The Senate has just voted against a bill which would have ordered the Pentagon to assure that all U.S. servicemen and servicewomen performing in Iraq have adequate water to function. The bill would have required the armed forces in theater to maintain stores of water, or make plans to obtain water, sufficient to keep all troops there hydrated except when doing so would interfere with the military mission. The defeat of the bill was seen as the latest victory for those in favor of supporting the troops. "The signal this sends to the troops is one of no confidence in their ability to overcome thirst. The best way to bring the troops home faster is to let them win by letting the generals on the ground follow their own best judgment."
Opponents also said the bill was unconstitiutional. The Bush Administration has said that it does not believe the Congress has authority to pass legislation concerning the military, and that it considers the entire Title 50 of the United States Code, dealing with military matters, to be void.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Definition: A Gathering of Eagles
Noun. (1) A support group for the endangered species which continues to back the failed occupation of Iraq; (2) A coming together of members of this group, typically numbering in the single digits, but ranging into hundreds for exceptional occations: A Gathering of Eagles counterprotested the anti-war march.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Completely Heterosexual
It finally makes sense to me; no, wait, I'm still confused.
Larry Craig, like Ted Haggard, is completely heterosexual, although it has not yet inspired a Roy Zimmerman song. For several days, Leno has been pumping a video clip from MSNBC with anthropologist William Leap (identified as a Northwestern) professor, but I find him identified online at American U). Leap states that the Craig bathroom incident does not involve gay sex, just sex between men who are seeking sex with other men, which generates an apparent amount of skeptical laughter from the crowds in Burbank. Dan Savage helps with a CNN appearance, also referred to in his column. Some insight also comes from a seminal 1970 work, recounted, among other places, in this article. (So today, I'm actually giving some links!) Short upshot: guys who seek out sex in mensrooms are nearly all "straight-identified," rejecting the gay label and gay culture, and are disproportionately conservative, Republican men. This goes along with the well established phenomenon that among those who identify as straight, homophobia and homoerotic arousal are strongly correllated. Some experts, apparently including Leap, think Craig is not dishonest in denying he is gay, that the term is not properly applied to the deeply closeted, that it makes more sense in some ways to separate what closeted men do from what we label as gay, and that Craig may be completely sincere, although deluded, in describing himself to others as straight. At some level, he sees himself that way, never having heeded columnists like Savage, who have written a million times that, hey, guess what, if you like sex with other men or other women, that is rest-assured, straight-up, end-of-argument gay.
Should police patrol mensrooms? There're various problems justifying the patrols -- the concerns are overblown and exaggerated by prejudice; policing legitimizes the apprehension, which is counterproductive; the interest in preventing exposure to facts of life that are not inherently harmful is somewhat dubious in an open society, even where those exposed would be children; the actions employed, while not entrapment, tend in that direction; the menace at maximum is small, while most metropolitan police departments have more serious issues to worry about. None of these, save the last, is a knockout.
Is Craig a hypocrite? Not as obviously as most assume, but yes, for the reason Savage notes: he probably would have voted for tough penalties against the very thing he was caught doing. But there is no contradiction between his vile opposition to healthy gay identification and activity, on the one hand, and his inulgence in unhealthy closeted behavior on the other.
Should Craig be investigated if he does not voluntarily resign? Yes. Merely being a pervert or a hypocrite, or using his position for political self-interest are all normal. But: He insists his guilty plea, made under oath, was a perjurious lie. The police account shows an apparent attempt to use his official position to avoid the consequences of the crime. His status as a closeted man active in same-sex hookups raises a concern that he would be exposed to blackmail. Any of these could be a legitimate ground for further examination. Less seriously, he may enjoy a good roasting. Recalling his Meet the Press appearance in 1999, one can almost imagine him saying, "Yes, by all means, investigate me, censure me; I've been a bad boy, a naughty boy. I need to be disciplined."
What is the larger lesson? The conservative majority in the redstate world is not as crazy as it may seem. If you lived in that world you would see the natural appeal of conservative positions. Gay people in blue America go about leading ordinary lives, albeit coping with prejudice. In red America they are more likely to sneak off from the closet to the toilet for anonymous sex. It may seem offensive for Santorum or Scalia to liken gay sex to bestiality, but in red states, there're a lot of farms, and boys do what they will do. It's not just gays, but the risk of animal sex is a lot more present if discipline were to fail. You can see why they may be more preoccupied over there. They also have more crime, more teen pregnancies, more abortions, they draw more of their economy from the public sector, and in general suffer more of the problems that their policies claim to fix. The Republican party and allied institutions are just about the only loci in the nation where unqualified minorities are routinely given positions over better-qualified whites. Look at Clarence Thomas, or a more spectacular laughingstock, Alan Keyes. The redstate right is focused on real problems, they just have not attributed their sorry state to the spectacular failure of these policies, or noticed that these problems are less severe in the civilized world outside their own.
Larry Craig, like Ted Haggard, is completely heterosexual, although it has not yet inspired a Roy Zimmerman song. For several days, Leno has been pumping a video clip from MSNBC with anthropologist William Leap (identified as a Northwestern) professor, but I find him identified online at American U). Leap states that the Craig bathroom incident does not involve gay sex, just sex between men who are seeking sex with other men, which generates an apparent amount of skeptical laughter from the crowds in Burbank. Dan Savage helps with a CNN appearance, also referred to in his column. Some insight also comes from a seminal 1970 work, recounted, among other places, in this article. (So today, I'm actually giving some links!) Short upshot: guys who seek out sex in mensrooms are nearly all "straight-identified," rejecting the gay label and gay culture, and are disproportionately conservative, Republican men. This goes along with the well established phenomenon that among those who identify as straight, homophobia and homoerotic arousal are strongly correllated. Some experts, apparently including Leap, think Craig is not dishonest in denying he is gay, that the term is not properly applied to the deeply closeted, that it makes more sense in some ways to separate what closeted men do from what we label as gay, and that Craig may be completely sincere, although deluded, in describing himself to others as straight. At some level, he sees himself that way, never having heeded columnists like Savage, who have written a million times that, hey, guess what, if you like sex with other men or other women, that is rest-assured, straight-up, end-of-argument gay.
Should police patrol mensrooms? There're various problems justifying the patrols -- the concerns are overblown and exaggerated by prejudice; policing legitimizes the apprehension, which is counterproductive; the interest in preventing exposure to facts of life that are not inherently harmful is somewhat dubious in an open society, even where those exposed would be children; the actions employed, while not entrapment, tend in that direction; the menace at maximum is small, while most metropolitan police departments have more serious issues to worry about. None of these, save the last, is a knockout.
Is Craig a hypocrite? Not as obviously as most assume, but yes, for the reason Savage notes: he probably would have voted for tough penalties against the very thing he was caught doing. But there is no contradiction between his vile opposition to healthy gay identification and activity, on the one hand, and his inulgence in unhealthy closeted behavior on the other.
Should Craig be investigated if he does not voluntarily resign? Yes. Merely being a pervert or a hypocrite, or using his position for political self-interest are all normal. But: He insists his guilty plea, made under oath, was a perjurious lie. The police account shows an apparent attempt to use his official position to avoid the consequences of the crime. His status as a closeted man active in same-sex hookups raises a concern that he would be exposed to blackmail. Any of these could be a legitimate ground for further examination. Less seriously, he may enjoy a good roasting. Recalling his Meet the Press appearance in 1999, one can almost imagine him saying, "Yes, by all means, investigate me, censure me; I've been a bad boy, a naughty boy. I need to be disciplined."
What is the larger lesson? The conservative majority in the redstate world is not as crazy as it may seem. If you lived in that world you would see the natural appeal of conservative positions. Gay people in blue America go about leading ordinary lives, albeit coping with prejudice. In red America they are more likely to sneak off from the closet to the toilet for anonymous sex. It may seem offensive for Santorum or Scalia to liken gay sex to bestiality, but in red states, there're a lot of farms, and boys do what they will do. It's not just gays, but the risk of animal sex is a lot more present if discipline were to fail. You can see why they may be more preoccupied over there. They also have more crime, more teen pregnancies, more abortions, they draw more of their economy from the public sector, and in general suffer more of the problems that their policies claim to fix. The Republican party and allied institutions are just about the only loci in the nation where unqualified minorities are routinely given positions over better-qualified whites. Look at Clarence Thomas, or a more spectacular laughingstock, Alan Keyes. The redstate right is focused on real problems, they just have not attributed their sorry state to the spectacular failure of these policies, or noticed that these problems are less severe in the civilized world outside their own.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Two Cents on Rove
The best observations I've made and seen others make:
1) He's treated as history making when in fact he made few innovations, had little real power, and made little impact. All the big historical things that happened would have happened, or come very close to happening, if he had not existed. Pre-existing trends, chance events, and a reliably ineffective opposition did the work, while Rove took the credit.
2) He's treated respectfully and asked his views, even as his interviewers wink to him with the knowledge that about 78% of everything he says is a lie.
3) He's regarded as a genius in all probability because he's mastered the art of getting perceived as a genius without ever having to prove it. He has no academic credentials, but drops names and historical references, constantly makes mistakes which people credit for being clever lies or part of a secret strategy, and he travels among the easily impressed.
4) He's very much a product and exemplar of the corrupt and juvenile College Republican milieu, where dirty tricks are virtually all that matter. It is a culture steeped in petty criminality which its practitioners tend to lose only when they move into some part of the real world where crime is looked down upon, or graduate into adult politics and the potential for actual felonies.
