Froma Harrop Implodes Publicly

Never heard of Froma Harrop? Ed Morrisy and James Taranto think maybe not, but you really should read about her position in the Great Civility Discourse. She actually has a Civility position, with an official title and everything. Everything except, well, civility.

Harrop is,

“ syndicated columnist and head of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, a group that has a project called Restoring Civility as a featured part of its website. Her twice-weekly column appears in more than 200 newspapers, and she also blogs at RealClearPolitics. According to Media Matters for America, Harrop had the 14th largest circulation and ranked 20th in total reach in 2008.

If you hadn’t heard of Harrop before this, at least the WSJ’s James Taranto had. In his Best of the Web column from Wednesday, James and his crew skewered the Restoring Civility activist for her decidedly uncivil attack on Tea Party activists:

“Froma Harrop, a member of The [Providence] Journal’s editorial board and a syndicated columnist, has been named president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. The NCEW is a 64-year-old professional organization. Its members include editorial writers, editors, broadcasters and online opinion writers. One of its new missions, the Civility Project, endeavors to improve the quality of political discourse.”–Providence Journal, April 15

“Make no mistake: The tea party Republicans have engaged in economic terrorism against the United States–threatening to blow up the economy if they don’t get what they want. And like the al-Qaida bombers, what they want is delusional: the dream of restoring some fantasy caliphate. . . . Americans are not supposed to negotiate with terrorists, but that’s what Obama has been doing. . . . That the Republican leadership couldn’t control a small group of ignoramuses in its ranks has brought disgrace on their party. But oddly, Obama’s passivity made it hard for responsible Republicans to control their destructive children. The GOP extremists would ask Obama for his firstborn, and he’d say, ‘OK.’ So they think, why not ask for his second-born, to which he responds, ‘Let’s talk.’ ”–Froma Harrop syndicated column, Aug. 2

That dig apparently annoyed Harrop, who responded on her own web site yesterday. Her explanation is, to say the least, entirely self-serving, and she twists the definition of “civility” into knots in order to explain her double standard:

“’I see incivility as not letting other people speak their piece. It’s not about offering strong opinions. If someone’s opinion is fact-based, then it is permissible in civil discourse. Of course, there are matters of delicacy, and I dispensed with all sweet talk in this particular column. And I did stoop to some ad hominem remarks, I’ll admit.

However, it was a Wall Street Journal editorial that first called the tea-partiers “hobbits.” After John McCain picked up the hobbits theme in a much-quoted remark, a subsequent editorial expanded on it[.’]”

And here’s the twist of the knife: when Harrop posted her bitterly uncivil comments, she received a lot of comments – all civil – and all of them calling her out on her uncivility. Remember her comment above?

” I see incivility as not letting other people speak their piece”.

Harrop deleted all the comments that were critical of her double standard, and closed the comments. But here's the thing about the internet: the comments were grabbed and uploaded elsewhere before Harrop got them nuked at her own site. The comments she deleted are HERE.

One of the definitions of Narcissism is that “I don’t have any problems; you are the one with problems”. Narcissism in its advanced form cannot be treated for that very reason: there is no reason to accept any responsibility when one has no issues to be responsible for. The parallel with leftist civility problems is compelling.