The James Q. Wilson Saga: A Coda

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

This is the most trivial issue ever, but if you read every blog comment I wrote in the last week, you would have seen me going absolutely bonkers on Monday as the "John Edwards doesn't recognize the name James. Q. Wilson" story ran its course through the internet.  The story was based on an interview with George Will -- specifically the following part, which I interpret in a radically different way from most people, it seems:

  The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals' nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores -- punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. -- that are not developed in disorganized homes.

Edwards, who does not recognize the name James Q. Wilson, may have missed this paradigm shift. Many people in public life, and almost all those with presidential ambitions, are too busy for the study and reflection necessary for mastering any subject.

That bit about Edwards not knowing Wilson's name seems like a mere figure of speech to me.  If you say that right-wing blogs haven't had a major effect on the media, some right-wing blogger might say of you, "JimPortlandOR doesn't recognize the name 'Dan Rather'.  Many liberals, and almost all those named 'Jim', don't ever think of our heroic struggle against the MSM."  Clearly you do recognize the name "Dan Rather", but the point is that you haven't drawn the conclusions from it that the right-winger wants.  Given the snarky-for-an-old-guy tone of the Will interview, this interpretation made sense. 

Michael Tomasky, however, interpreted the comment literally, spawning several posts on several blogs repeating his interpretation.  Not wanting my hero to get a reputation as an intellectual lightweight on poverty issues -- the guy has been going around and talking with lots of academics about poverty after losing the 2004 election, and occasionally refers to the less famous Wilson from sociology, William Julius -- I hit up several different comment threads with my interpretation of the above quote. 

On Thursday I got an email from Ezra, who had asked Edwards' staffers about it.  They didn't dispute Tomasky's interpretation of the story. I was embarrassed, and I accepted Tomasky's interpretation, posting apologies to various people whom I had defamed (mostly Tomasky) on various comment threads.  At the time, I hadn't even realized that Will had a phone interview with Edwards.  I habitually read him like I'd read another blogger -- I thought all the Edwards quotes in the piece were cobbled out of speeches and TV appearances, and it didn't occur to me that someone might base an article on a phone conversation with John Edwards, without explicitly mentioning that he had a phone conversation with Edwards.  In any case, the entire issue now fills my soul with leaden fatigue.  I don't know if I'll be able to finish this post. 

Now new evidence has arisen, in the form of this interview from my old hometown paper, the Nuisance and Disturber, which lib_dem at the Edwards blog alerted me to.  The N&O raises the issue:

Q: Back to George Will. He suggested that you did not recognize the name James Q. Wilson. Do you know who James Q. Wilson is?

A: Yes, he’s a conservative thinker, a smart guy. I don’t claim to have studied everything James Q. Wilson has done, but I do recognize the name.

Q: Did he ask you if you recognized the name?

A: I don’t remember.

At this point, I'm completely agnostic on the question of whether Edwards recognized Wilson's name at the time. Clearly he knows the name now, but that could just be because of the