5) He's regarded as an ideologue rather than a functionary, but there is precious little evidence that he had any agenda other than accumulating power for himself and his team.
6) The supposedly big idea at the center of his philosophy ultimately reduces to conceiving politics as total war without any ethical limitations: you get away with whatever you can, and that's a lot. You lie because the lies have no adverse consequences. You deny the opposition access to information. You phony up evidence. You create token programs whose effects you can exaggerate. You smear without mercy or restraint. You are absolutely loyal to those with you and seek to destroy those who are not totally loyal in return. You manipulate voting rules, voting machines, districting, use all the arms of government to promote political over policy interests. In short you rely on short attention spans, public impatience with partisan bickering, and the media's tendency to frame every debate as an even and honest one no matter how lopsided and dishonest. You shovel coporate welfare at the money base and an endless stream of empty platitutdes and symbols at the social base, knowing that 50.002% of the voters will not notice.
7) Even as congratulations and applause greet him, it is widely recognized that he is leaving under a cloud, getting while the getting's good.
UPDATE: Hey, I have a comment! Yes, No. 1 is probably overstated. We may find out later that it is terribly wrong. But I thought this was a great observation since the tendency throughout most of the punditocracy has clearly been excessive in the opposite direction, crediting him for nearly every significant political event in the last seven years.
1) He's treated as history making when in fact he made few innovations, had little real power, and made little impact. All the big historical things that happened would have happened, or come very close to happening, if he had not existed. Pre-existing trends, chance events, and a reliably ineffective opposition did the work, while Rove took the credit.
2) He's treated respectfully and asked his views, even as his interviewers wink to him with the knowledge that about 78% of everything he says is a lie.
3) He's regarded as a genius in all probability because he's mastered the art of getting perceived as a genius without ever having to prove it. He has no academic credentials, but drops names and historical references, constantly makes mistakes which people credit for being clever lies or part of a secret strategy, and he travels among the easily impressed.
4) He's very much a product and exemplar of the corrupt and juvenile College Republican milieu, where dirty tricks are virtually all that matter. It is a culture steeped in petty criminality which its practitioners tend to lose only when they move into some part of the real world where crime is looked down upon, or graduate into adult politics and the potential for actual felonies.
5) He's regarded as an ideologue rather than a functionary, but there is precious little evidence that he had any agenda other than accumulating power for himself and his team.
6) The supposedly big idea at the center of his philosophy ultimately reduces to conceiving politics as total war without any ethical limitations: you get away with whatever you can, and that's a lot. You lie because the lies have no adverse consequences. You deny the opposition access to information. You phony up evidence. You create token programs whose effects you can exaggerate. You smear without mercy or restraint. You are absolutely loyal to those with you and seek to destroy those who are not totally loyal in return. You manipulate voting rules, voting machines, districting, use all the arms of government to promote political over policy interests. In short you rely on short attention spans, public impatience with partisan bickering, and the media's tendency to frame every debate as an even and honest one no matter how lopsided and dishonest. You shovel coporate welfare at the money base and an endless stream of empty platitutdes and symbols at the social base, knowing that 50.002% of the voters will not notice.
7) Even as congratulations and applause greet him, it is widely recognized that he is leaving under a cloud, getting while the getting's good.
UPDATE: Hey, I have a comment! Yes, No. 1 is probably overstated. We may find out later that it is terribly wrong. But I thought this was a great observation since the tendency throughout most of the punditocracy has clearly been excessive in the opposite direction, crediting him for nearly every significant political event in the last seven years.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Executive Privilege
Aziz Huq has a bylined editorial in the Nation this fortnight on executive privilege, which is very nice, but it does take him to paragraph 8 to make the point I would put first: what good is it?
The standard explanation is that shielding a communication from inspection is required in order to achieve candor. You can see this in attorney-client or priest-penitent privilege: the attorney or confessor function would be completely frustrated if secrecy could not be guaranteed. You can quickly think of most of the functions that might be considered important enough to make a guarantee of a controlled communications environment: gathering information on the transmission of a communicable disease, or for an individual's diagnosis or treatment, anonymous reporting of crimes, support groups and brainstorming sessions, or when spouses confide in one another.
There are lots of laws shielding eliberations of various bodies: when judges caucus, or jurors especially, or even when job interviewers speak openly to decide whom to hire. Hence it is argued that officers of the executive branch, in order to obtain candid advice, must have blanket secrecy over their internal (and some external) discussions.
Huq questions this, and rightly so. My own immediate thought was what kind of exchange might occur if there were no executive privilege, what Bush and Rove might have been like in a room where the contents of their discussions was subject to general release:
President: So, what ought I to do about this here thing?
Adviser: I, I.. I'd rather not say, Mister President.
President: What's wrong, rover-dover?
Adviser: I, I'm ascared, Mr. President. What if I tell you what I think and then someone finds out and doesn't like what I said? They might make me feel bad.
President: Well, you know, it's like I always say, you don't come here to be popular, you got to stand up for stuff. Just tell me what I should do.
Advisor: I can't. I'm still afraid. I, I just wet myself. Waaaah!
As you can see, eliminating executive privilege would have completely crippled Karl Rove's ability to advise the president, which would have been a loss for us all.
As a caviat, I don't doubt that observing a privilege for executive advice is appropriate in proper circumstances. Executives may also be penitents or spouses or clients or patients. There may be times when effective advice depends on disclosing some matter which is rightly secret for other reasons. And there may be genuine occasions where the value of secrecy outweighs its costs. Maybe an advisor is has a special basis for concern but they're indospensible and no one else can give the advice. Likewise, there are also exceptions going the other way, where a privilege fails: the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, for example: if a client and attorney conspire to break the law, the exchange is not privileged. In any unclear case, a court may have to examine the content of the matter in chambers to decide what is privileged and what is not. That's life.
The standard explanation is that shielding a communication from inspection is required in order to achieve candor. You can see this in attorney-client or priest-penitent privilege: the attorney or confessor function would be completely frustrated if secrecy could not be guaranteed. You can quickly think of most of the functions that might be considered important enough to make a guarantee of a controlled communications environment: gathering information on the transmission of a communicable disease, or for an individual's diagnosis or treatment, anonymous reporting of crimes, support groups and brainstorming sessions, or when spouses confide in one another.
There are lots of laws shielding eliberations of various bodies: when judges caucus, or jurors especially, or even when job interviewers speak openly to decide whom to hire. Hence it is argued that officers of the executive branch, in order to obtain candid advice, must have blanket secrecy over their internal (and some external) discussions.
Huq questions this, and rightly so. My own immediate thought was what kind of exchange might occur if there were no executive privilege, what Bush and Rove might have been like in a room where the contents of their discussions was subject to general release:
President: So, what ought I to do about this here thing?
Adviser: I, I.. I'd rather not say, Mister President.
President: What's wrong, rover-dover?
Adviser: I, I'm ascared, Mr. President. What if I tell you what I think and then someone finds out and doesn't like what I said? They might make me feel bad.
President: Well, you know, it's like I always say, you don't come here to be popular, you got to stand up for stuff. Just tell me what I should do.
Advisor: I can't. I'm still afraid. I, I just wet myself. Waaaah!
As you can see, eliminating executive privilege would have completely crippled Karl Rove's ability to advise the president, which would have been a loss for us all.
As a caviat, I don't doubt that observing a privilege for executive advice is appropriate in proper circumstances. Executives may also be penitents or spouses or clients or patients. There may be times when effective advice depends on disclosing some matter which is rightly secret for other reasons. And there may be genuine occasions where the value of secrecy outweighs its costs. Maybe an advisor is has a special basis for concern but they're indospensible and no one else can give the advice. Likewise, there are also exceptions going the other way, where a privilege fails: the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, for example: if a client and attorney conspire to break the law, the exchange is not privileged. In any unclear case, a court may have to examine the content of the matter in chambers to decide what is privileged and what is not. That's life.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Applemilk1988 is offline
Perhaps the most lamentable quality of the popular internet is the forum it provides for, and the representatives it attracts from among, people who are just crude and vicious.
The accusation of expressing ignorant, hateful thoughts online has been abused by rightwing pundits as a means of putting down the progressive blogosphere: some of those thin-skinned, delusional pundits can hardly find a political opinion at variance with their own that does not set off their martyr complexes or promote a surge of unexpected solicitude towards a group they had villified only the previous day.
But it occurs quite a lot, either coming from the right, or in politically neutral settings.
Today I opened up youtube and saw that many of my favorite videos were gone. A few months ago I had gotten the account just so that I could favorite a few clips from a girl in South Florida named Emily. She had reminded me, in some superficial ways, of an old friend of mine, and the videos were entertaining in a modest way. Emily's videos have gotten probably a million views (I stopped adding the figures at half that) and have been the object of a lot of hype, fan mail, and -- to the point of this post -- hate mail. I wont compare her to Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick, but for a teen (Her login name is Applemilk1988; I can only guess 1988 is her birth year) just doing these quick simple postings from the local mall or Starbucks or from the couch in her family home, they had a lot of humor and personality. Some were definitely better than others. Her best, an "intense" lesson in the Japanese language which spawned four sequels of varying quality, made me understand why she had fans. In contrast, she had regular posts in an entirely different, more natural and subdued persona, that invited a sense of familiarity and empathy.
At least for me. As I noted, Emily has gotten a lot of hate mail. I know because a huge amount of the hate mail is in the completely public form of open video posts on youtube. I continue to be shocked at the vicious character of some of the writing and posting about Emily. Just to give some idea, there is a lot of abusive language and epithets. I would guess that youtube probably deleted others because of use restrictions; either that, or the vloggers have maximized the hostility while evading those restrictions by design.
