamentalist Christianity, in particular, and I've met, or even been on friendly terms with, many people who would qualify under most definitions of fundamentalist Christianity (e.g they believe that the Bible is the inerrant, unchanging word of God). It is simply not true to say of them, in a blanket way, "They want us to die."
Many of these people actually want us to live as long as needed to accept Jesus Christ as our saviours. The minds of many or most fundamentalist Christians are simply not oriented to violence, but to spreading the Gospel and "saving" souls.
Nor should we talk as if people who believe in fundamentalist Christian doctrines - or radical Islamic ones if it comes to that - are more likely to be sociopaths or psychopaths than anyone else. In the absence of robust research findings to the contrary, there is no reason to think that these groups contain a significantly higher percentage (or, indeed, a higher perecentage at all) of sociopaths and psychopaths than any other religious group or than non-believers. No such research is mentioned.
These religious groups may well harbour far greater percentages of fanatics than the rest of the population, but that is another matter entirely.
It's true that fundamentalist Christians tend to want their views to prevail at the social and political levels, so Stefanelli is correct to say, "They do not want to sit down with us in diplomatic efforts to iron out our differences and come to an agreement on developing an integrated society." That, however, is not the same as wanting us to die.
To try to sum this up, Stefanelli's article is often confusingly written; it makes Stefanelli himself look more extreme than he probably is (when you try to boil down what he's actually asking for); and at best it engages in considerable hyperbole.
What about Hale? Perhaps her response also includes some hyperbole, but it certainly does not exhibit a failure of reading comprehension, as Stefanelli says on the comment thread. Indeed, an obvious way to read Stefanelli's post is that he thinks society as a whole should not allow certain groups to exist.
Moreover, it's always wise not to blame your readers too quickly, even if they do seem to misunderstand you. Sometimes readers may misunderstand because difficult concepts are involved, and because the readers are not familiar with them or with their historical context. This may not be the fault of the writer, and it can be galling when readers who have failed to understand a line of argument for these reasons reply in a dismissive or nasty way. That's happened to me plenty of times, and I can understand if that's what Stefanelli thinks is going on here.
But I don't see it like that in this case. The concepts in play are not actually that difficult, and the person who has struggled to achieve the meaning Stefanelli apparently intends is a high-profile and highly-educated atheist blogger who has produced much in the way of intelligent analysis in the past, especially of Catholic responses to sexual misconduct issues. In any event, it's easy to see how the hyperbole and very strong language used by Stefanelli can give the impression that he is arguing for something drastic (much more drastic than he probably intends) even if read with some charity.
I'm sure there are lessons in all this, but different readers will take different things from it. One lesson might be that we should always explain ourselves very carefully when putting views that might be interpreted as extremist. Labelling your own views, or views that you commend, as "extremist" is asking for trouble.
That said, some opponents will quote mine, over-simplify, and distort, no matter how carefully we explain ourselves. There is no guaranteed defence against this happening when our words get into the hands of malicious or intellectually dishonest opponents, but that's not a reason to write in a way that will even confuse and alienate allies and others who are reading in good faith.
There may be other lessons as well, but I've said enough for now. I wish these kerfuffles could be avoided, but they will go on happening, and we need to take them in our stride. When they do, it's worth examining some of them to see if we can learn anything ... especially anything that could minimise poor communication in the future.
Here's a fairly recent post by Al Stefanelli, Georgia State Director for American Atheists, in which he calls for "taking the gloves off" against Christian fundamentalism and radical Islam. It has attracted well over 100 comments and a great deal of additional controversy on the internet.
An initial difficulty with the post is that it calls for "intolerance" of certain beliefs. That, however, goes against the grain of liberalism ... which values toleration and social pluralism.
Philosophical atheists are usually notable for endorsing and advocating liberal tolerance: this does not mean that we welcome or esteem every viewpoint, but merely that we do not attempt to crush rival viewpoints by the use of state power. Prisons, guns, and the like - swords, the rack, and flaming torches in earlier times - are not, according to liberal tolerance, to be employed as weapons to crush disfavoured ideas or ways of life. Not, at least, without some compelling reason for state interference, such as a pressing threat to someone's health or safety.
