On Scapegoats

Nonsense. His firing was a result of becoming so toxic that advertisers started pulling out. If the advertisers had stuck with him, the network executives couldn't care less who he offends. It's not as if this was the first time.

Not to excuse Imus in any way, but he was doing what he was hired to do. It's like buying an attack dog and being surprised when he bites someone...and then putting all the blame on the dog. Shock jocks sell, and as his listeners get progressively more jaded to his outrages, he has to become even more outrageous. This was as predictable as the sunrise. Yet the executives are shocked...SHOCKED that he would do such a thing.

Oh, Jesus.

I mean "Jesus" that not in the current blasphemous usage, but rather literally:

"Jesus Christ, can you give me back the time that I have spent hearing about the origins of the word scapegoat?

Love and Kisses,

Chris R"

Oh, Jesus.

I mean "Jesus" that not in the current blasphemous usage, but rather literally:

"Jesus Christ, can you give me back the time that I have spent hearing about the origins of the word scapegoat?

Love and Kisses,

Chris R"

I think it's more than our humor. I think part of it is our media, who have gone too far down a path of barroom blowhard tastelessness, a lot of it on the right (it's "authentic America", don't you know):

http://mediamatters.org/items/200704120010

(See, Joe? Media Matters has kindly done some work for us on this. Those guys don't sit on their hands over there.)

Joe - So if I understand you correctly, you are saying that Imus is a scapegoat of the ancient, guilty variety and not a scapegoat by the current, innocent definition.

Sure I can go along with that. As long as you are not trying to claim that he is innocent of anything then I agree. Again, this issue may have been bown out of proportion but it is good to have it cleared up.

Personally, I am glad that he is gone because he was a bigotted, old fart who added nothing to the discourse. Unfortunately, I suspect that the major networks will replace him with somebody more conservative (so that Joe Lieberman can continue to feel comfortable).

Let's start a poll:

Which conservative host will replace Imus?
Dennis Miller?
Glen Beck?
Hannity?
Any others???

Hard to add to Franco- I will just predict, thus negate, that Joe will add that the advertisers are proof positive that Imus is the scapegoat.

Terrapin, Imus would still be on the air if he had Hannity's numbers.

When Professor Girard told you this, did the professor have any reason to worry about his own safety?

You didn't drunkenly menace him in the corner of some cocktail party, did you Joe?

You're quickly becoming a laughingstock Joe.

If only you were commenting on a blog in the ancient world, your defense would be a good one. But you're not. The English word, "scapegoat" has had a very settled meaning for, lo, these last hundred years or more, I'm sure.

Its amazing watching the sheer unmatched fatuousness that you bring to the blogosphere.

You're one of a kind!

So, Joe, before you wrote the original blog post mentioning scapegoats, you rang Stanford Professor Rene Girard to ask him if the word could mean what you wanted it to mean? Wow! Do you do this about all words, or just those that have more than 3 syllables? Hey, kudos to you. That's why you're making the big bucks with your writing instead of those dirty hippy bloggers who just use words all the time without consulting professors. What dedication to accuracy!

Or there's the, you know, occam's razor interpretation. Imus said something bad, we're now at a time where corporations don't want to be associated with it, because people don't like it, so he got fired.

So save the arm chair psychology. You're not better at that than you are at concern-trolling the Demcratic party.

wow, joe. can't you just admit you were wrong?

See, your reference to "scapegoat" involved "atavistic" ceremonies of ACTUAL scapegoats, not "mythological" ones. And while I haven't found a reference to these "mythical" Greek scapegoats -- I have found considerable information about "atavistic" ceremonial scapegoats in the ancient world in general, and the use of HUMAN scapegoats in Greece in particular.

Probably the most familiar text is Frasier's Golden Bough (see http://www.bartleby.com/196/144.html )

In general, scapegoats were innocents -- usually slaves, the "deformed", or the Greek equivalent of the homeless. Some cities, however, used criminals as scapegoats. In one greek colony, they would take a poor person, treat him like royalty for a year, THEN stone him to death.

Bottom line -- you wrote about REAL scapegoat sacrifice, and citing mythological scapegoats to defend your position -- especially given the fact that you've been contradicted by actual (albeit self-proclaimed) anthropologists -- doesn't cut it.

Blog tip #44... if you are going to quote from someone in an argument, provide a link -- unless your quote is from a dead-tree source. In the latter case, say you don't have a link. (common net discussion courtesy here).

Blog tip #45 DON'T act as if you said something you didn't say, then cite something to support what you falsely claim you said. Its the freaking INTERNET for crying out loud, Joe. We can check what you wrote in seconds.

Anna Marie Cox's so-called apology for her having used Imus to boost her career wouldn't have passed muster with my parents when I was an eleven year old.
She's an interesting girl, someday, she may grow up to be an interesting woman, but probably not soon.
You loved the exposure of the show, so, at least, have the good grace not to attack the man who opened up that audience to you.
I watched last night and wondered how anyone so seemingly irresponsible and immature could have even be on the staff of TIME. I guess standards do change and that bar is very low right now.

Oy. Name dropping in support of a weak, weak analogy. Whether we are talking about Greek or Hebrew scapegoats, Imus is no scapegoat -- just a goat. Indeed, his ostracism has raised the self-appointed furies to take the campaign to other talk-radio types.

A better metaphor, which does not require you to assert academic pretentions, would be to say that Imus is just blood in the water.

And if the suggestion is that the White community turned its back on Imus so that the sin could be washed from them, that is a really strained metaphor. This was a business decision on the part of CBS and MSNBC, that followed the business decisions of the sponsors. The story here is not scapegoats, but power. The power of Imus and his cohorts, and the relative power of consumers.

Like I said before, Klein thinks that Imus was fired because we are sexist, racist pigs - not because he's a sexist, racist pig. He's wrong.

Imus got away with being a pig for so long because most Americans didn't listen to him and didn't know what he said, and the high-powered suck-ups who wanted to sell books didn't really care. But when he attacked a high-profile group of clean-cut teenaged girls, he enraged millions of people who up to then had barely heard of him. There is nothing to anger a respectable middle-aged person like the feeling, "he could have been talking about my daughter." That's why he had to go.

What's genuinely new about this is that millions of white middle-class, middle-aged Americans could look at these young women and experience feelings of parental protection for them. That is a spectacular advance in American society and that is the main lesson from this sorry episode.

Considering the heat Joe takes on a daily basis for things like his support for the invasion of Iraq, I'm thinking this post is about himself, not Imus.

What you don't know about ancient religions -- and ancient religious rituals -- would fill a library. Patriarch much?

It doesn't surprise that the group of people doing the most to try and find an excuse for the racist pig Imus are the self proclaimed "centrists".

Klein your scapegoat argument is still a crock. Let's just say that in the ancient world you would have been a sophist (and I don't mean "wise".)

Joe, you manifestly could NOT have been using "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of "never wrongfully accused" that was later "changed...and made the scapegoat an innocent". This is clear because in the very next sentence you say that Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzalez are being persecuted by an unthinking lynch mob. That clearly implies that you think they are innocent. Hence you were not using "scapegoat" in the ancient guilty sense (lol) but in the everyday innocent sense.

Great cover story though! Well played Sir Sophist!

What The Fool said. Brilliant argument!

How about he got fired because he was needlessly rude and boorish?

