I’ve liked John Podhoretz ever since, years ago, he called to introduce himself and ask me to write something for him—on Thomas Mann’s novels, as it happens. I very gratefully learned, as much as I was able, to write literary reviews by churning them out for him while he was at the Weekly Standard.
I’ve liked David Goldman ever since a mutual friend put us in touch two years ago. He’s visited me in the hills over the summer, and he’s now worked in the First Things offices for just over a year, a fine and valued colleague.
Always we’d have the new friend meet the old, as Yeats once put it, And we are hurt if either friend seem cold, . . . / And quarrels are blown up upon that head.
And now a quarrel has blown up. Over at his Pajamas Media blog, Michael Ledeen lays out the chronology. David began by repeating some of a loose but interesting pop-psychology of President Obama that he wrote two years ago for the Asia Times website.
And John promptly wrote that it was “unacceptable” and “beyond the pale” and “disgusting” in three ways: as taste (in mentioning the president’s mother as someone “who sought to expiate her white guilt by going to bed with Muslim Third World men”); as intellectual endeavor (in trying to psychologize from parents to children); and as ideology (in calling Obama “a Third World anthropologist studying us”).
It was the last that John dwelt most on—”Casting Obama as a malign foreign influence is a particular and unforgivable intellectual madness on the Right over the past two years”—and he seems to relate it to the Birther controversy about Obama’s birth certificate.
Figuring out who is, and who is not, a true conservative is a never-ending pastime of conservatives—and rightly so, in some ways. Just in recent weeks, a billion pixels have been burned over the question of David Frum’s leaving the American Enterprise Institute, and over what National Review called Max Boot’s “attempt to drum Diana West out of the conservative movement” for criticizing Gen. David Petraeus’ comments about Israel as a source of America’s woes in the Middle East.
As it happens, David Goldman picked up Petraeus’ comments, too, and he wrote bitterly about them—and about those who continue to support Petraeus despite those comments—in a piece for the relatively new Jewish online journal, The Tablet, but it’s David’s new repeating of his old comments about Obama that is the focus of the attempt to write David out of conservatism.
Having read it all, I’ve got to say that John is absolutely right that David was tasteless in his phrasing about Obama’s mother. She wed among Muslim men; why do we have to have it that she also bed among them? David was echoing phrasings that he used two years ago, and he shouldn’t have—mostly because, not to put too arrogant a point on it, he now writes for First Things. It wouldn’t have ever gone into the print magazine, and so it shouldn’t go onto the web. For that matter, I don’t have much of a stomach for psychologizing, although I recognize that others do.
On the matter of David’s participation in the nutball conspiracy theories of the fringe, however, I’ve got to say that John is absolutely wrong. Over at National Review, Jonah Goldberg posted a comment, initially on John’s side—and focusing solely on what he, too, took to be John’s main point, about the affinity for the Birther fringe.
But then Jonah updated his post with a note from one of his friends, who writes:
I don’t care for Goldman’s rhetoric, but I’m not sure I don’t see his point. I think, to paraphrase him, he’s arguing that Obama’s family life—left-wing grandparents and an extremely left-wing, anti-American radical mother—and upbringing abroad and in the precincts of the left have provided him with an extra-American worldview—that is, he looks at America as an object, not necessarily a subject of which he is wholly part, and that his agenda is at least in part about re-making America into something he thinks will be more acceptable to those outsiders regarding it.
This strikes me as a not unreasonable conjecture given Obama’s own narrative in Dreams from My Father, and given that it has been a commonplace on the hard left since at least Vietnam to affect—and internalize—an alienated stance against America. Obama’s come out of a more ideologically pure left-wing environment than any major Democratic figure in a while.
Focusing on David’s phrase “Third World anthropologist,” John insists that “there is nothing foreign about Obama’s ideas or ideology, alas, which can be understood, in my view, almost entirely from the curricula and extracurricular ideas endemic in the American university in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he was in college.”
