You know who should be allowed to blog?
Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law.
Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and then clerked for a Supreme Court Justice.
Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and then clerked for a Supreme Court Justices before working in the White House.
You know who shouldn’t be allowed to blog?
Employees of things.
Employees of things who graduated from community colleges.
Employees of things who graduated from community colleges and then found a decent enough job.
Employees of things who graduated from community colleges and then found a decent enough job but are vulnerable to managerial whimsy.
Such is Ed Whelan’s “argument.” If you work for a company that manufactures cat food, you shouldn’t be able to pseudonymously blog about your liberal politics if your boss is a conservative, because “revealing [your] identity breaches no ethical norm,” so everyone you argue with has the “right to tell [on you], for whatever reason it suit[s them] to tell it—including no particular reason at all other than that [they find] it useful at the moment [they do] it.” If your boss fires you because he disapproves of what he now knows to be your views, it’s your fault for having them while not being the President of your thing. (Because when you’re the President of your thing, only you can fire you for your views.)
But if you’re not the President of your thing, that makes you an employee; which, following Whelan’s logic, means that you don’t have anything important to say, because you can’t have anything important to say, because people who haven’t already risen to being the President of their thing are worthless people. They shouldn’t be allowed to blog because, when they chatter about their unimportant views, the compel Presidents of things, like Ed Whelan, to listen and respond to them—even though whatever it is they say is, by definition, worthless.
Because anything written by anyone with a threatenable job is, by definition, worthless.
Unless, that is, they have “extraordinary circumstances in which the reason to use a pseudonym would be compelling.” Having “extraordinary circumstances” indicates that someone’s extraordinary enough to acquire high-caliber circumstances, which means that—despite not being the President of their thing—they are somehow important. What kinds of circumstances does Whelan consider extraordinary? Hard to tell what they are, but we know what they can’t be: they can’t be “private, family, [or] professional,” because when those were offered as reasons not to out someone, Whelan went ahead and without ever inquiring as to what those reasons might be outed publius anyway.
That can only mean that “extraordinary circumstances” never fall into the categories of private, family, or professional matters, otherwise the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center would’ve violated his own ethical standards by outing someone who potentially had such circumstances; and, being that he’s the President of an ethical thing, the laws of logic preclude from being the case. As for how he became the President of an ethical thing, I think we have a blueprint for how that happened:
It begins by acquiring a small amount of power, then using it to silence your critics by creating structural incentives for them to keep their mouths shut. Then, you acquire a bit more power and use it silence your new critics by creating structural incentives for them to keep their mouths shut. Then:
Rinse.
Lather.
Repeat.
Because that’s what Whelan’s done. He has yet to indicate what his preferred outcome to this was—that is, whether he wanted to see publius lose his job; lose his job and be forced into accepting a position that afforded him less time to write on the internet; lose his job and be forced into accepting a position that afforded him less time to write on the internet and provided no health insurance, so that he might have to choose between feeding his family or bringing one sick member of it to the doctor—but we do know that one reason he outed publius was because he had tired of people thinking less of his character, his integrity, and his intelligence on the basis of his exchanges with publius.
Which, given the reaction to this sorry episode, almost makes you feel sorry for him. Because being the President of a thing is much like being the Captain of a thing, and what Whelan did here was very brave indeed. In order to prevent the enemies of the U.S.S. Reputation from destroying it, Captain Whelan did the noble thing and hit self-destruct.
(x-posted.)
40 comments
June 7, 2009 at 8:31 pm
kathy a.
well, that’s just pathetic. you’d think the president of something would have more common sense, and/or be able to manage better manners.
and speaking of ethics, the last time i checked, it wasn’t considered ethical to counter arguments with personal attacks designed to bring personal, professional, and/or family harm to one’s opponent in a debate, in the service of personal advantage.
June 7, 2009 at 9:38 pm
calder
There are hundreds of wingnut welfare centers like Ethics and Public Policy Center … having ethics was not a requirement of becoming President of Ethics and Public Policy Center.
June 7, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Matthew Ernest
1) As luck would have it, i just went though my company’s “Code of Conduct” online annual refresher course on Friday. One of the *specific* scenarios involved a worker associating their name with their politics when different from that of their coworkers and their manager. Whelan would find every point of the corporate policy wrong, since the policy goes on about how coworkers can’t out you and your manager can’t fire you.
