Whereabouts
: Sorry to have deserted you, my second family. Been busy. Work, you know. Happens. Back soon. Whether you want it or not. Complete sentences to follow. Promise.
12 responses to “Whereabouts”
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I don’t “get” today’s criticism of you re: Salam Pax. What’s up?
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Nice to see Oliver Willis’s post The Jarvis Hypocrisy here:
http://www.oliverwillis.com/node/view/1756
Just shows what a hypocrite you are.
Also reveals your toe curling patronising attitude towards Salam Pax, your pompous assumptions about him, your smear tactics. Ah yes, someone who dares to critcise the Americans in Iraq is “cheeky” and “ungrateful”.
Jeff Jarvis – the hypocrite. -
Salam Pax was being attacked by those who speculated — it’s going around — that he was not real, that he was not in Baghdad, that he was a plant. I was suggesting — naively, I will now fully confess — that he should have revealed his identity to deal with that. The war was over, I thought. Well, that was wrong, and that is why I understand the importance of identity for many people there now.
But identity is NOT the issue. Alterman’s “imagination” speculating without any basis in fact or journalistic justification of any sort that somebody might be a CIA agent is the issue here. That is what puts people at risk. That is his big lie.
I would have said this on Oliver’s blog but he doesn’t make leaving comments easy. Wonder why. -
Jeff
It took me two minutes to register on Oliver’s blog. Easy.
I am very glad he wrote the post.
And what about your outrageous smears of Salam Pax? Wanna explain that too, Jeff? The patronising attitude?
Salam was living in Iraq, and you call his criticisms of the Americans “cheeky” and “ungrateful”.
Why should Iraqi’s not criticise? Its DEMOCRACY, Jeff.
It’s not cheeky or ungrateful, its DEMOCRACY.
I am a Brit, Jeff, and I am reminded of the old British imperialist attitude.
And yet you’re a Democrat. Go figure. -
Ben: Of course he can criticize and I can disagree. That, indeed, is democracy.
Yes, and let’s remember that Iraq is in the mess it’s in in the first place because of colonialists from — where was that again? — oh, yes, you know.
Let’s not distract from the issue at hand: Alterman’s smear. -
Jeff
Fair enough. I am with you on the stupidity of British imperialism at least!
But Iraq was/is in a mess PARTLY because of British colonialism, to be more accurate.
Anyway your criticisms of this Alterman chap would carry more weight if your attitude to Pax had been rather more principled. I do take your point regarding the time period it took place, although if you really thought the war was over at that juncture that does seem very naive.
Thanks for your response anyway, Jeff. -
Ben: Couldn’t resist the colonialism jab.
The Salam Pax discussion was a very, very long one and it shifted quite a bit as people tried to attack Salam Pax. In the end, he and I had friendly correspondence and I regretted that we didn’t get together when he was in the U.S. I respect him and his work and only wish he were still blogging away. When I wished for more bloggers in Iraq — which, yes, is part of the reason I feel some personal responsiblity in this matter — I said I wished for “a thousand Salam Paxes.” I meant that as a tribute to him and also a wish for hearing the many voices of Iraq through citizens’ media. That, indeed, is starting and he, indeed, bears the real credit for getting it started. -
Ben,
Uhh, let’s see — Jeff posts about Iraqi bloggers, and some of the things he says now seem to be inconsistent with what he said almost two years ago, so he is a HYPOCRITE!!!
Okay… just step away from the keyboard, slowly now, and take a deep breath… there, that’s it, feeling better now?
To be fair to you, I do recall that Jeff’s indignation with Salam Pax did also make me think about condescending British colonialists.
But only superficially, because when I thought more about it, I could see that Jeff was trying to hold Salam Pax’s feet to the fire only because he considered him an equal. Jeff was thinking he was only asking Salam Pax to do what Jeff thought he himself would do in those circumstances. I had my doubts that Jeff was correct then, so I’m glad to see him backpedalling a bit about it now.
POSTSCRIPT: I previewed my comment, and now I see that Ben has actually taken a breath and become a lot more rational. But since he still can’t resist calling Jeff naive anyway, I’m still going to post this comment. -
Matthew
Hey, I did go in with all guns blazing, as it were…
But anyway, I understand there is a bit of an issue regarding time.
But as regards the ending of the war, I personally never believed it had ended – in any real sense – after the initial completion of the invasion. For the Americans, the invasion was the easy part.
Well, anyway, perhaps Jeff’s initial view was not naive, perhaps I was being unfair.
It’s just that in the UK, not many thought it was over after the invasion. Perhaps we are more cynical. -
Earlier I referred to Oliver’s output as “cartoonish ravings,” and perhaps that was unfair: A much better description would be “disjointed twitterings.”
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I should clarify my question… The part of this story I am missing is why this is coming up now.
As for Salam Pax, was anybody really suspicious of him being anything other than what he said he was? I followed his blogging from start to finish and was riveted. He struck me as being young, likely educated overseas somewhere, wealthy, gay, anti-Saddam and anti-invasion.
Jeff – were you having difficulty with somebody being both anti-Saddam and anti-invasion at the same time? I guess that would be pretty naive. Can you understand how comebody could be in both of those camps now? -
“: Sorry to have deserted you, my second family. Been busy. Work, you know. Happens. Back soon. Whether you want it or not. Complete sentences to follow. Promise. – Jeff Jarvis”
My only surprise is that you don’t have to do this more often. When in the day do you have the time to surf all the other sites and news sources, think about all of this and then write all of this stuff? Is it a stream-of-consciousness thing on a laptop between meetings, or are you sacrificing work to do all of this> Sincerely, I’d be interested in the nuts and bolts side of producing so much (mostly good) material.
