ARE WE ALL BIGOTS?

Recently I was having a difficult time falling asleep and decided to see what was on You Tube. To my delight, I found an old debate between Alan Deshowitz and Norman Finkelstein on Democracy Now! which was taped right after Deshowitz's book "A Case For Israel" was first released. It appears that Democracy Now! had asked Finkelstein to come on the air to debate the veracity of the Deshowitz's claims made in his book.

In the introduction,  one of the first words out of Mr. Finkelstein's mouth were "...and only one conclusion one could reach having read the book,  and this is a scholarly judgement, not an adhominum attack, Mr. Deshowitz has concocted a fraud". I knew Deshowitz was in trouble within the first few minutes when Mr. Finkelstein was asked for evidence of plagarism and he responded with exacting precision "I started to read your book,  Mr. Dershowitz and came to Chapter One, footnote 10, footnote 11...."  To make a long story short, Deshowitz didn't follow any rule of debate, interjected when Finkelstein was making his case, wouldn't respond to any of Finkelstein's points, was invasive, etc. It was almost embarassing to watch Mr. Dershowitz flail around like a fish on a hook. By the second half of the debate, it had turned into the Dershowitz show with Norman Finkelstein just sitting there with a small smile of complete contempt on his face. Dershowitz's antics, avoidance, back-pedaling and complete disrespect for the rules of debate had given me a headache and I decided to email him my complete disgust with his performance and to let him know what I thought of his "work of scholarship".

This is how it went:

1.  Email from me to him:
-----Original Message-----
From: mmmcknigh836@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 23:33:53
To: xxxx.harvard.edu>;
Subject: Inquiry or Comment

I have watched you in several debates over the Israel Palestine Conflict. It was actually painful to watch. You are disrespectful of the other party's time, do not answer any question directly and actually appear to be the stereotype of the manipulating lawyer. You challenge anyone to find any any distortion of proven fact, yet when are proven wrong, you claim typographical errors. You also obviously do not realize that if the error helps or hinders your cause has no effect on the what the challenge was. If it was not a true fact or a misquotation, you are still wrong. What makes it worse, it that you actually refer to this as scholarship. Your work reflects the same amount of serious scholarship as the tabloids have. You refer to Chomsky planet, I think you are way out in space by yourself on this one. It is almost like watching Bush when he is trying to make a speech. Painful, painful, painful!

I certainly did not expect any response and once I had emailed it off, I received a standard message basically telling me that Mr. Dershowitz is thankful for any comments, but cannot reply himself...blah, blah, blah, his assistants handle his email. To my amazement:   

2.  Email from him to me:

from xxxx@law.harvard.edu reply-to xxxxx@law.harvard.edu to mmmcknigh836@gmail.com date Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 7:52 AM subject Re: Inquiry or Comment mailed-by law.harvard.edu

Your bigotry is showing
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Now, I had to certainly respond back as I do not understand what in my comments made him call me a bigot.  I didn't refer to the Israel Palestine conflict nor did I express who I felt was right or who I felt was in the wrong.  I basically just told him was:

1. he was a poor debater
2. he was a poor sport
3. his book was not a work of scholarship 

3.  My reply to him (unanswered as yet)

to xxxx@law.harvard.edu

bcc: xxxx@xxxx.xx

Mr.Dershowitz:

The logic of your response to my comments evades me. I must say though that I do appreciate your response and certainly did not expect one.

How does my voiced opinion of your scholarship (or non scholarship) and my assessment of your lack of decorum and debating skills in any way characterize me as a bigot?  A statement of my perception of your painful performance did not in anyway support or favour the position of either side.  It simply was a statement reflecting my evaluation of your performance.

So is it fair for me to say, that in your opinion, anyone who found your performance on Democracy Now lacking in credibility or serious scholarship is a bigot?

The ironic part is that Mr. Deshowitz, "defender of the constitution", "Harvard Professor", "lawyer to celebrity criminals" and "friend to both Mr.Clinton and the State of Israel" actually has time to answer me at 7:52 a.m. via email to respond to my criticism of his book and debating skills.  Even funnier, I googled him with regards some inane statement he had made and found myself on this website "We Hold The Truths - Strait Gate Ministries" also referring to Mr. Dershowitz's response to them via (every superhero's # 1 tool) his blackberry.  On their website, they write:

"A question we now ask is, why did Alan Dershowitz answer We Hold These Truths on his BlackBerry?  What nerve did we strike?" (http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2862)"

If you have some time and need a good laugh, watch it on You Tube (video feature up top). I already respected Norman Finkelstein before watching this, but my estimation of him certainly went way up, as he was cool and collected listening to this ridiculous, little man.