A bad thing about social media is also good
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Jill Lepore recently presented an illustrative example of how social media amplifies bad stuff ("The World According to Elon Musk's Grandfather", 9/19/2023):
Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Musk […] only glancingly discusses Musk’s grandfather J. N. Haldeman, whom he presents as a risk-taking adventurer and whose politics he dismisses as “quirky.” In fact, Haldeman was a pro-apartheid, antisemitic conspiracy theorist who blamed much of what bothered him about the world on Jewish financiers.
Elon Musk is not responsible for the political opinions of his grandfather, who died when Musk was three years old. But Haldeman’s legacy casts light on what social media does: the reason that most people don’t know about Musk’s grandfather’s political writings is that in his lifetime social media did not exist, and the writings of people like him were not, therefore, amplified by it.
Bu a few days after the publication of Lepore's article, something happened that showed an effect in the opposite direction.
On September 20, David Brooks emitted another example of his standard David Brooks BS. As I noted back in 2013 ("'Your passport has just been stamped for entry into the Land of Bullshit'"):
David Brooks has an unparalleled ability to shape an intellectually interesting idea into the rhetorical arc of an 800-word op-ed piece. The trouble is, a central part of his genius is choosing the little factoids that perfectly illustrate his points. No doubt he's happy enough to use a true fact if the right one comes to hand, but whenever I've checked, the details have turned out to be somewhere between mischaracterized and invented.
In this case, his contribution was a tweet rather than an op-ed, but the technique is the same.
I've explored his rhetorical inventions in a number of past LLOG posts, and so this example has languished on my to-blog list for nearly a week. But as Gary Legum hyperbolically put it ("David Brooks Recalls A Better America When A Man Could Cheaply Get Drunk In An Airport", Wonkette 9/22/2023):
Brooks posted this tweet at 9:26 P.M. on Wednesday night. By approximately 9:27, he was being roasted across the Internet harder than Mexican street corn.
This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible. pic.twitter.com/1qeV9qOBL3
— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) September 21, 2023
Among thousands of others, some notable social-media reactions came from the restaurant and the state of New Jersey — and so the whole thing blew up to the point where dozens of stories appeared in traditional media, including the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Independent, the NY Post, …. Brooks was ratioed so hard that he apologized on PBS News Hour, as Fox News reported.
But compare this reaction to what happened in response to his December 2001 Atlantic Magazine article, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible", in which he deployed a closely-analogous piece of rhetorical BS, epitomizing his safari to "red America":
When I drive to Franklin County, I take Route 270. After about forty-five minutes I pass a Cracker Barrel—Red America condensed into chain-restaurant form. I've crossed the Meatloaf Line; from here on there will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters. […]
On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu—steak au jus, "slippery beef pot pie," or whatever—I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's. I'd go into a restaurant that looked from the outside as if it had some pretensions—maybe a "Les Desserts" glass cooler for the key-lime pie and the tapioca pudding. I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and "seafood delight" trying to drop twenty dollars. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it.
It was a couple of years before Sasha Issenberg exposed this as bullshit (in the philosophical sense) — "David Brooks: BooBoos in Paradise", Philadelphia Magazine 4/1/2004:
Brooks, an agile and engaging writer, was doing what he does best, bringing sweeping social movements to life by zeroing in on what Tom Wolfe called “status detail,” those telling symbols — the Weber Grill, the open-toed sandals with advanced polymer soles — that immediately fix a person in place, time and class. Through his articles, a best-selling book, and now a twice-a-week column in what is arguably journalism’s most prized locale, the New York Times op-ed page, Brooks has become a must-read, charming us into seeing events in the news through his worldview.
There’s just one problem: Many of his generalizations are false. […]
In January, I made my own trip to Franklin County, 175 miles southwest of Philadelphia, with a simple goal: I wanted to see where David Brooks comes up with this stuff. […]
As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home. “On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend \$20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu — steak au jus, ’slippery beef pot pie,’ or whatever — I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee’s,” he wrote. “I’d scan the menu and realize that I’d been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and ’seafood delight’ trying to drop $20. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it.”
