Kudos to Michael Ezra
Sorry to drag Michael "Not a Troll" Ezra up again, but I have to say that I admire him for writing this video and posting it on Harry's Place.
This is a bit off-topic, but if you watch, much of it will seem familiar. Video below, so you don't have to follow the link.
I wouldn't recommend reading the comments on Harry's Place, but Linda Grant makes some good points. ME earns himself some love with this comment on 12 March 2011, 11:58 am:
Finally, for those who won't watch the video, this is the best bit:
-- All you are interested in doing is hating Israel. You read the Guardian. I read it too. Look how many articles that they publish attacking Israel. And then look at the comments. If there is an article on Canada, a massive country, they will be lucky to attract 50 comments. But on the tiny little country of Israel, they would get 500 comments on an article.
-- A lot of those comments are your comments or responses to your comments. If you did not comment, there would be a lot less comments.
-- I comment because I have to defend Israel.
Of course, Michael goes and spoils everything by saying that he likes Norman Podhoretz, whom I regard as nothing more than a bigot, like his wife Midge Decter:
But we can't have everything.
This is a bit off-topic, but if you watch, much of it will seem familiar. Video below, so you don't have to follow the link.
I wouldn't recommend reading the comments on Harry's Place, but Linda Grant makes some good points. ME earns himself some love with this comment on 12 March 2011, 11:58 am:
Israeli Nurse,
You are also a parody of the female character in the video in the main post.
Finally, for those who won't watch the video, this is the best bit:
-- All you are interested in doing is hating Israel. You read the Guardian. I read it too. Look how many articles that they publish attacking Israel. And then look at the comments. If there is an article on Canada, a massive country, they will be lucky to attract 50 comments. But on the tiny little country of Israel, they would get 500 comments on an article.
-- A lot of those comments are your comments or responses to your comments. If you did not comment, there would be a lot less comments.
-- I comment because I have to defend Israel.
Of course, Michael goes and spoils everything by saying that he likes Norman Podhoretz, whom I regard as nothing more than a bigot, like his wife Midge Decter:
From there we segue into a long, withering attack on Midge Decter ("Mrs. Norman Podhoretz"), whose nakedly homophobic Commentary essay on "the homosexual-rights movement" ("The Boys on the Beach," September 1980) clearly provoked in Mr. Vidal a kind of gleeful, murderous fury. He alternates light slaps ("She … writes with the authority and easy confidence of someone who knows that she is very well known indeed to those few who know her") with roundhouse punches ("For sheer vim and vigor, ‘The Boys on the Beach’ outdoes its implicit model, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"), and ends on a note of bitter contempt and ominous foreboding: "[S]he is indeed a virtuoso of hate, and thus do pogroms begin."
But we can't have everything.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 3/14/2011 04:06:00 PM
13 Comments:
The bit at the end gets so ludicrous that it must shurely be based on something actually said by someone actual.
I thought it worked best as a satire on the rather mechanical, ping pong like, nature of *both* sides of such discussions.
Sarah, I don't. I think one party was reasonable, and the other may have been Melanie Phillips. Totally bonkers and very repetitive.
The comments threads on HP seem to be drying up. 100 odd comments used to be the norm, but most posts attract far less now. Michael's 318 (last time I looked) seemed to rather prove his point.
Kudos indeed for taking a crap on a good number of detestable HP regulars. However, Michael is as tone deaf over there as he was when he was here denying his trollish behaviour. Only in this case, he's trolled his own audience, which is kind of admirable I suppose.
Michael's 318 (last time I looked) seemed to rather prove his point.
Can we expect one about Canada next then?
Chardonnay Chap - I thought there were some funny moments/observations - I suppose, though, I felt that some of the points 'she' made were fair, yet ironised by the context, or even contaminated by the various other crazed and neurotic things she said, and by the fact 'he' seemed entirely reasonable. Perhaps it would have worked better if she hadn't been Israeli, too? But I do remember looking at a thread about the Goldstone report once (or some meeting connected with it) and thinking that some of the criticisms of it were just so bizarre, based on such extraordinary over readings (some criticisms of it may be entirely fair, I haven't gone into it) that I fled in bewilderment.
Anti-Zionists' manoeuvres can be unreasonable too of course ...
Sarah, Perhaps it would have worked better if she hadn't been Israeli, too? If she'd been British, and he'd been Israeli, then she'd simply have been absurd, and I think Michael was trying to be fair, not that Harry's Place's more excitable readers would agree.
Michael does have a good point about the length of threads on Israel. They're long because the same people keep coming back. I don't deny that there are some anti-semite trolls on those threads, but a lot of the length comes from the defenders of Israel having their say.