Rush Limbaugh survived referring to Chelsea Clinton as "the new White House dog" (afterwards, mock pretending that the photos had somehow gotten scrambled - cute, given that the Clintons did not have a dog at the time)...but he shouldn't have survived it.

What the Rush incident has in common with the Imus incident is that both of them started from the assumption that it was ok to denigrate women/girls they had never met, simply on the basis of whether or not they considered them attractive.

That's not a legitimate source of "humor".

That's the biggest offense in the whole Imus flap.

At the end of the day, you have to be impressed with Klein. Seriously. It takes a world class bullsh-itter to construct a completely fatuous argument based on his ostensive erudition and prowess as a scholar of the ancient world, to try to spin his way out of defending a racist in the contemporary world.

I am (nearly) speechless. This post is the Taj Majal of sophistry. Thrasymachus is a piker in your presence, Klein. Plato trembles at the thought of debating someone with your powers of obfuscation.

Let us gaze upon the wondrous works of Joe Klein. Ther may not be another bullsh-it artist of his stature for many more centuries to come.

Joe,

Please do yourself a favor and go re-read Bob Herbert's Op/Ed in Thursday's New York Times.

Then come back here and explain to us how appointing someone on your staff to tell the "nigger jokes" and then claiming that was an off-the-record conversation (to a 60 Minutes producer!!) makes Don Imus a "scapegoat."

Is this really a show you wish you were still a part of? Honestly? Really?

You're disappointing today.

Patricia Feeley
April 13, 2007

"I watched last night and wondered how anyone so seemingly irresponsible and immature could have even be on the staff of TIME. I guess standards do change and that bar is very low right now."

In all fairness, it's only low on the Right side. Everyone else still has to know something about journalism.

Joe: "As for Imus, his firing was a projection of this society's guilt about locker-room racist/sexist "humor." A classic scapegoat, if not by the current definition."

Um, no. Not even by the old definition. Imus got trashed for what he himself did, on the air, with millions of witnesses. OK, maybe thousands, but you know what I mean.

Imus attacked a group of young women for playing basketball well. That was their sole sin. He did it with the help of some other racists, and he is simply one of many racists that spew Right Wang talking points.

Imus is despicable, as are Glenn Beck, Rush Limpbaugh, and other hate-radio loons.

What we saw here was nothing like scape-goating. What we saw was the left and the center discovering their power as a commerical and moral force here in Dog's Own Merkin Paradise Here On Earth. You can expect more like this as the netroots people continue to organize and continue to exert both a moral and a commerical force over the whack jobs you so lovingly call your fellow travelers.

Oh, for the days when Time was considered left of center.

As for Imus, his firing was a projection of this society's guilt about locker-room racist/sexist "humor." A classic scapegoat, if not by the current definition.

Oh, nice try. Imus was fired for saying a racist and sexist thing on public airwaves, and by doing so, losing advertisers and having people call for his firing. Your scapegoat brought it upon himself.

On Scapegoates (from http://www.salon.com/media/media960718.html)

That night I was at a table with Jacob Weisberg, the political scribbler for New York magazine. We were gossiping about fellow journalists, when Klein passed by. He spotted Weisberg and came to a stop. That week New York had published a piece about how a literary expert had used a computer program to pinpoint tell-tale similarities between Klein's bylined writings and "Primary Colors." Weisberg had written a sidebar noting that there were other reasons to suspect Klein. The author of the book, Weisberg reported, was knowledgeable about New York politics, a onetime Clintonphile who now felt betrayed, and a man obsessed about the subject of race. All these attributes fit Klein.

Klein was enraged. He launched into a blistering attack on Weisberg. Why hadn't New York -- where Klein once had been the political columnist -- called him, he yelled, for a comment? (A comment which, obviously, would have been a lie.) "Thanks, thanks, a lot, Jacob," he said with bitter sarcasm. "That was real nice." Klein's face was red. His eyes steely. He wouldn't let Weisberg talk. "And that bit about being obsessed about race -- I really liked that. Do you think being concerned about an important national issue is the same as being obsessed?" How could the magazine do this to him, he demanded to know, playing the wrongly accused to perfection.

Increasingly wound up, he charged Weisberg with possessing no class and making improper use of off-the-record information. Getting meaner, Klein said Weisberg was gaining a reputation in journalistic circles as an unlikeable fellow not worthy of a dinner-party invitation. (I know of no evidence of this and find Weisberg entirely likable.) When Weisberg tried to squeeze in a word, Klein shot him the look of daggers and hissed: "You don't understand. This is the very last time you and I will ever speak. The last time."

I had rarely seen such a display of unrelenting anger. Weisberg turned white. Finally, Klein huffed, "By the way, this is off-the- record. You do know what off-the-record is, Jake, don't you?" Then he stormed off. (Since I do not believe public outbursts can be placed off-the-record ex post facto, I do not feel bound by Klein's parting comment.)

Klein is obviously lying. Depsite his elaborate cover story, he could not have possibly meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty.

In the next sentence he says Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzalez are being persecuted by an unthinking lynch mob. That means he thinks they are innocent, which means he couldn't have meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty.

Quod Erat Demonstratum.

To my great dismay, your link to Salon results in one o' those 404 Page Not Found things. If it's actually now gone from the site and not a typo, could you tell us who wrote the piece? It's utterly fascinating. It's Our Joe demonstrating in vivid living color that he behaves in person exactly the way he writes here -- oh, and btw, how similar is this description to what Alterman says Klein did to him the other day?

And wonderfully, he works himself up into a frothing rage, we learn, not just when he's been, he thinks, unjustly accused, but also when he knows the accusation is factually absolutely correct.

Wow. I think Our Boy has more troubles than just his inadequate and insipid writing.

What a delightful character he must be to live and/or work with. I guess we know now why his colleagues don't leap to his defense when he takes his daily pounding here.

Oh, for Christ's sake. Joe, I'll go with your definition of "scapegoat," even if it isn't pure by the standards of our stalwarts on the left.

Trivial pursuit.

The point is that many Bushies are being set up to be the fall guy, a borderline more current reference, for the absolute ineptitude and criminal malfeasance of the Bush Admin. They're in panic mode, that much is clear.

War Czar? Funniest thing I've seen in months, save for all the dead people.

Arguing about the definition of "scapegoat" is for idiots, pro and con.

We (should, if we tried) know what you meant.

Oops - here's the link to the above salon article:

http://www.salon.com/media/media960718.html

Joe: if you were using scapegoat in the ancient guilty sense, then why in the same paragraph did you say that the people attacking Imus and Gonzalez and Wolfowitz are an unthinking lynch mob? That strongly suggests that you think Imus and Gonzalez and Wolfowitz are innocent. And that means you couldn't have been using scapegoat in the ancient guilty sense.

How do you reconcile that Klein?

I'll tell you how I reconcile it. I think Klein is lying.

"As for Imus, his firing was a projection of this society's guilt about locker-room racist/sexist "humor." A classic scapegoat, if not by the current definition."

Bull. The only people who have guilt about this are middle-aged and older white men who are mad they can't freely insult the rest of the world anymore.

We don't have guilt that needs to be lifted about this--the vast majority of us don't use that kind of language, and we don't give legitimacy to people who do. This man has much in common with you pundits and other media figures, but not the rest of us.

