So, these quotes are from The Redneck Manifesto by Jim Goad, which was a great fuckin’ book. But having heard of your bet with the world that anyone who can point out an error or inconsistency in Mr. Goad’s work will get a hundred bucks, I’m compelled to try to cash in despite my admiration for Mr. Goad’s work.
“Serfdom was comparable to slavery in all the important senses: Serfs worked on giant agricultural plantations for the lord’s sole benefit”
-page 45
“Taxes are much higher now than the taxes that caused a revolution in 1776. They’re higher than the ‘tribute’ that feudal lords demanded of their serfs, which was usually a third of their crops.”
-page 191
Either the serf’s tribute was part of a larger package of economic transfer to the lord which consisted of the remaining two thirds of his income, or the serf conducted the physical activity of working with the intention of the sole benefit of the lord who consistently surprised him with two thirds of his own crops. If one of these things is true, then it should have been made clearer in the text. If neither is true, somebody owes me a hundred bucks.
More broadly, taken together, these statements imply either that our lives are worse than medieval serfs as well as those of slaves. Since my life is not that bad, medieval serfs as well as slaves must have had it pretty good, and we should get feudalism or slavery back.
Sincerely,
Richard Rose
Beachwood, Ohio
Dear Richard,
“More broadly, taken together, these statements imply either that our lives are worse than medieval serfs as well as those of slaves.”
No they don’t. Please learn the difference between implying something and making an inference. Do a little brushing-up on the whole idea of “straw man arguments,” too.
You’re INFERRING that I said our lives are worse. All I said is that “the master” takes a bigger cut than he typically did during serfdom…a bigger cut than the British taxation that cause a revolution.
And that’s absolutely true, unless someone can figure out how much that “tax on fruit trees” was.
How anyone wants to interpret that 100% true statement is beyond my purview. But unless you can nail me following up my statement with something along the lines of, “…which means our lives are now worse than they were then,” you’re shadow-boxing with a statement I never made.
UPDATE:
In my original response, I wrote the word “cause” when the proper variant should have been in the past tense, i.e., “caused.”
I found the mistake, so I think I’ve nullified your chances of pouncing on it in the hopes of getting $100. I believe the deal was that someone had to be the one to “find” the mistake in order to get the loot.
For the record, I am an intensely arrogant and haughty individual, but I am not the one who issued this “find a mistake and get paid” challenge. I believe at one point on the streetcarnage comments board I dared someone who said my writing was “filled with errors” to back up their statement by actually pointing out a single error, but that was the extent of it.
I also cop to my mistakes when they turn out to be, you know, actual mistakes. In the ill-fated VICE article I did about slavery, someone nailed me claiming the Australian trade in convict laborers started 11 years before it actually did. The error didn’t change the nature of my point (which was that England only started sending convicts to Australia after America rebelled and was therefore no longer a fertile dumping ground), but I graciously and gallantly copped to the factual error because I am of such refined and noble stock.
I also found a big error in The Redneck Manifesto. I cited a source regarding the quotient of Ireland’s population that was wiped out by Cromwell’s army. Judging by most other sources I’ve since encountered, my source appears to have severely overestimated the percentage of Ireland’s living inhabitants that Cromwell eliminated. So, yeah, that was a mistake.
UPDATE: JIM READ THE LETTER QUICKLY WHILE ON VACATION AND REALIZES NOW THAT DUDE IS RIGHT. IT IS A CONTRADICTION. RICHARD ROSE, YOUR CHECK IS IN THE MAIL.
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WELL WHEN I FIRST READ THIS I THOUGHT “WHAT A FEMINAZI NAMED RICHARD ROSE?” BUT THEN I REMEMBERED THE PREGNANT “MAN” THAT HAS BEEN ON THE NEWS LATELY AND I KNEW IT WAS PROBABLY JUST A “WOMON” THAT HAS CHANGED HER NAME TO RICHARD ROSE TO TRY TO “GENDERFUCK” US LOL BUT IN ANY CASE ITS PATHETIC THAT THE “WOMYN” WHO HAVE BEEN PERSECUTING JIM GOAD LOW THESE MANY YEARS WILL SINK TO THIS DEPTHS OF CHANGING HER NAME JUST IN ORDER TO TRY TO MAKE HIM FEEL BAD.
WELL JIM I HOPE YOU ARE STILL LIVING IN THAT BLACK NIEHGBORHOOD BECAUSE I THINK IT IS MUCH DIFFERENT THAN THE “HIPSTERS” WHO MOVE TO THE BLACK NIEGHBORHOODS IN MY TOWN (NEW YORK) BECAUSE I THINK YOU ARE DOING IT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS. I MEAN SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE BLACK BUT I TOLD HIM NO WAY I’M VISITING YOUR APARTMENT DUDE!!! LOL
01.05.09 at 12:38 pm
1/3 of income paid as taxes isn’t the only important fact. You have to consider differences in purchasing power. If George Washington paid $10 in 2009 currency for a Big Mac, then taking a third of his income is a little bit of a bigger deal. Do you have purchasing power parities for colonial America and today?
