You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
-Election 2012
NYTimes Blogger says double Standard in Politics is Justified
2012-03-14
stanley fish writing for a NYTimes campaign blog
Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they're basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. "Fair" is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.

I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule "don't do it to them if you don't want it done to you" the rule "be sure to do it to them first and more effectively." It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.
Posted by:Lord Garth

#14  Fish currently teaches law at Florida International University.

lotp, I thought you made that up. Turns out FIU has an actual law school, which moved up 19 spots in U.S. News and World ReportÂ’s rankings, from 132 to 113. So they went from a half-assed third-tier school to a ho-hum third-tier school.

Admits 20% of everyone who applies. Out-of-state tuition: $30k/year. I.e., they're happy to fleece unwitting students whose chances of getting a job doing something other than debt collection, ambulance chasing, or running an OccuPooper protest are zip. Excuse my snobbery, but it's not a real law school and they'll never be real lawyers.

But worth it, for access to Stanley Fish!
Posted by: RandomJD   2012-03-14 21:04  

#13  Yep, till they find themselves lined up before the ditch.

I live for that day.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man   2012-03-14 19:31  

#12  It has been said, and I think it is correct, that the news media in America is dying for one primary reason: the public wants to read news written by objective reporters; they do not want to read about journalist's opinions pieces that so corrupt the news that it is no longer news.

If you want a newspaper to succeed, fire the journalists and hire reporters. If the reporters don't report what happens, fire them and get new ones. If it is too boring for college educated people to do this, then fire them and hire high school educated people to do this.

The editor needs to be college educated to edit, and to make sure the reporters don't make very ignorant mistakes. But even he doesn't need to be a journalist.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2012-03-14 18:31  

#11  Stanley must have been a disappointment to his mother when she realized that he is an idiot and also has tendencies towards fascism.
Posted by: JohnQC   2012-03-14 18:09  

#10  Yep, till they find themselves lined up before the ditch. Then they'll be screaming about 'rights' they've denied others. Then the 'might makes right' argument takes a real bad turn. Having the 'It's ok as long as we do it' rammed through everyone's head, it'll be a little too late.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2012-03-14 17:09  

#9  
It substitutes for the rule "don't do it to them if you don't want it done to you" the rule "be sure to do it to them first and more effectively." It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.


Wow. The left really is going all-in for tyranny, aren't they?
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2012-03-14 15:47  

#8  Only in spirit, Scooter.
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2012-03-14 15:46  

#7  I wonder if Stanley is related to Albert Fish?
Posted by: Scooter McGruder   2012-03-14 14:46  

#6  The truth is they don't care about the double-standard. They want to attack their ideological foes and any weapon will do. We all know it, its been the facts on the ground for decades. Hopefully Joe Sixpack knows it as well now.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2012-03-14 14:43  

#5  ...you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair.

So, according to this guy, if somebody thinks it'd be a good idea to open up Stanley Fish's pompous assed head with a baseball bat, he'd have to be OK with that? Right?
Posted by: tu3031   2012-03-14 14:41  

#4  Stanley Fish is only incidentally a blogger at the NYT and occasional contributor to the WSJ.

He is primarily an academic in legal theory and literature who managed, among other things, to utterly gut the English department at Duke when he was chair there. He has been an influential voice in favor of campus (and other) speech codes, embraces identity politics in all extreme forms and was described by Camille Paglia as a "totalitarian Tinkerbell".

Fish currently teaches law at Florida International University,
Posted by: lotp   2012-03-14 14:05  

#3  We've come a long way if the NYT is at least admitting there is a double standard.
Posted by: Iblis   2012-03-14 13:22  

#2  STFU NYT. There is nothing at all moral about the owner, the paper, or the staff. Just a bunch of yentas preaching for their dear leader.

Ant-Semites and people who just plan cannot do math.
Your paper is unable to ascertain basic FACTS or even consider common sense. The editors are either blind or stupid.

Only scumbags would convert their whole paper to back the group of leftists that brought the most pain and suffering to the world in the 20'th century.

What would be fair? an expose of how you backed Mussolini, Pol Pot, North Vietnam, Hitler, and sat quiet while they shoved 12 million people into ovens.

NYT, you may cram your staff's "Morals" up your ass you pitiable dung assed creatures. You have no Virtue.

Keep masturbating to this dumb ass you backed for POTUS. You are still not going to make it through my firewall.

YOU LIE!
Posted by: newc   2012-03-14 12:22  

#1  I'd be happy to meet with the author and carry this to it's logical conclusion for him.
Posted by: Hellfish   2012-03-14 12:11  

00:00