Imus screwed the goat. Once he did that, no matter what he does, he will be remembered as Imus the Goat Screwer. And as such, he needs to (and deserves to) go.

Sorry, Joe, but Imus actually did something himself to bring about the events of the last week.

He's not a scapegoat at all. He's not being blamed for the lousy economy or the stab in the back, as the Jews were by the Nazis in Weimar Germany.

He said those words. He owns them. If he had never muttered those three words, none of this would have happened.

That is the difference.

If you cannot comprehend this, you're beyond hope.

"Finally, Klein huffed, "By the way, this is off-the- record. You do know what off-the-record is, Jake, don't you?" Then he stormed off."

This tells us quite a bit about Joe Klein.

As if "off the record" erased his conniption fit.

Again, Joe, you said the words. You own them. Your protests afterwards, like Don Imus', are of the "I'm sorry I was caught" variety, which indicates to me blatant, arrogant insincerity.

Which is I will NEVER buy Imus' apoolgy as genuine.

If he were a scapegoat, then he will have expatiated the racists in public life. But, wait, didn't George Allen already do that?

No, Joe, what's happened here is that because of YouTube, MediaMatters and C&L, you can't put these things behind you. The defense that Imus used, that you had to understand the remarks in context has worked for him in the past because if there was a record of what he had said, it was a text transcript.

Everyone could see and hear the context themselves--and see just how much Imus enjoyed making that joke.

I read in today's Daily News that NBC's black employees were in an uproar. That's because they'd all seen the video. This is going to keep happening--every commentator is being monitored and recorded--until people like Howard Fineman internalize what he said on the program, that people just aren't allowed to publicly racist anymore.

To be fair, Joe may believe that Imus, Wolfowitz and Gonzales are all guilty and just thinks that any attempt to hold them accountable is the equivilant of a lynch mob.

In any event, the "scape goat" analogy, in whatever form, only has validity if we stop with Imus. I, for one, hope that Imus is only the beginning. If, as Joe seems to argue, Imus is merely giving public voice to private behavior, the solution is not to give him a pass. That would only validate such private expressions of bigotry and encourage the proliferation of its enablers in the media and punditocrocy.

Rather, we should strive to insure that very next professional gasbag who engages in similar pandering to the worst impulses in our society gets exactly the same as Imus did. It's called setting a standard for public behavior.

Interesting that Joe finds holding political and media insiders to account dangerously toxic. The kind of poison spouted by Imus which Joe implies is commonplace in the National locker room? Not so much.

Not sure what Rev. Al Sharpton's checkered past has to do with anything. But if Joe wants to run him out of the public discourse, he's welcome to try.

Mr. Klein,
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I see your basically uncited quote ("Dr. Girard told me": where, on what date?), and raise you three paragraphs by Dr. Girard where he defines scapegoat, in a chapted called "Scapegoat" from _I see Satan Fall Like Lightning_:

Thus the expression "scapegoat" designates (1) the victim of the ritual described in Leviticus, (2) all the victims of similar rituals that exist in archaic societies and that are called rituals of expulsion, and finally (3) all the phenomena of nonritualized collective transference that we observe or believe we observe around us. This last meaning leaps over the barrier that anthropologists attempt to maintain between archaic rituals and their modern substitutes, the phenomena whose persistence shows that, yes, we have changed a little since the time of archaic rituals but less than we would like to believe.

I believe that the modern usage of "scapegoat" is basically valid. This is contrary to anthropologists who want to maintain the illusory autonomy of their discipline and who avoid using the expression "scapegoat" so they won't have to involve themselves in complex analyses that become inevitable when the absolute separation of the archaic and the modern is abolished. My own view is that the modern uses of the term are a sign that the Jewish and Christian revelation is becoming continually more effective and so is far from being a dead letter in our society.

The modern shedding of ritual brings to light the psychosocial substratum of ritual phenomena. We cry "scapegoat" to stigmatize all the phenomena of discrimination -- political, ethnic, religious, social, racial, etc. -- that we observe about us. We are right. We easily see now that scapegoats multiply wherever human groups seek to lock themselves into a given identity -- communal, local, national, ideological, racial, religious, and so on.
http://girardianlectionary.net/res/iss_12-scapegoat.htm

Nothing in those three paras convince me Girard conceeds scapegoats are guilty of as much as what they are accused.

By the way, funny thing, when I google the text of your block quote, ths only thing I only find is an excerpt from _The Natural_, by Joe Klein:
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-14-2002-20478.asp

U. S. ATTORNEYS
E-mails contradict testimony in U.S. attorneys scandal
By Marisa Taylor and Margaret Talev
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A U.S. attorney in Wisconsin who prosecuted a state Democratic official on corruption charges during last year's heated governor's race was once targeted for firing by the Department of Justice, but given a reprieve for reasons that remain unclear. A federal appeals court last week threw out the conviction of Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, saying the evidence was "beyond thin."

Congressional investigators looking into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys saw Wisconsin prosecutor Steven M. Biskupic's name on a list of lawyers targeted for removal when they were inspecting a Justice Department document not yet made public, according to an attorney for a lawmaker involved in the investigation. The attorney asked for anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the investigation.

It wasn't clear when Biskupic was added to a Justice Department hit list of prosecutors, or when he was taken off, or whether those developments were connected to the just-overturned corruption case.

Nevertheless, the disclosure aroused investigators' suspicion that Biskupic might have been retained in his job because he agreed to prosecute Democrats, though the evidence was slight. Such politicization of the administration of justice is at the heart of congressional Democrats' concerns over the Bush administration's firings of the U.S. attorneys.

Hey, is Time going to cover this or what?

Was it in Annie Hall where Marshall McLuhan steps out from behind a potted plant in order to scold a pretentious twit who was mischaracterizing his work in the course of impressing a girl?

That last post reminded me of that scene, for some reason.

Well, I hate to agree w/ 'keLine even a little bit, but here I go. Ya I can see the scapegoat thing. This whole episode has given white people an opportunity to shout 'Racist pig!' loud enough for their neighbors to hear so as to ensure to them that THEY aren't racist. Then the non-racist white people can have a 'national conversation on race' and feel the glow that only good non-racist white people can feel. Whenever I see white people trying that hard, I have to wonder, its a little like young men screaming 'queer' and 'faggot!' to cover up the latent homosexuality deep inside(which can only be safely expressed while watching wrestling). The black community gets to feel good about fighting the good fight and feel like its making some progress, and without having to tackle the much more complex, and much more real problems it faces. In the end, nothing will change, except Jesse and Al might have a little more money in their pockets. Its times like these that I really hope global warmin is real, and that it wipes out all of humanity so we don't spread our horrilbe disease beyond our solar system.

Oh, and Joke...still waiting for examples of Alterman mischaractizing your work.

Xenos, you know nothing about my work.

klein really truly believes his farts are champagne bubbles. there is a pathology to the man that jibes nicely with bush, cheney, bolton, perle et al. just insist you're right, call your critics stupid, declare you never said what you said and pile on the horsesh*t.

Reeves: Imus, Wolfowitz and Gonzales's critics cannot possibly be viewed as an unthinking lynch mob unless 2 conditions are met:

1) It would be thoughtlessly ignorant and misguided to think that Imus, Wolfowitz and Gonzales deserve criticism.

AND

2) The critics were working outside the law, through illegal means.