But this is what David was saying—that it’s a homegrown American phenomena, this preference for the Third World over America’s own First World. David thinks it arrived in the family with the mother’s generation, and John thinks it arrived with the son’s generation, but neither of them is somehow hinting that Obama is a foreigner. No one is trying to connect this to the Birther fantasy, and the stressed point of John’s complaint about David—the charge of bad ideology—is simply a misreading.
Along the way, John swerves off into an attempt to explain all this in terms of Lyndon LaRouche, but I couldn’t follow the connection, which was, in any event, tasteless and offensive in its own way. David then replied with a line from the German poet Heinrich Heine, which he does from time to time.
Enough with all this, already. On Friday, David wrote, “I posted an essay on the Jewish webzine Tablet explaining how my neoconservative friends (and they are my friends) blew it on the Middle East.” And on Tuesday, John wrote that, despite their disagreements, his foreign-policy thinking and David’s “stem from the same root—a conviction that the West is under ideological assault and needs defending from its Islamofascist enemies.”
Maybe this current muddle is a proxy for that foreign-policy debate they’re not engaging, but then, again, maybe it isn’t. Regardless, the point to take away is that there simply isn’t any disagreement here about the homespun nature of President Obama. If push comes to shove, I’m going to have to whack David upside the head for indulging that vulgarity about Obama’s mother and then completely support him, because he works with me, and because I enjoy his mercurial brilliance, and because he didn’t say what he’s thought to have said.
But why does it have to come to that? We’ve got enemies enough without creating more.
April 14th, 2010 | 6:56 am
I am relieved to hear that the honor of First Things does indeed require upholding certain standards. My faith (now restored) had faltered after reading the tasteless, best-forgotten review of Nabokov’s posthumous novel. I passionately agree with this post that President Obama is a homegrown, authentic, carefully nurtured product of our very own American educational system. Those of us who value First Things and other like publications, those of us who regard the Church as a spiritual entity, are the new “foreigners”.
April 14th, 2010 | 7:45 am
As for (the Jews, Israel) having enough enemies, this is true, and the danger therein continues to grow apace.
Concluding that to “psychologize” a sitting President of the United States is “vulgar,” I seem to recall a quite a bit of that being done to the previous president, and much of it coming from the (Jewish) psychoanalytical community.
Analyst friends and colleagues of mine, culturally Jewish, but religiously Liberal (to paraphrase the elder Podhoretz) engaged in this often.
A quick Google search leads to many such cites and sites, such as Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice.
Whether if things that are good for the goose are still good for the gander, I will leave it to the the professional opinion makers to adjudicate (Or refer to “Rules for Radicals” or “Prairie Fire” if still in doubt.”)
Barack Hussein Obama II is a complex and intriguing figure. His “narrative” is just the stuff of Myth making and conspiracy theories.
My $.02: Psychologize away! Enjoy! And be sure to vote early and often.
Just sayin’.
April 14th, 2010 | 9:44 am
I don’t know what your subscription numbers are at, but, for what it’s worth, after hearing of the strange publishing of Goldman’s articles under multiple pseudonyms and then the hiring of Goldman, I decided to let my subscription lapse.
April 14th, 2010 | 9:53 am
This brought to mind a comedy bit by the oddball comedian Emo Philips a few years back.
He was in a bus station, I believe, and sat next to a guy while they both waited for their bus to arrive. They struck up a conversation during which they discovered many similarities in their lives.”Oh your Baptist, well so am I.”Southern Baptist, me too” The list grew and grew. (I had not known of the many layered elements within Baptists.) Each item mentioned by one drew effusive confirmation from the other until one of them mentioned some 3rd or 5th tier issue which elicited this response from Emo. “Die you heathen bastard”.
April 14th, 2010 | 10:58 am
“If push comes to shove, I’m going to have to whack David upside the head for indulging that vulgarity about Obama’s mother”
Why would you insist on forcing him against his nature?
April 14th, 2010 | 12:34 pm
[...] David, when I said “enough already,” I meant, like, enough, already. Let it go. Comments [...]