Anyhow, I noticed that the videos of hers that I'd saved were gone. Despite being a busy guy, I searched first youtube, which had still had others' videos about Emily, and then the broader web, and discovered that Emily's accounts on youtube and various other services had been hacked, apparently by people who specifically targeted her. This all happened just about a week ago, while Emily was (and maybe is still) in Japan. Their celebratory posts reveling in this attack should not have been surprising. Again, I would guess that use restrictions may have weeded out some that were more threatening or sexually graphic than what I see there, but yes, there are gratuitous references to her speculated sexual practices. They also linked to a (former)boyfriend's site, who included some personal gripes against Emily because, he said, they increased traffic to his account due to her fame. He sounds like a real prince.
Emily is such a minor celebrity, known to a fairly small segment of the public for a few short homemade videos. I don't even know her last name, or what city she's in. Nor do I want to know these, and while her more intimate videos invite some empathy with the events of her daily life, I really have no desire to know what she does in private. And yet, there is a following out there for material attacking her, calling her names, exposing her passwords, exposing her alleged doings offline, alleged failings, intimate matters, and who knows what next. This cottage industry of hate against a young woman whose worst crimes, as far as I can tell, are well within the bounds of small interpersonal matters where none of us are perfect.
This seems to me like an interesting case lesson in the proper bounds of discourse, as well as the perils of fame, and it reminds me of the Don Imus ruckus, but of course Emily's haters have not withdrawn their attacks or apologized, but let them persist and metastasize. They have gone to the point of silencing their enemy by force. And I don't see anyone defending her yet, but I'm not sure whether her fans know what's going on.
The accusation of expressing ignorant, hateful thoughts online has been abused by rightwing pundits as a means of putting down the progressive blogosphere: some of those thin-skinned, delusional pundits can hardly find a political opinion at variance with their own that does not set off their martyr complexes or promote a surge of unexpected solicitude towards a group they had villified only the previous day.
But it occurs quite a lot, either coming from the right, or in politically neutral settings.
Today I opened up youtube and saw that many of my favorite videos were gone. A few months ago I had gotten the account just so that I could favorite a few clips from a girl in South Florida named Emily. She had reminded me, in some superficial ways, of an old friend of mine, and the videos were entertaining in a modest way. Emily's videos have gotten probably a million views (I stopped adding the figures at half that) and have been the object of a lot of hype, fan mail, and -- to the point of this post -- hate mail. I wont compare her to Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick, but for a teen (Her login name is Applemilk1988; I can only guess 1988 is her birth year) just doing these quick simple postings from the local mall or Starbucks or from the couch in her family home, they had a lot of humor and personality. Some were definitely better than others. Her best, an "intense" lesson in the Japanese language which spawned four sequels of varying quality, made me understand why she had fans. In contrast, she had regular posts in an entirely different, more natural and subdued persona, that invited a sense of familiarity and empathy.
At least for me. As I noted, Emily has gotten a lot of hate mail. I know because a huge amount of the hate mail is in the completely public form of open video posts on youtube. I continue to be shocked at the vicious character of some of the writing and posting about Emily. Just to give some idea, there is a lot of abusive language and epithets. I would guess that youtube probably deleted others because of use restrictions; either that, or the vloggers have maximized the hostility while evading those restrictions by design.
Anyhow, I noticed that the videos of hers that I'd saved were gone. Despite being a busy guy, I searched first youtube, which had still had others' videos about Emily, and then the broader web, and discovered that Emily's accounts on youtube and various other services had been hacked, apparently by people who specifically targeted her. This all happened just about a week ago, while Emily was (and maybe is still) in Japan. Their celebratory posts reveling in this attack should not have been surprising. Again, I would guess that use restrictions may have weeded out some that were more threatening or sexually graphic than what I see there, but yes, there are gratuitous references to her speculated sexual practices. They also linked to a (former)boyfriend's site, who included some personal gripes against Emily because, he said, they increased traffic to his account due to her fame. He sounds like a real prince.
Emily is such a minor celebrity, known to a fairly small segment of the public for a few short homemade videos. I don't even know her last name, or what city she's in. Nor do I want to know these, and while her more intimate videos invite some empathy with the events of her daily life, I really have no desire to know what she does in private. And yet, there is a following out there for material attacking her, calling her names, exposing her passwords, exposing her alleged doings offline, alleged failings, intimate matters, and who knows what next. This cottage industry of hate against a young woman whose worst crimes, as far as I can tell, are well within the bounds of small interpersonal matters where none of us are perfect.
This seems to me like an interesting case lesson in the proper bounds of discourse, as well as the perils of fame, and it reminds me of the Don Imus ruckus, but of course Emily's haters have not withdrawn their attacks or apologized, but let them persist and metastasize. They have gone to the point of silencing their enemy by force. And I don't see anyone defending her yet, but I'm not sure whether her fans know what's going on.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Wrecking the bus system
Cutting the bus system is an extremely stupid policy.
I was going through some old newspapers lying about my house when I noticed an article from May when vast cuts to the county bus system were being announced. I saw a detail which I had not noted before, though perhaps this is because I have paid too little attention to the issue. The article stated that the proposed cuts would create a net savings of something over $2 million, but at the cost of 7 million riders per year. I don't know what riders means, but let's assume it means full fare equivalents. Then there would be a gross loss to the system of about $13 million. This is a stunning statistic, and even if my figures are a little off, it would still be stunning, and perhaps moreso.
This is ridiculous from two standpoints. First, from the perspective of the bus system, it means a substantial reduction in service for a comparatively small benefit. The analysts have figured that by dumping unprofitable routes, they can achieve a net gain in strict economic terms. To the extent such a marginal change is a requirement, it may be the best among bad options, but it is still a bad option.
I recall my own experience in business running a small newspaper. The former publisher, deep in debt, had decided to economize by reducing the size, circulation, and use of color in the paper. The result was an immdiate net savings, to be sure, but the paper was locked in a spiral of decline. Ultimately, producing a less attractive, less frequent paper with less in it to read could not have anything good to do for readership, or the value of advertising in the paper. And economies of scale meant that a 50 percent reduction in service only produced, say, a 15 percent reduction in cost. Failure of the paper was palpable when, with a new strategy, the paper was saved.
Finding better ways to cut costs, my staff and I expanded and promoted the paper, with the result that we grew out of our debt. Similarly, a bus system in decline will only continue to decline if the best strategy its leaders can advance is to shrink service. The question that leaps to mind is what other options have been evaluated: Identifying potential efficiencies? Differential pricing of routes? Creative efforts to attract riders? Partnerships with popular
destinations? More effective use of grants and subsidies?
The other standpoint from which the proposal is ridiculous is the public standpoint. Although the bus system, on paper, will be made $2 million more profitable, the loss to citizens would be far greater than the $2 million necessary to maintain the current level of service. The fact that the equation is so lopsided suggests we need much more public investment in the bus system.
The loss of 7 million riders means that some riders will see their access to the city shrink, especially the blind and disabled, and the unlicensed, who are predominantly minorities. They will be forced to forego employment opportunities, opportunities to save on services, and bear the costs of less efficient modes of transportation, such as borrowing rides from friends, or using taxicabs, or simply driving themselves. Inequality and poverty can be safely predicted to increase. Lost employment or consumer transactions will also affect the would-be employers and sellers. Establishments that depend on bus service for customers or employees will be stressed and some may close. Increased auto traffic will increase pollution, traffic congestion, parking congestion (increasing fees for oher drivers), and will increase the number of drivers on
the road who are intoxicated or have suspended or revoked licenses, diminishing public safety. Milwaukee's reputation as a successful modern city with progressive values will be injured, and the loss of a public service will make the city less attractive to tourists, skilled immigrants, students, and businesses that may otherwise wish to locate here.
Did I leave anything out? Probably.
None of these losses will appear on an internal bus system spreadsheet. They will all have a long-term negative effect on the bus system, because the bus system depends on a thriving city and a thriving tax base. But more importantly, these losses will affect the entire public, which should invest in preventing these losses.
Of course, the question is who among the architects of the plan is: (1) actively trying to destroy public services for selfish reasons; (2) merely acting out of ill-considered ideology; (3) duped into following the plan because they have been brainwashed into thinking it is necessary; or (4) actually went through some rational thought process and concluded for a good reason whether it was necessary or not. All four exist. Only (1) and (4) know what they're doing, the former for evil, the latter for good. All that it takes for the (1)s to triumph is for the potential (4)s to become (2)s and (3)s.
I was going through some old newspapers lying about my house when I noticed an article from May when vast cuts to the county bus system were being announced. I saw a detail which I had not noted before, though perhaps this is because I have paid too little attention to the issue. The article stated that the proposed cuts would create a net savings of something over $2 million, but at the cost of 7 million riders per year. I don't know what riders means, but let's assume it means full fare equivalents. Then there would be a gross loss to the system of about $13 million. This is a stunning statistic, and even if my figures are a little off, it would still be stunning, and perhaps moreso.
This is ridiculous from two standpoints. First, from the perspective of the bus system, it means a substantial reduction in service for a comparatively small benefit. The analysts have figured that by dumping unprofitable routes, they can achieve a net gain in strict economic terms. To the extent such a marginal change is a requirement, it may be the best among bad options, but it is still a bad option.