BUT:

1) is false, since it is not thoughtlessly ignorant to think that Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales deserve criticism. This condition would only be satisfied if Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales were innocent. But that is precisely what is at issue. Klein says he did NOT mean that they were innocent. He says he meant the ancient guilty sense of scapegoat.

2) is also false because no one acted contrary to the law or violated anybody's rights in the process. People exercised their First Amendment rights to freely speak out against Imus and his racism. His bosses exercised their property right to cancel his show. No laws broken. No lynch mob.

Klein's little subterfuge self-destructs. But Joe that doesn't mean you shouldn't be proud. (Not that we're real worried about a pride deficit on your part). Your appeal to the wisdom of the ancients to try to spin your incoherent rationalizations is a work of true artistry. You, sir, are a bullsh-it artiste of the highest order.

Scapegoating is an act of projection.

Kind of like how Joe Klein is projecting his sad sputum of guilt all over anyone who questions his stupidity.

Sputum, by the by, from the Latin neuter past participle of spuere, "to spit."

Glad we cleared all that up.

Hmmm -- I don't know about society's guilt, but listening this morning to my own local talk show host express his amazement at Imus being fired, I got the strong impression that he was feeling a cool breeze on his neck.
He's no shock-jock racist blowhard, but I think it occured to him, perhaps for the first time ever, "If they can fire Imus, then can fire anybody -- even me. So I better not start acting like I can say anything and use 'Sorry' like an eraser."

Every NOW and THEN I notice that various big-time journalists and politicos are coming in for criticism because they maintain their relationships with Don Imus, in spite of his racist comments. But here’s another Imus association that caught my eye.

NOW

“…As he left his studio ... the house band he [Imus] hired for the fundraiser, led by Levon Helm, serenaded him with ‘Hail to the Chief’.”

[from the 04/13/07 edition of The New York Times (“Off the Air: The Light Goes Out for Don Imus”)]

THEN

“In one of the verses I mentioned something about Lincoln in there and Levon said, “You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Really? I was just reading this book…’ From the Southern point of view it was ‘Hey, this is the guy that was trying to tell us we can’t have slaves.’ So, Levon just wised me up to that. He was like, ‘You’ve got to watch that because in the South that wouldn’t necessarily go down well!’ Then he explained to me the politics of that period in a Cracker fashion that I [understood]. ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ That was his contribution to the song.”

[Robbie Robertson, talking about his song, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, to Rob Bowman]

In case some of you younger readers might be confused, that was in 1969, not 1869.

Hey Fool.

It's not a matter of what you or I think. It's a matter of Joe thinks and it's obvious he believes insiders deserve special consideration.

Mr. Klein,
Do you read these comments? Don't you wonder why
nobody ever agrees with you? Doesn't the constant
barrage of personal attacks from everybody lead
you to ask yourself why you are so loathed?
Have you ever felt like a lying weasel for
building a very lucrative career based on
betraying the Clintons? Is exposing yourself to
constant abuse an intentional effort to punish
yourself for being a fawning, obvious, cloying,
disgusting sycophant for anyone who can further
your career? Are you aware that on television
you appear to be weak, insecure and pompous?
Has it ever occurred to you that Imus' comments
are racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic?
I'm just asking because I'm curious.

paul_lukasiak is right. Pharmakoi in ancient Greek ritual practice, rather than in Greek myth as represented in tragedy (for Girard, think Oedipus above all), are usually just some poor defenseless bastard.

Also, we don't know that the goat of Azazel of Leviticus is an Israelite mitigation of earlier practices, and all of our Greek evidence postdates the Pentateuch anyway. I can't speak to the Sanskrit texts, but if there's something to the contrary I think I'd have heard by now.

But apart from that, I'm puzzled by the idea that I should be anything but pleased by the fact that somebody with a history of insulting racial minorities and women at work has eventually gotten fired for doing so. I would also be happy if I heard that that had happened to someone who wasn't famous, but I so rarely hear about things that happen to non-famous people. If only they were more famous...

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the saner way to look at this is not as lading our sins onto a sacrificial victim but as repudiating antisocial behavior.

I'd also point out that, far from being made the object of universal scorn, derision, and hostility among his community of media elites, he enjoyed your solidarity and practically unconditional support, unless you happened to be black. Rarely has a scapegoat felt so included and loved. If he's your friend and you think he's not so bad, that's fine. Support him and speak up for him. But you can't call him a 'scapegoat' when he's got David Gregory and Tom Oliphant and Frank Rich hugging him and cooing and telling the meanies to go away. When you're a scapegoat, that means the community is against you, not that the community except for all of the really powerful, prominent people who aren't black are against you. He was fired only after a ridiculously long delay and *despite* a massive, embarrassing show of support from famous, influential, non-black people. And that's some mighty comfortable scapegoatin' in my book.

If anyone said what Imus and McGuirk said in a modern, corporate environment in the company of black women they would be fired.
So all the analysis and handwringing is unnecessary. Businesses don't tolerate this talk anymore because it opens them to civil court actions and horrible brand-damaging publicity.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013630.php

Looks like a US Attorney received a reprieve on being fired because he brought a "beyond thin" (in the words of a judge) corruption case against a Democrat during a heated Govenor's race.

You Time columnists are missing a good scandal. We'll do our best to keep you informed. Isn't it supposed to be the reverse?

As for Imus, his firing was a projection of this society's guilt about locker-room racist/sexist "humor."

which raises the question of whether Joe belongs to a segregated health club.

While "sexist" rhetoric isn't hard to find in a locker room , the kind of racism engaged in by Imus has been unacceptable in any (non-segregated) group situation for at least 40 years (i.e. as far back as I can remember) including "locker rooms".

"Locker rooms" as a description of rhetoric ha nothing to do with race, it means "sexual". "Locker room talk" was talking about sex. "Locker room humor" is dirty jokes--- and the origins of the phrase implied discourse that was inappropriate for a mixed-GENDER group. But there was no sense of guilt involved in engaging in "locker-room" discourse in its appropriate setting.

The words and phrases that people use often give them away -- describing Imus was a "scapegoat" who was engaging in "locker room humor" suggest far more about Joe Klein's true nature than he may realize.

While many here have argued that the defense of Imus is about the "clubbiness" of the media elite, I think its much more than that. Its really a means of deflecting attention from their own complicity in Imus' actions.

Ana Marie courageously confronted and acknowledged the fact that she chose to ignore what Imus was doing to advance her own career. Maybe it was easier for her to do that that it is for the rich white males who continue to defend Imus -- after all, as a woman Ana Marie was also the "victim" of the sexist aspect of Imus's discourse -- in appearing on Imus, she was acquiescing to not merely the degredation of blacks, but of women like herself. So perhaps it was slightly easier for Ana Marie to confront the truth in public because it freed her from participating in her own degradation.

But for people like Howard Fineman, there is no such small trade-off; telling the truth is simply an admission of guilt, and no upside (other than the benefits of confession itself) in saying "I tolerated Imus' bigotry because it suited my personal agenda."

Taking Joe seriously for a minute — OK, 30 seconds; a minute is impossible — I hope that Imus' firing isn't a ritual sacrifice to make us all feel better about ourselves but instead is the beginning of a serious effort to examine talk radio and move the dialogue (and paychecks) of its most offensive hosts from the mainstream back to the fringes of society.

