Bush is a succesful politician. That qualifies him as an expert on being elected, but says nothing concerning his knowledge of huiman rights, and does not give him any moral authority concerning human rights.
What it comes down to is that Bush supports torture but denies it, and Pinter has called him on it. Both speak to the masses.
Would it be better if only Bush were given a wide audience? I think not.
Artists have been bringing attention to human rights and political issues for thousands of years.
Well, I’ll agree with you about Ms. Streisand. She can’t even write a proper letter to the editor:
“In light of the obvious step away from the principals of journalistic integrity, which would dictate that journalists be journalists, editors be editors and accountants be accountants, I am now forced to carefully reconsider which sources can be trusted to provide me with accurate, unbiased news and forthright opinions.”
Yeah, this is what gets me about some of the people who rail against folks like Pinter. They seem to believe that we should actually accord him less than the usual amount of credence simply because he happens to be prominent. Not only that, but they often appear unwilling to draw distinctions between celebrities who simply jump on a passing bandwagon, and celebrities who arrive at their political views through long years of reading, involvement, and activism.
I certainly don’t believe that we should accord someone authority on a particular political subject just because the person happens to be well known in some field of cultural endeavor. But, like it or not, celebrities get afforded more opportunities to speak in front of large audiences than most of us. So when they do speak, and we do hear what they say, surely it’s better to listen to the content of their speech and evaluate its merit, rather than adopting a knee-jerk position that dismisses their opinion out of hand just because they happen to be famous.
And how about learning to separate someone like Pinter, whose politics and social engagement form a crucial aspect of his cultural work, from those who specialize in vapid sound bites bereft of any evidence of careful consideration or introspection?
Then Weirddave is making a bad point, and doing it poorly. IIRC, Sokal & Bricmont quote Chomsky on this very sort if issue in Fashionable Nonsense. When Chomsky speaks to mathematicians on mathematics, nobody cares what his credential are, they just care about his arguments; however, when he speaks about politics, everyone tries to dismiss him because he lacks credentials, rather than considering his reasoning.
Also, even if the credentialist argument were valid—which it’s not—it would be interesting to know exactly when someone like Chomsky should be considered sufficiently qualified to speak on political issues. After all, American Power and the New Mandarins was released in 1969, and since then Chomsky has produced literally dozens of books dealing with political issues. Most of those books are extremely heavily footnoted, with literally thousands of references to newspapers, magazines, journals, television programs, scholarly books, popular books, reports by NGOs, government reports and documents, and a multitude of other sources.
Just how many hundreds of thousands of pages does Chomsky have to read about politics? Just how many dozens of books, thousands of pages, and multiple thousands of footnotes does he have to produce before people concede—even if they don’t agree with what he says—that he might be sufficiently well informed to speak on the subject?
I’m not arguing that Unclebeer or Weirddave (or anyone else) should agree with Chomsky’s position. I’m just arguing that the credentialist argument is nothing more than intellectual cowardice, a rabbit hole that allows the person using it to avoid dealing with substantive issues while making a belligerent and completely irrelevant claim regarding qualifications.
I’ll second that.
And I didn’t mean to be disrespectful to Unclebeer or Weirddave. I’m awfully inclined to say, “Oh, that guy is a playwright, what the hell does he know?” That’s why I’m in tune to it.
And, of course, if the guy is just spouting assertions without any actual reasoning, then…
Sure. But to make that determination, it is necessary to actually listen to what he has to say, rather than dismiss him out of hand simply because he doesn’t have some particular qualification.
People who make the credentialist argument also have to deal with one possible corrollary. If they dismiss people out of hand for not having the right credentials (whatever they might be), then do they accept other people who do have the right credentials, even if their arguments are crap?
For instance, this person sounds like they might be pretty well credentialled to speak on issues related to politics and the law:
Despite those impressive credentials, however, i still think that Ann Coulter makes some very poor arguments.