I recall my own experience in business running a small newspaper. The former publisher, deep in debt, had decided to economize by reducing the size, circulation, and use of color in the paper. The result was an immdiate net savings, to be sure, but the paper was locked in a spiral of decline. Ultimately, producing a less attractive, less frequent paper with less in it to read could not have anything good to do for readership, or the value of advertising in the paper. And economies of scale meant that a 50 percent reduction in service only produced, say, a 15 percent reduction in cost. Failure of the paper was palpable when, with a new strategy, the paper was saved.
Finding better ways to cut costs, my staff and I expanded and promoted the paper, with the result that we grew out of our debt. Similarly, a bus system in decline will only continue to decline if the best strategy its leaders can advance is to shrink service. The question that leaps to mind is what other options have been evaluated: Identifying potential efficiencies? Differential pricing of routes? Creative efforts to attract riders? Partnerships with popular
destinations? More effective use of grants and subsidies?
The other standpoint from which the proposal is ridiculous is the public standpoint. Although the bus system, on paper, will be made $2 million more profitable, the loss to citizens would be far greater than the $2 million necessary to maintain the current level of service. The fact that the equation is so lopsided suggests we need much more public investment in the bus system.
The loss of 7 million riders means that some riders will see their access to the city shrink, especially the blind and disabled, and the unlicensed, who are predominantly minorities. They will be forced to forego employment opportunities, opportunities to save on services, and bear the costs of less efficient modes of transportation, such as borrowing rides from friends, or using taxicabs, or simply driving themselves. Inequality and poverty can be safely predicted to increase. Lost employment or consumer transactions will also affect the would-be employers and sellers. Establishments that depend on bus service for customers or employees will be stressed and some may close. Increased auto traffic will increase pollution, traffic congestion, parking congestion (increasing fees for oher drivers), and will increase the number of drivers on
the road who are intoxicated or have suspended or revoked licenses, diminishing public safety. Milwaukee's reputation as a successful modern city with progressive values will be injured, and the loss of a public service will make the city less attractive to tourists, skilled immigrants, students, and businesses that may otherwise wish to locate here.
Did I leave anything out? Probably.
None of these losses will appear on an internal bus system spreadsheet. They will all have a long-term negative effect on the bus system, because the bus system depends on a thriving city and a thriving tax base. But more importantly, these losses will affect the entire public, which should invest in preventing these losses.
Of course, the question is who among the architects of the plan is: (1) actively trying to destroy public services for selfish reasons; (2) merely acting out of ill-considered ideology; (3) duped into following the plan because they have been brainwashed into thinking it is necessary; or (4) actually went through some rational thought process and concluded for a good reason whether it was necessary or not. All four exist. Only (1) and (4) know what they're doing, the former for evil, the latter for good. All that it takes for the (1)s to triumph is for the potential (4)s to become (2)s and (3)s.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Habilus Erectus
I'm back, after a ridiculously long hiatus. Nothing for all of July? Two months gone? Absurd! I promise my estimated 0.06 readers that I will do better.
Lots of ideas have come and gone. Oh, well.
Today's inspiration was a pretty stupid AP story that I saw yesterday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It was a science story, and they're always bad. Basic information buried. Phony spin. No context. Oversimplified for idiots in a way that makes the story nearly incomprehensible to anyone with a whit of understanding to begin with.
Here's the deal. There are lots of species (or proposed species, or subspecies) of genus Homo, which includes the species of modern humans, Homo sapiens. For example, H. ergaster, H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. georgicus, and so on. No one can be completely sure if a piece of skull from here or seven individuals from there is really a distinct species or not, so there could be at least a dozem, or maybe not. The two really old ones that are known, which are common and well established, are Homo erectus and Homo habilis. H. habilis is the oldest known, followed by H. erectus. There's been a longstanding puzzle exactly how the family tree looks for those old days because remains are scarce. Maybe there's more "missing links" to be undug.
The story is that they found a really old erectus -- older than any previously known -- in the same general area as an old habilis of about the same age.
This shows that erectus came about earlier than previously understood, and that it could co-exist with habilis without either species (presumably the newer and better erectus) driving the other out of existence by its superiority in a general competition to survive. This further implies the two species occupied distinct niches, and may have been under evolutionary pressure to dissimilate. The discovery also makes it more plausible that erectus might have existed even earlier than did the newly discovered , and that it could have evolved not from habilis, but from some as-yet undiscovered precursor.
I found that very hard to figure out from the article, which is larded with pseudoscientific garbage about whether human evolution is "linear" or not.
Now, the missing link idea I referenced above is mostly popular mythology. No one who does evolutionary anthropology has thought for a very long time that there was any validity to the idea that humankind evolved up a ladder or across the panel of a newspaper comic, gradually but inexorably growing less hairy and more erect through an orderly progression as though with a target end form in mind. This is so much old-fashioned simplistic magical predestination, nature is good, the world is orderly wishful thinking carried over from a 19th-century religious mindset.
Instead, you have a complicated family tree. Evolution is a natural process with lots of trial and error. Looking back, you can make up a linear progression from primoridial ooze to any modern form of organism you pick by simply ignoring all the side lineages along the way. Such a constructed linear picture, particularly when manipulated to make change appear gradual and homogenous, may be accurate as far as it describes the direct ancestry of an organism, but it carries with it a misleading message to the lay public that evolution is an arrow pointed at a final form.
Yet the news article proceeds from the premise that what is really important about some new Homo bones is that it puts further to rest an image which has long been relegated to the unschooled and those using outdated elementary school textbooks. It is full of stuff about whether erectus and habilis are "sister" species or "mother and daughter," which is itself misleading, since all mother and daughter species are sisters as well -- it's not as though a magic wand could have passed over all the hibiles and turned them into erecti -- the daughter is always a sister for at least some period. Likewise, although the use of the phrase "common ancestor" is scientifically correct, it should be noted that the common ancestor of species A and B might well be one or the other and not necessarily a third: any two species have a comon ancestor if you go far enough back.
I cannot say the article was inaccurate. But it said very little and took a lot of effort to make sense of because it really wanted to tell me things that it thought would have some lay currency, but made me wonder, "scientifically, what is that supposed to mean?" I have the same problem with a lot of legal reporting. If the reporting is not wrong, it's simply confusing. For example, a report will say a judge ruled that Mr. X can stand trial for Y. What does that mean? Was there a motion to declare him incompetent to stand trial? Was there a motion to dismiss? Was there a preliminary hearing? A challenge to jurisdiction? Was Y the only charge? Was there something specific about Y? Even if the report is accurate, I have to question, based on experience, whether it is.
It's frustrating.
Lots of ideas have come and gone. Oh, well.
Today's inspiration was a pretty stupid AP story that I saw yesterday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It was a science story, and they're always bad. Basic information buried. Phony spin. No context. Oversimplified for idiots in a way that makes the story nearly incomprehensible to anyone with a whit of understanding to begin with.
Here's the deal. There are lots of species (or proposed species, or subspecies) of genus Homo, which includes the species of modern humans, Homo sapiens. For example, H. ergaster, H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. georgicus, and so on. No one can be completely sure if a piece of skull from here or seven individuals from there is really a distinct species or not, so there could be at least a dozem, or maybe not. The two really old ones that are known, which are common and well established, are Homo erectus and Homo habilis. H. habilis is the oldest known, followed by H. erectus. There's been a longstanding puzzle exactly how the family tree looks for those old days because remains are scarce. Maybe there's more "missing links" to be undug.
The story is that they found a really old erectus -- older than any previously known -- in the same general area as an old habilis of about the same age.
This shows that erectus came about earlier than previously understood, and that it could co-exist with habilis without either species (presumably the newer and better erectus) driving the other out of existence by its superiority in a general competition to survive. This further implies the two species occupied distinct niches, and may have been under evolutionary pressure to dissimilate. The discovery also makes it more plausible that erectus might have existed even earlier than did the newly discovered , and that it could have evolved not from habilis, but from some as-yet undiscovered precursor.
I found that very hard to figure out from the article, which is larded with pseudoscientific garbage about whether human evolution is "linear" or not.
Now, the missing link idea I referenced above is mostly popular mythology. No one who does evolutionary anthropology has thought for a very long time that there was any validity to the idea that humankind evolved up a ladder or across the panel of a newspaper comic, gradually but inexorably growing less hairy and more erect through an orderly progression as though with a target end form in mind. This is so much old-fashioned simplistic magical predestination, nature is good, the world is orderly wishful thinking carried over from a 19th-century religious mindset.
Instead, you have a complicated family tree. Evolution is a natural process with lots of trial and error. Looking back, you can make up a linear progression from primoridial ooze to any modern form of organism you pick by simply ignoring all the side lineages along the way. Such a constructed linear picture, particularly when manipulated to make change appear gradual and homogenous, may be accurate as far as it describes the direct ancestry of an organism, but it carries with it a misleading message to the lay public that evolution is an arrow pointed at a final form.
Yet the news article proceeds from the premise that what is really important about some new Homo bones is that it puts further to rest an image which has long been relegated to the unschooled and those using outdated elementary school textbooks. It is full of stuff about whether erectus and habilis are "sister" species or "mother and daughter," which is itself misleading, since all mother and daughter species are sisters as well -- it's not as though a magic wand could have passed over all the hibiles and turned them into erecti -- the daughter is always a sister for at least some period. Likewise, although the use of the phrase "common ancestor" is scientifically correct, it should be noted that the common ancestor of species A and B might well be one or the other and not necessarily a third: any two species have a comon ancestor if you go far enough back.
