Monday, July 9, 2007

Insufficient Gratitude Watch


Today’s blog essay title is half-facetious, with tongue halfway planted in cheek. I won’t be starting an “Insufficient Gratitude Watch” any time soon. But if I were to do so, I could post such comments as I noticed Hugh Fitzgerald make today on a recent Dhimmi Watch article of his:

[Louis Bertrand] translated into English Andre Servier’s “Psychologie des musulmanes” which can, thanks to the efforts of a JW poster, now be found on-line.

Were I that JW poster, I would say, “Gee, you’re welcome Hugh, glad to spend 3 hours of my time which is not worth money to help out JW, even though JW never seems to care much to reciprocate any substantial gratitude to us readers...”

That JW poster could also add that Hugh has made public on the pages of Jihad Watch before (in a comments section, at least) his fastidious distaste for mingling too much with the hoi polloi of the Jihad Watch readership—except, of course, when he has to parenthetically thank one for doing the cause unrequited favors.

As I argued more comprehensively in my previous essay, Spencer and his Readers: Ideas for Improving Jihad Watch (and supplemented here), there are many ways that Spencer and his Board can use Jihad Watch to involve his loyal and growing reader population and also show his respect and gratitude for all the time and thought they devote to his cause (which, incidentally, also helps increase his fame and book sales). One of my readers, Kab-bin-Ashraf, in the comments section of my update to the above linked essay, noted off the top of his head two or three more examples of the dependency Jihad Watch has upon its readers, without much show of reciprocity.

3 comments:

Nobody said...

I don't know whether anybody else has noted it, but no phrase has seemed more snobbish to me than 'from a poster above', where Hugh goes out of his way to not acknowledge the identity of a poster he's responding to. Doesn't make any sense, since anybody can see who it is that's being addressed, and in some cases, attacked (in which case, it might make more sense in terms of attacking the argument rather than the person).

I also agree that it was baffling to see him advocate the handbook, and never again take any interest in its progress at the time we took the project public. While I am more disappointed in that instance with the general readership that had little interest in it, the fact that our appeals never received any echos from Hugh (unlike in the case of the demographic jihad appeal that once went out), wasn't too well taken either. As for Greg's request a couple of days ago to post reviews on amazon, I did, but the thing that annoys me about him is that he never responds to any discussions about his DVD in the comments section.

Indeed, in some cases, no gratitude is more like it.

Hesperado said...

Nobody,

"I don't know whether anybody else has noted it, but no phrase has seemed more snobbish to me than 'from a poster above', where Hugh goes out of his way to not acknowledge the identity of a poster he's responding to."

Yeah, I agree. A long time ago, during one of my previous incarnations that eventually got me banned, I made a couple of snide comments to Hugh in the comments section (which he never responded to, of course).

"I also agree that it was baffling to see him advocate the handbook, and never again take any interest in its progress at the time we took the project public."

Actually, Hugh never really directly advocated the handbook, as far as I know; all he's done is make parenthetical comments about how certain aspect (which would represent one or two of the Handbook Index) would be useful -- more along the lines of "print this out and pin it to your refrigerator, it might come in handy" -- which I think is ridiculously lax considering the exigent importance of something like a Handbook.

"the fact that our appeals [about the Handbook] never received any echos from Hugh (unlike in the case of the demographic jihad appeal that once went out), wasn't too well taken either."

Also no echos from Spencer or any other Board Members.

Anonymous said...

Just to add something here about the origins of the Handbook idea, this was something that was discussed explicitly by Hesp and I in Nov. 2005 (re pamphlet or booklet). The issue of such a handbook was also raised several times by certain posters in threads subsequent to Nov. 2005 and prior to August 2006.