Utilitarian Review 12/6/14 | The Hooded Utilitarian

That Jack Schafer column is from almost two years ago, and in the meantime The Atlantic has offered Ta-Nehisi Coates and many others (including you, who is a joy to read even when I disagree, vs. J. Chait who is merely embarassing), while most of those flouncing from TNR were like a rougues gallery of reactionary quasi-progressive insiders. Chait’s recent essay about race in particular was an example of how the New Republic has little to lose.

The twitter fit and mass flounce (seriously it was like people quitting a Livejournal community) was telling in several ways: First, the “how dare you, burn it down” group tantrum rather than even attempting to handle things in a dignified or constructive manner seemed especially unwarrented over a magazine which has relied on wealthy patrons from the start and been the plaything of Marty Peretz for decades, making it seem very much getting mad because the wrong sort of priveleged white guys were in charge. Second, that these guys can abandon any media gig in a snit just shows what sort of privileged insiders they are at a time where the majority of writers facing unwelcome change have to grumble and suck it up. Third, that they indulged this drama all over twitter in a tone of self-satisfied defiance at this particular moment of protest and discussion just made these alleged deep cultural figures seem very out of touch indeed. Lest this seem like I was deeply offended, I found it hilarious.

To Jack Schafer, I would just say, as long as Gabriel Snyder never published Lee Seigel he will be ahead of the curve. In fact, it would be awesome of Snyder restored all of Seigel’s blog, including the sock puppet comments, which TNR scrubbed.

My apologies – Chait didn’t write that piece for TNR – but he’s been making such a big stink this week I thought he was still on staff there.

I don’t disagree with you on tnr.

Chait moved to the New Yorker I believe because they offered him better flex time to care for his kids. The New Republic remains his first love though.

Enjoyed your attempt at reasoning with the ethical agnostics at Reason.com (“how you interact with fiction can have an affect on how you interact with reality.”). You’re wasting your time there, though. Libertarians get their philosophy largely from pop culture (cartoons, films, science fiction, video games) and yet they deny the relationship between their cultural choices and their sense of life, their personal philosophies. It’s obvious to any objective observer that they do indeed bring their entertainment choices and biases to the “real” world — as evidenced through their blog and chat room commentary — and yet they deny the reality of their own actions.

Observe the almost instantaneous circling of the wagons when you provided a citation to support your claim, dismissed with a sneer and a jerk of the knee by the chat-puppets as “one pop neuroscientist’s pet theory” and a “false dichotomy of absolutes.” Libertarian narcissists will argue ad infinitum with you to prove to you that they don’t care what you say. And they’ll remain forever oblivious to the contradictions in that statement.

Shut up, Weixelbaum.

Weixelbaum? I’m missing something.

Kizone, comments threads are definitely a frustrating experience. I do feel like it’s not all libertarians (as they say.) The libertarians at Reason are really committed to sex worker rights, and other causes that I agree with, even if I don’t agree with them on everything.

That was a comment to Kizone. Who, by the way, often floods the Reason boards with virulently racist and anti-Semitic comments. Just so you know whom you are speaking with, Noah.

Well…I’d prefer not to have fights from elsewhere restaged here. If you’ve got substantive comments on the topic at hand, that’s great, but if you’re just going to insult other commenters, I’ll start to delete those comments. Fair warning.

“If you’re just going to insult other commenters, I’ll start to delete those comments”

Does that also apply to the insults directed at me in Kizone’s original post?

Quite a shame if it’s not. I’d love to discuss just how horrible Morrison’s “Pax Americana” was with you one day.

I didn’t really realize that what he said was directed at one person in particular. But yes, I don’t want anyone bring fights here from other venues.

I haven’t read Pax Americana, believe it or not. I’ve been burned by a lot of Morrison’s recent work, so I’m leery of it. Hopefully I’ll get to it eventually though. You’re the first person I’ve heard say it’s dreadful, I think? It’s gotten rave reviews.

Well, my standing on one foot criticism is if you’re going to pay homage to the Transformers, don’t give us the GoBots. I understand GM had many things working against him: the source material was just too rich to be captured in a one shot, the mythology of the Watchmen has had decades to build, etc. In fact, I think the error really lied in the fact that he chose to stick too closely to the Watchmen’s plot and didn’t do enough to update it. GM had the opportunity to really explore how the Charlton characters would deal with the modern terror-security state. By sticking as closely as he did to the WM, it just seemed like a knock-off rather than an homage. The one thing it did better though was in the characterization of Captain Atom, which really showed how terrifying an autistic god-being would be.

I will add that I’ve really enjoyed most of the Multiversity so far. I thought “The Just” was brilliant.

Huh; that’s interesting. I barely even know what the multiversity is, believe it or not.

Okay; I’m going to close this. Take it elsewhere, guys.

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