Taking Brooks’s cue, I lunched at the Chambersburg Red Lobster and quickly realized that he could not have waded through much surf-and-turf at all. The “Steak and Lobster” combination with grilled center-cut New York strip is the most expensive thing on the menu. It costs \$28.75. “Most of our checks are over $20,” said Becka, my waitress. “There are a lot of ways to spend over \$20.”
The easiest way to spend over \$20 on a meal in Franklin County is to visit the Mercersburg Inn, which boasts “turn-of-the-century elegance.” I had a \$50 prix-fixe dinner, with an entrée of veal medallions, served with a lump-crab and artichoke tower, wild-rice pilaf and a sage-caper-cream sauce. Afterward, I asked the inn’s proprietors, Walt and Sandy Filkowski, if they had seen Brooks’s article. They laughed.
But Issenberg's takedown didn't lead to any widespread mockery, much less a public apology from Brooks.
The Smokehouse Barbecue episode may make David Brooks avoid future restaurant-cost factoids, but I'm betting that the NYT will continue to pay him for spraying a continued stream of bullshit in other directions. Still, maybe the general public will now respond more actively on social media?
Some past LLOG posts on (a small sample of) Brooks' body of work:
"David Brooks, cognitive neuroscientist", 6/12/2006
"David Brooks, neuroendocrinologist", 9/17/2006
"David Brooks, social psychologist", 8/13/2008
"The butterfly and the elephant", 11/28/2009
"'Your passport has just been stamped for entry into the Land of Bullshit'", 3/13/2013
"David 'Semi True' Brooks", 3/20/2013
"Ngram morality", 6/22/2013
"Reality v. Brooks", 6/15/2015
"Brooks on biological sexism", 8/13/2017
As you can see from the links in those posts, many others over the years have exposed Brooks' factoids, without a lot of uptake outside a small community of Brooks watchers. But this time was different.
Seth said,
September 25, 2023 @ 11:15 am
I'm very confused as to the points being made. Up until maybe 1960 or so, antisemitism wasn't a crank view – it was closer to Mainstream Media, to put it in an anachronistic way. I recently reread "The Merchant Of Venice", and the antisemitism in it is hair-curling (no, Shylock is not sympathetic – he's an enormous jerk, and much of the humor is jokes presented as good characters deservedly dumping on him).
Thus, why would anyone know now about Musk's grandfather’s political writings in specific, when they weren't particularly unusual at the time? Or even if they were, he wasn't exactly a world-famous historical figure. As far as I can make out, she's trying to force it into a narrative of extremism from fringe perspectives being amplified, even if that journalistic hook doesn't hold up.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
September 25, 2023 @ 12:40 pm
@Seth:
Maybe you didn't read Lepore's article to the end, which states that
"Elon Musk’s grandfather’s political views are not Musk’s responsibility. But what would happen to those rantings, if they were posted on X today, really does lie at his doorstep."
How succesful would Qasinine have been in the era of the spirit duplicator?
Philip Taylor said,
September 25, 2023 @ 2:46 pm
Anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice. It is now over sixty years since I last read The Merchant of Venice, yet one part of it remains as clear in my mind now as it was at the time. Shylock says :
Now Shylock did not write those words — Shakespeare did. And by putting those words into Shylock’s mouth, is he not demonstrating that whilst some characters in his play may harbour anti-Semitic sentiments, he most certainly does not. I would therefore suggest that Shakespeare’s The Merchant should be viewed in the same light as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah — a film which cannot help but portray blatant anti-Semitism while at the same time making it indisputably clear that the film-maker does not share those sentiments ?
Seth said,
September 25, 2023 @ 3:35 pm
@ Philip Taylor – I know, that's what people often say. But it's "presentism". It's projecting back our modern abhorrence of antisemitism into a historical time where it was considered correct. In context, Shylock is meant to come across as a huge whiner there, a mobster complaining "Why are all the churchgoers always picking on me? They're so mean to me. I'm just a guy trying to make a living [as a loanshark]. I've got to eat too, right?". The audience wasn't intended to take it as showing the others characters were bad people. Quite the opposite, the purpose is to say Shylock is so morally twisted that he thinks he's the one being wronged.
That "presentism" connects to my confusion over what Lepore is attempting to argue. @Olaf Zimmermann – Q*n*n might have been very successful if "yellow journalism" or radio stations owned by religious evangelical were pushing it. There's apparently an attempted narrative here about antisemitism conspiracy theories being fringe in the past, and that's just ahistorical.