2) Strictly speaking, the president of a thing is not the board of directors of a thing, so presidents of things can still be fired for their views. But they get excellent severance packages.
3) I hereby declare this to be the the nuclear option of ad hominem attacks.
June 8, 2009 at 1:43 am
Michael Turner
Whelan is (to me) obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I’ve got some issues with publius’ behavior, too.
Note that Whelan
(1) was accused of being a kind of ideological “hitman”, i.e., of not arguing in good faith,
then
(2) saw his private e-mail published, where he called publius a “coward” and an “idiot”.
If I’m not mistaken, that second blow was, strictly speaking, illegal. But Whelan has not threatened legal action, and has even partly apologized (for “idiot”, not for “coward”.) As to the former . . . .
It’s better to stay on the high ground. When someone like Paul Krugman throws down the gauntlet before a Dr. Evil, he usually does it by filling in the blanks in the following argument template:
(1) Dr. E (for “Evil” or “Error”) cited source X, in arguing for claim Y.
(2) Look at source X, same page n cited. You can’t miss fact Z.
(3) Also undeniable: Fact Z directly contradicts claim Y.
(4) Dr. E isn’t stupid; he is a good scholar. He must have looked at source Y, and must have noticed fact Z.
(5) Ergo: Dr. E is arguing claim Y by reference to authority X in full knowledge that he’s actually misrepresenting that authority.
So, even if Dr. E is merely a Dr. Error, his reputation is deservedly damaged. Moreover, his right to a credible defense against the charge of being Dr. Evil rests entirely on an immediate willingness to admit undeniable Error. The more time passes, the more he’s just ratifying his own Evil.
In the meantime, charges of “shrillness” — or more recently, “bullying”– notwithstanding, Dr. Krugman will be guiltyof (at worst) only an unrealistically high opinion of Dr. E’s intellect. Oh, well. We all make mistakes, especially when we’re estimating. Even Paul Krugman. (Who tends to admit those errors ASAP.)
In the case of Whelan, I have to wonder. Maybe the guy is really just not very bright, and — like many minds basking lazily in undeserved accolades from warmly receptive (and deep-pocketed) ideological factions — maybe he can no longer see his own intellectual failings anymore (if he ever could). Giving him the benefit of the doubt isn’t much of a concession in this case: you’re basically saying he’s more likely gotten stupid and/or lazy, than evil. And that this has happened to him under conditions that could make a sharp mind stupid and lazy: those of winger thinktankery.
June 8, 2009 at 5:28 am
bailey
Publishing someone’s e-mail is illegal? I don’t think so.
June 8, 2009 at 5:38 am
Karl Steel
Maybe the guy is really just not very bright
Given his vita, I don’t think that’s his problem.
June 8, 2009 at 7:05 am
Mr. Sidetable
Re: Bailey, yes, it is technically illegal to publish a private e-mail message from another person. We all hold copyright on all of our e-mail messages as soon as we send them, so publishing a private message without permission is a violation of copyright (I don’t think publius would be able to argue fair use here, but then he’s a lawyer and I’m not). Whelan would have to register for copyright on the message in question before he could pursue legal action, so it’s probably unlikely, but given that he appears to be an enormous pain in the ass, I wouldn’t put it past him.
June 8, 2009 at 7:33 am
Michael Turner
Publishing someone’s e-mail is illegal? I don’t think so.
It’s debatable, and still being debated. So I was mistaken — I should have looked it up first. It’s certainly been netiquette-covered for a long time (going back to USENET days), often with commentary about hazards of legal standing. It’s easy to imagine how your interests could be hurt by someone else revealing private communications without permission. It’s just that, in the case of e-mail specifically, it seems there’s been no court test establishing any inherent privacy of private e-mail.
The best defense so far of the right to publish private e-mail without express permission might be the resort to Fair Use doctrine. Unfortunately for the Whelan/publius case, you’ve got the complication that the intent must be educational. But what did we learn from this episode of e-mail leaking? Not much except that Whelan responds to public name-calling with private name-calling.
That’s not to say it couldn’t eventually be very informative. This fracas is interesting not only because both sides are acting intemperately — who doesn’t love a good catfight on the internets? — but because, if it escalates enough, we might get two fascinating court cases out of it: Whelan and publius both suing each other, and getting decisions that perhaps set wonderful (or alarming) legal precedents.
