Discuss Neal Pollack's calling-out of war debate. (ATTN: People sick of war debate!)

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Neal Pollack, to whom I usually find myself responding with gastrointestinal discomfort and not laughter, publishes the following tired rant concerning war discussion: JUST SHUT UP.

"Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up."

For my part: I like this sort of piece, in that it asks not for agreement (would you really agree with a call for silence on this issue?), but simply sums up the irritating overload we're all bound to feel, now and then, when everyone has something to say.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 February 2003 20:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Wow, given how often people here say "I am sick of XXXXXXXXX" I thought this thread might get some quick answers.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 February 2003 20:37 (twenty-three years ago)

I like it I think for the same reason nabisco does, in that no matter how rational you are, every once in a while you get sick of trying to be polite and phrasing your thoughts in a useful way and instead just want to yell at everyone and not have to make sense. Or maybe that's just me.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Friday, 21 February 2003 20:39 (twenty-three years ago)

I've read the first part so far. i like his rant against the poets. My first reaction is to like this piece.

but you know maybe he's been reading the papers and switching on the TV too much.

or maybe he's been reading ILX.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 21 February 2003 20:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Funnily enough, I've felt like yelling shut the fuck up on several occasions lately. Mainly because my little daughter is beginning to get spooked by the whole thing and is picking up on vibes and anxieties when she's within earshot of people discussing war. Every night at bedtime, she asks her dad will he have to go to war if they run out of soldiers and no matter how he tries to reassure her, she asks him the same question every night in some form or another.

― Tatyana, Friday, 21 February 2003 20:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Just wait for Ed and Millar to both find this thread, Nabisco, then sit back. ;-)

Having pretty well made up my mind on this whole thing months back (namely, all the assholery Saddam Hussein has ever done means he deserves a specific individual thrashing but I don't trust BushCo more than an inch on how they're carrying out any of this because among many other factors they are hardly applying their 'down with tyrants' thing universally and deeply fear what the end results might be regardless of how soon Hussein might in fact be taken out), I too am rather nonplussed. My fellow non-war-approving people, no need to scare me further with the potential consequences, for fuck's sake, you think I haven't WOKEN UP AT NIGHT SOMETIMES GRIPPED WITH AN INTENSE FEAR FOR THE FUTURE OF THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED PLANET BECAUSE OF IT?

For instance.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to actually do some work around here.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Kate might like this article.

But this is article is an old idea: when saturation is reached on a coverage of an event someone is bound to write something like this.

I liked the attack on andrew sullivan since he writes for the sunday times but again i only glance. its just not worth engaging (though i like a lot of the war threads on ILX).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:04 (twenty-three years ago)

?,?4n wanting to yell 'fuck you' at people since before Bush was ever even elected. But yeah, this guy probably deserves heaps of praise for having the guts and ingenuity to write a piece about how people get tired of arguments and shouting. Wow. What an utterly worthwhile use of paper, ink and bandwidth. Does this man have a blog where he talks about bad weather sucking eggs?

― Millar (Millar), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:05 (twenty-three years ago)

I've come to the startling realization that I don't care enough about my life to care if this thing touches off a global catastrophe or not. This still doesn't keep me from wishing that people would shut up about it. I am a frighteningly insular man.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:07 (twenty-three years ago)

its meant to be funny tom.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:08 (twenty-three years ago)

If that's true then DOUBLE the piss and vinegar for MISERABLE! FAILURE! LARFS = X, X=0! ARRRGH EVERYTHING MAKES ME ANGRY TODAY WHY WHY WHY

― Millar (Millar), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:14 (twenty-three years ago)

if you're so angry just get your gun out and start firing it into the sky. like palestinians do.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think it's meant to be purely funny: it could be a little sharper if he spent more time calling out the specific people whose contributions to the whole debate seem the most self-serving, self-aggrandizing, least helpful to the actual discussion. (Hitchens is not a bad target in this respect: he's written and spoken a lot about this, and a really unfortunate proportion of his thoughts seem to consist of "we should go to war because it is an important step in validating my ideas and my reputation as a thinker.")

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Here's a fun game for this thread: who, in particular, has had the least useful things to say about this situation, things he or she should have just kept to him or herself? Particularly people whose commentary seemed to completely neglect truth or moral good in favor of staking out sensational or self-aggrandizing positions?

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:31 (twenty-three years ago)

didn't he name ppl nabisco? part two was ppl from pro-side. part three was the ppl from the anti-side.

he did give names.

there is a point he makes abt how oversaturation just leads to mountains of unreadable/confused garbage that you might as well not spend energy trying to digest. but if he the author didn't do this then he wouldn't have written this article in the first place.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:34 (twenty-three years ago)

nabisco, meet Ann Coulter.

― hstencil, Friday, 21 February 2003 21:38 (twenty-three years ago)

''Here's a fun game for this thread: who, in particular, has had the least useful things to say about this situation, things he or she should have just kept to him or herself?''

The little that I have actually read in the papers: Bryan appleyard ran a really stupid piece abt how everybody was confused abt what exactly was going on in this war (he spent most of the piece citing celebrities from the left/right side to make that point).

I think that's abt it. I just haven't read or watched TV much (not just news but anything though i might watch the 'Fist of the north star movie' (based on the manga cartoon) tonight).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, but it's like Pollack says: Coulter is always like that, it's hardly worth pointing it out in this instance. Plus that Coulter column just after 9/11 was fascinatingly personal, like Olson's death ground whatever shards of artifice she had left to powder and she topped even her own records for from-the-gut irrationality.

I guess I'm thinking of people we might otherwise have hoped would have had something insightful to say.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:53 (twenty-three years ago)

NEAL POLLACK JUST NEEDS TO SHUT THE FUCK UP. ABOUT EVERYTHING. GUH.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 21 February 2003 21:58 (twenty-three years ago)

I wish people would talk more about the outrages our country is permitting in its wealth obsessed capitolist ways, and how lots of people are living in fear if poverty , not fear of fucking Sadam Husein.

― Mike Hanle y (mike), Friday, 21 February 2003 22:14 (twenty-three years ago)

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