That said, I ain't holdin' my breath.

I also agree with Paul and disagree with many posters here in believing that Ana Marie's piece about deciding not to appear on Imus any more (before he was fired, of course) was heartfelt and took at least some degree of self-examination.

But if she's now contrite about letting some rancid old letcher drool over her hooters in public in exchange for some shameless self-promotion, shouldn't she also feel some contrition about rising to fame in part because of her willingness to publicly share her fondness for the backdoor boogie on what ostensibly was a Washington-focused blog?

It's tough to feel slimed by someone else reducing you to a sex object when you've reduced yourself to one first.

Philly Boy asked
"But if she's now contrite about letting some rancid old letcher drool over her hooters in public in exchange for some shameless self-promotion, shouldn't she also feel some contrition about rising to fame in part because of her willingness to publicly share her fondness for the backdoor boogie on what ostensibly was a Washington-focused blog?"

in short, no she shouldn't.

Wonkette is (and was) what it is -- a gossipy and snarky look at Beltway culture whose readership took off after Ana Marie reported on some sex scandal. People who were drawn to Wonkette by that story liked what they saw, and continued reading it. Ana Marie was doing the job she was assigned to do, and doing it very well. At Wonkette, she didn't demand to be taken "seriously" -- and she achieved "status" mostly because her "beat" was Washington DC, and she became a "must read" among the Beltway media types.

Someone covering Philadelphia politics with as much skill and elan as Ana Marie would never have been noticed -- so if you want to "blame" Ana Marie for something, blame her for being the right place at the right time --- not for excelling at the job she was supposed to be doing.

So here's the current state of play on this thread:

Due to the argument reprinted below, Klein has been conclusively exposed as a disingenuous liar who is desperately trying to spin his way out of a defense of a racist. Oh he wanted to defend that racist alright, because that racist is a member of his Kewl Kidz Kamera club and also because by defending the racist he'll gain a small increment of approval from conservative racists whose approval he craves like a junkie craves his smack. But he wanted to do it in his characteristically weaselly way, where by deft acts of sophistic bullsh-it he is able to eat his cake and have it too, attacking the racist's critics while maintaining a cover story so he can't be accused of defending racism per se.

Here is the argument that destroys Klein's brilliantly constructed cover story:

Klein could not have possibly meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty because in the same paragraph he also says Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzalez are being persecuted by an unthinking lynch mob. That means he thinks they are innocent, which means he couldn't have meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty.

Q.E.D.

paul_lukasiak - why are you attempting to engage in an intellectual discourse with Herr Klein?

Don't you know this is like using nuclear weapons to kill a housefly? I enjoy all your posts, but remember that Mr. Klein is often unencumbered by the thought process, or the use of journalism tools like news gathering.

Plain and simply this: If advertisers didn't turn queasy at the Imus hawking their wares, he would still be on the air.

I propose that we coin a new net neologism called "pulling a Klein" or simply "to Klein".

Pulling a Klein is hereby defined as an attempt to spin one's way out of an embarrasing position by 1) redefining the plain meaning of words and/or 2) disingenuous appeals to esoteric scholarship.

"Klein" can be a noun, as in "pulling a Klein". or it can be an intransitive verb as in "he tried to Klein his way out of it".

A further gloss on "Klein":

3)a third usage is when one pretends to have held a position in the past when one actually held the opposite position in the hopes that no one will remember what you actually said or that one will be able to cherrypick one's own quotes and then give them tortured interpretations to pretend that that's what one meant all along.

I thought this column at SI.com was interesting regarding an assessment of Imus and reporting in general. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/dr_z/04/13/mailbag/index.html

You'll see the reference to Jacques Steinberg towards the end of the column. Since Jay Carner wants to work for SI in next life, why not propose a trade, Carney for Zimmerman? at least Paul Zimmerman knows how to gather news. He's a wine expert too!

Mr.Klein,

etymological origin of the word scapegoat may be associated with purging collective reservoir of guilt of a sinning society by offering a sacrifice.The concept seems analogous to Aristoles concept catharrsis enshrined in his definition of tragedy.But in chess analogy ,as can be very near to its political synonym, the word usually refers to "pawn's gambit "for capturing the queen figuratively and literally.

NANDLAL K PANCHOLI
NANUBHAI TOWER
MAHESANA NAGAR
OPPO. GARBAS GROUND
BARODA,GUJARAT,INDIA

email : ayurcure@yahoo.com

The Fool:

How about a Klein scale like the richter scale? Each point exponentially higher than the previous one?

Andy from Maine asks:

"paul_lukasiak - why are you attempting to engage in an intellectual discourse with Herr Klein?"

oh, I don't expect an exchange of views with Joe. I just want to be part of the Kewl Kids Kommentariat here at Swampland -- aka the Swampland Savants -- by posing as someone capable of intellectual discouse ;)

There is also an adjectival form of Klein, "kleiny," as in "he made this real kleiny argument but nobody fell for it"

"As for Imus, his firing was a projection of this society's guilt about locker-room racist/sexist "humor." A classic scapegoat, if not by the current definition."
********
Many others have tackled your flip-flop on your usage of 'scapegoat' in a much more erudite fashion than I ever could. But I wish to address the "projection" part of your posting.

I see Imus' comeuppance as looooong overdue. I feel NO guilt whatsoever for what happened to Imus, and I do NOT and have NOT participated in locker-room racist/sexist "humor" ever. I only feel disgust that someone was allowed to use the airwaves so long in such a despicable manner. I feel disgust that he was the DC types' go-to-guy.
It seems that Imus was the guy whose ring was kissed to validate one's standing in the DC community.

I've never been an Imus fan and have only listened to him a few times for a few minutes when I happened to be channel surfing. I was appalled at some of the things he said/was allowed to say/got away with saying.

Also, I generally don't focus on peoples' appearance. But honest to God, this guy looked and sounded as if crawled off the sidewalk after a hard night of drinking. I never could understand the "cachet" he supposedly had among the DC crowd. He looked and sounded like a cranky old drunk, the kind of person that I would normally run from as fast as I possibly could in real life, and the kind of person I was NOT willing to listen to for more than a few minutes.

Imus claims he is a good person who did a bad thing. I recall having seen Imus and his wife on some program, maybe Larry King Live. In my opinion, he treated his wife as if she were a moron. Maybe that was part act. I can't say for sure, but it did NOT come across as an act.

Are there others as bad or worse who use our airwaves? You bet! I just hope they will be looking over their shoulders and thinking a bit harder before opening their mouths.

paul_lukasiak: " by posing as someone capable of intellectual discouse ;)"

Kinda like Carney and Klein posing as people capable as journalists??? I understand.

You're doing a much better job than these two and Matt "Casey" Stengel are at their roles as pretenders of journalism.

To paraphrase Bugs Bunny, "What a bunch of maroons."

I try to provide attribution as best I can. ;)

Just got here, any word yet on whether or not Terry Moran at ABC, Sharpton at BET, or Jackson at PBS will be apologizing any time soon to the Duke lacrosse team?

Juan: no, but while you were out, there were a lot of good arguments made that questions like yours are completely irrelevant to Imus. Just so you know, bro.

some troll wrote:

"Just got here, any word yet on whether or not Terry Moran at ABC, Sharpton at BET, or Jackson at PBS will be apologizing any time soon to the Duke lacrosse team?"