Doesn't Stefanelli actually agree with this? Perhaps he does, but he says as follows:
The growing ranks of fundamental Christians and radical Muslims should be of concern to everyone who is not part of these two groups. Everyone. Again, bigotry, discrimination, hatred, coercion, terrorism, slavery, misogyny and everything else that is part and parcel of fundamental Christianity and radical Islam should not be tolerated and anyone who agrees with this needs to adopt extremist points of view that includes the intolerance of their very existence. The only reason these groups exist is because they are allowed to, and we, as a society, are allowing them to.This has evidently caused some confusion. The first quoted sentence talks about "fundamental [Stefanelli really means "fundamentalist"] Christians" and "radical Muslims", which sounds as if he is talking about individuals who belong to those categories, but then he ends the sentence by speaking of them as "two groups". In the next full sentence (after the sentence fragment "Everyone"), he talks about "bigotry, discrimination, hatred, coercion, slavery, misogyny" then "everything else that is part and parcel of fundamental Christianity and radical Islam"; he then says that anyone who agrees with this (i.e. that certain things should not be tolerated) "needs to adopt extremist points of view that includes the intolerance of their very existence". But what does the word "their" refer to?
Does it refer back to "fundamental Christians and radical Muslims" (as individuals)? Does it mean these as two groups, i.e. fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam? That's plausible, since the final sentence of the quote speaks of groups existing only because we "as a society" allow them to ... as if these groups should not be allowed to exist.
Or does the pesky pronoun "their" refer to "bigotry, discrimination, hatred, coercion, terrorism, slavery, misogyny" (and perhaps also to "everything else that is part and parcel of fundamental Christianity and radical Islam")? Or what?
If it refers merely to intolerance of the existence of bigotry, discrimination, hatred, coercion, terrorism, slavery, and misogyny, then why is this intolerance described as an "extremist" viewpoint? Surely there is nothing especially extremist about not tolerating those things (though it may be a good question whether all "hatred" and "discrimination" can/should actually be dealt with by the law).
If the intolerance is supposed to extend to the unnamed other things that are "part and parcel of fundamental Christianity and radical Islam" the situation is less clear - for what are these things? Surely there are some things that are part and parcel of fundamentalist Christianity, to use that example, but should be tolerated in every sense. Consider private prayer - this is surely "part and parcel" of fundamentalist Christianity, as it is of various other belief systems, but it's something that should be tolerated in every sense. I imagine there are also many things that are part and parcel of radical Islam but should be tolerated (belief in the existence of Allah, for example).
Overall, the post is emotive and confusing; and I don't think anyone who struggles to make sense of it is thereby suffering from a lack of reading comprehension, as Stefanelli has since suggested. I wonder, in fact, why it had to be written in such a way that it purportedly calls for "intolerance" (whatever exactly that is, in this context) and "extremist points of view". Why adopt this sort of language, which either identifies you as an extremist, a fanatic, or (if you are not one ... and I don't think Stefanelli is) merely causes confusion?
It gets worse: near the end, after talking about various organisations and their members, and why atheists and others rightly criticise them, Stefanelli says: "But the underbelly of fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam does not operate in the legal system. They don’t respond to lawsuits, letters, amicus briefs or other grass-roots campaigns and they must, must, must be eradicated."
Here, the word, "they" as in "They don't respond to lawsuits..." apparently refers back to the expression "the underbelly of fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam" - but why say "they", rather than "it", if that is intended? In any event, what is this "underbelly" that he speaks of? Does the expression refer to certain groups, organisations, individuals, ideas, or what? Whatever it is, we are told that "they" do not respond to lawsuits, etc. That wording implies that we are talking about groups or organisations (or, less likely individuals) that must be "eradicated". After all, an idea is not the sort of thing that is even a candidate for responding to a lawsuit.
And what form is the process of eradication supposed to take? It can't take the form of sending letters or initiating lawsuits, which are the very actions that we are told are ineffective. Some other action is evidently being urged, in order to eradicate whatever is supposed to constitute the "underbelly" ... but it's not clear just what action.
In the end, when you boil it down, Stefanelli mainly seems to be making a point with which I (essentially) agree: the law should apply the same secular standards to actions done for a religious reason as to the same actions done for some other reason. E.g., if we have a law in place forbidding murder, that law should apply just as much to ritual human sacrifices as to bumping off a rival lover or a pesky business competitor.
