“It’s not personal. I’m just saying what needs to be said.”
In the last few months, I’ve been hearing this statement frequently, or at least variations on it: Twice from people who are trying to jump start their own journalism careers by attacking me, and more recently from both sides of various online vendettas. And every time I hear it, I’m curious about how the people involved can say it.
Not, you understand, that I believe such comments for a second. When people focus on someone and attack them obsessively, claims that the attacks are impersonal quickly become unbelievable. Ditto for viciousness that is out of all proportion to the overt subject matter. A couple of people making this claim even made it immediately after explaining why the situation was personal, apparently never noticing the contradiction.
However, I do wonder why they even try to make a claim that so obviously fails to fit easily available evidence.
The most convenient answer would be that they are deliberately lying. Yet I hesitate to accept it, because to do so feels like evoking an explanatory principle to stop the discussion – like saying that opium puts people to sleep because it contains a dormitive principle. All you are really saying is that they are lying because they are lying. And my impression is that none of the people who make the claim are consciously lying.
Or, possibly, some of them are lying to themselves first, convincing themselves of the righteousness of their position before persuading anyone else. This tactic would allow them to make the claim of impersonality with utter conviction. At the same time, lying to themselves would let them ignore any evidence in their own behavior or words that contradicts the claim.
In other cases, denying personal motivations seems like a deliberate effort to elevate their words and actions. After all, in our culture, impersonal motivations are considered the only ones to legitimately act upon. Even in this post-modern age of doubts, to claim objectivity is also to covertly claim the highest of motives – to claim nothing less than you are acting like a scientist, that modern icon of impersonal reasoning.
By contrast, admit that you are attacking someone because you are jealous or because they made a comment that hit too close to home for you, and you might as well admit that your argument lacks validity. The first admission will be automatically equated with the second. Far better to claim a dedication to truth, or at least to disinterested criticism than to acknowledge that grubby bits of spite might be powering our actions.
Also, of course, if you stake the first claim of objectivity, you exclude your opponent from making a similar claim, casting them into the nether darkness of subjectivity, and all the evils that lurk within it.
Yet, even while I make this supposition, I wonder how such a claim can be sustained. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I try to make such a claim (and most of us do, at some time or the other), I am distracted by nagging doubts just beneath the level of consciousness. I start to notice that my actions and words are odds with the claim, and the claim soon collapses. Increasingly as I age, I find it mentally easier not to make such claims and suffer the embarrassment (if only privately) of backing down or continuing to assert what I no longer believe.
Could that explain the viciousness that often accompanies the claim? Could its makers be sensing the instability of their claim, and, instead of abandoning it, defending it as hard as they can? Are they, in fact, in denial?
I hope so, because otherwise I will have to admit that I don’t know people at all (a distinct possibility, I admit). All I really know for sure is that, when someone says that their behavior isn’t personal, you can be confident that it is not only personal, but deeply so.
Off the Wall 
When you write, you obviously get comments, Bruce. That’s all in the game. The whole world will never agree with you, you can’t please everyone. If you could, there would be no need to write any opinion pieces, because there would be no other side.
What seems to hurt you, is that you obviously can’t put a piece together that is so compelling and convincing that the whole world agrees with you. The only solution you can find, is that it is obviously personal.
Well, most of the time it is not. If anyone is taking or making it personal, it is you. Your pride seems to be that hurt that you have to. It is you that is in denial, it is you who is lying to yourself. Get some professionalism in your life, take some distance and life becomes a lot easier.
After all, it is only words, not your soul that you are selling.
Hans, didn’t you embarrass yourself enough when you tried to tell me how to write? But I guess enough time has passed since then that you have successfully buried the memory.
Your advice and claim to objectivity would be far more convincing if:
– You hadn’t jumped to reply to this article
– You consistently tried to answer other professional writers like Stephen J. Vaughan-Nicholls or Zonker Brockmeier
– Your constant disagreement hadn’t started after you embarrassed yourself
– Your outrage wasn’t so disproportionate to the topics
Also, for the record, I am not in the least hurt that you disagree with me. I’m simply fascinated by the obsessional nature of disagreement. After all, lots of people disagree with me regularly. But only three or four of you make a serious avoication out of doing so.
But thank you for adding a concrete example of what I was talking about.
Links to documented evidence, and links to the perpetrator’s own words admitting his guilt make the impersonal claim quite convincing to me.
You fail to address the issue of inconvenient facts, here, Bruce.
You also fail to ignore that when multiple unrelated people make the same complaints over several years, how can it then be personal? At that point, it is journalism.
Your objectivity is coughing blood, Bruce.
And some of the people you think you know are extremely devious sociopaths. They have fooled smarter people than you.
There is absolutely no reason why a viewpoint can’t be held with a mixture of personal feelings and objective evidence. Contrary to your implication, one does not exclude the other.
As for what constitutes journalism, it is far more than a number of people making the same claim. That is simply gossip, no matter how many times it is repeated. For something to be worth writing about, it has to have a certain level of importance to the audience, but these claims fail to meet that level. And that’s not just my opinion; go to any professional or semi-professional news site, and you will hear the same. There’s not an editor who would bother with this material.
I could, of course, write about it on my blog. But I don’t care enough to spend time on it, and the obsessional quality of the claims is distasteful. There are far more interesting things to write about, and being bombarded with insults and the same material over and over again is not going to change my mind. All you are doing is providing another example of the sort of thing I was talking about.
RMS is being slimed in the same way, by the same person.
This is what makes it news worthy.
Insults only came when you censored the comments, which are all meticulously documented.
Do you not consider it obsessional when one party is drooling over sexual photos he stole of the other party? And when he made a domain to publish them?
You are almost as good at attacking the victim as this perpetrator is, and he has slimed and harassed not only RMS in this manner, but several other people. And it is all well documented.
Comments to an article should never be censored.
The material would have only been presented one time, if you had not deleted it.
You are sinking even lower Bruce. This man’s victims include several women. It is interesting that you champion feminism but consider abuse of women “not important enough” for “any editor” to comment on.
The only obsessional one is the party with the domain, the other parties are victims Bruce. And you indulge in victim bashing like no one I have ever seen.
Your logic is convenient. But what you don’t seem to grasp is that your obsessiveness makes your claims no more believable than your opponents’.
However, to quickly answer your comments:
– Yes, the person is attacking Stallman, and I’m on record as saying that these insults contribute to the split between GNOME and GNU. That is news. But talking about the person’s past is not news. I know many things about a number of free software figures, some to their credit and some to their detriment, but I don’t publish them because they are not relevant to the stories I write.
– if you read this blog entry, you will notice that I say that I see obsession on both sides. If I have said less in public about the other side, that is because it is not constantly bothering me.
– Even with my casual interest, I know that this material has been posted many times, sometimes in slightly different forms. I know, too, that it has frequently been taken down, which should tell you something about how it comes across.
– If the claims about abuse could be substantiated, then that would be a serious matter. But, when one side asserts and the other denies, an outsider has no way of judging.
– Criticism is substantiated commentary. You tend to insult more than criticize. I am well-used to both, but how you imagine that you are going to persuade me to delve into your concerns is beyond me. All you do is reinforce the impression of unhealthy obsession.
– On the Internet, there’s no such thing as censorship, since you can always find a place to publish your views. But on certain sites, I am restrained by the legal concerns of editors and publishers. On my own sites, I reserve the right not to have my time hijacked or to be insulted. Usually, I give somebody two replies, then cut off discussion when they start to repeat themselves.
Which brings me around to the fact that you have now reached this point. I will not post any additional comments on this subject from you or anyone else who shares your perspective.