All of them have recorded heartfelt apologies for ordering a white southern prosecutor with 300 plus felony convictions to his record to indict the Duke players.

And they've promised to release those recording just as soon as Buch and Cheney apologize for publicly prosecuting a whose after building a case for it based on even less real evidence than Nifong had -- a war that has led to the deaths of well over 3000 Americans, and literally countless Iraqis.

(do trolls ever have original thoughts -- or is that an oxymoron?)

Thanks, Joe, for an insightful lead.
Just a few points:
1)Let me acknowledge that I have been a long-time regular viewer of Imus on MSNBC.
2) Let me express the view that there has been far, far more civility on the Imus program than on blog responses like this, which are models of incivility.
3) The person most subject to ridicule on the Imus program has been Imus himself--through various means, especially from characters played by Rob Bartlett (Dr. Phil, etc.). He may insult, but he subject himself to ridicule as well.
4) The non-responses to this "situation" from the pundits who have appeared regularly on Imus (with the notable exceptions of folks such as Oliphant and Crawford)is one of the most instructive things to lead to learning around this-- which feeds into my belief that much of the elite pundit media (as exemplified by Cox) is without principle or value. I could also comment on the networks that have profited from Imus' listeners and viewers.
5)The supporters of Imus are not likely to "waste" their time visiting or posting on blogs so the responses that you will find here and elsewhere are not representative.
6) As a college professor retired after 25 years of full-time teaching, I am genuinely embarrassed by the collective value of the 70 or so postings to Joe's lead. Fortunately, the college students that I have over those years were far more reflective and capable of dialogue.

I hope Joe is wrong about Imus being a scapegoat. I would like to see all the screaming, merchants of hate and intolerance follow him into history.

Paul: you are a fu-cking liar, pal.

No one on this blog is telling nigger jokes so there's no way we're less "civil" than Imus.

Oh yeah, take your utterly fake and phony civility and shove it up your a-ss, scumbag.

The whole darn Klein premise falls apart because their is no 'collective' guilt that I can see. If there is a 'scapegoat' it is the 'rap' culture, as the collective disclaimer of responsibility is running down hill to the 'black culture' and 'their potty rap mouths'.

Who are the pimps, the whores and the johns? Rap porn sales are 80% to white suburbia. They are buying what their parents have bought with Rush, Stern, O'Reilly, Imus and all the rest. Several have already mentioned economics and power. Roland Martin discussed the 'pension dollars invested in GE'. The 'talk radio, etc.' are all scared that their empire is threatened and are screaming 'they did it', scapegoat, and 'free speech' (the same ones who back the Gonzo-Giuliani type Patriot Act with water-boarding are the ones singing the second verse worse than the first). It's a free pass to the head of the class for all the codependent enablers like those who have participated on air and droids like Huckabee.

Joe, wake up. Mel Gibson gets a little outrage, but basically a wink and a nod from the Evangelists for attacking a 'smaller' group-Jews. Richards got some outrage for attacking blacks. If Rev. Phelps and his gang of inbred gay bashers had not attack US soldiers would they like others get a little anger management and another wink and a nod?

Why Imus? Because he attacked too large of a segment of the population, even though it was a fight to get MSM to even cover the misogynistic part of the attack. The anger simmered with the Bloggers. But Imus' big mistake was to try to play in the big leagues and take on C. Vivian.

Then the whack jobs attack Jesse Jackson over the pathetic Duke case. MSM and the power brokers tried that one in the press, not Jesse. Oh, and the rage over crap NC justice-politics keeps the underage drinking and paying for Exotic dancers from being discussed. I think my G'pa covered that one with 'you lay down with dogs...' And how many MSM have brokered the ANS 'Marilyn' image for ratings. Hey, let's bring out Hugh with his harem or OJ.

Addition thoughts: Nobody responded to Karen's abortion post because that hot button was the usual bait and switch from GonzoGate. The 'yuk' is the 'charity donation' of the Imus crowd including Bush/Cheney while Iraq and the ME smolders, the Gulf Coast languishes, and the globe is warming with the profiteers in hog heaven. Jay's comment defending 'political reporting' is sad because politics are achangin' and most of the commenters on Swampland are saying dump the baggage and get ahead of the curve. Please, don't count Friday's lost e-mail story as a major break through. It was just a tad above a wink and a nod. And we all know who assigns the stories.

Like C. Vivian, the Rutgers Women and their families said they are willing to accept a real apology and are willing to work on forgiveness. Guess what she's saying is that a goat is only symbolic, but it is time to work for a real change.

<2) Let me express the view that there has been far, far more civility on the Imus program than on blog responses like this, which are models of incivility.

The Civility Card is played.

Don't tell me. You're a smug, middle-aged white Repub who longs for the days when you could still tell a good n****r joke in public, aren't you? Yeah, SURE you're a professor, pal. I'm the Queen of England.

Its very simple, here is the argument that destroys Klein's cover story:

Klein could not have possibly meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty because in the same paragraph he also says Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzalez are being persecuted by an unthinking lynch mob. That means he thinks they are innocent, which means he couldn't have meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty.

Q.E.D.

Imus and his firing may oblige lots of people to deal with what pollutes the air waves in the guise of free speech (and the same for tv and the film industry). Something has started. let us hope it will continue.

Why don't our lead commentators in Swampland now turn their collective eyes on the document dump and let us have their inside the beltway view of Main Justice's muddying the picture, Karl's lost e mail, etc. This is a beltway story which, theoretically, they are all well placed to dissect. Why so little effort on this topic?

Alan: why so little effort here? Poor boy, you're on the wrong blog for that kind of thing! This is a Time Magazine blog. But you're obviously looking for a journalism blog! Here's a link to what you're looking for:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Hey, James. The dude may be a professor. John Yoo is at Berkley. Can you image the 'school' that the Haggards after 3 weeks in the desert are attending to get a degree in psychology or something? Or the 'good prof' may be of the 'genre' of the tenured Swensen whose 'Immigration' lecture I quietly with a handful of others on the way to get a drop slip walked out of in 1964. He used his lectern to defend the need for legal immigration quotas being limited to Northern Europeans. Who knows what his lectures contained from that point forward?

linda, I responded to your query regarding the Confederate flag on another thread. Can't recall which thread it was, but it was from early yesterday, I think.

Can I ask why my post was selected for review?

ama-got it. thanks for the insight.

You know what's gonna be awesome? Four years from now when Joe Klein's talking about how he "never cared for the course and racist Don Imus." You know, like he currently claims he was loudly against invading Iraq all along.

Joe, you're horrible.

rmrd, I just had a message that my post regarding PROF was being held too. :(

***********
linda, you are welcome. Sorry I am still a fence sitter, but...

"1)Let me acknowledge that I have been a long-time regular viewer of Imus on MSNBC."

Eeeeewwwww!
That tells us all we need to know. Anyone willing to suck that kind of PAP
r-e-g-u-l-a-r-l-y MIGHT also be a Faux News viewer.

"Let me express the view that there has been far, far more civility on the Imus program than on blog responses like this, which are models of incivility."

Depends upon your definition of "civility,” which I would seriously question after you just made statement #1 above. Since when is calling young,
accomplished college students "nappy-headed hos" considered civil discourse? Oh, I know, that was one of them thar oops! moments that just slipped into the conversation--sorta, kinda like calling Gwen Ifill "the cleaning lady."