AntC said,
September 25, 2023 @ 4:26 pm
only glancingly discusses Musk’s grandfather J. N. Haldeman, …
Confusingly, wp on Elon Musk, calls the grandfather "Joshua Elon Haldeman". Musk's 'Elon' being a namesake. wp then links to this biog for J. N. (Or does Musk have two grandfathers named Haldeman, and wp has screwed up?)
@Seth Up until maybe 1960 or so, antisemitism wasn't a crank view …
Hmm? In which parts of the world? J.N. moved to South Africa from Canada in 1950. He'd been chair of Social Credit Party during WWII. " His vocal opposition to Communism during the war briefly landed him in jail" [says the linked biog]. So antisemitism was a crank view in Canada, but not S.A.? (Apartheid certainly included treating the large Jewish community as 'Coloureds' — I knew someone from that community in college 1970's.)
This is a little before my memory of politics, but I'd say in UK by early 1960's, antisemitism was recognised and condemned. British National Front formed 1966 was met with staunch opposition.
When did the extent of Nazi antisemitism become common knowledge in Europe?
Mark Liberman said,
September 25, 2023 @ 4:28 pm
@Seth: "There's apparently an attempted narrative here about antisemitism conspiracy theories being fringe in the past, and that's just ahistorical."
Certainly that's not my take.
Jill Lepore's argument, which is a reasonable one, is that today's social media offers a vehicle for "disintermediated" initiation and spread of certain kinds of bad ideas, which in the old days mostly had to be initiated by a few people in positions of influence (though of course then spread via social networks in the "two-step flow").
My observation was just that similar mechanisms can sometimes also challenge bad ideas, as in the Brooks hamburger example — though obviously hateful ideas were at least as common in the mid-20th century as now.
Obviously
Seth said,
September 25, 2023 @ 5:11 pm
@AntC What's I'm trying to convey is that nowadays, there's a rejection of antisemitism all across the media spectrum. This is a historical change. It's not just "liberal" media. It's that Fox News and Rupert Murdoch newspapers and ilk don't deal in it. Before people reflexively gainsay that, there's a profound difference between stuff like criticizing Soros is a dogwhistle, and what used to be on similar media decades ago. Even many fundamentalist Christians have some sort of convoluted pro-Israel stance now. You have to go very very far into fringes before you actually see serious Elders of Zion level talk.
@Mark Liberman – Her example doesn't work for me though. It comes off as moral panic. I don't see it in the David Brooks case either. That strikes me as more where peers of possibly lesser but still substantial power, deciding to do a pile-on.
Philip Anderson said,
September 25, 2023 @ 5:30 pm
@AntC
In its article on Elon Musk’s mother, Wikipedia says that her father (his grandfather) was Joshua Norman Haldeman, while her grandfather was John Elon Haldeman; other articles could be completely different of course, this being Wikipedia.
AntC said,
September 25, 2023 @ 5:49 pm
@Philip A thank you. this being Wikipedia. Indeed.
wp on Elon Musk says "His maternal grandfather and namesake, Joshua Elon Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane." refs for that include the biog I linked above.
It was J.N. who was the aviator. So wp is just wrong. (Possibly poor editting eliding the two Haldemans.)
Perhaps someone at wp thinks that 'maternal grandfather' means grandfather of the mother?
Martin Schwartz said,
September 25, 2023 @ 6:23 pm
For this Language Log forum, I think this slight diversion from the discussion at hand is not inappropriate: I am briefly putting forth
the suggestion that the terms "antisemite, antisemitic, and antisemitism" be replaced (by what, I'm not sure; see below).
Good prolegomena are the Wikipedia articles "Antisemitism" (esp.
the etymological section) and "Semitic people"–NB as background
Renan's usage as countered by Steinschneider. Folks–Jews as well
as Gentiles, for sure–have become cozy (even, in a way, fond)
of "antisemit-", which may be irretrievably entrenched, but I think,
'"enough, already!". Apart from the term being etymologically anachronistic, it is problematic in practical terms. "Semite" obviously now properly refers to a speaker of a Semitic language.
Non-Jewish speakers of one or more of the many Semitic languages, despite conventional usage, may justly feel a frisson of
unhappiness with the usage of of the "a-" words. Worse yet,
these words can provide a cop-out for anti-Jewish attitudes.