I cannot say the article was inaccurate. But it said very little and took a lot of effort to make sense of because it really wanted to tell me things that it thought would have some lay currency, but made me wonder, "scientifically, what is that supposed to mean?" I have the same problem with a lot of legal reporting. If the reporting is not wrong, it's simply confusing. For example, a report will say a judge ruled that Mr. X can stand trial for Y. What does that mean? Was there a motion to declare him incompetent to stand trial? Was there a motion to dismiss? Was there a preliminary hearing? A challenge to jurisdiction? Was Y the only charge? Was there something specific about Y? Even if the report is accurate, I have to question, based on experience, whether it is.
It's frustrating.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Korea Model
I'll admit first off that I have not really looked seriously at what all the hype is with the supposed re-envisioning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq on the so-called Korea model. I've basically assumed there is no there there, that this -- to repackage an old analogy -- is a case of bad-tasting 4-year old wine repackaged into 50-year old bottles and resealed to make it seem both fresh and of good vintage. I mean, haven't they trotted out post-war occupations of Germany, Japan, Korea, and other places every time they wanted to encourage patience? What is there new about this? And at the same time, what is there of any venerability that we can apply? How is this anything like Korea, except that the occupation will strive for high-duration, low-footprint passive vigilence?
Is that a model? A model shows how something was done, not what the result will be. Otherwise, let's pick a better model, like Solonic Athens, or Paradise, or Eden, or one of those Star Trek planets where everything was kept in order by a benign computer or alien caretaker that never made a mistake. Or even a good Japanese car factory. Let's have our "model" be perfection, or at least continuous quality improvement.
Actually, some of those models are not what they once were. Restoring Paradise may require a crusade, and only al Qaida and the Coral Ridge folks want that. Eden was part of pre-Islamic Iraq, and although I would agree with preserving the origins of civilization, this seems to be a minority view, at least in terms of preservation in situ -- I understand that there may be some private collections enjoying a nice steroidal plumping off the work of those odd looters who do not feel compelled to smash every 20,000 year old vase they encounter. And as far as the Star Trek model, I'm sure Bill Gates' preserved head-in-a-vat could appoint a crack team of AIs to run Iraq from Washington state or from an orbital platorm after the required electrical grid is restored sometime in the 23rd century. Until then, few good options.
Actually, what I started out wanting to say is just that the Korea model is an ironic concept to be pushing now. Didn't we have the Korea model under the last administration? Hmmm...
I see the 50s. There's this country divided North-South. We call the North part Iraq and the South part Kuwait. Over time, lots of things happen, in no particular order. The Southern part, divided off and placed under separate leadership, remains subject to greater influence from the "Free World" has a free market and a less-free populace. The north has to be threatened with nukes because it is too independent. It plays both sides of the cold war. It is geographically prone to Communist bloc influence and receives selective support, and the West seeks various means of influence. Eventually, the North invades the South. (Though the hidden history of the war is that the North was lured or provoked because the U.S. wanted the war.) The North is driven from the South and could be crushed and occupied, perhaps, except that the President of the U.S. resists, knowing that this could turn to disaster as the North's more powerful regional allies could use it as a proxy to fight the U.S. By the 90s, the U.S. has a large force permanently garrisoned in the South, whose tasks include enforcing sanctions on the North, and defending the South from renewed attack. The North flirts with building a nuclear capability.
On this analogy, the Korean model went off the rails in 2003, when the U.S. invaded North Korea, destroyed its infrastructure, found no WMDs and is being bled to death by local and foreign-based insurgents, whom we claim are basically pawns of China, against whom we are threatening a broader, and nuclear, war. If this were actually the case in Korea, what would our model be for dialing that down? You'd withdraw as fast as possible to the old North-South line, and rely on China for help in stabilizing the situation, recognizing that its influence would be greatly expanded, and try to minimize that inevitable strategic loss. Am I wrong?
Of course, Iraq turns out to be more complex. Maybe Iraq will be partitioned, although it seems clear that if Iraq is divided into three countries, those countries will probably be called Iran, Syria and Turkey. Just what we wanted all along? Doubtful.
Is that a model? A model shows how something was done, not what the result will be. Otherwise, let's pick a better model, like Solonic Athens, or Paradise, or Eden, or one of those Star Trek planets where everything was kept in order by a benign computer or alien caretaker that never made a mistake. Or even a good Japanese car factory. Let's have our "model" be perfection, or at least continuous quality improvement.
Actually, some of those models are not what they once were. Restoring Paradise may require a crusade, and only al Qaida and the Coral Ridge folks want that. Eden was part of pre-Islamic Iraq, and although I would agree with preserving the origins of civilization, this seems to be a minority view, at least in terms of preservation in situ -- I understand that there may be some private collections enjoying a nice steroidal plumping off the work of those odd looters who do not feel compelled to smash every 20,000 year old vase they encounter. And as far as the Star Trek model, I'm sure Bill Gates' preserved head-in-a-vat could appoint a crack team of AIs to run Iraq from Washington state or from an orbital platorm after the required electrical grid is restored sometime in the 23rd century. Until then, few good options.
Actually, what I started out wanting to say is just that the Korea model is an ironic concept to be pushing now. Didn't we have the Korea model under the last administration? Hmmm...
I see the 50s. There's this country divided North-South. We call the North part Iraq and the South part Kuwait. Over time, lots of things happen, in no particular order. The Southern part, divided off and placed under separate leadership, remains subject to greater influence from the "Free World" has a free market and a less-free populace. The north has to be threatened with nukes because it is too independent. It plays both sides of the cold war. It is geographically prone to Communist bloc influence and receives selective support, and the West seeks various means of influence. Eventually, the North invades the South. (Though the hidden history of the war is that the North was lured or provoked because the U.S. wanted the war.) The North is driven from the South and could be crushed and occupied, perhaps, except that the President of the U.S. resists, knowing that this could turn to disaster as the North's more powerful regional allies could use it as a proxy to fight the U.S. By the 90s, the U.S. has a large force permanently garrisoned in the South, whose tasks include enforcing sanctions on the North, and defending the South from renewed attack. The North flirts with building a nuclear capability.
On this analogy, the Korean model went off the rails in 2003, when the U.S. invaded North Korea, destroyed its infrastructure, found no WMDs and is being bled to death by local and foreign-based insurgents, whom we claim are basically pawns of China, against whom we are threatening a broader, and nuclear, war. If this were actually the case in Korea, what would our model be for dialing that down? You'd withdraw as fast as possible to the old North-South line, and rely on China for help in stabilizing the situation, recognizing that its influence would be greatly expanded, and try to minimize that inevitable strategic loss. Am I wrong?
Of course, Iraq turns out to be more complex. Maybe Iraq will be partitioned, although it seems clear that if Iraq is divided into three countries, those countries will probably be called Iran, Syria and Turkey. Just what we wanted all along? Doubtful.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Brownback's Folly
It's been a few days now since Sam Brownback authored this in the New York Times. I would leave it lie with the posts at Hullabaloo and Pharyngula, but I feel let down by their reactions. I mean, Tristero's point is worth acknowledging(although there are other meanings of "materialism" that are also being evoked), and for most of what he says, P. Z. Myers is good as always, but I would comment differently from the good cephalopodist on some of it, so here goes:
Brownback gives us a pile of gas, comfortably vague principles with no controversial application, the standard mealy-mouthed variation of glittering generalities designed to offend no one. He assures us that the issues are complex and nuanced and should not be reduced to a sound-bite or false dichotomy.
He then goes ahead and abandons nuance, rattles off sound-bites, and confronts the reader with a series of false dichotomies.
Nuance is abandoned by his representation of the opposing position in terms that are false, unsubstantiated, or contradictory. Myers covers this well. He catches what I thought was a pretty obvious point, that to believe in evolution, one must believe in randomness ("man is the chance product of random mutations") and also "an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world." And he states with familiarity and authority things that I suspected but could not have argued with assurance (e.g., that Gould's punctuated equlibrium has long established its dominance, and Brownback is stuck in the past).
At the same time, he complains that his own side's view has been oversimplified and mischaracterized:
The premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days.
It's worth noting that there is no evidence presented that anyone anywhere has actually accepted or advanced this "premise." But anyway, okay, so it isn't his view. Creation in 144 hours would be too silly. So what is his view? (It must be nearly as ridiculous-sounding, or I think he'd tell us.)
The sound bites consist of maybe half the op-ed, lots of Rodney King-style fluff prasing science and religion and urging them to get along and for each to respect the other's contributions. As Myers notes, none of the contributions of religion are ever made.
He doesn't want an oversimplistic dichotomy:
But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.
Although he never explains what would be wrong with this particular dichotomy. Evolution is a pretty clear-cut idea, and so is creationism.
But of course, he goes ahead and dishes up phony dichotomies.
If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes
over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I
believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an
exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place
for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.
Apparently, these are the only choices. And Brownback, you guessed it, believes in small changes within a species. This is kind of like saying, "if believing in Einstein's theory of relativity means accepting that atomic clocks will run faster at high altitudes, then count me in." That is, I accept the theory, but only one small, irrefutable observation in support of it, but none of the conclusions from that and other supportive observations that actually make it a scientific theory, and hence also none of the other predictions that would flow from the theory.
But apart from being a hypocritical wanker, Brownback's real problem is in drawing the line between the appropriate the appropriate realms of religion and science in the wrong place.
Myers is more of an atheist than I am. My profile on the "What kind of atheist are you" quiz is very similar to his, but we part in that he opposes religion, and seems to fault Brownback for saying religion should have any role in the search for truth. I, in contrast, can go along with most of what Brownback says, but I think he's grossly disingenuous when he outlines the value of faith.