However, when Stefanelli talks of some-or-other "they" which doesn't respond to lawsuits, letters, etc., and so must be eradicated, this starts to sound like he is talking about eradicating organisations or groups or movements (again, I do think it's stretching things to imagine that he's talking about eradicating people ... but still, any use of words such as "eradicate" and its cognates is dangerous).
Miranda Celeste Hale has thought about all this ... and written a blog post that has also received over 100 comments, including at least one angry one from Stefanelli.
I don't agree with every point in her post, but I do agree with her that Stefanelli's post suffers the fault of using inflammatory language while being quite fuzzy as to what is intended by it. What's more, there was no need to employ such inflammatory language ("intolerance", "extremist"), since the strength of the post is a good, solid point - a point about the need to subject religious adherents and organisations to the same laws, and the same kinds of criticism, as everything else. This point could have been made without talk of intolerance or the need for "extremist points of view", or anything else of the kind.
This point could also have been made without seemingly wild over-generalisations about how fundamentalist Christians and radical Islamists "want us to die" - no doubt, some do. But I happen to know a lot about fundamentalist Christianity, in particular, and I've met, or even been on friendly terms with, many people who would qualify under most definitions of fundamentalist Christianity (e.g they believe that the Bible is the inerrant, unchanging word of God). It is simply not true to say of them, in a blanket way, "They want us to die."
Many of these people actually want us to live as long as needed to accept Jesus Christ as our saviours. The minds of many or most fundamentalist Christians are simply not oriented to violence, but to spreading the Gospel and "saving" souls.
Nor should we talk as if people who believe in fundamentalist Christian doctrines - or radical Islamic ones if it comes to that - are more likely to be sociopaths or psychopaths than anyone else. In the absence of robust research findings to the contrary, there is no reason to think that these groups contain a significantly higher percentage (or, indeed, a higher perecentage at all) of sociopaths and psychopaths than any other religious group or than non-believers. No such research is mentioned.
These religious groups may well harbour far greater percentages of fanatics than the rest of the population, but that is another matter entirely.
It's true that fundamentalist Christians tend to want their views to prevail at the social and political levels, so Stefanelli is correct to say, "They do not want to sit down with us in diplomatic efforts to iron out our differences and come to an agreement on developing an integrated society." That, however, is not the same as wanting us to die.
To try to sum this up, Stefanelli's article is often confusingly written; it makes Stefanelli himself look more extreme than he probably is (when you try to boil down what he's actually asking for); and at best it engages in considerable hyperbole.
What about Hale? Perhaps her response also includes some hyperbole, but it certainly does not exhibit a failure of reading comprehension, as Stefanelli says on the comment thread. Indeed, an obvious way to read Stefanelli's post is that he thinks society as a whole should not allow certain groups to exist.
Moreover, it's always wise not to blame your readers too quickly, even if they do seem to misunderstand you. Sometimes readers may misunderstand because difficult concepts are involved, and because the readers are not familiar with them or with their historical context. This may not be the fault of the writer, and it can be galling when readers who have failed to understand a line of argument for these reasons reply in a dismissive or nasty way. That's happened to me plenty of times, and I can understand if that's what Stefanelli thinks is going on here.
But I don't see it like that in this case. The concepts in play are not actually that difficult, and the person who has struggled to achieve the meaning Stefanelli apparently intends is a high-profile and highly-educated atheist blogger who has produced much in the way of intelligent analysis in the past, especially of Catholic responses to sexual misconduct issues. In any event, it's easy to see how the hyperbole and very strong language used by Stefanelli can give the impression that he is arguing for something drastic (much more drastic than he probably intends) even if read with some charity.
I'm sure there are lessons in all this, but different readers will take different things from it. One lesson might be that we should always explain ourselves very carefully when putting views that might be interpreted as extremist. Labelling your own views, or views that you commend, as "extremist" is asking for trouble.
That said, some opponents will quote mine, over-simplify, and distort, no matter how carefully we explain ourselves. There is no guaranteed defence against this happening when our words get into the hands of malicious or intellectually dishonest opponents, but that's not a reason to write in a way that will even confuse and alienate allies and others who are reading in good faith.
There may be other lessons as well, but I've said enough for now. I wish these kerfuffles could be avoided, but they will go on happening, and we need to take them in our stride. When they do, it's worth examining some of them to see if we can learn anything ... especially anything that could minimise poor communication in the future.
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