Plus, there’s really no obvious parity between taking a third of someone’s food and taking a third of the money they earn without knowing what percentage of the food those people need in order to survive.
01.05.09 at 12:55 pm
My guess is that we have the better purchasing power today, but that’s just a guess.
Anyway, my point is that you can’t use the tax rate alone to make your point.
01.05.09 at 1:01 pm
So if George Washington sucks MY dick, does that make ME gay? I mean, shit, I could just close my eyes and dream of Madonna’s vag!
01.05.09 at 1:17 pm
Be it far from me to defend Goad, but Beachwood, Ohio is a nancy town with a giant puke of a shopping mall, a Whole Foods and about 30 Starbucks. It’s also a mere 15 minutes from Cleveland Heights, and we all know what goes down there. Anyone who’d deliberately move there is a wanker dee-luxe. The dude’s name is Dick Rose so I guess he really is a fucking hard-on, capiche? And why did he have to do this right as MY copies of Goad’s books are waiting for ME at the post office? Poetic justice would have allowed ME to unearth these errors. Goad knows I’m on his case. I’ll start reading that shit as soon as I can muster the courage to ask my surly ass postal workers to get me my reading materiel from behind the counter. Those goons make me wanna pro-barf on their greasy bullet proof glass. And check this out, if historical information is fair game, Sir Goad best be using legit primary sources. Nearly all historical info is questionable and therefore potentially false. I got me a high a$$ academic IQ.
If you don’t think we’re slaves, you’re blind. The money men took what they would have otherwise spent on slave quarters, slave food, slave housing and simply turned it over to the slaves (us) to be used as we see fit (crack and $150 team jerseys?). It’s called a paycheck, i.e. a much more cost effective arrangement for the people in charge while giving us piss-poor reason to believe in the huge fucking lie which says that we’re somehow free. Do you really believe that you live under conditions that are even remotely conducive to reaching your human potential? The notion of American freedom (I laugh just thinking about it) is the greatest scam in the history of the world. “Oh boy! I’m free to get a shitty soul sucking job, if I’m lucky, and then spend my hard earned money (that’s worth nothing!) on useless, over-priced plasticene toys that mollify the brainwashed retard/boss that yaps away in my media fucked head.” Yeah rummy, your life is great. I don’t need no stinkin’ book to figure that out.
01.05.09 at 2:49 pm
wahh wahh. everyone is whiny today.
01.05.09 at 3:48 pm
Hey, “high a$$ academic IQ”…
You misspelled “Plasticine.”
And “overpriced.”
And “bulletproof.”
I’ll spare you all the missing hyphens necessary for compound modifiers as well as all your other punctuation errors.
Kelly Pavlik never should have fucked with Bernard Hopkins.
01.05.09 at 5:50 pm
Pouncing on whether or not you claim we are worse off, you conveniently skip past the inconsistency brought to light by the two quotes Richard provided. I don’t know who made the bet but it sounds to me like someone needs to put their money where their mouth is.
01.05.09 at 6:03 pm
I bet Jim Goad has a Master’s in English and teaches freshman composition at Spelman College. Say Jim, how long does it take to grade each paper? 4 hours? “Compound modifiers.” Bite me.
Kelly had bronchitis for the Hopkins fight AND he fought at 10 lbs. above his usual 160 lb. middleweight limit. He also took home 3 million dollars. What did you take home that night? A double dose of Viagra? Hey, do you think Gavin would post film of me sparring with Kelly at the infamous South Side Boxing gym? He’d probably give the credit to SBTVC. Just fucking with you Gavin. I love you like a brother! Anyways, I’ll be at Kelly’s next fight with all the other goons looking for “firmer erections.” Let’s hope it happens.
01.05.09 at 6:28 pm
goddamn…. I am in dire need of some BN.
01.05.09 at 6:29 pm
Gavin was the one who made the challenge, not me. He didn’t even consult me about it.
And I didn’t “conveniently skip past” anything. For fuck’s sake, cut me some “good intentions” slack here.
The truth is worse: I read the letter too quickly and fixated on the last paragraph. Yes, it’s impossible to simultaneously work for someone’s “sole benefit” while subsisting on 2/3 of that labor. So yes, that’s a contradiction.
