Shorter Jeff Goldstein

It pisses me off that people I attack without cause think I’m a jerk. If my former professor didn’t want to be associated with what I’m writing now, he never should have worked with me then. His request to have his name removed my site is political censorship. OUTLAW!

Goldstein’s old professor listed “a propensity for stifling opposition” as one of the reasons he wanted to distance himself from the site, but as Goldstein notes, that’s nonsense. Consider, for example, the condensed version of the rational arguments with which he and his commenters engaged my argument the other day:

Scott is a cartoon, a hack; a clearly clueless and remarkably dishonest bracketing brackety bracketer who stands on the sidelines cheering while Lady Liberty takes it in the cornhole. This pretentious character is a lying cock, a fucking pussy, and a fucking retarded scrotumless fuck wearing a hot-pink thong, or maybe white lace boyshorts, and he would not stop a rape in progress, but would instead go home and be so turned-on he’d write a paper about it. Effete attention whores like Scott Eric Robespierre are routinely beat up by bread and, like all leftist twatwaffles lusting for power, he is a haughty apparatchik with a lisp and a pedo beard who couldn’t find cool were he to stumble pantless into a caribou orgy. He roots for the Mets and is truly a prick.

Why wouldn’t an English professor want their name associated with the above? It’s a dazzling display of Oulipian restraint. After all, anyone can write a novel without the letter “e,” but writing in a way that attracts people who argue ad hominem and only ad hominem?  That requires true literary talent.

Comments

[NickS]

We want our comic book posts . . . *pounds table*

[Sj]

Well, but was he *wrong* about the lace boyshorts? really? hmmmmmmm. I'm calling your wife.

in all seriousness, there is a strange sort of.... satisfaction to be had in the knowledge that you so haunt this person's waking csns that he would resort to calling you a... what was that lovely phrase? "twatwaddle?"

brilliant Scott.

[Dan Coyle]

A Bracketing brackety bracketer? Is that an insult?

[Anonymous]

Hi, my name is Brian Kiteley. I'm primarily known for having been Jeff Goldstein's teacher, but I haven't let that go to my head and I'm very approachable. I have a nice little collection of Goldstein memorabilia that I expect to accrue in value as time goes on, and I occasionally organize showings for small groups of Goldstein fans.

[SEK]

I'm working on a thing about Nemesis this very moment, Nick. It'll be up soon.

[happyfeet]

I don't think for reals that the Kitely person was actually associated with any of Mr. Jeff's political views... the Kitely person took it upon himself to proactively assert that he was somehow getting besmirched by an association with unfashionable views, which I think was a bit precious of him, really.

[JLR]

Do you really have a lisp? Either way, please start spelling as if you do.

[SEK]

happy:

I don't think for reals that the Kitely person was actually associated with any of Mr. Jeff's political views...

Neither do I, but he was listed as someone who helped Jeff become the man he's become despite not having spoken to him in years. I can understand why he'd want to distance himself from someone whose website he finds odious.

the Kitely person took it upon himself to proactively assert that he was somehow getting besmirched by an association with unfashionable views, which I think was a bit precious of him, really.

I don't think there's any claim of preemptive besmirching: it's simply a case of, how to put this: Jeff claims that his training in literary theory led him to believe X; he also claims that the person he studied under was Kitely, who happens to find X reprehensible; because Kitely doesn't believe that literary theory leads to X, he would rather not have a vocal proponent of X claiming, however implicitly, that Kitely thinks it does. Does that make sense?

JLR:

Do you really have a lisp? Either way, please start spelling as if you do.

I don't. Jeff's referring to this video in which, you know, I don't have a lisp. Not only do I not have a lisp, but I did a decade of speech therapy in order to not sound like a deaf person—the result of which is, of course, that despite being a Jew from New York, I sound nothing like a New York Jew; and that despite having lived in the South most of my life, outside of saying "y'all" because I prefer my languages have second-person plurals, I don't sound like I'm from the South. So I'm not sure where they're getting the lisp comment from, outside of the obvious, you know: they think I'll be wounded if they claim I sound "gay," because for them, sounding "gay" would be the worst possible thing in the world ever.

[happyfeet]

I guess I just think that's shabby, disavowing an association with someone just cause of a spot of controversy. And it's a lie besides. Mr. Jeff studied under the Kitely person and that's that, really.

[Sisyphus]

Scott, stop going to those caribou orgies. They are *never* cool. And you might meet whats-his-face there, checking to see if you wore pants.

[Anonymous]

I think that it is reasonable for anyone to dissociate themselves from Jeff Goldstein, any time, any place, anywhere, for any reason or no reason. It would be sort of harsh if his mother did, though, and if she asked me about this I'd suggest that she not do it just so he'll have next of kin in case something happens.

