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DISSENT, MODERNITY SHUNNED
Robert Fisk lives in the past:
QUESTIONER: Gary Rosen from Commentary magazine. Mr. Fisk, you’ve achieved a degree of immortality in the blogosphere, where these online commentators [use] the verb “to fisk” [meaning] to take a piece of journalism and to respond to it point-by-point for its ideological biases and factual unreliability. I’m wondering, do you — do you take pride in this coinage? Does it fill you with indignation? What are your thoughts on it? Is it justified?
FISK: I don’t waste my time with blogs, I don’t use the Internet, and I don’t use e-mail. I work.
(Via ex-blogger Roger Bournival)
I say we pay a group of 12 year boys to follow Robert around and beat him up once a week. I’d be willing to chip in $10. In Afghanistan, that probably be worth 20 hooligans for a year.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 11 12 at 04:15 PM • permalinkFisk: “Neither do I bathe, wear shoes, or use electrical appliances. I work, smell bad, and eat my food raw”. Looks like we’re dealing with another primitive here. Time for me to try and communicate with this Cro Magnon on his own level . . .
Paco come in peace Fisk. Me know how it is. In old days, you make ‘em pictures on cave wall, tribesmen come look, scratch, nod and move on to hunt mammoth (leaving you standing there with chalk in hand, pointing at “hurt” ankle). Now, by ‘n by, come blogs. Many blogs. You make ‘em picture, tribesmen no more just nod; they laugh and shake ‘em heads. Them say blogs say pictures wrong, Bush-Man not really have two horns and long tail, Fisk full of brontotherium $hit. Fisk get angry, but what him do? Paco got heap big medicine, Fisk; read blogs, learn ‘em new things, draw true pictures, maybe by ‘n by tribesmen pay attention again.
That must be why he has no idea that people can fact-check his lies now.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2005 11 12 at 05:09 PM • permalinkWhat proportion of the world’s population is without internet access?
Anyone?
Or what proportion is without computers?
They must be living in the past, too.
I know, I know, Fisk should be reading blogs and sending off emails cos he’s a journo. It’s part of the job description. How silly of me.
Anyway, this is a chance to make a personal attack, so let’s go for it. Next time he reports something we don’t feel comfortable with (or which doesn’t fit our “fantasy”, PW) we can smeer him as a non-emailer. What a crime. Outrageous.
Excellent blog.
Anyway, this is a chance to make a personal attack, so let’s go for it.
Ok.
dbo, you are an idiot.
Next time he reports something we don’t feel comfortable with…
Reporting means “relaying the truth,” not “making shit up to fit your own narrow worldview and/or to push your agenda.”
we can smeer him as a non-emailer.
See my respose regarding personal attacks.
Excellent blog.
It is, isn’t it?
Dirtbikeop;
I know, I know, Fisk should be reading blogs and sending off emails cos he’s a journo. It’s part of the job description. How silly of me.
Uhm… if it isn’t a part of the MODERN journo’s job description, it should be, if for no other reason except to understand that his readers can fact-check his ramblings so easily.
Fisk is living in 1970. He needs to come a bit foreward in time… or give up writing.
Posted by mamapajamas on 2005 11 12 at 06:55 PM • permalinkBetter questions would be: what proportion of the world’s population is without access to the Internet, but would dearly love to participate in the benefits of the 21st century? And what proportion of the world’s population have access to the Internet and willfully refuse to face the future, thereby isolating themselves from it?
Dirtbikeoption — Can you tell me what percentage of the world’s population, offered the Internet, chooses to do without it? Outside of coffee-bar poseurs, the percentage is damned low. The internet is usefel for far more than WebDiary, nekkid pictures and other forms of masturbation aid, if you haven’t noticed. People like Michael Yon use it to make people like Fisk look like absolute caraciatures, for one.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 11 12 at 07:07 PM • permalink#13 OK David, here’s some of Fisk’s recent ‘reporting’.
‘I fearlessly get out and visit all the morgues of Baghdad, unlike all my colleagues. So I can estimate the deaths so far as at least 150,000.’
Not only a reporter, a brilliant social statistician, with unpublished papers.‘Iraq is gone, it’s hopeless, it’s history.’
He’s an instant historian too.Looks like he is living up to his own coinage.
Who put the extra t in ‘immortality’?
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2005 11 12 at 08:19 PM • permalinkDirtbikemoron, what sort of ‘journalist’ denies himself access to a mind-bogglingly massive reservoir of information?
