Re: The “Fisk” of Michael Ignatieff

A good Fisking dissects the arguments of a piece with counterarguments or adds inconvenient facts that the author of the piece has ignored. This wasn’t a Fisking, it was a lengthy, tedious, boring whine about a fairly bland essay.First off, in the few times where David Rees even tries to address the more substantive points, we only find out that his reading comprehension and his intellectual honesty both suck He has sacrificed both in an attempt at humor, but the quality of the jokes aren’t any good either.

[Ignatieff]: “An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm. . . .”

[Rees]: Right off the bat, he’s saying: “It was right for me to support the Iraq war when I was an academic, because academics live in outer space on Planet Zinfandel, and play with ideas all day. But now, as a politician in a country that opposed the war, I’ll admit I screwed up, because politicians must deign to harness the wild mares of whimsy to the ox-cart of cold, calculated reality.” So, although his judgments were objectively wrong, they were contextually appropriate. Sweet! You’ve been totally 0wn3d by Michael Ignatieff! And so have all those dead Iraqis.

To begin with, no, that was not what Ignatieff was saying. Ignatieff was making a point that the academy isn’t always a very good format to craft large ideas. You have to be an idiot to think he was actually saying that he was right to support the war as an academic, even though he believes the war was a mistake.

And as for style, if you don’t find what you just read hysterical, then you should skip the Rees piece. That’s about how the whole thing goes. The pattern of the rest of the “fisking” is like this. Take a statement, misinterpret it, then rephrase it in a corny, bizarre way, and then go on to attack that rather than the actual statement of the author.

[Ignatieff]: “As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners. . . .”

[Rees] Don’t bus drivers ever get tired of the “Regular schmoes are smarter than us academics/politicians/journalists” gag? Raise your hand if you think Ignatieff appointed any bus drivers to the Kennedy School faculty. I mean, if Ignatieff really thinks bus drivers are shrewder than academics, why didn’t he quit Harvard and go drive a bus?

Again, adults really should be able to follow along with a standard newspaper essay more clearly than this. Ignatieff doesn’t believe that bus drivers are smarter than professors, nor does he say this.

“Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp….” The statement that Ignatieff writes is unassailable. But after Rees either intentionally or ignorantly changes the meaning, now it becomes ripe for fisking.

[Ignatieff]” Good judgment means understanding how to be responsible to those who pay the price of your decisions. . . . Sometimes sacrificing my judgment to (my consituents’) is the essence of my job. Provided, of course, that I don’t sacrifice my principles. . . .”

[Rees] Attention, Michael Ignatieff’s constituents: HE THINKS YOU’RE DUMB.

By now it’s a bit pathetic. I really don’t know if David Rees is stupid or just an habitual liar. Doesn’t he think anyone reading his piece took the time to read the original Ignatieff point, too, and that we’ll therefore see through these glaring errors from Rees? Ignatieff makes the simple statement that occasionally, when a representative’s principles conflict with his constituents’ wishes, the political leader will vote his principles. This is pretty basic stuff, and I’m sure that every member of Congress and the Canadian Parliament agrees with it. But Rees thinks it means Ignatieff thinks voters are stupid. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

[Ignatieff]: (those who said Iraq would go badly) avoided all these mistakes.

[Rees]: “Yeah, you’re right, they did. Do you know why? Because they’re not retarded.

Powerful stuff, that.

The rest of it is a repetitive list of jokes Rees makes about Ignatieff’s examples or metaphors or writing style.

Seriously, Mr. Rees, this is really middle school stuff. Your reading comprehension and writing level are at about an eighth grade level, though your humor sounds more like my sixth graders.