People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given
us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question.... Faith
supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values,
meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us
understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love.
This is designed to suggest that he accepts a David Hume kind of recognition that questions of "is" and "should" are absolutely independent. Science examines the material world and allows us to understand cause and effect. Moral philosophy helps us identify duties and desiderata. Science allows us to understand the consequences of actions, which is a fundamental factor in their moral evaluation.
It turns out that Brownback suffers from a defect, however, in his faith, one that many of his coreligionists also suffer from. The spiritual world is not real enough to hold their interest, so they have to profane God by basing their faith on what occurs in the physical plane. For Brownback, you cannot have God without certain material consequences that, unfortunately, contradict the scientific evidence.
Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a
unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations —
go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy
or theology.
...
It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.
So you see, Brownback has a very reasonable position. Science is okay until it sounds offensive to human dignity, like when that nasty Galileo Galilei and people like Giodorno Bruno showed that "insolent spirit of self-assertion" that required they be sanctioned for the common good.
Don't worry, if history is any guide, Darwin will receive his full pardon sometime around A.D. 2400. By that standard, Brownback is really ahead of his time, even if he's behind most of the industrialized world.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Follow up on that.
Some really good stuff out there. A few high points I did not hit, most of which I'm drawing from others' comments, but not all.
1) Yes, there has been an awful lot of attention to this, crowding out other issues of importance. My having posted on it reflects my agreement that it's interesting and important, but having seen the explosion of coverage, I do agree with the call for perspective.
2) Yes, I also agree that the implicit internalized rejection of self in response to white standards of beauty figured in this; that to me does not shift the blame at all, but it does point out that developing an independence of thought and embracing what others seek to stigmatize can be an effective defense if you're lucky enough to be able to do it.
3) This is a good example of how free speech means being able to say what you want via the network you own; hence NBC and CBS got a chance to exercise their free speech by letting Don Imus find some other venue. Free speech purists might have demanded something other than Imus' termination, true, so as not to chill people in his position, but this speech struck me as weak in hallmarks for protectedness, Imus has been relatively privileged, and the demand for a penalty seems pretty inevitable. It would be better to enact a durable and viewpoint-neutral standard for on-air speech conduct than to get rid of a person.
4) I am generally accepting of a humor defense for what otherwise might be considred hate speech, provided the humor succeeds in achieving some redeeming value and particularly if the joke is intended to be on the bigots and not on the disenfranchised. It should be one of a series of factors considered in evaluating how bad a comment is.
5) Some have tried to shift the attention to rappers. Some very smart people rightly acknowledge that hip hop has its horrible side that should be addressed; on the other hand, the ploy of justifying us-on-them bigotry by pointing to them-on-them bigotry is tired and disingenuous coming from most of its advocates. Beyond that, a most of rap is pretty benign compared to the worst it has to offer. When Nelly sings, "won't you hos come out and play, now?" he's talking about...hos. When Will Smith affects a bad-ass persona, bragging about his sexual exploits, you know it's just silly : Jada's not gonna stand for it. When Slick Rick gives us "Women Lose Weight," it would be horribly misogynistic if it weren't so funny. The defense in the previous paragraph applies.
6) Several of these points can be summarized together in the series of factors suggested above which provide an estimate of how bad something is. There is precedent in the law for identifying lists of factors that distinguish, for example, threats, which are unprotected performative speech, from mere expression, which is protected. It's easy to think what some of the factors should be that should be considered, for example, in employment harassment policies. I would suggest:
(a) The comment targets a specific individual or small group, as opposed to an entire protected class. This is because the attack in the first instance is apt to be felt more personally.
(b) The target or targets are not merely members of a protected class which is attacked, such as women or AfricanAmericans, but represent, or are closely associated with the broader group. This would include a role model, advocate, or spokesperson for a group, or a person whose group membership is especially salient. Such association assists in assuring that the attack is felt by an entire group.
(c) The individual is a private rather than general-purpose public figure, who has not courted or invited the kind of attention represented by the remark.
(d) The individual is vulnerable, either because young, experiencing hard times, not rich or powerful, or is at a point in their venture where there is much at stake.
(e) The individual’s targeted classification is not shared with the attacker, especially if the comment is directed by a member of a dominant group toward a member of a less-dominant group. This is because comments from without are an expression of power and implicitly threatening, because they are more hurtful, and because criticism of a group's internal handling of its identity tends to blame the victim, interfere with the group's internal autonomy, and suffocates the defensive project of defanging hurtful antagonistic speech.
(f) The comment is clear in its meaning and in its hostility, or else exploits a well defined mechanism of ambiuguity or code which resists policing.
(g) The comment is made more forceful by its being explicit or graphic, protracted, repeated, detailed, or especially loud, course, or profane.
(h) The comment is made directly to the target, or to people with power over the target, or to others whose respect or support is important to the target.
(i) The comment exceeds the background degree of ignorance or hostility ordinarily transmitted within the environment it reflects, and tends to advocate or promote (or lessen resistance to) a degredation of standards.
(j) The comment lacks legitimate purpose, or redeeming value, which would includes humor, artistic merit, comment on matters of social concern, academic or educational discussion, deliberative processes, or, to a lesser extent, communication for any legitimate purpose, including expression of strong emotion.
1) Yes, there has been an awful lot of attention to this, crowding out other issues of importance. My having posted on it reflects my agreement that it's interesting and important, but having seen the explosion of coverage, I do agree with the call for perspective.
2) Yes, I also agree that the implicit internalized rejection of self in response to white standards of beauty figured in this; that to me does not shift the blame at all, but it does point out that developing an independence of thought and embracing what others seek to stigmatize can be an effective defense if you're lucky enough to be able to do it.
3) This is a good example of how free speech means being able to say what you want via the network you own; hence NBC and CBS got a chance to exercise their free speech by letting Don Imus find some other venue. Free speech purists might have demanded something other than Imus' termination, true, so as not to chill people in his position, but this speech struck me as weak in hallmarks for protectedness, Imus has been relatively privileged, and the demand for a penalty seems pretty inevitable. It would be better to enact a durable and viewpoint-neutral standard for on-air speech conduct than to get rid of a person.
4) I am generally accepting of a humor defense for what otherwise might be considred hate speech, provided the humor succeeds in achieving some redeeming value and particularly if the joke is intended to be on the bigots and not on the disenfranchised. It should be one of a series of factors considered in evaluating how bad a comment is.
5) Some have tried to shift the attention to rappers. Some very smart people rightly acknowledge that hip hop has its horrible side that should be addressed; on the other hand, the ploy of justifying us-on-them bigotry by pointing to them-on-them bigotry is tired and disingenuous coming from most of its advocates. Beyond that, a most of rap is pretty benign compared to the worst it has to offer. When Nelly sings, "won't you hos come out and play, now?" he's talking about...hos. When Will Smith affects a bad-ass persona, bragging about his sexual exploits, you know it's just silly : Jada's not gonna stand for it. When Slick Rick gives us "Women Lose Weight," it would be horribly misogynistic if it weren't so funny. The defense in the previous paragraph applies.
6) Several of these points can be summarized together in the series of factors suggested above which provide an estimate of how bad something is. There is precedent in the law for identifying lists of factors that distinguish, for example, threats, which are unprotected performative speech, from mere expression, which is protected. It's easy to think what some of the factors should be that should be considered, for example, in employment harassment policies. I would suggest:
(a) The comment targets a specific individual or small group, as opposed to an entire protected class. This is because the attack in the first instance is apt to be felt more personally.
(b) The target or targets are not merely members of a protected class which is attacked, such as women or AfricanAmericans, but represent, or are closely associated with the broader group. This would include a role model, advocate, or spokesperson for a group, or a person whose group membership is especially salient. Such association assists in assuring that the attack is felt by an entire group.
(c) The individual is a private rather than general-purpose public figure, who has not courted or invited the kind of attention represented by the remark.
(d) The individual is vulnerable, either because young, experiencing hard times, not rich or powerful, or is at a point in their venture where there is much at stake.
(e) The individual’s targeted classification is not shared with the attacker, especially if the comment is directed by a member of a dominant group toward a member of a less-dominant group. This is because comments from without are an expression of power and implicitly threatening, because they are more hurtful, and because criticism of a group's internal handling of its identity tends to blame the victim, interfere with the group's internal autonomy, and suffocates the defensive project of defanging hurtful antagonistic speech.
(f) The comment is clear in its meaning and in its hostility, or else exploits a well defined mechanism of ambiuguity or code which resists policing.
(g) The comment is made more forceful by its being explicit or graphic, protracted, repeated, detailed, or especially loud, course, or profane.
(h) The comment is made directly to the target, or to people with power over the target, or to others whose respect or support is important to the target.
(i) The comment exceeds the background degree of ignorance or hostility ordinarily transmitted within the environment it reflects, and tends to advocate or promote (or lessen resistance to) a degredation of standards.
(j) The comment lacks legitimate purpose, or redeeming value, which would includes humor, artistic merit, comment on matters of social concern, academic or educational discussion, deliberative processes, or, to a lesser extent, communication for any legitimate purpose, including expression of strong emotion.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Imus: Why the Why?
I've been, not astonished, but foreseeably disappointed, by the inability of so many mainstream media observers to get it. The local TV anchor refers to Don Imus's "blunder," a public radio report asks why the furor this time when he's said worse in the past. Another news report notes his being "insensitive."