You fucking imbecile ...
Posted by Crispytoast on 2005 11 12 at 09:10 PM • permalinkI think the report I’ll always remember Fisk by was when he forcefully denied that the Coalition has captured the Baghdad Airport. Which they had, completely, and with substantial forces.
To this day, he has never admitted that he was wrong.
Look journalists, all the rightwing asks is that you report the news without any bias. Just tell us the facts. That’s all. How hard is that?
Posted by wronwright on 2005 11 12 at 09:59 PM • permalinkI know, I know, Fisk should be reading blogs and sending off emails cos he’s a journo. It’s part of the job description. How silly of me.
Yes, very silly of you. Journalists and pundits like Fisk deal in information. For him to willfully avoid the greatest instant-access repository of information is risible. You did see that he said, “I don’t use the Internet”, right, dirt? And not just, “I don’t read blogs and use e-mail”, right, dirt?
Anyway, this is a chance to make a personal attack, so let’s go for it.
Dirtroad, I’m going to explain this to you very slowly, because I know you lefties have a hard time grasping it:
If…you…are…criticized…for…saying…
something…stupid…or…false…,
it…is…not…a…personal…attack.Grow…up.
Next time he reports something we don’t feel comfortable with (or which doesn’t fit our “fantasy”, PW) we can smeer him as a non-emailer. What a crime. Outrageous.
No, next time he reports utter falsehoods or makes more absurd predictions with an accuracy record of about .005%, we can justifiably criticize him as a asshat.
BTW, the “fantasy” stuff PW is talking about and which you ridicule by putting in quotes might refer to things like saying the defenses of Baghdad are an impenetrable deathtrap for American forces who will be mercilessly cut to pieces. What part of that wasn’t a fantasy, dirt? Fisk’s work is full of this kind of nonsense. Why do you put on the air of a sneering sophisticate when you are so credulous of a fraud like Fisk?
If bloggers refused to believe him just because he doesn’t use our technology, even when he had evidence, that would of course be contemptible.
When it happens, we’ll let you know.
Posted by Assistant Village Idiot on 2005 11 12 at 10:14 PM • permalinkOf course Fisk doesn’t use the internet. Why would a professional journalist have the slightest need for LEXUS/NEXIS? (You can research any publication subject EVER, $3 a pop if you’re a grubby “civilian” like us. Any respectable news organization has a standing subscription.)
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 11 12 at 10:14 PM • permalink#18
There’s pictures of nekkid wimmin on the internet? Where? Where? And why didn’t anyone tell me.Posted by CujoQuarrel on 2005 11 12 at 10:20 PM • permalinkFisk is also a liar. It is nearly impossible for anyone to get published in periodicals these days without having some sort of access to the internet. I suppose he’d like us to think he slaves away on a manual typewriter and then has faithful Bedouin messenger boys transport the manuscript by camel to the offices of whoever publishes his crap, but the idea is laughable. Even if he avoids the internet due to some misplaced sense of virtue I’ll bet he has a flunky to press “send” for him.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 11 12 at 10:32 PM • permalinkFisk is also a liar.
And always has been. Multiple times over. Doesn’t it drive you bonkers when obvious whoppers like that just fly right past the Kos Kidz and the Webdiarist types? His name is attached to online debunking, but of course, fisking Fisk is considered child’s play nowadays.
I just want to know why there is no Wikipedia entry for “pilgery”...
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 11 12 at 10:44 PM • permalinkFisk does indeed hate email.. I’d say the reason that he’s so often wrong about things is because he’s not on the internets.
Come into the 90’s Bobby!Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 11 12 at 10:44 PM • permalinkDBO—Here’s what makes the internet fun:
Robert Fisk reported in the run up to the capture of Baghdad that he had stocked up on like 20 rolls of toilet paper. We all had a jolly good laugh with our oafish and childish comments but it made it evident that toilet paper was something that could be bought in Baghdad. Fisk made it seem that Iraq was no stranger to bog roll.
THEN: Dexter Filkins (sp?) reports in the NY Times during 2004 that the sewage system in Baghdad was broken and raw, untreated sewage was bubbling up in the streets BECAUSE…(wait for it)...US troops, unlike Iraqis, used toilet paper! That jammed the sewage system which was never built to deal with TP! (Filkins gave no other probable reason for the damage. Not bombing, sabotage, nothing but Imperialist bog roll! I’ll bet Cheney probably made the TP from the shredded US Constitution but Filkens didn’t say that).