April 14th, 2010 | 12:40 pm
Spengler is what you get when you cross the intellectual aspirations of First Things with the hysterical reactivity of The Gateway Pundit. If Bottum wants to preserve the standards of First Things, a good deal more housecleaning is in order. For anyone disturbed by Goldman’s ad hominem and alarmist assault on Obama’s bona fides as an American, go read the Gateway Pundit and his commenters for a few minutes. Trust me, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
When it comes to expiating guilt, Goldman could lay some claim to expertise on the subject. Just Google Lyndon LaRouche and David Goldman, and you’ll find an extensive write-up alleging and detailing Goldman’s former participation in anti-Semitic LaRouche propaganda.
But why bother to do that? Goldman claims to have changed his ways, which deserves our respect. More importantly, his stated views in the present are worthy of being considered on their merits, and not evaded by way of ad hominem conspiracy theories.
It seems to me that considering Obama’s policies on their merits is what Goldman largely wants to avoid. Goldman has been predicting disaster because of Obama since before he was sworn in, and it doesn’t seem to bother that none of his predictions are coming to pass. It’s much easier to scare people with insinuations of anti-Americanism—”This is Not a Drill—This is the Real Thing” is almost as good as Condoleeza Rice’s mushroom cloud.
Regarding anti-Americanism, why the love affair on the neocon/theocon Right with this particular trope? When decidedly First World Americans, liberals and conservatives alike, regularly found fault with George W. Bush’s politics—particularly his foreign policies—they were routinely denounced, including here at First Things, as driven by anti-Americanism. But now the Right is free, as the expression of its Americanism, to denounce the President of the United States and all of his foreign policies, and this when the President is actually doing way more than he should to clean up G. W. Bush’s blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan. But beyond this, Goldman clearly implies that the President himself, who achieved victory the old-fashioned American way by winning at the polls, is said to be basically hostile to the American project!
Why tolerate this petitionary logic that only grants credibility (i.e., American-ness) to the like-minded? And what kind of intellectual sclerosis leads someone so obviously gifted as Joseph Bottum to suggest, as he does above, that not truth, but common enemies, should be the source of our unity, or the principle that animates our critical energies?
April 14th, 2010 | 1:13 pm
Goldman’s bit about Obama’s mom was ungentlemanly. However, it was just sort of a wormhole thumbnail explanation for how we have arrived at a place were the Jew-hating, gay-hating, woman-hating, West-hating fanatics running Iran are actually seen by Obama as the solution to our entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was showing that Israel is Obama’s guilt offering to these terrorists and their ilk.
Polished writing can sometimes put too fine a point on certain horrors growing in our midst. Obama’s genocide placation is one of these horrors.
April 14th, 2010 | 1:19 pm
To Former Subscriber:
I loved First Things, and I like and read Spengler (even though Goldman is always too smart by half), but I agree they don’t go well together.
April 14th, 2010 | 3:01 pm
“I don’t know what your subscription numbers are at, but, for what it’s worth, after hearing of the strange publishing of Goldman’s articles under multiple pseudonyms and then the hiring of Goldman, I decided to let my subscription lapse.”
**************
What he said. I’ve subscribed to and supported FT off and on for near 20 years.
No more.
April 14th, 2010 | 3:11 pm
Thank you, Charles Collier, for calling out Joseph Bottum in regards to the nasty, cynical blog he lets Jim Hoft publish.
Also, I’ve just read David Goldman’s Who is Barack Obama? piece, in which he writes that Michelle’s eyes were “hooded with rage” when she said she was proud of her country for the first time. That phrase I’ve quoted perception is pure, ugly fantasy, as is the notion that Ann Dunham “despised” America. The U.S, is a great country, but it’s flawed just as human beings are flawed. Patriots criticize their country because they love it. And they can understand, if they choose to, why a member of an historically used and abused population would feel as Michelle felt.