"3) The person most subject to ridicule on the Imus program has been Imus himself--through various means, especially from characters played by Rob Bartlett (Dr. Phil, etc.). He may insult, but he subject himself to ridicule as well."

That may or may NOT be true. I didn't hang around long enough to see or hear any ridicule of that description.

"4) The non-responses to this "situation" from the pundits who have appeared regularly on Imus (with the notable exceptions of folks such as Oliphant and Crawford)is one of the most instructive things to lead to learning around this-- which feeds into my belief that much of the elite pundit media (as exemplified by Cox) is without principle or value. I could also comment on the networks that have profited from Imus' listeners and viewers."

Oh, I saw Mary Matelin, James Carville, Howard Fineman, and Paul Begala genuflect as well, but I think you have a point about lack of principles or values regarding the whole steaming pile of those who appeared on his show. Yep! There were a few who defended the indefensible, but most crept away with their tails between their legs.

"5)The supporters of Imus are not likely to "waste" their time visiting or posting on blogs so the responses that you will find here and elsewhere are not representative."

Well, I can agree in part with you on that one. It is highly unlikely that any of Imus' guests are gonna show up here in Swamplandia, except for Joe and Ana, both of whom have indicated they appeared on Imus' show. Can't say about "supporters" in general though. Some here have indicated they were regular listeners, such as yourself, and some have seemingly mourned Imus' dismissal, such as you seem to do. I think the responses here are representative of those of us who are disgusted with people in power, such as Imus, using that power as a sledge hammer against those undeserving of such tactics.

"6) As a college professor retired after 25 years of full-time teaching, I am genuinely embarrassed by the collective value of the 70 or so postings to Joe's lead. Fortunately, the college students that I have over those years were far more reflective and capable of dialogue."

Oh my! Dear Prof, you should be "genuinely embarrassed" for exposing yourself as a pompous aZZ (filter safe I hope), and we're genuinely pleased as punch we didn't have to listen to you for one class, let alone an entire quarter, semester, or trimester. One self-righteous sanctimonious posting was quite sufficient. Thank you very much.

Who helped you crawl out of the tar pit and pushed you to your computer and made you visit Swampland?
Poor thang!

Cheers from "the heat of Dixie" (otherwise known as GOPer/Jesus land)! ;)

I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE!

"There is also an adjectival form of Klein, "kleiny," as in "he made this real kleiny argument but nobody fell for it""

These are great! "Klein" means small in yiddish, so it's even more apt--this Imus thing has shown just how small these media figures really are--certainly in their ethics and morality and decency if nothing else.

just a quick test of the Time forum policy.

ah-ha. no warnings or user agreements and immediate posting. these being monitored/moderated/edited?

imus was right - black people ARE nappy-headed ho's. even fucking black men have vaginas.

amberglow: Mazel tov!

How is it that tcoke's test got through and my benign post was halted?

David Gregory was in obvious pain as he was trying to appear unbiased as the guest-host on the Chris Mathews show. You could tell that a part of his world was collapsing. Blacks and women voiced their opposition to Imus and played a partial role in the shock jock-media guru's demise.
Gregory was shocked that while those Black rappers could say what they wanted about Black women, he was limited to the WH press core, a hefty salary, hosting TV shows and dancing with MC rove. He was now disenfranchised. Klein shares his pain

That PaulD comment smells of sprezzatura.

Responding to Bartkid above:

"I see your basically uncited quote ("Dr. Girard told me": where, on what date?), and raise you three paragraphs by Dr. Girard where he defines scapegoat, in a chapted called "Scapegoat" from _I see Satan Fall Like Lightning_"

Did anyone else find it telling that a commenter can acually site a chapter from Girard's work but pundit Joe Klein only says Girard "told him"? As if Klein's actual knowledge of Girard's work only comes from a couple quotes Girard gave him(years ago and in reference to Bill Clinton). Given that, how does Klein know that Girard's book is masterful?

Someone give me odds on whether Klein has actually read any portion of the book he calls "masterful".

It almost seems like he's trying to defend his position by sounding more authoritative and learned that he actually is.

I realize this brings us a bit far away from where we started with Imus and Joe's reponse to it, but it struck me as a nice little example of what pundit's routinely do.

Sure, smalldog and Bartkid--cite the text, if you will. Geez, anyone with access to a library, or a small handful of cash, and some training in close reading can do that.

But apparently Klein thinks that "reporting" means talking to various insiders. Reading printed texts, assessing their arguments, and attempting to interpret them correctly apparently doesn't carry the same authority.

So you can keep the printed word, with all its relative accuracy and permanence. The rest of us will just rest comfortable our trust in Klein's self-pronounced authority.

After all, he's earned that trust, hasn't he? And so has everyone who calls him- or herself a "reporter." You just have to accept what your betters tell you. Brian Williams will back me up on this, too.

>You just have to accept what your betters tell you. Brian Williams will back me up on this, too.

So will Jeffrey Schneider.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/11/abc_response/index.html

Just so we don't lose focus, here is the argument that destroys Klein's cover story and exposes him as a disingenuous liar:

Klein could not have possibly meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty because in the same paragraph he also says Imus, Wolfowitz, and Gonzalez are being persecuted by an unthinking lynch mob. That means he thinks they are innocent, which means he couldn't have meant "scapegoat" in the ancient sense of guilty.

****Q.E.D.****

I've just read this whole thread, having become fascinated with the Imus story. If you -- most of you, anyway -- would like a breath of fresh air on the subject, try this:

http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2007/04/nappyheaded_hos.html

This is Barbara Ehrenreich's latest blog piece, entitled "Nappy Headed Ho's of the World, Unite!"
Ms. Ehrenreich is smart and funny. I don't read "Time" but I sure get the feeling Mr. Klein is neither.

Aren't your heads sore from banging them against this brick wall?

Soon, Imus should be receiving a $50 Million full-up contractual payout plus the appropriate severance package plus whatever else. He apologized; apology was accepted. End of story or should have been. He stated what had been stated for a long time and he gets to be the "poster man" for this behavior! Network pinheads erred on this one as they really "spit the bit" and good luck to them making their budgeted net profits. Stockholders should be anxiously scrutinizing the future quarterly financials on an ongoing basis as the bottom line will be taking hits. I find these posted comments extremely intelligent and the networks should be considering the inputters (along with the erudite WFAN braodcsters) to upgrade their management staffs.

Thoughtful post, Joe. Another scapegoat (for frustration with the media), apparently, is Karen Tumulty. (I miss the blog for a couple days, and I miss the brouhaha--though I did catch her original, relatively harmless, post.)

My god, people--try to realise there are real human beings (and kind, decent ones at that) involved here. Do any of you ever see Karen on Washington Week or other pundit shows? I'd have to think if you had you would know better than to tear into her. And I usually really like Olbermann (have ever since his Sportscenter days), but am pretty disappointed with him in this case.

-Alan

Amberglow and Andy: I don't know about the Yiddish, and wonder if that was a 'take this, idiot'. But I think we are trying to end that stuff as well as the tcokers.