When a former Arab colleague of mine was accused by a student, rightly or wrongly, of being an antisemite, another former Arab colleague asked me, naively or hypocritically, "How can N be antisemitic when he's a Semite himself?". Furthermore, I feel
there may still be a touch of latent euphemism involved in usage
of the "a-" words. Certainly a bald (and bold) usage of "antijew",
noun and adjective, which I personlly wouldn't mind, would incur discomfort, since the use of "Jew" as an adjective is pejorative (cf. the antipodal use of "Jewish people" to avoid saying "Jews"). I remember a francophone Sephardic friend telling me of an occasion when a Frenchman remarked, "Ah, monsieur, vous êtes israélite" (a euphemism for "Jew" not here"Israeli'), my friend saying, close to the Frenchman's face."Non, je suis JUIF!"
As replacement for "antisemitism", then, what? *"Antijew(ish)ness"
would be ambiguous in its compound syntax. Given, e.g. "homophob-", maybe Judeophob-" (used by Leon Pinsker in the late
19th cent.) could be used. No doubt there are other possibilities….
Martin Schwartz
maidhc said,
September 25, 2023 @ 7:01 pm
With all the discussion of David Brooks' meal, no one seems to have commented that he apparently took the lettuce, tomato and what looks like a pickle off his hamburger and then dumped three packets of ketchup on it. None on the fries.
Is that a "status detail"?
/df said,
September 25, 2023 @ 7:04 pm
"Up until maybe 1960 or so, antisemitism wasn't a crank view"
Data point: Woody Allen's story, early '60s, of taking a moose that he's shot, but only concussed, to a fancy dress party where the Berkowitzes have also come as a moose (hilarity ensues). Mr Berkowitz ends up mounted as a trophy in the New York Athletic Club "and the joke's on them, because it's restricted": the Berkowitz moose head is the only Jew admitted to the club.
AntC said,
September 25, 2023 @ 7:26 pm
a few days after the publication of Lepore's article, something happened that showed an effect in the opposite direction.
To @myl's main point, the traditional complaint about influential media is that retractions or corrections do not get the same prominence as the original mis-statement: a lie has gone three times round the town before the truth can get its boots on (or something to that effect).
Will a snide piece in a Language-oriented blog (or on something called 'wonkette', or 'Philadelphia Magazine' two years after the lie) get the same prominence as Brooks in NY Times?
So: good to see the twit-people are calling him out so rapidly [**]. OTOH in the current political atmosphere, it remains the case that fact-checkers have a hard time keeping up with the torrent of half-truths and evasions — especially because they're couched in such oblique language, the checkers have first to guess at what specific claim is being alluded to.
[**] ratioed was new to me.
AntC said,
September 25, 2023 @ 7:52 pm
@Martin S the suggestion that the terms … be replaced …
With respect, I hardly need tell you that words mean what we use them to mean. No amount of legislating will outlaw some sense of a word, no matter how etymologically 'wrong'.
"Semite" obviously now properly refers to a speaker of a Semitic language.
I suggest neither obvious nor even true for most of those who use the 'anti-' word, who probably don't even know there is a legitimate word without the prefix. What are you trying to convey by 'properly refers'? 'Properly' is doing a lot of counterfactual/historical heavy lifting.
'Anti-semite' used to include casting aspersions on Arabs — which was one of the things T E Lawrence was opposing.
the use of "Jew" as an adjective is pejorative (cf. the antipodal use of "Jewish people" to avoid saying "Jews").
You might remember this outrage [at 0:55] (which rapidly got smothered in worse outrages).
Barbara Phillips Long said,
September 26, 2023 @ 1:09 am
Less than a decade after David Brooks wrote about Franklin County, I was working for a rural Pennsylvania newspaper that required me to report from Franklin and western Cumberland County regularly. My experience was that when people made jokes about unsophisticated or ignorant folks, they were complaining about residents of Perry County, north of Cumberland County. Perry County also has a western border with Franklin County. Brooks might also have missed one truth of rural life — traveling for an expensive night out happens because population density affects the availability of high-cost services. Yet he didn’t sample restaurants in central or eastern Cumberland County nor any in nearby Hagerstown, Md.
