It's been a long time. After weeks away from the burden of confronting my own thoughts, I'm back at the keyboard because something written in The Dartmouth this term has finally captured my fancy -- or, rather, my disgust and sorrow -- to the extent that I feel an overpowering urge to pour out my guts and do whatever is within my grasp to provide hope for the campus I yearn for. I refer to John Stevenson's column in the Feb. 26 issue of The Dartmouth entitled, "Attack the Message." Hopefully other people are motivated to respond to it too. Dialogue is good, even if Stevenson grabs it around the neck and kicks it repeatedly in the crotch until it can only whimper and look at the ground.
Let's start with the title of Stevenson's column. Stevenson is obviously an English major in the making: he has taken irony to a whole new level. He urges people like Kevin Carmody, whose column he attacks, to attack what a person says and not the person him or herself. Yet a tone of personal attack pervades his column to the point that I am inclined to believe the words jumped out of the page and physically beat Carmody when he read it. Egocentrically placing himself in the position of all-seeing oracle of truth, he repeatedly attacks Carmody's "ignorance," "sophomoric name-calling," and "editorial diarrhea." He goes beyond simply attacking Carmody's viewpoint and attacks Carmody himself, as if only Stevenson is worthy of having an opinion. In attacking Carmody's immaturity, he himself reverts to a level of childishness I don't think I have ever before witnessed in a column in The Dartmouth; ironically, his attitude is a far cry from Carmody's rational, calm, well-argumented and constructively critical column.
But Stevenson doesn't stop there. He goes on to accuse Dartmouth students of ignorance, and not only that, he accuses the typical American of being blind to the obvious. Stevenson thinks only he can see, and hence only he is worthy of an opinion; I guess he thinks this justifies an attack so virulent that it cannot in any way be construed as rational discourse. "Why," says Stevenson, "should I bother with sensible dialogue since I know I'm right and everyone else is too incapable of understanding the issue to challenge me anyway?"
Stevenson's expert use of irony continues. His attack on Carmody is based on what he identifies as a misinterpretation of the facts. He criticizes Carmody for basing his analysis of Sharpton on news reports melted and distorted to the point of illegibility by the heat of racial tension. Meanwhile, he goes on to assert his own interpretation, which he automatically assumes is "right," even though he himself admits that the facts surrounding the case to which he refers were obscured. I have a question for Stevenson: what newspaper are you reading, and how do you automatically think you know what happened, let alone feel so strongly that you know the truth that the issue simply becomes undebatable because everyone else is wrong? Actually, if Stevenson's argument is based on anything beside his own emotions, it is based on resources paralleling the ones to which Carmody had access when he formulated his own opinion.
I have no delusions of knowing the truth behind this argument. I do know that the issue it embodies is central to the strength and unity of America. And I also know something far more basic, something upon which this and all arguments must be predicated for any hope of achieving a resolution: no progress toward understanding, whether it be along broad, all-encompassing racial lines or just among people of dissenting opinions at Dartmouth, can be made as long as attitudes like Stevenson's are present.
And that is the most upsetting thing about Stevenson's diatribe. His appalling attitude of superiority completely undermines all hopes for the inter-group understanding he ostensibly hopes to achieve. Stevenson seems to think he has all the answers, but how can we feel comfortable being enlightened by them when we know he can so readily slip into personal attacks against a classmate, the justification for his argument nebulous at best? Even if his column holds any factual merit (an issue which he himself throws in doubt with his extensive use of conjecture as support for his argument), it is corrupted by his absolutely disgusting tone. If we as a campus are ever to overcome this and other issues, reasoned argument, much like Carmody's and nothing like Stevenson's, must prevail.
Stevenson brings to light many important issues. He refers to how we cannot trust everything we read, especially if we read it in a newspaper -- and that I applaud. He also spends the energy he has left after attacking Carmody on revealing his own perceptions of racial strife. Unfortunately, he taints what he is convinced is a fact-based argument with unfounded accusations and hearsay, such as suggesting that white people were upset over the results of the O.J. Simpson case because they wanted to see the "aggressive" black male punished for attacking the "pure" white female, ignoring the more accurate explanation that all the evidence pointed to Simpson's guilt, something which was acknowledged in the subsequent civil trial. The gist of it -- racial divisiveness -- remains the same, even if Stevenson's hypocrisy in presenting his own opinion as absolute truth distorts any possible recognition of what the problem even is, let alone how to resolve it.
There is something much more fundamental that must necessarily serve as a prerequisite to any and all dialogue regarding divisive issues, something which I hope Stevenson learns before he continues to put his opinions down on paper: in order for us to discuss these issues constructively, we have to do so rationally and respectfully. And unless Stevenson takes that advice seriously, his opinions will go unheard, overpowered by his deafeningly obnoxious attitude, and everything he writes will continue to not only be a "reading nightmare," but a nightmare for any chance of progress.