Because of the internet, we know one of them is a fucking liar and the other hates George W Bush.
Don’t you see? It was the US’ fault that the city was ankle deep in crap because that bastard Chimpy W McBushitlerburton sent those TP using ‘killbots’ (who are all poor ignorant minorities BTW) to Baghdad; a place that either does or doesn’t use toilet paper!
I know this because I read the internet. Thanks, Al Gore!
While looking up the origin of “Fisking” (no joy), I came across this quote:
As anyone who’s watched the quality of online discussions deteriorate over the past ten years, “problem-solving deficit disorder” isn’t entirely confined to schoolchildren. Many of today’s debaters prefer “Fisking” - line-by-line rebuttals where facts are dropped like radar chaff - to rational debate or building a coherent argument.
Ain’t that nice? Facts are just “chaff” that interferes with a good debate.
And who coined “fisk”? Well, Tim himself got the coinage rolling, back on December 19, 2001, 11am Aussie time…
66~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tim, I still say that you were the first to coin “fisk” as it’s used today.Posted by: Lawrence at April 1, 2004 at 05:58 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~99Lawrence’s link led to a Tim posting which concludes:
66~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Where is that gang of bloodthirsty Fiskers when you need them?posted by Tim Blair at 12/19/2001 11:00:33 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~99Tim made a verb of Fisk’s name and later helped Bush win the U.S. election. Then to top it off, Tim got a day job. So, Robert F., put that in your pipe & fisk it.
From the temple of Fisk, dedicated by like-minded people (oxymoron alert there) to all things Fiskish.
“Also, we are unable to forward any emails addressed to Robert Fisk. However, as from the 12th February, 2004, The Independent carries this information regarding the way to contact Robert Fisk: “Robert Fisk regrets that he cannot accept e-mails but letters may be sent to: C/o Foreign Desk, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS”
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/Do carrier pigeons understand HTTP and are willing to fly in packets?
#36. Dont forget that Tim B. also thought up the infamous ‘Clock/Clark County Guardian Newspaper appeal to dumb Merican voters camp-pain’. lol!
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 11 12 at 11:36 PM • permalinkClearly Fisk, stung by how fast people caught on to him in the blog world, is sulking behind the pretense that somehow, what he calls “work” is superior to that Internet thingy, which only attracts layabouts and ne’er-do-wells. He is kind of like the guy that has had a rough first ride in an automobile and so tells people he’s through with cars and he’s going back to his horse which, by inference, is what real men ride on, anyway.
#44. After ten minutes listening to an anti-globalisation rant the high powered economist snaps and chokes the useless dreadlocked arts student right?
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 11 13 at 12:15 AM • permalinkI saw Fisk on Dateline a few months ago.
Here is some of the trancscript.
“Fisk is heading back down to Beirut to send his story and pictures to the ‘Independent’ in London.ROBERT FISK: Look at this monument here. This is a monument to Halfa Zalasa the President of Syria. I’m waiting for this to be taken down before someone blows it up. I think they’ll take it down, won’t they? The obelisk above the road here.
Unlike most journalists, Fisk refuses the use a digital camera which means a trip to the local photo lab to process his film.
ROBERT FISK: It’s hard saying what this is, actually. It’s very odd, what the hell is this. It’s the Syrians alright, I can see them. OK, here we are. This is good, isn’t it? That’s a good one here.
To file his story, he pays a visit to the back office of his local grocery store where he hands it over on a floppy disk.
Despite being thousands of kilometres and several time zones away from London, Fisk remains cheerfully ignorant of the Internet and also refuses to use email.”
The Road to DamascusYep, #40, that’s just what I had in mind. What a bank shot—from the Guardian, then idiot laureate Pinter and many another, on to Ohio voters, the US election, and the rest is history. All because Tim tossed off a comic idea one day, classic case chaotic process exploiting the left’s unintended vaudeville. What would have happened instead if Tim had not thought it funny enough? Frightening to think about.
#31 Dave S.
Sorry. You were there ahead of me and I missed your comment.#12
What proportion of the world’s population is without internet access? Anyone? Or what proportion is without computers? They must be living in the past, too.Love that moonbat condescension. Sounds just like one of the leftie hacks I endured at school. That this has no connection to someone like Fisk who is affluent and a reporter, for god’s sake, shouldn’t prevent a little display of moral vanity. Tiresome.
dirtbikeoption is a good example of what happens to one’s mental faculties by spending too much time on blogs like Antony Loewenstein’s.