April 14th, 2010 | 3:18 pm
Perhaps John Podhoretz took Goldman’s attack on neocons and his overreaction to some things Petraeus said about Israel too personally.
That might have been what led Podhoretz to look for an angle on Goldman. Who knows?
I agree with Goldman on Obama. Disagree with him about Iraq (that war was important in a number of ways, all of them jeopardized by the election of Obama). And I think Podhoretz just had one of his periodic flare-ups. He’s usually a jolly good fellow, but is, in the odd moment, prone to find a way to be provoked.
So, to sum up: Goldman was more than right about Obama; the neocons were right about Iraq; Podhoretz jumped in the pool with his clothes on; the party started.
April 14th, 2010 | 4:51 pm
[...] Events’ Joseph Bottum steps in to squash the beef, agreeing with Podhoretz that all of their thinking “stem[s] from the same root—a conviction [...]
April 14th, 2010 | 6:25 pm
“Charlie Collier” I love you! (Un-homosexualistically, that is.)
I didn’t even know why I don’t read Gateway Pundit. Thanks to you–and not for this alone–I just now glanced at it and immediately recalled: 1) Having done so at some dim once-before; 2) Why I’d never repeated the act.
The utter, clear-headed, genuine decency of the rest of your post has maybe-not-undying-but-long-standing-for-the-foreseeable-future affection my you won–to krautify it in honor of the Israelitish Germanophile here concerned.
April 14th, 2010 | 6:26 pm
Sorry, “Charlie”. That should have been ‘non-homosexualistically’.
April 14th, 2010 | 8:46 pm
Hmph, I was trying do something fancy and funny–who finds it not funny would still find it fancy–lemme vainly try to get it better,
——————–
“Charlie Collier” I love you! (Non-homosexualistically, that is.)
I currently thought that I didn’t know why I don’t read Gateway Pundit. Thanks to you–and not for this alone–I just now glanced at, but did not parse, it and instantly recalled both having done so at some dim once-before-time and why I’d never repeated the act.
The utter, clear-headed, genuine decency of the rest of your post has maybe-not-undying-but-long-standing-for-the-foreseeable-future-affection-mine you won (to put it in kraut-fashion in honor of the Israelitish Germanophile under consideration).
——————–
This version or the first one?
;-)
April 14th, 2010 | 8:49 pm
“Ken”, thank you for your so weighty, perennially applicable and far too rare admonition,
“…they can understand, if they choose…”
April 14th, 2010 | 8:50 pm
hey you, deleting my last-but-one post, what’s wrong with an injection of levity?
April 14th, 2010 | 8:51 pm
it took a bit of work, you know
April 14th, 2010 | 9:26 pm
you put it back, oh, gee, thanks, now I’m blushing
April 14th, 2010 | 9:27 pm
i’lltakeuplessspacenexttime,ok?
April 14th, 2010 | 10:43 pm
I’m very sorry to see that Mr. Bottum hasn’t responded to the criticisms posted here. There comes a point at which silence in the face of criticism looks like defensiveness and an unwillingness to address the concerns of the loyal opposition. In other words, there comes a point at which silence looks like a lack of love. And a lack of love . . . well, perhaps First Things should stop calling itself a Christian organ until it’s willing to behave like one, with a capacity for humility, self-criticism, and charity.
April 14th, 2010 | 10:53 pm
Difference between USSR Communist media and USA “mainstream media”
In Russia government make media say what they want – even if lie.
In USA “mainstream media” try make government what they want – even if lie..
…..eventually they become same thing?!
Old Russian saying You can tell same lie 1000 time but not change truth!
I Igor produce Obama Birth Certificate at http://www.igormarxo.org
Compare Obama Care vs Igor Care at Obama Care vs Igor Care
April 15th, 2010 | 12:17 am
“Ken”, since he’s presumably at the helm, he can have a breather ’til the bell rings?
(Sorry to mix yachting with boxing, but wouldn’t a real combo of the two resemble the kerfuffle we have here?)
“Igor”, you rule, nothing to lose but your chains, baby.