You want icing on that cake? If it goes to the highest court, we might see the issue debated of whether Sotomayor should recuse herself. So, even though I think both these guys are acting like idiots at the moment (but not cowards, please note), my first impulse is to yell, “fight! fight! fight!” and egg them both on.
But I dream. And perhaps digress.
June 8, 2009 at 7:56 am
Michael Turner
Given his vita, I don’t think that’s his problem.
Fair enough. Allow me to retract the “and” in “Maybe the guy is really just not very bright, and . . .” It should’ve been “or”. Ideology can make the otherwise intelligent behave stupidly; maybe that was a (more minor) case in point.
The Volokh smackdown of Whelan worked by simply staying on the high ground, keeping the legal commentary relatively non-ideological. Publius’ mistake was in descending to a level low enough for Whelan to grab him by the ankle — you know, like in that scary movie?
No, kids, don’t go dancing and spitting on certain graves in the cemetery where certain bodies are still resisting their recent burial. Rising floodwaters will wash it away in due time. Rather, move higher still. More succinctly: DON’T FEED THE ZOMBIES.
June 8, 2009 at 9:04 am
Ben Alpers
Whelan’s vita indicates that he is very accomplished. Being very bright is only one path to such accomplishments.
June 8, 2009 at 9:08 am
rea
Note that Whelan
(1) was accused of being a kind of ideological “hitman”, i.e., of not arguing in good faith,
then
(2) saw his private e-mail published, where he called publius a “coward” and an “idiot”.
Well. note: Publius did not call Whelan an “ideological hitman” himself, but rather linked to another blogger who did so. And the posts linked by Publius did a excelent job of demontrating either that Whelan was unbelievably ignorant of a topic presumably within his area of expertise, and on which he was commenting to a national audiance–or arguing in bad faith. And whatever the general rule is about publishing someone’s private e-mail to you, it is certainly licit to do so if the other party starts making a public issue about the contents of as e-mail exchange with you, as Whelan did with Publius.
June 8, 2009 at 9:19 am
jazzbumpa
U.S Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
1) How can it be a violation of copyright if you acknowledge the source of a quote?
2) Copyright exists to protect the commercial value of the original work. To violate, there must be harm resulting directly from the alleged violation. This isn’t tort harm. It’s loss of revenue harm.
3) I’ll bet some sort of a fair use claim could be made by one skilled in the art.
I’m not a lawyer, but looking for some sort of restitution based ion a CR infringement argument looks very thin to me.
June 8, 2009 at 9:37 am
Karl Steel
Whelan’s vita indicates that he is very accomplished. Being very bright is only one path to such accomplishments.
Fair enough. However, since Decent World v. Whelan hinges in part on Whelan’s character, I think it’s important to reserve the probability of his intelligence. Any dumbass can get things wrong; it takes a special kind of [insert term of insult here] to know the right answer and still promote the wrong answer and then compound that sin by behaving like a [insert term of insult here].
June 8, 2009 at 9:37 am
rea
To amplify on what i said above, you can’t publish the folowing:
I e-mailed Blevins to ask him to confirm or deny that he is publius, and I copied the e-mail to the separate e-mail address, under the pseudonym “Edward Winkleman,” that publius used to respond to my initial private complaints about his reckless blogging. In response, I received from “Edward Winkleman” an e-mail stating that he is “not commenting on [his] identity” and that he writes under a pseudonym “[f]or a variety of private, family, and professional reasons.” I’m guessing that those reasons include that friends, family members, and his professional colleagues would be surprised by the poor quality and substance of his blogging.
… and then complain if Prof. Blevins publishes the actual text of your exchange with him in response. Well, you can complain, but not legitimately.
June 8, 2009 at 9:50 am
Sir Gnome
I’m already revising my resume objective to read, “Aspire to one day be president of a thing.” But since one can’t be president of a thing without already having been president of another thing, I’ll have to find something else to “president.”
Soap? Dirty dishes? I hereby accept your nomination as president of the apartment. Dog is going to be tough competition, but not so long as dog bowl gives us his public endorsement first. Also, leak some rumors about dog’s urination problem to vacuum and carpet.