Brooks is just one of many journalists who take shortcuts to portray rural Americans without spending enough time to get his facts straight. I grew up in a rural upstate New York county and also lived in a rural Kentucky county for almost ten years. I’ve seen more articles than I care to that mischaracterize rural life either negatively or positively.
martin schwartz said,
September 26, 2023 @ 1:52 am
@AntC: I don't suggest legislation or outlawing; rather that people
who are convinced of my arguments give up the "a-" words
voluntarily. I've done without them for years. Linguistic habits can change. Perhaps if you read again what I wrote, you'll see that I believe more is at stake than etymology. Re Arabs being asperesed under the term "antisemite", yes: see my prolegomena re Renan etc. and all the rest in the 2 articles. Re "properly": I think you do know what I mean. I'll yet comment on your "outrage".
Martin Schwartz
martin schwartz said,
September 26, 2023 @ 1:57 am
@AntC: "outrage"–yes, I see.
MS
Mark Liberman said,
September 26, 2023 @ 5:06 am
@Seth: "the David Brooks case […] strikes me as more where peers of possibly lesser but still substantial power, deciding to do a pile-on."
Actually the first few dozen critiques were written (on X, threads, etc.) by relatively unknown individuals, whom I didn't quote — the issue was taken up later by higher-profile micro-bloggers and then even later by conventional mass media.
Rodger C said,
September 26, 2023 @ 12:19 pm
Even many fundamentalist Christians have some sort of convoluted pro-Israel stance now.
Even? Convoluted? In my all-too-extensive experience, pro-Israelism is the default view among fundamentalists. Probably most of the people in the USA who call themselves Zionists are Protestant fundamentalists. They combine a straightforward Old Testament literalism about Israel with (in many cases) a desire for actual Jews to please go elsewhere.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
September 26, 2023 @ 2:48 pm
Where is Tom Lehrer, now that we need him so badly?
The bulk of contributions to this "thread" are reminiscent the bad old days of USENET's *.advocacy.* groups which, like this blog, weren't foisted upon you – you had to seek them out actively. (As of late, I have a twitwit account with a handle entirely unrelated to what or whom I might possibly be, and I am utterly astonished as to the unsolicited crap/rubbish/garbage I unselectedly receive – so at least here I know wat to expect … unti this time.)
Ironically therefore, the first-responder to this thread – for what a benign assessment would call a mere misunderstanding, but more sober judgment would classify as need for a mission in search of an outlet (we're in Monty Python territory here) – this turned as of the first posting from a discussion of how BS (in the Frankfurtian sense) could nowadays find such rapid dissemination (e.g. Malcom Gladwell, Tyler Brûlé [sic!], Richard Brooks [sigh!], the Freakonomics gang, {I can make it longer if you like the style …), i.e. opinionated people who've hardly ever been anywhere nor done anything but spouting wisdoms about places they've passed – or have been passed by) into something wich would make Tevye giggle.
Sorry @Seth, you s[p]oiled it for many of us, and yet you are likely to have followers. [Suggestion for a simpler life: Neither a follower nor a leader be!]
Michael Watts said,
September 28, 2023 @ 11:00 pm
While I have to agree that it's ridiculous for David Brooks to present \$78 as the cost of his meal, I feel like he could have achieved the same effect he was going for, only legitimately, by noting that he had to pay \$15 for a burger with a side of fries.
Michael Watts said,
September 28, 2023 @ 11:01 pm
Are we using LaTeX in the LL comments now? How do we do dollar signs? \$?
ktschwarz said,
October 1, 2023 @ 2:02 pm
"Now"? MathJax has been installed on Language Log for ten years (which was a bad idea in the first place; it's only been used intentionally a couple of times, and only ever for weak math jokes). This effect gets rediscovered in the comments every few months, most recently perhaps in December 2022, when myl commented "prefix dollar signs with backslash to avoid triggering mathjax".
Philip Taylor said,
October 3, 2023 @ 2:37 am
"it's only been used intentionally a couple of times, and only ever for weak math jokes" — I respectfully disagree. I have intentionally used Mathjax notation in comments on a number of occasions, having inadvertently triggered it once and realising immediately what had occurred, and believe that the benefits of being able to use TeX maths notation in comments far outweigh any perceived disadvantages.