April 15th, 2010 | 12:21 am
“Ken”, in the words of Mr. Goldman, First Things is not a Christian but an “interreligious magazine”.
April 15th, 2010 | 1:54 am
An “interreligious magazine”? That is a completely meaningless descriptor, as far as I can tell. Not a Christian magazine; yes, that penny dropped some time ago.
However, the revelation that First Things has given shelter to the noxious mouth-breather Goldman is the last straw. I am joining Marcus and “former subscriber” in the march to the exit.
It is Christian to forgive, and I will try to forgive you, First Things, for no longer being what you used to be. But this Third Culture kid — and American patriot, thank you! — ain’t hanging around here no mo’.
April 15th, 2010 | 2:34 am
Goldman may be noxious, but to describe him as a mouth breather? Are his comments about Obama nice? No. Are they true? I believe it part they are, certainly my world views were formed by my parents, especially my father. But certainly as others have already noted, it’s nothing compared to what Bush had said about him, to include in perfectly respectable magazines.
April 15th, 2010 | 10:39 am
Yes, yes, let’s all just say nice, christian things about the president! Because a president’s background should never be examined, no never, even when it might affect the country’s well-being! Are we not gentlemen?
I mean, toads and tadpoles, nobody ever took an in-depth look at Bush senior, and Junior, or Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan! No indeed! No indeedy! No indeedy-roony!
/Sarcasm.
April 15th, 2010 | 11:57 am
Rhinestone, no need to explain that you’re being sarcastic.
A president’s background should be examined, but should we do that just to look for faults, or are we as Christians commanded to approach even our ideological opponents with as much charity as we can muster and the benefit of the doubt whenever possible? You guys just caricature the guy, and don’t tell me you don’t want him to be that caricature.
And in regards to Bush and the rest, two wrongs don’t make a right.
April 15th, 2010 | 1:22 pm
Well, yes, Ken, we do look long and hard at a potential president’s faults—is there any good reason not to? Charity is a wonderful thing—but you can have too much of even a good thing; the American president is a guy with a finger on the nuclear trigger; the guy who will lead us to war, if we go to war; the man who, at the head of the armed forces, who’ll lead us, in case of (God forbid) a crisis, or disaster.
Are we, as Christians, supposed to give politicians the benefit of the doubt, even when doing so might result in disaster, or be harmful for the country. Sheesh, if we’re supposed to be that blind, we might as well just grab any random person off the street and stick them in the White House—because it would be unchristian, donchaknow, to look into his background, or examine him in any way.
So, yes, we look at a president’s/potential president’s faults! What else is a campaign for? We can be charitable to a candidate as an ordinary man; as a candidate for the presidency , we have to be ruthless in judging whoever runs.
I find it strange that the Clintons, the Kennedys, the Bushes, Reagan, Carter were all put under the microscope, but, somehow, when it comes to taking a look at Obama (something that wouldn’t even be necessary if the media had actually done its job during the election) we’re suddenly being “vulgar” and “unchristian”, and we oughta just cut the guy some slack, that’s what we oughta do!
And, by the way, the “you guys” comment somehow tells me you’re really not all that into Christianity yourself. And I am going to tell you—I didn’t vote for Obama, but, after his election, I supported him as our president, and told myself he’d probably grow into the office, and turn out alright.
I’m disappointed to find I was wrong. I didn’t want him to be a caricature at all, and I don’t like what he’s doing to the country.
April 15th, 2010 | 1:25 pm
It seems to be a new commandment of this administration that—”Thou Shalt not criticize the Obama, nor his wife, nor his mother, nor his friends and relatives, nor anything else that pertains to the Obama!”
April 15th, 2010 | 2:38 pm
Rhinestone, go ahead and criticize — of course every president needs the scrutiny. I’m talking about birther/”Barack Hussein” conservatives, who are well-represented on Gateway Pundit, and who Goldman reminds me of when he spins a fantasy about Obama viewing this country in a way Goldman seems to think is un-American. (I can’t stand it when either liberals or conservatives talk about taking my country back — not that Goldman actually said that.)