June 8, 2009 at 10:32 am
Ben Alpers
I think it’s important to reserve the probability of his intelligence.
I’m perfectly willing to leave open the possibility of his intelligence, but I don’t think one needs to posit intelligence to critique the performance.
I’m just sort of surprised how quickly even Whelan’s opponents are willing to look at that resume and conclude that it proves that Whelan is some kind of a genius. For example, Anonymous Liberal, in this otherwise highly critical post, calls Whelan “unquestionably a brilliant man.”
I think the evidence for Whelan’s brilliance is pretty thin. Doesn’t mean he might not be brilliant; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And I agree with Karl Steele that what his performance says about his character depends in part on his intelligence.
I just think that experience has proven that using a resume to conclude that someone is brilliant is a tricky business.
For example this guy signs pretty smart: High School honors student. After serving in the Air Force, enrolls at the Air Force academy before transferring to Rice where he receives his B.A. in Political Science and is described as an excellent student by his professors. Graduates from Harvard Law School. Takes a job at a major national corporate law firm where he makes partner. Becomes general counsel to a governor and later his state’s Secretary of State before being named to his state’s Supreme Court. Along the way, he is named Latino Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association. He then leaves service in his state to become, first, White House Counsel (during which time he is frequently mentioned as a potential SCOTUS nominee) and then Attorney General of the United States.
By now you’ve probably figured out I’m talking about Alberto Gonzales.
I seem to remember that our last president also had a pretty good resume.
All of which is to say that I refuse to draw any conclusions about Whelan’s intelligence based on his c.v.
June 8, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Vance
I don’t have much to say about the main issue, other than that it’s now clear that, even as he outed publius, Whelan knew well that there was no upside to the act, only downside.
But the question of “intelligence” rang a bell. This has come up most recently, of course, with Sotomayor — the effort to argue she is “not that bright”. (If true, I suppose one could argue from that that Whelan must be a moron, but then so are the rest of us with our silly degrees.) There too I wanted to say that intelligence is as intelligence does — if we’re speaking of an adult, whether one who’s worked her way to eminence after a slow start or fizzled after early fireworks, we’re long past such questions as whether SATs predict undergraduate success: the best predictor of future performance is performance.
Whence, then, the impulse to deprecate by alleging a lack of intelligence? Perhaps a remnant on our own part of school days, with tests and perpetual performance before the dual audience of class and teacher; or “meritocracy” in the worst sense, the belief in intelligence as a kind of grace, or election, or patent of nobility or desert.
June 8, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Vance
Hmm, apart from general windiness there, I seem to have used “performance” in two slightly inconsistent senses, with only a sentence between. Indications are that my next comment will overreach slightly as well.
June 8, 2009 at 1:55 pm
jazzbumpa
Hmmm. I was once (long ago) president of the school board for my Parish School. I am currently president of my homeowners association.
Ergo, I guess I can post just about any damned thing I want to.
June 8, 2009 at 1:57 pm
nnyhav
EPPC FAIL
June 8, 2009 at 2:15 pm
kathy a.
so, to sum up: dude’s kind of a jerk, isn’t he?
whether or not mensa would embrace him, he’s got some kind of deficiency. it always mystifies me when people achieve a fair amount but have never learned to be thoughtful and decent humans.
June 8, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Ben Alpers
Whence, then, the impulse to deprecate by alleging a lack of intelligence?
Just to be clear, Vance, I was not trying to allege a lack of intelligence on Whelan’s part. I was simply questioning the apparent tendency among his opponents to allege an abundance of intelligence on his part, which I think is simply another aspect of the phenomenon you write about. Calling Whelan “brilliant” is meant to suggest that he possesses (as you put it) “a kind of grace, or election, or patent of nobility or desert” which, in this case, he is purportedly not living up to.
These uses of intelligence are an example of a kind of fundamental attribution error.
In short, I think alleging brilliance is as silly as alleging intellectual mediocrity. Judge people by their works.
June 8, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Vance
Right, Ben, I understood it was other people trying to put Whelan down this way. Slimy — yes; dumb, who knows or cares.
June 8, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Karl Steel
Well, let’s just back up and change our terms. Because of Whelan’s education and professional expertise,* he can’t not know the things he claimed not to know. Therefore he’s a [whatever], where [whatever] doesn’t = dumbass…or, for that matter, prince among men.
