(Click on the logo to return to the main blog.)

Amazing How Topics Expand
01/24/2003

In a comment to my post about the Confederate wreath affair, Howard mentions that Josh Marshall ought to offer a more clear retraction, as well. The mention of Marshall beyond just being the guy to whom Instapundit linked about the retraction motivated me to head over to Talking Points Memo to check out Marshall's original post on the topic. Amazing how topics expand.

Marshall takes the opportunity to tar Bush by association with Richard T. Hines, whose Sons of Confederate Veterans is so vile as to have a formal procedure for reporting insults and vandalism concerning their heritage. I don't agree with excessive reveling in the Confederate past, but whoopdeedoo: a way for an organization to... umm... organize.

But Marshall returned to the topic the next day to recall South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks's 1856 caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. According to Marshall, Sumner had just made "a long and explosive speech" about whether Kansas should be a slave or free state. Why is this relevant? Because Marshall has dug up "President Bush's political ally Richard T. Hines' celebration of the attack" and offers a link to a gif file of the offending article — from 1984. Hines describes Sumner's speech:

On the first day—May 19th—the Massachusetts solon and martyr-to-be characterized Senator Butler (who was absent from the Senate at the time) as a whoremonger who had taken "harlot Slaver as a mistress." On the second day of his oration Sumner uncharitably referred to the effects of slight labial paralysis from which the elderly South Carolinian suffered, describing him as speaking "with incoherent phrases, discharging the loose expectoration of his speech..." There was, Sumner maintained, no possible "deviation from truth which he (Butler) did not make...and touches nothing which he does not disfigure." Continuing, Sumner assailed Butler's home State as representative of the South "...with its shameful imbecility. Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the last election of the Senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose less, I cannot say how little, but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas in its valiant struggle against oppression."

In the vehemence of his words, Sumner seemed intent on arousing the ire of South Carolinians. Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan labeled Sumner's speech as "the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated the ears of the members of the high body." Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois asked: "Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick him, as we would kick a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the just chastisement?" Even The New York Times announced, "We have never considered it at all surprising that he (Brooks) shall have been greatly excited and angered by the terrible invectives of Mr. Sumner, nor that...he should have determined to inflict upon him some mark of personal indignity as punishment thereof." Brooks later explained that "the assault upon Sumner was not because of his political principles, but because of the insulting language in reference to my State and absent relative."

This brings to mind an intellectual method that I found particularly intriguing in college whereby a professor and some minion-like students elevated the violence of racially insensitive speech to the level of any physical violence that it might inspire, thus excusing the reaction. Obviously, I disagree, but I wonder what Josh Marshall's thoughts are on the topic.

As for his own "speech," apparently, Marshall doesn't believe his hop-skip-an'-a-jump from a Bush administration memorial wreath to a long-ago beating to require more than a "huh, a bad source" (that's a paraphrase). As Marshall says of the fallacious Time article, "That's web journalism for ya!"

Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:55 PM EST

1 Comment

On another thread, a writer corrects my initial post by observing that Marshall IS a real journalist. Well, I guess I would concede that he writes and types well. But his handling of this current story is somewhat characteristic of his entire history in "real journalism," going back to several previous jobs, including in particulat the one with the Prospect. A fundamental sloppiness has had a habit of creeping into his work where the work directly touches on his extremely liberal beliefs. He's never been able to avoid embellishments that comport well with his beliefs, even where there is no underlying support. Hopefully, he will join some of the other radical leftists upon completion of his doctoral work, and participate in corrupting the minds of our college-age youth.

Howard K. @ 01/24/2003 10:25 PM EST