Incidentally, I think dbo should immediately terminate his internet access. Hey, if it improves Fisk’s work (and it must, or dbo surely wouldn’t suggest we’re wrong to ridicule him for it), just imagine what it will do for dbo! Can you say, “instant intellectual celebrity”? That ABC job is just around the corner waiting for you! Go forth and forsake the evil temptation that is the intarweb!
BTW, dbo must be a glutton for punishment. There are certainly more stupid lefties around than him, but even they are usually picking better guys to defend. I mean, first Loewenstein, now Fisk? That just has to be a conscious decision, right?
If it’s not, I have seriously overestimated dbo’s intelligence.
#52. They dont call Dirt Bike Option ‘Meat and two Veg’ for nothing.
(check ‘Dirt Box Open’s website to get the ‘in joke’).Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 11 13 at 05:23 AM • permalinkDirt Bike Option’s ‘website’.
(such as it is).Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 11 13 at 05:49 AM • permalinkwine and politics from Sydney’s inner west
Dirt bike option epitomises the problems with the modern day left. Middle Class (and often upper middle class) wankers who lean leftist not out of any genuine life experience or (albeit misguided) belief that socialism will help them directly, but rather purely out of moral vanity.
Fucking PRAT.
Balmain Bolshevism at its finest.
I wonder if he/she is genuinely interested in dirt bikes, or it is simply a cheap moniker to give himself some semblence of working classness.#20 Swinish capitalist, where does the extra ‘t’ go? Is that, like, in ‘timmortality’?
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2005 11 13 at 07:26 AM • permalinko/t again-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s minority Government has lost it’s sole parliamentary ally,paving the way for opposition parties to oust the Government as early as this month.
The Conservative Party leader and Bloc Quebecois leader said they would back any efforts by the socialist New Democrats to bring down the government…More importantly, this from further on in the Q&A section
“QUESTIONER: Samir Sumaidaie. I am the Iraqi ambassador at the U.N. I was, in fact, minister of Interior during April of 2004 when the operations in Fallujah took place.
I am disturbed by the black-and-white nature of both presentations, frankly. Mr. Fisk, a very learned and acknowledged journalist, has presented us with a vision which almost is immutable. He referred to the example of a gruesome dead body on the way from Kuwait to Basra to prove that war is awesome and should never be entered by any responsible politician. Yet the responsibility for that war could be laid squarely at the door of Saddam Hussein and his regime. And he had to be removed, and there is, I’m afraid, such a thing as a just war, as was the war in Germany and the Second World War. So certain theses here are doubtful.
I can tell you as an Iraqi that the majority of the Iraqi people were praying the week before the attack on Baghdad that Bush and Blair will not change their mind. They were extremely disappointed and let down in 1991 when Bush the elder decided not to go in. I have a different perspective, I’m afraid.
And the other distinguished speaker has presented us with everything in sort of very neat and tidy black-and-white, Sunni, Shi’a, Sunni dominated. I am, sir, from a Sunni family. Yet I fought Saddam and his regime for as long as I remember, from at least 20 years ago, was active in the opposition. Now I am proud to take part in building an Iraq not on sectarian basis, as you present us, but hopefully, on a basis that will move gradually towards the releasing of the tensions and the reactions to the polarizations that took place.
I think there is reality which, admittedly, a lot of — both presentations have contributed to, but it’s somewhere in the middle. You have left a huge gap between you, and that gap has to be filled in in concrete terms by the Iraqi people, both Sunni and Shi’a.
Don’t you agree with that? Thank you.”
Even Fisk had trouble with that one.
Robert Fisk’s name has become part of the English language.
Along with fellow countryman Ned Lud, who founded the Luddites.Fisk is a modern Luddite.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 11 13 at 11:55 AM • permalinkI remember the stories of Fisk’s great-great-granpa in the Crimea, complaining because he couldn’t get fresh goose-quills at Balaclava…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 11 13 at 12:57 PM • permalinkI dunno, PW. Homer has this child-like innocence about his posts, rather like listening to a 3 year describe how Santa brings toys every year. DBO just sounds clueless in most everything that he posts.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 11 13 at 02:28 PM • permalink
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Yeah, he works. For the enemy.