On Saturday morning, Eric Alterman sent me this charming email in reference to my post about him:
You are making a jerk of yourself which is why I am doing you the favor of ignoring these baseless accusations on the blog. You have now twice accused me of imputing intentions to the administration on the basis of zero evidence. When I say something wrong, fine. When I say something that you (alone) interpret to imply what I mean--without any evidence whatsoever--it might be a good idea not to make a public accusation. I have never, ever accused Bush et al of what you say. And if I did believe it, I wouldn't say it, having no evidence to support it save my own feelings. The idea that you do this in the context of playing language cop is, shall we say, ironic.
Feel free to print this. I have nothing to hide.
A followup email added:
It occurs to me that I am being accused of accusing Bush et al of thinking something they have not said by someone who is accusing me of thinking something I did not say, This same individual purports to be policing the standard of public discourse. This is, I believe, triply ironic, and perhaps quadruply ridiculous.
And then today Alterman lashed out at me on his blog:
The sad fact is that the Bush administration has done little about preparing the nation for another terrorist attack in the past four years—just look here and here, while it does plenty to make one more likely—creating more hatred in the Arab world and more support for those who would give their lives to kill us, and less willingness to follow our leadership everywhere else. I am not saying, as a foolish young blogger named Brendan Nyhan idiotically insists, that Bush has done this because he wants more terrorism. I don’t pretend to know what Bush wants, but I would be honestly surprised if it included killing lots of brave American soldiers for no good reason. (Hmmm, Nyhan, the little language cop, professes to know what I think but have not said about what Bush thinks but has not said. Someone call George Orwell… or Alanis Morissette.) What I am saying, and have been saying all along, is that George Bush is so blinkered by his ideological obsessions, coupled with his intellectual laziness, personal pique, and professional incompetence, that he cannot see what is plainly before him and hence, has failed in his most fundamental duty as president: to provide for the security of the nation.
So what did I do to get Alterman so riled up? I called him on the plain implications of his language:
One of the key tactics of political jargon* is confounding intention and (alleged) effect, as in this passage from Eric Alterman today:
In the name of fighting "terrorism," the administration has sent 40 percent of the National Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away.
The phrase "in order to" clearly implies that the Bush administration wanted to "create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away." Alterman would no doubt claim that he's just being sarcastic, but that's an easy excuse that allows him (and people like him) to make this sort of vile suggestion.
(* By jargon, I mean the highly engineered and manipulative language used by pundits, politicians and PR experts.)
This is not a radical idea. The phrase "in order to [x]" has a clearly accepted meaning -- an action taken with the intention or goal of doing [x]:
Idiom: in order to do something
So as to be able to do it.
Thesaurus: to, with a view to, with the intention of, with the purpose of, intending to.
And if you peruse this Google search, you'll find Alterman using the phrase that way over and over. Yet he is angry that I took his words seriously in the quotation presented above. To state the obvious, I have no idea what he personally believes -- I can only judge him by what he writes. If I am wrongly interpreting his statement, what does Alterman suggest the phrase "in order to" actually means? Of course, he has no answer, so he vaguely disparages me for allegedly trying to read his mind and engages in ad hominem attacks ("foolish," "the little language cop," "idiotically," etc.). Nowhere does he address the substance of my criticism. Draw your own conclusions.
Update 9/12 -- Here is the email exchange I had with Alterman today (he has given me permission to reprint it):
Nyhan:
That’s some sloppy ad hominem on the blog, and you didn’t link to the original post about you. Anyway, my response is here:
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/when_alterman_a.html
I’ll happ[il]y print any further comments you have there.
Alterman:
I'm sorry but your original blog item is unworthy of a considered response (though I thought I did link to it). What kind of person would accuse George Bush of wanting to murder American soldiers and create terrorism on purpose? And given that, what kind of person would willfully misread what I wrote to pretend I said that?
Someone of bad faith, that's who..
Nyhan:
Did you read my original post before flying off at the handle? You linked to the one about Yglesias, but that was a followup to this one:
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/altermans_antib.html
And as I said in my response today ( http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/when_alterman_a.html ), if I’m willfully misreading you, what does the phrase “in order to” mean? I don’t think you believe Bush intentionally tried to murder American soldiers, but that’s precisely what your original phrasing suggested.
Finally, I’m certainly not acting in bad faith – I’ve praised your writing in the past multiple times, you linked to Spinsanity frequently, etc. More fundamentally, I spent 3 1/2 years building up a strong reputation for fairness and accuracy on Spinsanity. I take that seriously.
Alterman:
And as I said in my response today ( http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/when_alterman_a.html ), if I’m willfully misreading you, what does the phrase “in order to” mean? I don’t think you believe Bush intentionally tried to murder American soldiers, but that’s precisely what your original phrasing suggested.
Only to someone of bad faith deliberately misrepresenting what I said... to someone who is familiar with who I am and my work, it would be obvious that I was pointing out that this was the result, rather than the intention...
