Bruce, nice name.

Aha, a last word freak to add to everything else. I side with much of the criticism of you that has come around to my way of thinking in the comments above.

You do not understand what I’m saying because you are alienated from the group of people that you claim to speak for. The people have no interest in you speaking for them in mainstream media, law review articles, or otherwise. I do not claim to speak for the people or the left. You do.

It’s too bad that you consistently make assumptions about what I’m saying without actually reading and addressing what I am actually saying. I’ll let what I wrote in the many comments here speak for itself. Having a dialogue with you has been frustrating, as you really don’t seem to care about responding to my arguments. So go ahead and keep calling me self-important and inactive, despite the fact that I do tons of media interviews. Go ahead and make wild assumptions about me and ignore what I’m saying. I’ve tried repeatedly to engage you in an argument, but I think we’ll just continue talking past each other. I still don’t quite understand what your position actually is; as one who gets quite a lot of media calls and does many media interviews, I was sounding off about a more systemic problem I’ve noted and was hoping to have a more constructive dialogue about how to fix it. Instead, the dialogue with you has proven rather unhelpful and unproductive. That’s unfortunate. I hope that the left does whatever you think it ought to do, and that self-important assholes like me don’t get in the way.

The point from all of this which you repeatedly miss is this:

Don’t presume that you speak for the left and that your retreat from mainstream media will be any loss. Indeed, your position, inactivity, continuance of self-inflated importance, and so on is exactly what the left doesn’t need.

Law review articles might not be helpful to everybody’s practice area. Your argument assumes that law review articles should be assessed by their usefulness to the legal profession. But many law review articles are not written for the legal profession but for different audiences — for legal academics, for professors in other fields, for policymakers, etc. I’ve written some articles to an audience of policymakers, for example. One piece got cited several times in Congressional testimony and read by may congressional staffers and state legislative staffers. It wasn’t written for practicing attorneys — it was written for an audience of policymakers. So I think that you’re viewing the purpose of law review articles too narrowly. They are written for many purposes.

Second, there are law review articles that have been quite influential. I blogged about it at this post: What Law Review Articles Had a Major Influence on the Law?

I am a lawer and have been one for almost 20 years. A good portion of my practice is appellate work. I have never found a law review article to be of any use. We don’t read them, judges don’t read them and they are not helpful to the practice of law.

Sorry,

Ima

I don’t agree. Today, more people are college-educated than at any time in history. True, we could do better, but Americans are not a dumb bunch of people. The media treats them as dumb and panders to the lowest common denominator. Coulter doesn’t get all the attention because her work is as smart as most Americans can handle; she gets the attention because she’s entertaining and controversial and the MSM exploits that. It’s not as fun to have on somebody like an Eric Muller who is balanced, armed with real facts and arguments. When the TV news show calls for a 5 minute segment, best to get Coulter on and find some equally obnoxious talking head for the other polar extreme and let them go at it. My point is that I wonder whether it’s a good thing for us to play along in this game when the format of the game guarantees that we’re already 10 points down. This doesn’t mean disengagement — it is why I cheer the blogosphere, because at least it allows engagement on terms that don’t already make a mockery of the debate.

Socrates was astute in recognizing that even smart people can be seduced by sophistry and even smart people find it challenging and hard to engage in deep critical thought and discussion. That doesn’t mean, however, that people can’t handle it, or, after being exposed to it, don’t appreciate it. On the other hand, we all know what happened to Socrates.

For the record (and perhaps as an allocution of sorts) I have sound-byted you. (http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1127379915380&rss=ltn)

Nonetheless, my point remains that I think local publications (read: smaller than 100,000-circulation newspapers like the one I’m working for now) or small TV stations would love to have a “legal affairs expert” on call who could produce explainer articles.

Blogs are part of the solution, I agree, but they should not be the end-point of the debate. After all, the only way one finds a blog is by looking for it — a luxury an unknowing person in the middle of nowhere might not have. Outreach to small, local newspapers might be a good way to draw in readers and get them interested in complex legal issues (and maybe even cultivate some new online readers too).

-Who do you people want to save: Coulter, the law professors, or Barabus?

“Save Coulter.”

“Save Barabus.”

-And what shall we do with the law professors?

I believe that the general public can understand the views of professors. There are many things professors write and say that are widely accessible. Perhaps you’re being elitist and view most people as dumb. I don’t. I think that they can understand, but my complaint is that the MSM often doesn’t provide a good vehicle to help get academic voices heard. I’m complaining about the medium by which debate is taking place today.

The assumption in your comment is that for the general public, the current level of rude obnoxious crap spouted by Coulter and others is the level of discourse we must sink to in order to respond. I don’t believe this. Maybe you do, as you seem to resort to calling many lefties “inarticulate, cowardly snobs.” This is the kind of childish banter that doesn’t advance the debate at all.

Professors are trying to speak out, but as Eric’s experience illustrates, the MSM enjoys focusing on the more provocative views of Coulter-types. Eric’s detailed discussion of the facts may not be as entertaining as Coulter or Malkin, and that’s why he’s shut out. And it’s not the general public who is shutting him out; it’s not that he cannot speak clearly; it’s that the MSM doesn’t want to have him speak, or only gives him a few seconds for a soundbite. Go read his blog posts about Malkin. Why didn’t that get the same level of coverage in the MSM?

NPR is one of the exceptions in the mainstream media — they actually care about having people talk and discuss, not just shout soundbites across the airwaves. Your experience with TV emphasizes my point.

There are certainly a few who can trade barbs with the Malkins and Coulters and get attention in the mainstream media format — Keith Olbermann, Al Franken, etc. I applaud them. They are needed. I applaud you for getting involved — and my argument isn’t that you should be disengaged. But we need to think about how to deal with a structural problem — that the parameters created by the mainstream media increasingly make it hard to have a meaningful debate. They give rise to folks like Malkin and Coulter who are well-adapted to exploiting these media formats. The question is how much professors should adapt to these formats to debate the Malkins and Coulters. The adaptation often inhibits or strips away the things that academics can best offer in the debate, which is detailed intelligent analysis and argument. And while some professors can develop some talent for engaging in the slick soundbite conversations in the MSM, they are not the most skilled for this format. In other words, I think Al Franken vs. Coulter would be more effective in the current formats the MSM will allow than most professors vs. Coulter.

I wish I had the answer, because I find the problem exasperating. The choice often seems to be: (1) engage in a “debate” with the Coulters by adopting a similar style, being rude and aggressive, overly self-assured in your points, and opting for quick soundbites rather than reasoned analysis and fact; or (2) be ignored by the MSM.

I appealed to every tv show that was hosting Malkin to allow me or Greg or some other internment scholar a bit of time to respond, but none of the shows would do it.

From what I recall, your dialogue with Malkin was mostly in the blogosphere. Did you ever try to debate Malkin on the radio or TV news? I think that the formats of these media make it very difficult to make the points you would have wanted to make. In other words, my point is that the mainstream media (not all of it — there are a few exceptions) is set up in a way that inhibits the kind of meaningful debate or even meaningful response that you might want to make.