Year: 2010

David Colquhoun sees Evan Harris rather differently from the way George Pitcher does.

Evan Harris is one of the most principled men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. His stands on human rights, civil rights and libel law reform have been exemplary. He is also one of the few (and now fewer) members of parliament who understands how science works and its importance for the future of the UK. He has been a tireless advocate for the idea that policy should be based on evidence (as opposed to guesswork).

And he’s an atheist, and “his defeat was brought about by poisonous lies propagated by, ahem, evangelical christians.”

Then Colquhoun goes through the lies and the people who propagated them.

Lynda Rose is an Anglican minister who seems to think it appropriate to call a good man “Dr Death” because of her religious ‘principles’…Cristina Odone was editor of the Catholic Herald from 1991 to 1996. She is another ‘good christian’ who wrote an abominably nasty piece in the Daily Telegraph on April 19th…

A piece also calling Harris “Dr Death.” And then George Pitcher, and Father Raymond Blake.

So much for the idea that religious people are nicer.

I’ve been working on the next issue of The Philosophers’ Magazine for the past twelve days. We have now finished; another issue put to bed. This one is the 50th. Imagine that! The 50th! Cities have risen and fallen in that time, dynasties have collapsed, bubbles have burst, banks have run through all their own and everyone else’s money, oil has spilled, cookies have crumbled.

It’s a tremendous issue. I can’t tell you how, because it’s a surprise, but it’s Special, and it’s very very good. I’ve read every word of it, as always, and it’s great.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has some sharp (in both senses) things to say about the burqa and laws relating to it and the hijab.

As always, the British power elite casts itself – unconsciously perhaps – as more tolerant and enlightened than its European counterparts…
We have a history of self-righteousness in these intra-continental culture wars. The veil once more gives us a chance to show off our liberal credentials and show up our more bigoted neighbours, whose anti-Muslim attitudes are indeed uglier…

But defending the right to wear the burqa isn’t really the ideal way to show off one’s liberal credentials.

What of the fact that millions of us are against the black covering? And that many supported the French school-uniform proscription? We know there is no Koranic injunction to cover the face, and we watch helplessly as organised brainwashing is leading to the blanking out of female Muslim presence and individuality from the public space. The Oxford theologian and imam Dr Taj Hargey can give you chapter and verse to prove both these points. We say that dress codes can be imposed in public-service interactions for a greater good. That whether opted for by the woman or pushed on her by others, the inherent message of the veiled woman is that femininity is treacherous – which is an evil slur.

Too many defenders of the right to wear the burqa – not all, but too many – fail to deal with the evil slur aspect. Too many defenders treat the matter as unambiguous, easy, a slam dunk. They need to keep the evil slur firmly in mind.

Jerry Coyne did an amusing post yesterday about anonymous blogging. He did it as if he were Andy Rooney (an editorialist on a long-running tv news show, for non-US readers).

I’ve learned that there are people out there who run blogs but do it anonymously. Anonymously—get it? That means that they hide their identity from readers. Now when I first heard this I was astounded. After all, I’ve been a journalist for nearly seven decades, and the first thing you learn is that you stand behind your work—you take responsibility for what you say.

Well quite. And if you don’t, then most of the time – unless you’re very good at it, very clever and sharp and funny and knowledgeable – you will be taken considerably less seriously than you would be if you did take responsibility for your work. You will also be read less. I’m just not very interested in what Someone Random has to say (unless SR is good enough to have built up a reputation as SR, which takes time), and I’m also usually wary of it, because SR lacks an important motivation that the rest of us have for not doing things like lying or lapsing into scatalogical frenzies.

But some commenters on Jerry’s post sharply disagreed – mostly for bad reasons. A somewhat good or at least reasonable reason is that some people want to be free to discuss controversial ideas without fear of repelling employers or families or both.

I would still say that is at least not the best way to argue for controversial ideas, precisely because it does look evasive and unaccountable. There is an old and admirable tradition of anonymous pamphleteering, but all the same – there are drawbacks to pamphleteering that way. There are non-invidious reasons people want to know who is writing.

More to the point, however, that kind of anonymity isn’t a reason for slandering other people who are not anonymous, and doing so is ethically…suspect, shall we say.

One late commenter remarked that

I find it interesting that those who fail to understand the value of anonymity are usually those who didn’t have the privilege of growing up with the internet. It’s an unfortunate generation gap.

No; that won’t fly. Anonymous abuse does not magically become a fine thing just because it’s on the internet. For one thing it’s hardly a secret that the internet can be an incredibly nasty place, nor that anonymity is one major reason for that. For another thing, why would it?

Suppose someone at your workplace starts leaving messages all over the place saying nasty things about you or some other co-worker – anonymously. That’s not considered perfectly all right, is it? Granted I don’t get out much, but it is my understanding that that kind of thing is frowned on. Or suppose someone at a school is doing that – plastering the place with anonymous messages about a teacher or a student. Is that seen as okie dokie? No. So why would it be ok on the internet? It wouldn’t, and it isn’t.

I don’t read anonymous blogs much; it may be that I don’t read them at all (I’m not sure offhand). One I’m just not very interested, but two, I don’t trust them. Newspaper editors don’t trust anonymous sources, and neither do I. And as for anonymous ankle-biters – they’re just a joke, and they sink to their own level. No one reads them but other anonymous ankle-biters.

You did want to know that, didn’t you?

Poor Orlando Figes, what a terrible fate. The embarrassment of it.

The future of one of Britain’s leading historians was looking increasingly uncertain tonight after he admitted that he was the author of anonymous reviews that praised his own work as “fascinating” and “uplifting” while rubbishing that of his rivals.

On Amazon. Oh dear.

Orlando Figes, one of the stars of contemporary history, had issued a string of legal threats to academic colleagues, literary journals and newspapers that suggested he might have written the reviews posted on Amazon.co.uk.

When challenged about the reviews, Figes’s lawyer initially denied Figes was the author and threatened legal action. In a later statement, Figes blamed them on his wife, the barrister Stephanie Palmer.

Then he said he did it, and he’s fraffly sorry.

[T]he editor of the TLS, Peter Stothard, said the issue of poisonous online reviews needed to be kept in proportion. “There’s nothing new about oversensitive writers, and nothing new about anonymous criticism, both of which have existed since time immemorial. What is new and is regrettable is when historians use the law to stifle debate and to put something in the paper which is untrue.”…As a specialist in Russian history, Figes’s “whole business is replacing a mountain of lies with a few truths”.

It’s a good business, and people who engage in it should try to live up to it.