Watchers Council Results - Confirmed: NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Is An Excellent Illustration Of How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears
I wasn't going to write about this tool again, but duty calls. The Council runner up from a few weeks ago was The Provocateur, writing about the vapid press coverage that's allowing Obama to channel his campaign thuggishness into a historically unprecedented Executive powergrab. The top non-Council post was from Spiked Online, discussing how anti-Semitism gets smuggled into public discourse by the most vulgar kind of nudge-wink anti-Zionism. The non-Council runner up was from The American Digest, describing how arguments about abortion are mired in nonsensical slogans and unblinking ideology.
What all these posts have in common is that they're about a particular tactic of contemporary political debate. Instead of genuinely answering political opponents, liberal partisans give their followers shallow excuses to believe what they already want to believe.
The top Council post was the one I did about NJDC tool Aaron Keyak, an undeniable master of the form. This tool was dispatched to the HuffPo to smear a studiously balanced evaluation of the Bush years as the height of partisan wishful thinking (full disclosure: the article was written by MR friend Larry Greenfield). The problem is that it's tough to characterize "balance" as "imbalance." So Keyak had to take a few less than subtle liberties. A bit of my original evaluation:
The National Jewish Democratic Council and their ilk have a different approach. Their goal is to provide thinly-veiled excuses so liberal American Jews can vote the way they've always voted. Since those excuses kind of suck as arguments, these tools have to insulate their propaganda with sneering condescension and faux sophistication. The result: American Jewish groups unblinkingly claim that the Democratic Party is "pro-Israel" even though the Democratic electorate is overwhelmingly against broadly-supported Israeli policies and even though the new Democratic Israeli-Arab envoy steadfastly opposes the vertical settlement growth that even liberal Israelis support. Because why should pesky things like "what words actually mean" matter?... Though you do have to admit: his incoherent arguments and mediocre reading skills aside, Keyak genuinely excels at giving liberal hacks shallow excuses for self-styled intellectualism. So at least he's good at his job!
The smug comments under his article are a debate between whether conservatives are too stupid to understand facts or too mendacious to accept them. It's a genuine showcase of self-styled sophistication. Which doesn't exactly not prove my point.
In any case Keyak responded on the NJDC blog. Pure magic:
The attack:"The National Jewish Democratic Council and their ilk have a different approach. Their goal is to provide thinly-veiled excuses so liberal American Jews can vote the way they've always voted. Since those excuses kind of suck as arguments, these tools have to insulate their propaganda with sneering condescension and faux sophistication...Because why should pesky things like "what words actually mean" matter?"
Words do matter. Here are the words. But more important than releasing pro-Israel statements are words that actually matter. That's why on the morning of the President's first day in the oval office he "placed calls to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and three other Middle Eastern leaders and stressed his determination, among other things, to stop Hamas from smuggling arms." Stopping Hamas from smuggling arms? Sound pro-Israel? President Barack Obama said that his Middle East policy "begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel: our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point." Obama supports Israel: Words. That. Matter.
Don't worry about all the easy stuff. Yes he extolled Obama's token phone call to Olmert while omitting how Obama deliberately called Abu Mazen beforehand to express sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Yes he very carefully gave himself plausible deniability by using the phrase "three other Middle Eastern leaders," suggesting that he knew he was being intellectually dishonest. Yes he arguably lied by implying that Obama's "starting point" quote was from one the phone calls rather than from the 2007 AIPAC conference. And yes he wrapped it all up in a tone that blended faux sophistication with an obnoxious high school gotcha tone.
But that's par for the course for a professional like Keyak. It's not a habit as much as it is a job. But if you wallow in this nonsense for too long you begin to forget that you're peddling propaganda. You start to actually believe that you're arguing. And then you end up writing the kind of response that Keyak wrote. I'll quote it again below.
Keep in mind that my original post was a criticism how he and his ilk truncate conservative quotes so they can condescendingly dismiss conservative arguments. The alternative is that they'd have to answer solid arguments with their own solid arguments - and, come on. Now here's the part of the post Keyak quoted:
The National Jewish Democratic Council and their ilk have a different approach. Their goal is to provide thinly-veiled excuses so liberal American Jews can vote the way they've always voted. Since those excuses kind of suck as arguments, these tools have to insulate their propaganda with sneering condescension and faux sophistication...Because why should pesky things like "what words actually mean" matter?
And here's my original paragraph. Or more precisely, the full original paragraph:
The National Jewish Democratic Council and their ilk have a different approach. Their goal is to provide thinly-veiled excuses so liberal American Jews can vote the way they've always voted. Since those excuses kind of suck as arguments, these tools have to insulate their propaganda with sneering condescension and faux sophistication. The result: American Jewish groups unblinkingly claim that the Democratic Party is "pro-Israel" even though the Democratic electorate is overwhelmingly against broadly-supported Israeli policies and even though the new Democratic Israeli-Arab envoy steadfastly opposes the vertical settlement growth that even liberal Israelis support. Because why should pesky things like "what words actually mean" matter?
What. A. Tool.
References:
* The Weasely Agenda of the Progessive Ignoratti [Watcher Of Weasels]
* Limited Post-Election Activities For Obama's Creepy Worshipers and Devoted Brownshirts? [MR]
* The Shadow Government of the Obama Administration [The Provocateur]
* After Gaza: what's behind 21st-century anti-Semitism? [Spiked Online]
* Abortion in America: A Personal Journey [American Digest]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* 70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say "We Didn't Know" When Obama Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know) [MR]
Previously:
* Watcher's Council Results - What You Say Out Loud Matters
* Watchers Council Results - It Could Be That Capitulation Doesn't Appease Fanatics
* Watchers Council Results - It's Ideological Not Political