By “you guys,” that’s who I’m referring to. I’m a theologically pretty conservative, more or less evangelical, lately Anglican Christian.
I find it strange that the Clintons, the Kennedys, the Bushes, Reagan, Carter
Again, two wrongs don’t make a right.
April 15th, 2010 | 8:37 pm
So, because of BDS syndrome, no one can be allowed to criticize Obama—because two wrongs don’t make a right? So, let’s just ignore his past, and what might have made Obama the man he is today—because two wrongs don’t make a right.
Golman’s article seems to be more about the formation of Obama’s worldview, than about “birtherism”. And what is so fantastic about his speculations? Judging by Obama’s actions since he’s been in office—-for instance, appeasing our enemies, while alienating allies, pushing through healthcare against the wishes of the American people, going soft on Iran while assuring the world that we won’t retaliate with nukes, if attacked (thereby practically inviting our enemies to attack, without fear of reprisal), he’s either incredibly naive, or he holds political views that might not be in America’s best interests. Looking at his past might tell us what those views actually are. . . but that wouldn’t be nicens! Let’s all sing “Kumbay-yah!” instead! And remember—no criticism of Obama allowed!
April 15th, 2010 | 9:42 pm
So, because of BDS syndrome, no one can be allowed to criticize Obama
The first thing I said was “go ahead and criticize.” I’ll not read more of your post and I’m done talking to you.
April 15th, 2010 | 11:04 pm
Nope. It isn’t a misreading. There’s been no dearth of conservatives willing to say that Obama is anti-American. That point can be made without calling his ancestry into question, and has been. The Birthers go further: they deny that Obama is American at all (at least, those who sincerely believe what they say). So does Goldman, for his view is that Obama is an anti-American foreigner, where Podhoretz’s is that Obama is an anti-American American. Goldman’s crude calumniation of Obama’s mother is supposed to establish his putative foreignness, not his supposed anti-Americanism. This is what Podhoretz saw, and you missed: it’s telling that you give no reason whatever for your equation of Goldman’s and Podhoretz’s views, you simply assert that they’re saying the same thing (vide “…this is what David was saying.”)
April 19th, 2010 | 2:33 am
To all of you friends who have cancelled subscriptions:
Ok, I understand getting upset and pulling out your cash. I do the same thing for the same reason when a publication misbehaves (I cancelled my subscription to The Weekly Standard when they referred to Alex Jones as an “internet looser, a really snarky thing to say and like him or not, unlike The Weekly Standard, Mr. Jones gives his stuff away free).
But re-subscribe? If you can? I’m not on the editorial board, I write now rarely for the journal, but I do love First Things and don’t you agree that it has been an important and eloquent voice on a lot of issues? At least in the past?
Yes, I’ve found a bit of the recent material distasteful. And there have been a couple of recent articles that I was surprised were published. But it’s tough times. I think the board and the staff are taking a while to find their bearings after Neuhaus’ death (a bit tricky to replace Neuhaus, right?) but they are working hard on it. And with the mess my Roman Catholic friends are dealing with (yeah, that mess), the push for another war (yeah, that war—yeikes), and an economy that appears to be built entirely on the teachings of Saint Ponzi (blessings be upon him)—we need First Things as a host for thoughtful writings based, well, upon First Things. And if the journal has stumbled in articulating those first things as clearly as some of us might have liked, isn’t it understandable? For all of us, this hasn’t been really a year of unstressed reflection, has it?
So, if you can, one more year? Re-subscribe? I hate here to sound like an Episcopal bishop pleading with Christians for patience, but I mean, if nothing else, the First Things covers look so pretty on the coffee table, right? So please?
April 19th, 2010 | 12:27 pm
“So, if you can, one more year? Re-subscribe?”
******************
Nope. FT’s increasingly “inter-religious” and propagandistic content is no longer of interest to me.
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