Still limping along here with a creaky typepad. Yeah, I know the comments aren’t working either.
I. Can’t. Help. Myself. Ya gotta read Henry Farrell take down Linda Hirshman. Oh, the joy that brought me. Henry, I owe you a big frosty beer at APSA in August. This all came up because of a recent post on Open University and an op-ed in the Washington Post where she equated raising children to picking up socks.
Apt. 11d 
Laura,
Is this you who just posted explaining the bizarre level of hostility in CT?
“Linda – I believe you evoke such strong reactions from good people, like Henry, Mark, Ann, and even myself, not because you use strong language. Even the issues with methodology are not the root of our outrage. It’s your contempt for women who watch children, your disdain of caretaking responsibilities, your rigidity, your unquestioning reverence for the corporate workplace. You also really don’t seem to like women very much. Henry would have given you a free ride on the methodology, if the larger thesis wasn’t so irksome.
Posted by Laura · June 8th, 2007 at 12:59 am”
I can see the free beer thing, if this is you, but how exactly does attacking someone’s methodology, or conversely, giving her a free ride if her message isn’t irksome qualify as a celebration of American Political Science? Or any political science? or science?
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I responded to you in the comment section of CT, Linda, but we can do it here, too.
The questions that Henry and Mark pose of your methodology is exactly what will happen in every panel we will attend at APSA. All presenters will be questioned, sometimes roughly, about each and every claim they make. I’m going to give a paper about blogs and the media and I expect to get grilled about how I come to each of my conclusions. Thick skin time.
Linda, I was actually trying to be nice and explain to you why so many smart, left leaning, reasonable academics disagree rather strongly with your ideas, as well as your methodology.
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Surely you are not now denying what you just said a day ago — that Henry called me “bat shit” and “comprehensively pwned” and “want to be rude” because he (and you and Mark Schmitt apparently) disagreed with my advocacy of women staying in the workplace. Anyway, I rather doubt this is how people question each other at the APSA, just like I doubt such professional exchanges are a “take down” with frosty beer at the end. Certainly the Law School Conventions weren’t nearly that much fun, in the old days when I went to them. But at least people didn’t give each other a “free ride” on their methodology unless the conclusions were “irksome.” We didn’t open critiques of each others’ work with “and speaking of vomit” either.
I actually really appreciated your candor about how these “smart and reasonable left academics” are ends-driven, and all their angry, sneering tone about the meaning of the coding of DK’s in Luskin and Bullock is actually because they hate what I have found.
Given that you disagree with my conclusions, I hate to limit the “joy” you took in the “take down,” on my methodology, but at least CT commenter “Dr. Slack” has figured out that the disagreement is extremely technical, nuanced and much more balanced in my direction than Farrell’s hysterical posting would have shown. Schmitt never followed up with his transparently inadequate first pass at it, and, confronted with Dr. Slack’s and my third effort to clarify the methodological dispute yesterday, Farrell has gone silent. Maybe he is spending the time figuring out some great argument about why he is right on the statistical point of how to code disproportionately female Don’t Knows. And he may be right. But
the fact that the study I cited on its face clearly supports my position and Henry is taking so long to show what, if anything, is wrong with invoking it, just makes the World Wrestling Federation behavior online look simply, as you so candidly confessed, strategic. Scary business, but the history of the dangers in scholarship driven by pre-existing political commitments to specific outcomes is well enough documented for me not to have to review it here.
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Linda, you have totally misunderstood and misrepresented what I said. I said that your thesis explains the anger of your critics; the methodology problems alone don’t usually create anger. I’m not sure how I can explain myself any better.
Good luck.
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On June 12, Henry returned from his travels and I was able to ask him about your description of his process again. Here’s the exchange:
“But I’m so glad you are back Henry, because while you were away, Laura, from 11D posted this explanation of your writings about me. I am asking you whether she is right about you:
“Linda – I believe you evoke such strong reactions from good people, like Henry, Mark, Ann, and even myself, not because you use strong language. Even the issues with methodology are not the root of our outrage. It’s your contempt for women who watch children, your disdain of caretaking responsibilities, your rigidity, your unquestioning reverence for the corporate workplace. You also really don’t seem to like women very much. HENRY WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU A FREE RIDE ON THE METHODOLOGY, IF THE LARGER THESIS WASN’T SO IRKSOME[Emphasis added].”
Posted by Laura · June 8th, 2007 at 12:59 am”
Posted by Linda Hirshman · June 12th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
#
And Henry answered:
“Rather obviously, Laura is wrong here, and it seems to me rather peculiar that you should adduce this as some sort of evidence”
…
Posted by Henry · June 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
So maybe you should reconsider that icy brew.
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My goodness, you really are a nutjob, since you felt that defense of your own methodological flaws is SO crucial you had to hijack the comment thread of a totally different, substantive discussion.
FWIW, I do think that Schmitt pwned you. “I’m too bored to refute your point” is not a valid refutation to a methodological criticism. But you are the master of selective quotation. Given the rest of what Henry wrote, I wouldn’t exactly crow that he agrees with you. I suspect that the icy brew is still on.
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OK, you win, I lose. Henry thinks you’re a “batshit crazy” because of your methodology and not your larger thesis. You do understand that this argument is not helping your cause at all. I would suggest dropping it.
If you are spoiling for a fight, this isn’t the place for it. We’ve discussed you and Caitlin Flanagan and all the rest quite a bit on this blog before, and I’m done with it. If you and the readers want to get into it, that’s fine by me. I can make an open thread, if people want it.
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Laura,
If you do an open thread, can you focus it a bit and kill it if it goes 75% personal?
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Just so we’re clear. When you say “Posted by,” do you mean that you and Henry posted this exchange at a publicly accessible site somewhere in that infinitely vast universe known as the Internets? Or are you rather (which I suspect is the case, though I’m not entirely certain: hence the request for clarification) reprinting, here in Laura’s comments section, excerpts from a private email correspondence between yourself and Henry Farrell, with “Posted by” loosely referring to the act of sending the message via email, which might be seen as a form of sending by post?
If the latter, you really need to step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath, count to ten, maybe have an icy brew. Though perhaps you mean the former? But if so, where is the link?
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I’m closing this thread. Next time that Linda writes something that I like or hate, I’ll link to it, and we’ll talk more then.
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Hirshman reminds me of one of the kids in my 9-year-old’s class – desperate to be a center of attention, and willing to say or do anything to do it. If the attention is negative, well, that’s better than no attention at all. The parents are good friends of ours, and we are trying to sell our guy on, he has some virtues, play dates, etc. But it’s tough, because he angers our kid so often.
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