Patterico's Pontifications

12/13/2009

No, Goldstein’s Accusation of Anti-Semitism Was Not Ironic But Rather Angry

Filed under: — Patterico @ 10:57 pm



Goldstein now claims he was trying to tweak me. Why, he wasn’t really angry and lashing out with a phony, martyrish victimhood ploy!

I also called you anti-semitic, though it was clear to the people here I was just pushing your buttons and trying to get you to see how fucking easy it is to turn something you didn’t mean into a “reasonable” interpretation — a lesson born[e] out today when Mr Chaos (among others) found the adjectives you used to describe me suggestive of the kind of anti-Jew code words familiar to those with even a scant working knowledge of western lit.

Put aside for one moment the incredible irony of Goldstein and his disciple chaos talking about my using “code words” (a concept, by the way, that I have never once argued is valid).

Look at the screenshot again:

Goldstein Anti-Semitism Attack
(click to embiggen)

Does it look like Goldstein is being ironic?

No. He is angry.

If that’s not enough for you, look at the whiny (and non-ironic) way he addressed the whole affair the following day:

Just a reminder what Dan’s good buddy Patrick dropped in the comments here last night:

Goldstein needs a foil. So he can start a movement. April 1 is coming fast. Money’s running out. So you take a conservative who has been busting his local paper for six years, falsely caricature him as a wimpy turncoat, mobilize the forces against him, and start a foundation. Donation requests coming soon. Who’s in?

Mal the tertiary will tell you that I’ve been discussing this with him for a while, and that it isn’t about Patterico.

The suggestion that it’s somehow about money — well, that’s just plain insulting.

Then he said this — also reflecting an angry, non-ironic tone:

The point is, you keep talking about how I’ve been running you down, trying to make you look bad. All you have is my immediate reaction to your unprovoked and nasty attack as to the entirety of my political worldview being nothing but a sneaky way to turn a buck off people like you.

So of course you want me to put it back up.

No need. You just put up the entirety of the post. Had it in your comments, too, if I remember correctly.

The comments were just you and I shouting, and [s]omebody you were feeding info to over in your comments [This is a reference to Not Rhetorical — P] visiting to tell me that I was out of line for interpreting your nasty, uncalled for, unprovoked personal attack on my reason for running a website over the last eight years in a way that you didn’t like.

I’ve heard the same argument from nasty lefties — I’m in this for the dough. In fact, timb is one of the kings of that particular slur, and he’s now a regular over on your site.

So spare me your outrage. You should have thought about it before you posted that accusation.

This is Goldstein in Full Victim Martyr Mode. It makes crystal clear the fact that he was hurt to the quick by my accusation, and lashed out with the very claim of identity politics victimhood that he claims to stand foursquare against.

That he now portrays this as some ironic ploy that he was using to mock my views is a joke. It is a lie. It is a transparent lie.

And by the way, if it was a joke at my expense, he would have left it up.

You can see from the screenshot that this was turned into a post, titled “Late Night Patterico.” I don’t have screenshots of that, though I wish I did. Goldstein has since taken it down, and has deleted the comments he left as well.

In that post, Goldstein quoted my comment and quotes his anti-Semitic retort. About 15-20 comments ensued, in which Not Rhetorical and I noted the extreme irony of Goldstein playing the race card, and in which Goldstein sputtered with anger, repeating the allegations I had made interlaces with profanities. I have contacted Not Rhetorical to weigh in on this, since she is one of the few people who saw it. I think Eric Blair might have seen it too.

I let it go at the time, for the most part, because I was trying to be level-headed and all that. But now that Goldstein has savaged me for bringing up R.S. McCain’s comments, which were a GENUINE instance of racism, it seems appropriate to note that he accused me of anti-Semitism, in a very serious way, when I had said absolutely nothing to justify it.

He deleted the post early on, and later deleted the comments as well. I initially agreed to have him take down the comments, as part of a de-escalation.

But then, unprovoked, he re-escalated, as quoted above, with the line about what “Dan’s good buddy Patrick dropped in the comments here last night.”

When he re-escalated, I challenged him to put the post back up:

Put back up “Late night Patterico.” The post, with the comments. The one you said you’d put back up if I said the word.

Go ahead. Show people how you behaved in the comments to that post. So honorable.

Goldstein then pretended that he had lost them in an Internet transition:

Just went to put the post back up. It ain’t there. Lost in the transition, I guess. Sorry.

This was an obvious lie, and he now admits — first on Little Miss Attila’s blog and also on his own — that he deliberately deleted the post. As he now says on his blog: “There was a post I deleted.” This is not the story he told at the time.

This story about how he was tweaking me is bullshit. Another attempt to paper over blatant hypocrisy.

One Response to “No, Goldstein’s Accusation of Anti-Semitism Was Not Ironic But Rather Angry”

  1. […] P.S. Goldstein is now claiming he was speaking ironically. This is really getting in the weeds, but if you care, that transparent lie is demolished here. […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » Jeff Goldstein Plays the Race Card (e4ab32)


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