German: Klein besides 'small' among other diminitive words can be translated 'is petty'.

a. Klein anfangen: begin in a small way
or
b. Klein beigeben: to cave in

so, that which is petty can begin to grow in a small way or cave in. (sorry for the stretch here)

Love ya, Mom

Slacker, you might read the threads before you go all sanctimonious. Most of the regulars weren't tearing into *Karen* so much as trying to explain our frustration with the mainstream media's Clinton Rules of Journalism. Yeah, some right-wing loonies came over to spout their bile, mostly on Cox. Likewise, KO's little award was a gentle chiding as well. Besides, *you* aren't Karen's favorite. Terrrrr - a - piiiiin is. He showers before showing up at the keyboard.

There was no confusion over what a scapegoat is.

I can't believe you once spoke with Rene Girard (who was a French academic elitist!!!) but you remain so unbelievably obtuse.

Re: Smartdog ---

I didn't realize that Klein had used Girard in a piece on Clinton. So I did some research. In a fairly long piece of analysis of Girard's most famous work, you find that Girard actually recognizes the essential "innocence" of the scapegoat.

'This scapegoat is, according to Girard, an arbitrary victim: "The creature that excited [their] fury is abruptly replaced by another, chosen only because it is vulnerable and close at hand" (Girard 1977, 2)." '

http://www.jeramyt.org/papers/girard.html

(it should be noted that Girard is not anthropologist, but actually a historian whose expertise was in French literature and culture, but whose most "influential" work was the book cited by Klein, which proposed a "radical theory" on the origins of violence in humans.)

Bottom line here is that Klein wanted to make his piece on Clinton more "scholarly", so he used an isolated quote from a non-expert in cultural anthropology to say what he wanted to say. He then compounded that error by taking that quote completely out of its proper context to make his argument about Imus. (see below)

*************

okay, here is where it get weedy (or weedier)

As noted above, Klein used a quote from an earlier piece on Clinton. But reading the Girard quote IN CONTEXT, you can see exactly where Girard was coming from -- and its abundantly obvious that Klein is misrepresenting what Girard meant....

'How to explain the contrast between the intensity of outrage in Washington and the laissez-faire attitude toward the president's immorality among the citizens of the most religious of western democracies? Beneath the politics, a primal and even theological melodrama was at work: a disturbance among the national priesthood, a scapegoat sacrifice. The Stanford University literature and religion scholar René Girard, whose book Violence And The Sacred explores the intense societal purposes of the scapegoat ritual in the ancient world, told me that Bill Clinton was a classic scapegoat - which is not to say that he was wrongly accused. Quite the opposite, in fact. "In Greek mythology, the scapegoat is never wrongfully accused," Girard said. "But he is always magical. He has the capacity to relieve the burden of guilt from a society. This seems a basic human impulse. There is a need to consume scapegoats. It is the way tension is relieved and change takes place." '

It is clear from this passage that the "mythological" scapegoat as described by Girard is closely related to the use in some parts of Ancient Greece to use criminals as scapegoats (see the link to Fraser Golden Bough cited in an earlier comment).

But the phrase "not wrongfully accused" clearly refers to the Lewinsky matter -- and that Girard understands that a scapegoat is innocent of the sins that are "cast upon him". In all cases in ancient Greek practice, the person chosen as "the scapegoat" is someone completely outside of "respectable society." Different parts of Greece used different attributes to determine who was eligible to serve as a scapegoat (slaves, the deformed, and the extremely poor were also used -- se Fraser again) -- but the common thread in all Greek culture in determining who was chosen for a scapegoat was their social disenfranchisement.

Clinton as a "classic scapegoat" as described by Girard gives added depth to the IOKIYAR cliche. Clinton was an "outsider" in DC, and the persecution of Clinton was indeed an act of projecting the sins of the GOP (and the mainstream media) upon him. Clinton was designated a scapegoat -- but because of our sense the justice the GOP and the media investigated him until they found something that met the criteria cited by Girard ('not unjustly accused') in order to begin the "atavistic" scapegoat ceremony (i.e. impeachment).

I also think that the failure to "complete the ceremony" and banish the scapegoat may well account for the demonization of Hillary. The "ceremony" remains incomplete -- and as the person closest to Bill Clinton was where the "sins of society" were transferred. Hillary is merely a substitute for Bill in the "scapegoat" ceremony -- and the intensity of the attacks are enhanced because of the failure to "expiate the sins of society" (i.e. the Beltway culture) and achieve catharsis.

I mean, in a cultural anthropology context, this is a gimme. The GOP and the media FAILED to ritualistically free themselves of their sins, and its eating them up. Modern cultural imperatives DEMAND that some pretext be found to "banish the scapegoat", so we can expect to see her attacked relentlessly.

That being said, there is also a case to be made that the need for expiation and catharsis may be so great that transferance of "guilt" could again occur -- provided the new "scapegoat" shares characteristics with the old ones. Thus the ridiculous attacks on Nancy Pelosi's integrity -- and the efforts to enhance the perception that she is 'an outsider' (she's already a woman, which makes her an outsider in DC power circles by definition, and gets accused "San Francisco values" in an effort to portray her an an outsider to the country at large. Harry Reid, as a male, apparently isn't as convenient a victim.)

Indeed, I would suggest that virtually any Democrat who gets elected President will wind up as the designated scapegoat --- unless Hillary is "banished" effectively enough before the election to necessitate it.

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what kills me is that I did all this work, and NOBODY is gonna read it! ;)

Joe, if you are suggesting that Imus is blameless, and therefore the classic scapegoat, I disagree. Imus tried to have it both ways and lost. You can be a shock-jock, you can be a cable news pundit. You can't be both.

Let me veer off topic and congratulate you four on creating a must-read political blog. I don't always agree, but swampland has fallen (with Josh Marshall and Atrios) into my multiple-times-a-day blog obsessions.

addendum to the above post....

On Imus -- while it is obvious that he wasn't a "scapegoat", I would like to suggest that he is the recipient of "collective guilt" in some fashion -- and that while his critics see him as a "fall guy" (a witting accomplice; a racist) his defenders are trying to portray him as a patsy (an unwilling accomplice; a non-racist unknowingly advancing a racist agenda.)

I'd also like to advance the theory that our society still has the need to find ways to expiate our collective sins -- and there is an especially pressing need to do so with racism. But our culture does not allow for the ceremonial persecution of innocents -- and that reversal contributed to the use of those who are not socially disenfranchised. Thus, the objects of our "ceremonies" turn out to be politicians (Trent Lott), media figures (Imus), rich while college students (Duke), and cops (Brawley) and other "empowered" types -- and that that the impulse is so intense that the appearance of guilt is all that is necessary to become the ceremonial victim.

Discuss....

paul_: I read it and you are a smarter person. Your examples are politically correct. Although my thought is that Reid does not have the position of power (Bush-Cheney-Pelosi with a bigger majority in the house) that Pelosi has negates part of your gender based assumption.

From Huckabee to the political strategists to the MSM the 'turf protectors' of power and wealth have already started lifting their legs, circling the wagons, and marking their territory. Interesting the 'strange bedfellows'...

Joke Line, I don't use the word "hero" very often...But you are the greatest hero in American history.

Women are the consumers in this country. The folks who have keep Imus on the air all these years do so only because it sells their products.
Imus pissed off lots of women (shoppers. Bad for business. Grow Up Klein and realize American media is about money and that women and blacks are an import part of who they are catering too. this was not true in the past it is now. Get use to it!

Linda -- poi