Let's take the last first. Calling Barack Obama "articulate" is insensitive. One can sympathize with Joe Biden being so insensitive. Obama may be the most well-spoken American politician since Abraham Lincoln. He's the damned definition of articulate. But the word has baggage, and an articulate Democratic Presidential hopeful does not call an articulate black opponent articulate. It shows an awkward blindness to the consequences of language, one that can be attributed to innocent error. In contrast, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you would be offended at being called 'nappy headed hos'" does not seem very credible. [Aside: you shouldn't spell "hos" with an apostrophe, as many of these dumb media outlets have.]
Here's another test, based roughly on the burden-shifting mechanism recognized in Title VII discrimination cases: If you can make a prima facie case that a remark could reflect some kind of illicit prejudice, then ask whether the maker can come back with a credible explanation. In Biden's case: "Believe me: when I said articulate, all I meant was articulate" In Imus's case, the best I can come up with is, "I was saying that the Rutgers team fought on the court with the tenacity of young Ho Chi Minhs, but now must be so exhausted, they need to rest their sleepy heads." Pretty lame, I know, and I'm a lawyer.
Blunder implies the same thing: that it is what Imus did not intend that we dislike. What did he not intend? It's like a mean drunk who beats his pregnant wife every few days. If someone gets upset when it "goes too far" doesn't that mean that someone things a lesser degree of drunken pregnant wife-beating would have been acceptable?
I don't know everything that Imus has ever said, but the outrage in this instance does not seem hard to fathom. Not just that his -- wait --
Okay, as I am writing this, the local news I watch and always hate has just identified the issue as his "racially charged" comments. Again, this is a stupid hedge. Why is it only "charged"? My firm handled a case where a guy was fired for "racially charged" comments. We found a white comparator who told an African-American co-worker she looked like a hooker. That is what I'd call charged. It is not explicit, and in another context might have no racial aspect at all, but given the races of the parties, and the traditional Jezebel sterotype of African-American women, there was a racial tinge or inflection to the comment. "Nappy-headed" is pretty explicit. It's beyond charged. It's racial, period.
It also, of course, implicates sex, sexual mores, and class. In context, the phrase was equated with being rough, hard, savage. It hit on several points, and was graphic.
But that doesn't strike me as the big issue. Although I'm not a sports fan, I can appreciate the argument that for a bunch of underdog kids on the heels of a highlight achievement, this event partook of something sacred for its participants, like a funeral or a wedding. That's somewhere you don't want to take your dump, if you have any decency. Not if you want anyone to be willing to be seen with you.
Let's take the last first. Calling Barack Obama "articulate" is insensitive. One can sympathize with Joe Biden being so insensitive. Obama may be the most well-spoken American politician since Abraham Lincoln. He's the damned definition of articulate. But the word has baggage, and an articulate Democratic Presidential hopeful does not call an articulate black opponent articulate. It shows an awkward blindness to the consequences of language, one that can be attributed to innocent error. In contrast, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you would be offended at being called 'nappy headed hos'" does not seem very credible. [Aside: you shouldn't spell "hos" with an apostrophe, as many of these dumb media outlets have.]
Here's another test, based roughly on the burden-shifting mechanism recognized in Title VII discrimination cases: If you can make a prima facie case that a remark could reflect some kind of illicit prejudice, then ask whether the maker can come back with a credible explanation. In Biden's case: "Believe me: when I said articulate, all I meant was articulate" In Imus's case, the best I can come up with is, "I was saying that the Rutgers team fought on the court with the tenacity of young Ho Chi Minhs, but now must be so exhausted, they need to rest their sleepy heads." Pretty lame, I know, and I'm a lawyer.
Blunder implies the same thing: that it is what Imus did not intend that we dislike. What did he not intend? It's like a mean drunk who beats his pregnant wife every few days. If someone gets upset when it "goes too far" doesn't that mean that someone things a lesser degree of drunken pregnant wife-beating would have been acceptable?
I don't know everything that Imus has ever said, but the outrage in this instance does not seem hard to fathom. Not just that his -- wait --
Okay, as I am writing this, the local news I watch and always hate has just identified the issue as his "racially charged" comments. Again, this is a stupid hedge. Why is it only "charged"? My firm handled a case where a guy was fired for "racially charged" comments. We found a white comparator who told an African-American co-worker she looked like a hooker. That is what I'd call charged. It is not explicit, and in another context might have no racial aspect at all, but given the races of the parties, and the traditional Jezebel sterotype of African-American women, there was a racial tinge or inflection to the comment. "Nappy-headed" is pretty explicit. It's beyond charged. It's racial, period.
It also, of course, implicates sex, sexual mores, and class. In context, the phrase was equated with being rough, hard, savage. It hit on several points, and was graphic.
But that doesn't strike me as the big issue. Although I'm not a sports fan, I can appreciate the argument that for a bunch of underdog kids on the heels of a highlight achievement, this event partook of something sacred for its participants, like a funeral or a wedding. That's somewhere you don't want to take your dump, if you have any decency. Not if you want anyone to be willing to be seen with you.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Dirty Dining
Quick hit only. The Dirty Dining segments on Journal Communications' TMJ4 I see a problem, big surpise.
They have had a few segments on successful, landmark restaurants, owned by white people, located in the suburbs or in nice downtown locations, where the restaurant's "executive chef" or owner has come on and said all the right things. This problem here was a short-term anomaly. That one we've fixed. This one was not as bad as it sounds. We're glad to find out about this problem so we can fix it. We strive for perfection, but it's hard to keep on top of everything. That's why we welcome the health department reports to let us know where to focus our continuing efforts so our diners can have confidence. All of these problems merit our attention and are being addressed, but none had progressed to the point of affecting our customers, and we're thankful for that.
The problem I see is that some of these responses would be applicable to most of the establishments who are covered in these segments. This diminishes the force of all of them, but that's not the problem. The problem is that when the target is some minority-owned small Indian or Mexican restaurant or fried chicken franchise, and the owners don't put up sophisticated damage control, the news media takes advantage of the bad response, lets them ignore their defenses, does not give any caviats, and sensationalizes the problems.
This is a direct cognate of the problem in the legal system where some criminally accused get ineffective counsel, the prosecution unethically pushes the advantage, and the judge allows it. There is a difference in that the media in cases like this plays the prosecutor while pretending to be a neutral investigator. The end result is racist, classist, and just plain unfair, and it misleads viewers and harms the community.
Thanks again, JCI.
They have had a few segments on successful, landmark restaurants, owned by white people, located in the suburbs or in nice downtown locations, where the restaurant's "executive chef" or owner has come on and said all the right things. This problem here was a short-term anomaly. That one we've fixed. This one was not as bad as it sounds. We're glad to find out about this problem so we can fix it. We strive for perfection, but it's hard to keep on top of everything. That's why we welcome the health department reports to let us know where to focus our continuing efforts so our diners can have confidence. All of these problems merit our attention and are being addressed, but none had progressed to the point of affecting our customers, and we're thankful for that.
The problem I see is that some of these responses would be applicable to most of the establishments who are covered in these segments. This diminishes the force of all of them, but that's not the problem. The problem is that when the target is some minority-owned small Indian or Mexican restaurant or fried chicken franchise, and the owners don't put up sophisticated damage control, the news media takes advantage of the bad response, lets them ignore their defenses, does not give any caviats, and sensationalizes the problems.
This is a direct cognate of the problem in the legal system where some criminally accused get ineffective counsel, the prosecution unethically pushes the advantage, and the judge allows it. There is a difference in that the media in cases like this plays the prosecutor while pretending to be a neutral investigator. The end result is racist, classist, and just plain unfair, and it misleads viewers and harms the community.
Thanks again, JCI.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
A parable
A corrupt cop whose life has fallen apart breaks into a house of a personal enemy, ransacks the house looking for guns, and destroys the library and family heirlooms, including the family Bible and some irreplacable art. In his rampage he destroys the electrical lines and causes the toilet to overflow, and makes a general disaster of the house. He kills the man of the house, lets the dogs out, and then rapes the man's wife. Then he whispers sweet nothings to her, tells her he husband was evil and he's saved her, and expects her gratitude. He is about to leave with the family's cash when a sniper shot through the window wounds him. He goes to the woman he raped, and says, "this is your house; it's your responsibility; here's a gun; we'll defend the house together." He hands her the gun and turns his back and he's shot again. He says, "who did that?" turns and sees the woman running away. He says, "don't be scared. We can do this. Take my knife too." He turns his back and she shoots him again, and cuts off his penis.
U.S. in Iraq.
U.S. in Iraq.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Two entries on recurring themes -- part one.
1. Channel 4 again...
Right after my last post, they did another piece with the godawful John Mercure. This was an expose on a single businesswoman with a spotty record with the Better Business Bureau. It would have been nice to get the BBB's website or some excerpts of actual reports, but no. The report had the following elements: (1) the guy from the BBB gave his overall assessment that he would not use this service; (2) a disgruntled client was interviewed, said how upset she was, and claimed that she had waited months and gotten none of the product she was promised; (3) an undercover hidden camera visit to the businesswoman posing as a client caught her on film suggesting that she had lots of business, and it was opined, how can she take new business on when she hasn't finished the old business, and (4) a confrontation was arranged straight out of Jerry Springer or Cheaters where the dissatisfied client took over the usual John Mercure role of screaming at the subject of the expose. There was an apparent disagreement over whether the client had put in a specific order for what she said she had waited for, but the report did not include a look at the e-mail they were arguing over, so we could not see who was right. Now again, as usual, it may well be that the businesswoman was crummy, and deserved to be exposed. But that isn't the point. This dreadful report went to a lot of effort but did not convince me of its conclusions. I'm a lawyer. I see where the indictment had holes in it. I'm also a journalist and don't like the conclusion-driven reporting here. Instead of "We report, you decide" as Fox News promises but does not deliver, there is no pretense here of reporting. They have a conclusion which they present, and support with shaky, emotive, prejudicial evidence, and deny us the basic facts we would need to make a competent decision. This has led me to a lot more thought about the relationship between the news media and the legal system as alternative discursive fora where the truth is argued and opinions reached. The MSM, at its best, typically follows some of the guidelines of the legal system and disregards others, which results in systematic flaws, but the system is at least earnest. This Channel 4 crap follows an entirely different schematic. More later.