Still, it’s not a contradiction that undermines any of the broader points. Serfdom (under which a massive quotient of “privileged” Europeans lived for 1000 or so years) was far more similar to slavery than is commonly acknowledged.
And in “The Redneck Manifesto,” I quoted a British banker who said he and his financier cohorts were rooting for the North to win America’s Civil War because bankers preferred to “control” workers through taxes and wages rather than, as Vane$$a noted, having to pay for their room and board.
And despite whatever meaning one wishes to draw from the fact that we now devote a larger portion of our labor to “the man” than even the fucking SERFS did, it remains an astonishing statistic all by its lonesome. “The man” has perfected his game by fostering an illusion of freedom.
The only time I ever claimed infallibility was in ANSWER Me! #1 when I challenged readers to find a single typo. Someone found a single typo, and I published their letter in the second issue.
I never claimed to be error-free. I simply make far fewer logical and grammatical mistakes than anyone who’s ever called me a moron.
01.05.09 at 6:38 pm
^^^^^^^You’re a moron ^^^^^^^^
01.05.09 at 6:47 pm
Shit
01.05.09 at 7:02 pm
PROTIP FOR MR GOAD:
IF YOU HAVE TO GET IN THE TYPE OF ARGUMENTS DEFENDING YOUR WRITING THAT YOU ARE GETTING INTO HERE, WHAT YOU WROTE IS NOT THAT GOOD.
ALSO YOU SHOULD IGNORE INTERNET MANGINAS, YOU WILL LIVE LONGER.
ALSO IF YOU THINK YOU’RE ALREADY A SLAVE COME TO MY HOUSE AND DO ALL MY CHORES FOR ME FOR NO MONEY.
01.05.09 at 8:33 pm
Speaking of purchasing power, who gives a fuck about all that shit dude wrote in that thing?
01.06.09 at 12:56 am
Hey, “SHITCOCK”:
Great screen name you got there. Extraordinarily clever and witty. Dare I say it’s “transgressive,” too?
The book in question is now in its eleventh printing. I’m calling everyone who bought the book, and they’ll all be at your house by morning to pummel the fuck out of you.
Gavin makes a ridiculous public challenge about my writing that I never asked him to make nor approved of him making, someone writes an extremely nitpicky letter about an insanely minor point, I send the guy a pair of email responses, and then it becomes a “blog entry” without me ever saying it was OK to post any of this.
I realize a monstrous quotient of the fey hipster fags on here operate on such a rudimentary intellectual level that their brains bleed when someone isn’t co-opting ghetto slang to talk about fat asses, but that’s your problem, not mine. I do a lot of research and work harder on what I write than most of you have ever worked on anything in your gay little lives. Rather than, say, being an arrested infant who thinks it’s clever to call himself “SHITCOCK” or “clit juice,” I’m always willing to defend what I’ve written.
That’s what happens when you’re born on the wrong side of the tracks with a bigger brain than all the trust-fund slackers who’ve never hatched an original thought in their lives.
If you don’t think you’re a bound government servant for life, we can drive you to an IRS office after you get your beatdown in the morning, and we’ll investigate whether you’ve been dutifully been making your payments. If not, we’ll drive you to jail right afterward.
01.06.09 at 2:05 am
I used the word “been” twice in the second-to-last sentence there, so nobody gets a hundred-spot from Gavin for that one.
I also had a seizure and car crash and spent the better part of tonight at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta, and I can still verbally destroy any one of you.
Fake-ass pretend-bored effete poseur faggots.
01.06.09 at 2:15 am
WELL JIM GOAD IS REALLY TEARING “SOME BODY A NEW ASSHOLE” TONIGHT AND I HAVE TO SAY THAT I REALLY THINK ITS GREAT BECASUE FOR SO MANY YEARS THE INTERNET MESSAGE BOARDS WERE JUST CHOKE FULL OF PATHETIC LOSERS BUT NOW JIM GOAD IS HERE SO IT’S REALLY LIKE TOUCHING THE GODS IN SOME SINCE. HE HAS COME ALL THE WAY FROM THE BAD SIDE OF THE TRACKS TO THE INFORMATION MEGAHIWAY!!1 HE SHOLD BE PROUD AND I THINK I BOUGHT HIS BOOK THREE TIMES SO I DEFINATELY CONTIRBUTED TO THE MANY PRESSINGS LOL BUT I JUST KEPT GIVING IT AWAY TO MY BEST FRIENDS TO READ SOME OF WHICH ARE BLACK. BUT ANYWAY JIM IS WORKING HARD. PROBABLY HARDER THAN JENNY TOOMEY FROM SIMPLE MACHINES EVER WORKED AND THAT IS SAYING ALOT BECAUSE SHE ALWAYS TOLD US HOW HARD SHE WAS WORKING JUST LIKE JIM WOULD DO.
