I’m pretty certain that you’re not one to talk, Buckley. At least where I study, “intelligent [or intellectual] discourse” consists of more than spouting your own ideological outrage. Example from your two-paragraph paragon of intellectual discourse:

“I am ashamed of your ability to spout such ignorance in Canadian media.”

Fascinating! When you make it past affective states, perhaps even we lowly scribes of the blogosphere will take your “intelligent discourse” seriously.

(Before I get into this, let me point out that I’m not saying I agree with Ms Jacobs.)

Your letters to Ms Jacobs are all rather light in content and heavy in emotion. It’s hard to blame her for not wanting to engage you in a serious discussion.

The effort you’ve put into pursuing the (IMO rather irrelevant) question of whether her original response was or was not a form letter could have been better spent addressing (for example) the question of the relevance of publicly-funded “women’s groups” to the real issues of gender equality.

And your last (so far) reply is IMO a bit over the top. She did not claim to be above criticism. She did not suggest that you have no right to criticise her. Rather, she said “please don’t”. Inappropriate? Yes. But hardly offensive, and certainly not “intellectual bullying”.

I would suggest that with a different approach there would have been a chance — a very small chance, perhaps, but a chance all the same — that Ms Jacobs would have been open to being enlightened. But as it stands, all you’ve managed to do is annoy her.

(Having said all that, I should confess that I, too, am sometimes guilty of this same kind of combative approach.)

Mindy Jacobs wrote:

I would not presume to tell you how to do your job, Stephen, so please don’t tell me how to do mine.

And I do not send form letters to my readers. But if I think the same general point is worth making to several readers, I will do so.

MJ

I replied:

As a journalist, editorialist and Canadian citizen, it is my right to explain to journalists what I expect of them as they participate in the media climate of this country. You may disagree with what I believe to be your basic professional responsibilities, but you have no right to say that I cannot criticize how you are a public journalist. To do so is a form of intellectual bullying. It is inappropriate and offensive.

It is simply arrogant to say you are beyond criticism. You are a public figure writing in a public newspaper! If you wish to have no random person reading your public work criticize you as a public journalist, you are truly living in an absurd reality. First you say you write in a newspaper so you don’t need to deal in truths that academics discuss. Now you say that as a public newspaper writer no one can criticize your approach to journalism or editorialism? Democracy, free presses and sound public deliberation of policy all oppose both of those arguments.

Further, if you think sending the exact same response make an identical point to different critics arguing different points is NOT a form letter, I am speechless. Dictionary.com defines form letter thus. “Form letter: a standardized letter that can be sent to any number of persons, occasionally personalized by inserting the name of each recipient in the salutation.”

You have now reached the point where you simply astound me.

Mindy Jacobs wrote:

Stephen, I do not have time to wade into all this post-racist, post-colonial rhetoric. This is a newspaper, not a women’s studies dept.

MJ

I replied:

Mindy

I am not at all surprised that you do not have the time to discuss why you think Canada is no longer a racist or colonial country, or that there are no lingering effects of such social diseases. Simply, I think the position is indefensible without significant dislocation from reality, which you seem quite adept at.

So I applaud your choice not to try to defend your views from the land of unreality.

Hiding behind the lame excuse that your piece showed up in a newspaper is no excuse. Just because something appears in a newspaper, doesn’t keep it from being held accountable for truth or heinous assaults on the reality of millions of Canadians. In fact, because newspapers and the people who string together ideas in columns reach much wider audiences than academics’ work, they should be held to at least as high a standard for misrepresentations of reality as academics. Your newspaper excuse offends me and likely journalists of integrity worldwide.

By the way, your initial reply to me, which I suspected to be a form letter because of its inapplicability to my email, seems to have been a form letter as I compared your not so relevant reply to me with other people’s identical or nearly identical replies, which themselves had little to do with their particular complaints.

If you pretend to be someone who deserves to speak publicly on serious social, political and economic issues in a public newspaper, you should have the integrity to actually respond to people’s unique criticisms instead of lumping them all in a bin and replying with inapplicable, thereby dismissive generalities.

As it stands, you appear merely incapable of seriously discussing the issues you poorly discussed in your original piece. That is very sad for the state of “journalism” in this country. How this does not bother you simply escapes me.

Stephen Buckley

i was just forwarded mindy’s email reply to a friend’s attack of her ignorace. virtually word for word identical. it again dealt with none of the specific issues in my friend’s email.

mindy is a pariah on intelligent discourse.

There are concrete programs that can be funded to help marginalized women (and men) without having to shell out taxpayers’ dollars to shore up special interest umbrella groups as well.

MJ

My response to her pathetic retort:

Wow. I’m quite speechless.

What you write about the existence of funded programs to help marginalized people [men and women] is absolutely true. It would likewise be effective if the contemporary and historical condition and circumstances of women are and have been equivalent to men. They are not. You may believe them to be equal, but that would not make it true. Any social recommendations you may make based on those beliefs would be wholly flawed.

Further, in your limited reply to my limited response to your piece, you fail to comment on the state of racism or colonialism in Canada today. Am I to conclude from this that you stand by your claim that we are a post-racist and post-colonial society free from the effects of either of these social scourges?

Sadly, your reply is as inadequate as the level of understanding in your original article.

Stephen Buckley

I’ll likely post mine if I don’t see it on the letters page tomorrow.