Nyhan:
What about all the readers who go to your blog and aren’t “familiar” with who you are and your work? Where’s the decoder ring? Not to mention, I’m familiar with you and your work, but the phrase “in order to” still suggests intentional action.
In short, Alterman (who admits he did not offer a "considered response") says his statement is ok because "in order to" means what he says it means to people "familiar" with his work. As I noted above, this is an exceptionally weak argument. First, it assumes everyone who reads his blog is familiar with his work, which is not true. In addition, I'm quite familiar with his work (I have read several of his books and read his blog daily), but his assertion doesn't change the meaning of the phrase.
On a deeper level, Alterman's logic is deeply flawed. It implies we cannot directly assess the meaning implied or suggested by people's words, but instead should speculate about their intentions based on our knowledge of the person in question. The problem, however, is that we cannot know what someone's intentions are, nor does knowledge of the person resolve the question of what their "true" meaning was.
Just to illustrate the absurdity of this, I would note that it implies Alterman should no longer criticize conservatives whose work he is not familiar with, since the meaning of their words can only be interpreted in that context. More seriously, such an approach would prevent us from criticizing people who use language that implies things they cannot or will not state explicitly -- a heavily-used tactic in today's political discourse.
Finally, I want to clear up a confusion Alterman is promoting that came up several times in comments from readers. I did not say Alterman thinks Bush intentionally tried to "create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away." I said that his language implies this. Some people seem to be having trouble separating the two, but it's very important to do so. For instance, when I criticize President Bush for implying Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, I'm not saying Bush believes Saddam was behind 9/11 -- I have no idea if that's true. I'm saying his language leaves his audience with that impression, which is not supported by any solid evidence.
Update 9/13 -- I'm sick of this, but Alterman has replied again and given me permission to reprint his email, so here it is:
My readers are apparently either a lot smarter or more honest than you are since I receive hundreds of emails a day at Altercation and not one interpreted what I wrote the way you did. And as you point out, I've used the formulation many times, and never before have I seen the accusation, that I can recall, though perhaps someone like David Horowitz or Andrew Sullivan has made it and I've missed that. In any case, the phrase only suggests "intentional action" to those who would willfully misrepresent who I am and what I do. In the past twenty-three years, I've written six books, hundreds of columns and articles and a few thousand blog items. I have never accused any American official of seeking to kill Americans on purpose or wishing to. Indeed, I can't remember many times, if at all, I ever professed to know the motives of anyone for doing anything. I tend to keep my analysis on the level of results.
You know that--or at least the rough outlines--and you ignored it, dishonestly. For what reason, I can't know and don't really care, but it was a big, big mistake on your part. You may think I am over-reacting but the accusation could hardly be more serious.
Oh and by the way, being unfamiliar with the work of Kundera is a pretty damning admission for someone who sets himself up as a language cop or an educated person of any kind. I'd suggest taking a break from the blog and doing some reading.
Let's quickly run through the problems with this argument. Alterman begins with a logical fallacy, suggesting that the lack of reader email interpreting his statement the way I did proves he's right. He then mischaracterizes the Google search I linked showing that he uses "in order to" to mean intentional action, claiming it somehow supports his point. Next, he denies that he has ever "accused any American official of seeking to kill Americans on purpose or wishing to." The point of my post, however, was that Alterman's language suggested such a conclusion, not that he had made a direct accusation. Then, after more claims that I am being willfully dishonest about some objective truth, it's on to the vaguely threatening language: "[the post] was a big, big mistake on your part. You may think I am over-reacting but the accusation could hardly be more serious." Finally, he offers a pompous lecture on why I am an illiterate because I've never read Kundera.
I'm not going to spend any more of my time on this nonsense, but you can see why Alterman is so widely disliked in the media world. I think lee's comment below sums things up well:
Brendan,
I think you've run up against a central truth about Eric Alterman, which is - It's all about Eric Alterman.
He's clearly a smart guy and worth reading even when one disagrees with him, and he is capable of respectful and civil disagreement (see his posts conveying grudging respect for Paul Wolfowitz) But, whenever the disagreement becomes personal (not ad hominem, just personal, as in "I think Eric Alterman is wrong, or said something dumb.") it's as if a switch gets flipped inside him. His intellectual honesty goes out the window, and he becomes hostile, insulting, and incapable of admitting to the slightest of errors. He is, in other words, not just sensitive but hyper-sensitive to critisism. How DARE this young whipper-snapper criticize ME, ERIC ALTERMAN.
Update 9/12: One last thing -- people seem to be exaggerating how important I think this is in all the "nitpick" comments below. Alterman's phrasing is representative of an important problem, but he's not a serial offender and I've written about far worse language in the past. As such, my original post was less than 100 words, and I would have never mentioned it again had Alterman not attacked me personally on his blog. If he had just apologized and corrected himself, I would have been happy, but he decided to try to bully me instead -- and when challenged, I'm going to respond.
(Note: For more on Alterman's mistakes and successes, see my previous posts on him.)