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Like my amigo Sean and, I suspect, most American atheists, I celebrate Christmas. And why not:

By Tony Piro

Peace out, buffalo peeps. Have a merry whateverthefuck, see you when I feel like posting again.

So, where are all those voices which were pontificating on the virtues of divided government, about a year ago? What’s happened to all of you?

Don’t any of you want to tell us again how divided government is not only preferred by Americans but, in fact, genuinely for the best as it enforces compromise?

Anyone…?

Hm. I wonder what can have happened to all of those people.

Dear Professor Cole,

Please don’t whine about Facebook.

As I’ve said on other occasions, if you or someone else wants to use Facebook, go right ahead. And for that matter, if you want to whine about it, go right ahead… but be aware that you sound whiny and pathetic when you do so.

I realize that I run a risk, here, of sounding like I’m saying “if you don’t like the way things are then just do without,” a policy which is certainly neither progressive nor thoughtful nor, in many cases, especially practical.

But nuance can, naturally, work in more directions than just one. Yes, it’s simplistic to respond automatically to a complaint by saying “if you don’t like it why don’t you just do without,” but it’s also simplistic to conclude that, therefore, all complaining is equally valid. Obviously it is not; obviously whining is sometimes just whining, and the more whiny for being dressed up in the clothing of serious complaints about fairness and justice.

And in this case, I just don’t believe that you have much claim to your (usually justified and well-deployed) aggrieved voice for enlightened progressive opinion style, professor.

As multiple comments on your post point out, rather eloquently, Facebook is a private, for-profit corporation, for which you are not even a customer; their customers are instead those businesses and organizations actually paying them for information about and access to you. They are largely in business to engage in exactly the sort of misbehavior you lament.

Which doesn’t, by itself, invalidate your complaints. I complain about all kinds of businesses with which I still have some technically-voluntary association; it’s difficult to completely deny one’s business to all of the bad corporations in energy, telecommunications, finance, agriculture, media, etc., etc., etc.

But it’s much more difficult for me to see how a practicality exception applies to Facebook. You anticipate this objection and attempt to address it, but just end up making yourself look whinier and, probably, a bit hypocritical as well. Comments about Facebook’s social value are probably rather subjective, and difficult to judge, but I really believe that we’ve gone overboard by declaring that “you can no longer be in the blogging/ journalism/ public intellectual realm without it.”

Honestly, professor? (more…)