I really do think she was partially based on Melanie Phillips. Poor woman is utterly off her rocker. Norman Geras would say that it's wrong of me, but I still think Robert Webb has her number.
I meant it might have been better for them both to be British (like Melanie Phillips). I find much of what MP has to say on this kind of topic offensive - though not as offensive as the comments she attracts.
Kudos for posting it, but surely it's a bit problematic that an admin of HP Sauce posts it? I mean, it describes pretty precisely the behaviour of every single other admin of that site when Israel launches a pointless military offensive.
I'd have more time for it, too, if Mr Ezra hadn't a) effectively accused a regular of this site of being a 'religious loon' because of their interest in the Middle East, and b) effectively accused me of supporting not only Hamas but the IRA on here because I disgareed with him about the ME.
OC, if I'm wrong, I hope I admit to it. If someone I disagree with often is right, I hope I've got the honesty (and courage?) to say so.
I know that Michael Ezra made himself pretty unpopular round here, and threw out quite a few slurs, which though misguided still hit their targets.
I don't share ME's idees fixes on Communism or various far-left micro-factions. But I do agree with him again on Egypt. This is on-topic, if not for this post, then for AW generally, because to read Comrade Cohen in the Observer this week, there were only two positions to be had regarding the Arab revolts: solidarity (possibly with military support) or appeasement and being "objectively pro-fascist". Of course, it's a hell of a lot messier than that. The new regime in Egypt seems just as nasty as the one it displaced. And Nick's and others cheerleading for the armed rebels in Libya will not, I think, work out at all well. As far as I can tell, Gadaffi's paramilitary opponents are Islamic headbangers or the sort we encouraged once in Afghanistan. They're not democrats. I don't believe, given their recent personal histories, that many Quilliam people are democrats either. They supported bin Laden not so long ago. I really can't see why Martin Bright, Denis MacShane etc are so keen on them. Look at Gadaffi and Saif al-Islam, they took in Blair and all sorts of do-gooders. I sort of think Blair was right to hope he could 'turn' Gadaffi; but he picked the wrong bloke. The West could do business with Gorbachev, who was a reasonable and decent and insightful bloke, but not with Stalin, who was pretty much the opposite of all of those things. Gadaffi is Stalin by analogy. But then Blair was acting out of realpolitik, although I don't know what it is that keeps Nick from recognising this.
This has turned into more than a bit of a rant. I supported the Iranian revolution for what I still consider a good reason: it's better to have a government of one's own nationals that puppets of a foreign power. Maybe so, but it's still a case of "The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on."
God, I'm really fucked off with all these idiots and their magic democracy dust. It's not that I don't believe that Arabs deserve the freedoms we enjoy (although I do believe that they would select a very different menu of rights and freedoms, and could rightly point to many aspects of the West which increase unhappiness), it's that none of the factions who look able to form governments in the ME are offering anything like democracy.
Oh, I meant judos to him for posting it, not least cos of the vitriol it generated. I'm just not quite convinced by ME on the ME. (incidentally his Japan vs Israel in the Guardian thing will look a little different now).
But he's not always wrong, and the Egypt thing is hard to take issue with. If things pan out as they might, and if anyone cared about Egypt, then David Cameron's hasty embrace of the military junta there will come back to haunt him badly.
On Blair and Gadaffi - on one level it makes sense - dialogue is always better than siolation - but Blair went a bit further than that. I don't think it was so much trying to turn him as acknowledging that our support for Saudi can't be indefinite. that was one of the main reasons for the Iraq war too, on the US side - they had to get their military out of Saudi (bowing to Bin Laden's demands, incidentally), and needed a new Middle Eastern base.
It's not that I don't believe that Arabs deserve the freedoms we enjoy (although I do believe that they would select a very different menu of rights and freedoms, and could rightly point to many aspects of the West which increase unhappiness), it's that none of the factions who look able to form governments in the ME are offering anything like democracy.
I can't argue with any of that. As is sometimes poiinted out on here and by flying rodent, the Iraqi govt is signing an awful lot of UN resolutions which 'the west' would oppose.
there were only two positions to be had regarding the Arab revolts: solidarity (possibly with military support) or appeasement and being "objectively pro-fascist"
don't forget that even though George Galloway is outspokenly anti-Gadaffi, he was on the pro-fascist side...
I mean, it describes pretty precisely the behaviour of every single other admin of that site when Israel launches a pointless military offensive.
Excrement.
Repulsive shit
http://hurryupharry.org/2011/04/01/the-last-revolution/
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