The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Email to @betsyscribeindc

Posted on | September 2, 2017 | Comments Off on Email to @betsyscribeindc

“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
— Rhett Butler, Gone With the Wind

Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2017 6:09PM ET
From: Robert McCain
To: Betsy Rothstein
BCC: Bert the Samoan Lawyer

Dear Miss Rothstein:
As the old show-biz saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so I am in your debt for the Aug. 30 Daily Caller article headlined, “Journo Welcomes Female Wrath Into His Life.” When you emailed me in reply to the press release for next Saturday’s event in Worcester, I was a little too busy to reply immediately, but did ask you to phone me the next day, and later sent you replies to your initial questions. Well, that didn’t make it into your story, but I was rather amused to see you included this:

The Mirror also sought comment from Washington journalists who are familiar with his work.
“I think the guy is bad news,” said a Washington journalist. “Seems like a parody of the racist, sexist Neanderthal that the opponents want to portray all Republicans as being.”
“He’s gross,” said a female Washington writer when asked for comment. “You can disagree with feminism without being derisive about women.”
When McCain worked The Washington Times, The Mirror has learned that some female coworkers found him “funny” and others thought he was “offensive.”

Whether some anonymous writer thinks of me as a Neanderthal is of no consequence, but I fully agree with your second source: Disagreeing with feminism doesn’t mean being “derisive about women,” and I am not.

This is a point I made myself in reply to one of your email questions. You asked how I viewed women “generally,” and in my answer I said, “There obviously is no correct answer to such a question, because no one views women ‘generally.’ Rather, every intelligent person views people as individuals, and we tend to be offended by generalizations about groups.” Elsewhere in my reply, I remarked on the unfortunate tendency to think that any man who criticizes feminism is somehow “anti-woman.” This is some like saying a critic of Marxism is “anti-worker,” and is self-evidently false. Radical ideologues who insist that all opponents of their identity-politics movement are motivated by bad faith (mala fides) are engaged in a dishonest rhetorical game, and become offended when their tactics are exposed. During the Cold War, Communists always engaged in character assassination against their enemies, because Communism was (and still is) indefensible on its merits.

Elsewhere in your article, you seem interested in reviving the ancient fable that I am some kind of “white supremacist,” which falls into the category of fake news, as President Trump might say. As I told the pathetic bungler Max Blumenthal a dozen years ago, I’m too lazy to be evil. You might also want to consult my November 2009 blog post, “How to Reply to the Southern Poverty Law Center (If You Must).”

All of this is “asked and answered,” and there are many friends who could testify to my innocence in this regard, but why bother? In the Trump Age, liberals expect us to believe that all 65 million Americans who voted Republican last fall are crypto-Nazis, so I suppose I was just a few years early in being smeared as a “hater.” Now that you’re working for a notorious bastion of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I suppose I should welcome you to the club with the secret handshake, etc.

Considering how the Left’s character assassins are always slinging mud at their enemies, no sane man with a regard for his own reputation would become a conservative, but no one’s ever accused me of being sane. This email is BCC’d to my friend Bert the Samoan Lawyer, who can attest that I’ve been notoriously crazy as long as he’s known me, going back to my career as the music columnist “Doctor Rock” at Jacksonville (Ala.) State University. Of course, I was a Democrat back then, and there weren’t any left-wing media clairvoyants probing my subconscious mind for evidence of Thought Crime, so maybe I was a dangerous “alt-right” extremist the whole time, without even realizing it. But I digress . . .

A basic problem with Washington, D.C., is that it is a town full of utterly selfish people intent on climbing the Ziggurat of Ambition. Everybody’s concerned about their “image” and enhancing their “connections” by sucking up to those they perceive as influential. In their constant scramble for advantage, these status-conscious people often develop the habit of disparaging others behind their backs, and organizing clandestine attacks on those they deem enemies or rivals. A few months ago, I found myself at a CPAC party being yelled at by a certain GOP operative because of an old quarrel between two acquaintances. This was a quarrel that I had attempted to prevent, but my friends had disregarded my advice and so, inadvertently, this led someone to make me out to be the Bad Guy, and this GOP operative felt the need to get up in my face.

What can anyone do, in such a situation? Once upon a time, an insult might result in an invitation to the old Bladensburg dueling grounds, but nowadays it’s mainly just people badmouthing each other behind their backs, and trying to get people fired from their jobs by giving anonymous quotes to reporters. That’s at least 90% of the explanation for why, more than a decade ago, malcontent employees and disgruntled ex-employees of The Washington Times decided to make me the scapegoat for their grievances with the newspaper’s senior editors. As for the other 10%, I long ago said as much in my own defense as was necessary, and there’s no need to repeat all that today. Anyway, I need to wrap this up because Alabama’s playing Florida State tonight, and I wouldn’t want to miss the kickoff. Thanks again for the publicity, ma’am. Roll Tide!

— RSM



 

Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

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