* Letting these substitute for the much less useful–thanks Ben–“brilliance” or “intelligence.”
June 8, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Sir Gnome
May assist:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/the-outing-of-publius/
For parched English majors, there is a glaring literary-historicism angle to the pseudonymity issue that will inevitably be left unresolved except in the furthest corners of the blogosphere; angles such as you might find in bardolatrous debates about Shakespearean authorship, in the plays themselves, and in the lives of many Elizabethan playwrights.
The only issue that I’ve seen leveled against public pseudonymity is that it inherently strips one’s opposition of their constitutionally amended right to ad hominem retorts, which in turn forces a debate back into the sphere of objectivity. *shiver*
June 8, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Ann's New Friend
The United States is country formed “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
How soon we forget. (And it was these same people who created Harvard, not the other way around.)
June 8, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Ann's New Friend
The United States is country formed “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
How soon we forget. (And it was these same people who created Harvard, not the other way around.)
[is what I wrote — how did my comment get entangled with another?]
June 8, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Vance
That came through — I suspect you’re reading this with Internet Explorer. (We’d fix this bug if we could.)
June 8, 2009 at 5:15 pm
rea
the impulse to deprecate by alleging a lack of intelligence
Alleging lack of intelligence isn’t deprecating the man–it’s a charitable assumption. The alternative is that he’s acting in bad faith.
June 8, 2009 at 6:57 pm
bradamant
Silly rabbit! Code of Ethics…schmode of ethics. Privacy policy…smivacy policy. Harassment protection…well, you can see the pattern for yourself and finish it. I’ve gone to work for companies specifically because all the policies seemed to be in place, as outlined in their own pamphlets and on their own websites, only to find that none of the above apply. I just quit but maybe you don’t have that option.
June 8, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Jake
It’s a good thing we have people like SEK around to see past through this kind of BS. Wouldn’t want everyone being duped by the man’s fancy education and high-ranking position. Yay, SEK! Defender of little people. (Not meant sarcastically.)
June 8, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Doctor Science
I put some code to fix the IE7 comments problem in the comments to “Deliverance”, BTW. Email me if you need help using it.
June 8, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Vance
Whelan has apologized. Not sure what to make of it exactly, but it is, rather unusually for these times and this medium, an actual apology.
June 8, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Vance
Also, what is up with Simon Winchester? It’s as if he’s heard vaguely that the antique style of leering Orientalism is out of fashion, but can’t bring himself to stop drooling, until an editor steps in brusquely two paragraphs before the end.
June 9, 2009 at 2:51 am
Matthew
God is the president of a thing, If God disagrees with Whelan then publius wins. Is Whelan evil? Tell God and see what happens, surely if someone had a sense of humour it would save publius’s life. He could laugh at Whelan and Whelan would have to re establish some credibility if that road is followed. What do you think?
June 9, 2009 at 7:53 am
Ahistoricality
on Winchester: “Judeo-Calvinist dreariness”?????
It’s bad enough we get folded in with Christendom, but you’d think the culture that produced the Song of Songs would get an exemption from accusations of Calvinst Victorianism.
[Yes, I know “Calvinist Victorianism” is a linguistic and historical atrocity. That’s my point.]
June 9, 2009 at 9:40 am
Doctor Science
I could not read more than 2 paragraphs of that review because it’s too early in the day to take to drink.
June 9, 2009 at 10:21 am
kathy a.
it is an actual apology, although weirdly couched: “As I stated in that e-mail, I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.”
the twisted language at the end about “I recognize” and he “may understandably regard” serves only to buffer himself from “my apology is inadequate.” still, that may be as straightforward as it can get.
June 9, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Mikhail Emelianov
Whether posting private emails online is legal or not, it’s certainly pretty low, regardless of the content – see latest (minor) Graham Harman encounter with infamous Brian Leiter…
June 11, 2009 at 9:43 am
herbert browne
Well, this whole issue about anonymity to me is a parallel (in my mind) to the “secret ballot”… whereby we vote anonymously, rather than standing in the line that chalks the public board to favor our present ruler, or the board to his left, expressing our desire for “change”… and then join the line of those who are being beheaded.
Short of “criminal behavior”, don’t we have a right to our anonymity, as surely as our right to ‘privacy’? ^..^