[Boston-editorial] re: the William Rivers Pitt "article"

[Matthew Williams]

Uh, well, lots of people use the term "progressive" in an expansive way 
to include everyone from left-liberals to radicals. It's how I usually 
use the term.

But to get to the substance of your point, if you want to write a 
response to Pitt, I see no problem with that. I'd be uncomfortable 
taking the feature down, just because one member of the collective 
disagrees with it. I don't think our criteria for featuring a 
commentary is whether we agree with it, but whether it's intelligent 
and well written, coming from a progressive perspective, and have some 
local connection. This fits all three of those criteria. I recall at 
least one instance where I featured a commentary I completely disagreed 
with because I thought it fit those three criteria.

I'll admit I don't know the details of the debate, but from what he 
says, he doesn't support the occupation so much as he doesn't think 
pulling out without a plan is viable. I don't agree with that position, 
but I know serious progressives, who adamantly oppose the occupation, 
who do have that position. If people want to respectfully critique that 
position, I think that's all to the good, but ostracizing progressives 
with that view isn't going to get us very far. I don't particularly 
want to debate the merits of the position here anyway, but the fact is 
we have no party line and we should feature a range of progressive 
views. Not that I would want to feature something by Christopher 
Hitchens defending US imperialism in the name of socialism, but the 
Pitt article doesn't do that. The commentary isn't even about his 
opinions on the occupation, but the state of the left.

Oh, and you should be getting an e-mail that you can respond to, to 
join this list.

-- Matt

On May 9, 2005, at 11:52 AM, sharpie at riseup.net wrote:

> hey folks... I think that what William Rivers Pitt says in this 
> "article"
> is not exactly "accurate." there were no "progressives" heckling him.
> there were "radicals" heckling him. and they were heckling him because
> he's an asshole, and was using the podium to sell magazines 
> essentially.
> the number of times he made reference to the magazine that he is now
> working for disgusted me.
>
> He supports the continuance of the Occupation! I mean, what the fuck?!
>
> anyway... I understand that maybe we need to be "fair" and so I would
> propose either taking this self-serving shit off the features column, 
> or
> we take it off until I can look over the video of what actually 
> happened,
> and write a response to him that is "fair" and based on the "facts" and
> not on William Rivers Pitt defending himself.
>
> peace
> sharpie
>
> also, can i get added to the editorial list? thanks!
>
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