Subtweets, backshadowing, and Saint Barnabas
In my last post I went after a certain style of punditry and scholarship that scoffs at perceived errors as obviously mistaken—not reasonable differences of judgment but self-evidently foolish departures from objective fact—delivered in a rhetorical performance of casual omniscience. In criticizing this style, however, I engaged in a different style of criticism, but one no less annoying. One word for it is subtweeting; a plainer phrase is just being passive aggressive.
How do I know this? Because I named no names, linked to no articles, cited no sources. Which invites the question: Of whom was I writing? Which author or authors did I have in mind? (Besides, that is, Bill Simmons, whom I did name.) As it happens, a friend texted to let me know—with considerable self-restraint—what he thought about my subtweeting him. At which point my mouth fell open. I did what now?
Timing is an odd thing. I’d been mentally scribbling that post for months and finally found a spare fifteen minutes in the day in which to write it up and post it. But the truth is, anyone might have thought I was writing about them, for the simple reason that I studiously avoided names. I remember a similar instance, some four years ago, when I wrote about academics’ “touchy self-regard.” I realized after the fact that, were they to read it, certain writers whom I respect might take it as having them in mind when other, very different writers were in view. A sort of photo negative of Carly Simon’s chorus: You probably think this song is about you…
In truth, such scabrous screeds as that one are really about myself, because the very phenomenon I’m heaping scorn upon is one I find above all in myself.
Be that as it may, I’m going to leave up yesterday’s post, though I may append an explanatory note with a link to this post. I’m enough of an old-school blogger to dislike erasing mistakes while also hating to leave stupidities unflagged. The post was intemperately written even if ambiguously directed—or rather, the one becauseof the other. The anonymity of critique permits and even invites a rhetorical counter-performance, one that saws off the shotgun and blasts away anyone within range, bystanders be damned.
As you can tell, the text from my friend got under my skin, not least because it reminded me of my ugliest, most vicious tendencies as a writer. My overarching goal in all my work is to be unexcitable. When I write critical reviews, I bend over backwards to give the author the benefit of the doubt. I hate uncharitable reviews because they don’t give the book or its author the respect they deserve. Even a bad book deserves a fair hearing.
Blogging is most like social media when it degenerates into subtweeting—albeit minus Twitter. Better to just be direct. Better, in other words, either to be constructive (but generic) or to be critical (and specific). Critical-but-generic is the combination to avoid. E.g., in this 2022 post I leave unnamed that I’m criticizing Timothy Burke’s writings about Christian ethics on abortion. I get cute with shortcuts and euphemisms, but I also throw around words like “stupidity” and “ignorance” with abandon. I do so because I’m not writing in such a way as to be answerable for my words. I’m writing to own. And that, to quote my previous post, is childish and small.
I recall Alan Jacobs sharing in How to Think that he learned to take five minutes when he found that his fingers were shaking with anger as he typed. (Alan also shared with me Gary Saul Morrison’s concept of “backshadowing,” which confirms I was onto something in spite of myself.) That’s one of the many reasons why I got off social media. I didn’t deal with anger so much as the temptation to be glib, cute, sarcastic, and superficial. Yet here I am, doing the same thing on my own blog, unprompted. A fool’s foolishness follows him wherever he goes.
So what’s been on my mind over the past year that prompted the last post’s outburst of frustration? Who can I name with honesty but also a degree of charity?
My man Simmons, for one, along with his gambling buddies.
Another is simply the practice of punditry surrounding elections in America. By definition, elections are contingent events. Nobody knows what will happen, even if there are greater and lesser probabilities. Yet the lesson every pundit takes, in retrospect, is what they should have known all along based on the signs, the hints and symptoms, pointing to what eventually happened (read: was always going to happen). It drives me nuts.
A third example: Hollywood hits and flops. Before any movie debuts, you can write the Monday morning quarterback hot takes in advance, because whatever ends up happening will be taken to have been inevitable, nay necessary, and therefore utterly and absolutely non-contingent. Every producer of a hit is a genius who knew the Zeitgeist better than anyone else; every producer of a flop will never be hired or trusted again.
In the academy, the progressive version of this mood is the kind of scholar who describes his moral, political, and intellectual trajectory as a linear line, along which he is quite far, naturally, while others are catching up at different rates. A sub-species of this kind of discourse is progressive Christian scholars who claim expertise on American evangelicalism and describe its transgressions in terms that make Nazism look tame. Those of us in the know have always known, such folks intone, but we’re glad you’ve finally caught up.
I’d rather not name these scholars, but they have been on my mind of late because I’ve been re-reading Bonnie Kristian’s new book, In Defense of Evangelicalism, this week. At the same time, they have a sort of cracked mirror image in certain conservative writers. For instance, I enjoy reading and listening to Charles C. W. Cooke. The man can turn a phrase, and he doesn’t suffer fools. But while Mencken-esque contempt may make for good copy, it’s bad for the soul. And it’s only very rarely called for. Very rarely, that is, are one’s ideological enemies stupid, corrupt, or evil. Typically they’re just wrong, or so it seems to oneself. Conservatives are usually better than liberals about recognizing this. Not always, though.
Cooke’s buddy Kevin D. Williamson is guilty of a similar style, as evidenced in his review of the vice president’s new book. A friend of mine called the review “unhinged.” I recognize the characteristic gonzo style, and the one-liners do indeed have the intended effect. But the insults curdle fast. And the general air in all his writing of common sense against the idiots neither persuades nor edifies, even if it entertains.
I’m not meaning to write against polemic or boldness of tone. I’m not even meaning to write against any of these authors, scholars, or trends per se. I’m trying to suggest—against myself as much as anyone else—that because the world is difficult to understand, because genuine thought is difficult and thus a real achievement when it happens, any suggestion that implies otherwise is a failure to do the very thing one finds lacking in another.
And as for myself, I have come over the years to see my particular charism as a professor, teacher, and writer not to be criticism, not to be polemic, but instead to be encouragement. Saint Barnabas is my model, not Saint Athanasius. What do I mean? I mean, on one hand, that like Ebert contra Siskel, I do not want to be parsimonious in my joy, in the joy that I take in art and thought and writing. I want it to be capacious and full, not cramped or suspicious. And I mean, on the other hand, that I have learned that I am good at connecting people, at providing input and feedback and pointing to resources, at cheerleading, advising, and acting as a sounding board. I’m a good parent in the stands and coach on the sidelines.
By contrast, I’m tempted to suppose I’m the protagonist, the star; I’m tempted to get in the mud and fight. That’s when I pen the worked-up post aimed everywhere and nowhere. That’s when the blast radius expands far beyond the microscopic scale I imagined. That’s when I go astray from the path and neglect what small gifts I’ve received. Gifts are meant to be shared, to bless others. Saint Barnabas isn’t Saint Paul. But he goes to Tarsus and finds him and brings him back to Antioch. He’s a servant of the servants of God. When he forgets that, he loses his purpose. When he remembers it, he fulfills his calling.