*NOTE*: That is not a veiled threat. All kinds of goddamn things can happen. Whatever happens will happen with no help from me or anyone I know or know about. I am not trained or training myself in the use of firearms or any other kind of deadly weapon, toxin, incendiary or explosive device, debilitating parasitical organism, prion, incubus, or succubus.

[Richard Pennyfarthing]

"I guess I just think that's shabby, disavowing an association with someone just cause of a spot of controversy."

Haha, geez "a spot?" Goldbrick and Darleen are arguably the two most odious right-wingers posting these days.

I'm shocked! shocked! that decent people want nothing to do with them.

[Notorious F.A.G.]

Jeff Goldstein

caribou stretch pants

dance floor

[tomemos]

Am I misremembering, or doesn't Jeff object whenever a trackback from Scott shows up on his page? If that's the case, then he has no business complaining about Kitely's request. (If I am misremembering, I apologize.)

Happy, Kitely didn't disavow his connection with Jeff because of "controversy," which implies political cowardice. He disavowed it because he finds Jeff's blog repugnant, which is a principled position.

[Jake]

Where did all this rancor against Protein Wisdom originate?

[latinist]

Sisyphus, dude, you've been going to the wrong caribou orgies -- the public ones, for the totally lame caribou who could never get an invitation to the REAL caribou orgies. If you get in with the right caribou, who started the whole thing, they'll tell you where and when to find the real, underground events (as long as you're cool about it; some loser starts telling his friends, and the next thing you know, Jeff Goldstein is showing up, and it might as well be a gazelle birthday party), and let me tell you, it gets CRAZY.

[Karl Steel]

Where did all this rancor against Protein Wisdom originate?

[SEK]

tomemos:

Am I misremembering, or doesn't Jeff object whenever a trackback from Scott shows up on his page? If that's the case, then he has no business complaining about Kitely's request. (If I am misremembering, I apologize.)

Only slightly: Jeff and JD throw a fit every time the WordPress platform sends an automatic trackback to his place on account of (previously) Edge of the American West and (now) LGM both running on WordPress. You see, that sort of automatic process is high calumny, right up there with sending a diplomatic email.

Jake:

Where did all this rancor against Protein Wisdom originate?

It didn't start with rancor, but with common cause: we both worked with (in the loosest sense of the phrase) Walter Benn Michaels and share (again, loosely) Michaels' notion of how identity politics work; we've always, however, differed on the question of whether they're necessarily pernicious—Goldstein and Michaels think they are, I don't, but am frequently annoyed when issues of class are subsumed into race-cum-culture, as Michaels describes. So, initially I was the sort of liberal academic Jeff liked, which is why, completely unaware of how his current treatment of me undermines the very point he's trying to make, he'll write stuff like this:

When I noted that people were free to comment on the site and voice their opposition, Kiteley told me of my propensity for stifling opposition — which would come as a surprise to the commenters who visited to call Darleen a racist, etc. Or to the number of people on the left — from Nishi, to SEK, to Jeralyn Merritt — I’ve invited to guest post here over the years.

Which, of course, would be a valid point were it not for the fact that since I had the gall to take a position that was later proven to be, if not true, believable in light of subsequent events, they've decided not only that I'm the enemy, but that I'm embodiment of all that is ruinous about academia, about which I have two points to make:

First, all the ink they spilled over how Scott Beauchamp was a liar and a fraud; how soldiers would never behave like shell-shocked 20-year-olds in a combat zone; how Beauchamp doesn't care about his country, but was only in Iraq to discredit the military—basically, every position they held in that debate was shot to shit when the actual state of discipline in Beauchamp's unit was revealed. After all, their contention was that the mere suggestion that soldiers would mock a burn victim or play with a skull fragment is treasonous propaganda, because American G.I.s would never do anything of the sort, etc.

Second, in the years since then, Jeff constantly uses me as a symbol of academic brain-rot, and his commenters act as if I'm at the pinnacle of the academic pyramid so that my fall, or whatever, will be from far greater heights. You can point out to them that I'm a lecturer at a the institution that granted me my doctorate, have one publication to my name and only two others in the pipes, and that I live in the poorer section of Riverside County; but in their mind, and I use the singular emphatically here, I'm a tenured professor of high repute who lives in a mansion up on University Hills. It's really rather sad, when you think about it—which they do, all the time, and people who read over there shoot me emails because my ears never burn on cue.

[Jake]

Ah, thanks for the generous summary, SEK. I've been following this blog for some time and never got the hang of this epic battle.

[Dan Coyle]

Oh man, this is HILARIOUS:

http://www.southtexian.com/2010/03/in-at-death.html

"If you are employed in certain professional fields, like academia, you no longer have freedom of speech, only the freedom to parrot what your leftist colleagues say lest your career be put in jeopardy. That is no way to live, and it is why any love or respect I ever had for academia died long ago."

Seriously, what the fuck? The guy's just asking Goldstein to take his name off the site.