01.06.09 at 2:38 am
For a while I thought there was actually going to be an interesting discussion about the contents of Jim Goad’s book… alas…
01.06.09 at 4:07 am
dear vane$$a,
you’re right, beachwood ohio is a shitty town. what was removed from my email was the fact that that’s the closest thing i have to a mailing address because i haven’t lived there in eight years, and i presently live in a country that does not have enough national infrastructure to have street addresses. also, the dick rose jokes have been old for more than a decade now, you’re as imaginative as a 5th grader, congrats.
01.06.09 at 4:43 am
just to add a little more context, here was my reply to jim’s reply
I concede that
assertion I made to was severely flawed. My logical failure lies in
correlating a higher rate of tax results in lower quality of life. In
fact, the opposite is true, we pay more taxes because we live in a
society with double the life expectancy, and an arguably high quality
of life.
The inconsistency I was trying to identify in your book, is the
magnitude of the economic transfer to the lord: is it 100% (“sole
benefit”) or one third?
Moreover, I looked at the source you provided, and it does not appear
to address serfs at all. Just before that quote, it states that “in
these settlements serfdom was completely absent, and the settler was
liber homo.”
01.06.09 at 5:32 am
for context, here’s my reply to jim’s reply
I concede that
assertion I made to was severely flawed. My logical failure lies in
correlating a higher rate of tax results in lower quality of life. In
fact, the opposite is true, we pay more taxes because we live in a
society with double the life expectancy, and an arguably high quality
of life.
The inconsistency I was trying to identify in your book, is the
magnitude of the economic transfer to the lord: is it 100% (“sole
benefit”) or one third?
Moreover, I looked at the source you provided, and it does not appear
to address serfs at all. Just before that quote, it states that “in
these settlements serfdom was completely absent, and the settler was
liber homo.”
01.06.09 at 5:57 am
sorry for the double post, stupid monarcho-fascists fucking with the internet…
01.06.09 at 6:37 am
“someone writes an extremely nitpicky letter about an insanely minor point”
Seriously. You’re sending this guy a hundred books for being annoying. You might as well send a check to all the idiots typing their comments in all caps.
It’s one fucking insignificant inconsistency in a 250 page book. Have you seen the bibliography? That’s more research than your typical bullshit refereed journal article.
And yes, I would blow Jim Goad even if he had AIDS and a scab-covered dick.
01.06.09 at 6:51 am
“someone writes an extremely nitpicky letter about an insanely minor point”
Seriously. You’re sending this guy a hundred bucks for being annoying. You might as well send a check to all the idiots typing their comments in all caps.
It’s one fucking insignificant inconsistency in a 250 page book. Have you seen the bibliography? That’s more research than your typical bullshit refereed journal article.
And yes, I would blow Jim Goad even if he had AIDS and a scab-covered dick.
01.06.09 at 6:51 am
I double posted because I wrote “books” instead of “bucks”.
01.06.09 at 6:52 am
Ahhh, I am smiling now. I wholeheartedly agree with Li’s last sentence (in the first post) Jim Goad turns me into a swoony school girl.
Quick question, maybe I’m dense (most likely), is just a normal guy a comic genious or is he just retarded? I guess it doesn’t really matter because it makes me laugh either way.
01.06.09 at 9:38 am
WELL LEE I THINK YOU ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE SIZE OF JIM GOAD’S BILIOGRAPHY I MEAN SOME OF MY “HIPSTER” FRIENDS DO’NT LIKE ANNE COLTER BUT THEN WHEN I SHOW THEM THE SIZE OF HER BIOGRAPHY THERE ARE SO MANY FOOT NOTES AND THE HIPSTERS HAVE TO AGREE, ‘WELL SHE IS RIGHT” I DO’NT CARE THAT SHES A MAN OH COURSE
01.06.09 at 10:29 am
My hubby he is a patriotic american and thats why he worked so hard. He worked his hole life as a security gard on a 4 in the morning shift. He did not felt like a slave till the day he came home to find a pr welfare bunny sliding our Homes dildo up my snatch and drinking his beers. I forgot to change the clock. I felt a a little sorry for him on that day. He’s no jeanyus you see. That thing he went thru will make you question things. ALOT. More then you normally would. Now he drinks beer all day doesn’t say nothing and throws pretzels at my crawch. I seen him crying when he thought I wasn’t looking. He did say nobody is buying off his brain no more. I think this is what it means. What it all means. The world is dirty.
01.06.09 at 10:57 am
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=6587317
01.06.09 at 4:06 pm
I feel like I’m out of the loop. I’m going to buy this book and see what he has to say about it. This column won’t suffice.
01.08.09 at 10:32 am