Right after my last post, they did another piece with the godawful John Mercure. This was an expose on a single businesswoman with a spotty record with the Better Business Bureau. It would have been nice to get the BBB's website or some excerpts of actual reports, but no. The report had the following elements: (1) the guy from the BBB gave his overall assessment that he would not use this service; (2) a disgruntled client was interviewed, said how upset she was, and claimed that she had waited months and gotten none of the product she was promised; (3) an undercover hidden camera visit to the businesswoman posing as a client caught her on film suggesting that she had lots of business, and it was opined, how can she take new business on when she hasn't finished the old business, and (4) a confrontation was arranged straight out of Jerry Springer or Cheaters where the dissatisfied client took over the usual John Mercure role of screaming at the subject of the expose. There was an apparent disagreement over whether the client had put in a specific order for what she said she had waited for, but the report did not include a look at the e-mail they were arguing over, so we could not see who was right. Now again, as usual, it may well be that the businesswoman was crummy, and deserved to be exposed. But that isn't the point. This dreadful report went to a lot of effort but did not convince me of its conclusions. I'm a lawyer. I see where the indictment had holes in it. I'm also a journalist and don't like the conclusion-driven reporting here. Instead of "We report, you decide" as Fox News promises but does not deliver, there is no pretense here of reporting. They have a conclusion which they present, and support with shaky, emotive, prejudicial evidence, and deny us the basic facts we would need to make a competent decision. This has led me to a lot more thought about the relationship between the news media and the legal system as alternative discursive fora where the truth is argued and opinions reached. The MSM, at its best, typically follows some of the guidelines of the legal system and disregards others, which results in systematic flaws, but the system is at least earnest. This Channel 4 crap follows an entirely different schematic. More later.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Iraq
Quickly.
The U.S. presence in Iraq is destabilizing.
There are numerous reasons for this. The first is the strategy of providing arms and training to people whose interests and loyalties are not primarily toward creating stability.
The second is that you don't promote stability by enraging people, crashing into their homes, humiliating them, insulting them, and killing off their family members seemingly at random. Terror can make a terrible stability, applied systematically. Where there is no system, it just feeds the engine of chaos.
But most fundamentally, everyone knows that change is coming. Eventually, people need to sit down and agree on an outcome of this conflict that will be seen as legitimate by enough people for it to stick. But if change is in the air, that generally means that at least one group will believe it could be the beneficiary of that change. And all you need is one bellicose group at any given time to sustain perpetual conflict. The US stayed in Iraq this long by constantly seeing each new anticipated development as the potential light at the end of the tunnel. Why go when victory is just up this way and a little to the left? Iraqis who are still in the fight are called forward by similar perceptions of promise. They will keep fighting so long as there is a short-run prospect that the US will leave or shift in its actions or allies.
Leave and this disappears. There will be an explosion and then a sit down. The longer the US waits, the bigger the explosion will be and the harder the sit down will be.
The U.S. presence in Iraq is destabilizing.
There are numerous reasons for this. The first is the strategy of providing arms and training to people whose interests and loyalties are not primarily toward creating stability.
The second is that you don't promote stability by enraging people, crashing into their homes, humiliating them, insulting them, and killing off their family members seemingly at random. Terror can make a terrible stability, applied systematically. Where there is no system, it just feeds the engine of chaos.
But most fundamentally, everyone knows that change is coming. Eventually, people need to sit down and agree on an outcome of this conflict that will be seen as legitimate by enough people for it to stick. But if change is in the air, that generally means that at least one group will believe it could be the beneficiary of that change. And all you need is one bellicose group at any given time to sustain perpetual conflict. The US stayed in Iraq this long by constantly seeing each new anticipated development as the potential light at the end of the tunnel. Why go when victory is just up this way and a little to the left? Iraqis who are still in the fight are called forward by similar perceptions of promise. They will keep fighting so long as there is a short-run prospect that the US will leave or shift in its actions or allies.
Leave and this disappears. There will be an explosion and then a sit down. The longer the US waits, the bigger the explosion will be and the harder the sit down will be.
One last time...
Ohmigod! I just realized that I have not posted anything for four months except these gripes against the local news. Just one more, and I'll go on to something else.
A while back, they had a story on how "criminals" (actually, the criminally accused, I think) were allowed one free substitution of a judge, which had lightened the caseload of one judge who was notorious for, variously, either being harsh, or giving mean lectures from the bench. There were some efforts at balance, but it was mainly an expose on this allgedly bad law.
I think this was another disservice. I don't know the original reasons for the rule, but one logical benefit I can see was never mentioned, and seems pretty important. If there are multiple judges hearing the same kind of case, and differences among them in terms of severity of their sentencing or use of discretion so that some are more pro-prosecution and others more pro-defense, then giving out a peremptory strike against a judge (for either side) will tend to promote uniformity. This is vital because the consequences of a crime should depend on the facts of the case and the considerations sanctione by law and not on the dumb luck of what judge you draw in the lottery.
A while back, they had a story on how "criminals" (actually, the criminally accused, I think) were allowed one free substitution of a judge, which had lightened the caseload of one judge who was notorious for, variously, either being harsh, or giving mean lectures from the bench. There were some efforts at balance, but it was mainly an expose on this allgedly bad law.
I think this was another disservice. I don't know the original reasons for the rule, but one logical benefit I can see was never mentioned, and seems pretty important. If there are multiple judges hearing the same kind of case, and differences among them in terms of severity of their sentencing or use of discretion so that some are more pro-prosecution and others more pro-defense, then giving out a peremptory strike against a judge (for either side) will tend to promote uniformity. This is vital because the consequences of a crime should depend on the facts of the case and the considerations sanctione by law and not on the dumb luck of what judge you draw in the lottery.
And more...
I have been away for a while, but I need to post before the month is up. I've fogotten most of my stored-up criticism but there's always something fresh.
They just finished a report in which they concealed the identity of a teacher who had a concern of retribution, not for speaking out against an apparently stupid policy (but who knows, because we never get both sides), but because she admits violating the policy. This gets a black mark from me.
I think it would be ethical for the news to protect its source by concealing the fact that she did something for which she could legitimately be sanctioned, because revealing that fact would chill the willingness of sources to come forward. Sure. But after that, there were choices made that probably weren't right.
Maybe, if the source's confession of rule-breaking were not presented, she could have been shown and identified. We don't know if there was any reason to fear retribution for simply voicing disagreement with the policy. This is a public school system, and in principle, one is legall protected from retribution for speaking out in a private capacity on a matter of public policy. There was no hint in the broadcast that any reasonable apprehension derived from speaking out -- just from admitting insubordination in violating the rule.
In actual journalism, it's considered a good thing to reveal sources. Secret sources are not subject to public truth-testing and hence unreliable unless corroborated. It's always better to get a specific, identified source for a fact as opposed to keeping the evidence in your back pocket.
But I doubt this was much of a concern for Channel 4 News. My guess is that they chose to hide the identity of the source because it adds drama to conceal faces, distort voices, and pretend the source is like some kind of spy who risks grave peril for disclosing the dirty secret.
But here the dirty secret was the source's own wrongdoing. Regardles of whether the rule violated was justified, this same station that flaunted that wrongdoing, and its complicity in abetting it, has frequently in the past run special reports where it exposes individual wrongdoers. The distinction here appears to be the reporter didn't like the rule. The station made a value judgment that the rules they collaborate in enforcing are good rules, and this rule was a bad rule. They decide. They would not have to decide whether they liked the rule if their goal was simply to report the facts. The point of the story was not the violation of the rule, but the fact that the rule exists and is questionable. They could still point out that they'd received reports of the rule's violation, but to do so was less important than to be neutral.
They just finished a report in which they concealed the identity of a teacher who had a concern of retribution, not for speaking out against an apparently stupid policy (but who knows, because we never get both sides), but because she admits violating the policy. This gets a black mark from me.
I think it would be ethical for the news to protect its source by concealing the fact that she did something for which she could legitimately be sanctioned, because revealing that fact would chill the willingness of sources to come forward. Sure. But after that, there were choices made that probably weren't right.
Maybe, if the source's confession of rule-breaking were not presented, she could have been shown and identified. We don't know if there was any reason to fear retribution for simply voicing disagreement with the policy. This is a public school system, and in principle, one is legall protected from retribution for speaking out in a private capacity on a matter of public policy. There was no hint in the broadcast that any reasonable apprehension derived from speaking out -- just from admitting insubordination in violating the rule.
In actual journalism, it's considered a good thing to reveal sources. Secret sources are not subject to public truth-testing and hence unreliable unless corroborated. It's always better to get a specific, identified source for a fact as opposed to keeping the evidence in your back pocket.
But I doubt this was much of a concern for Channel 4 News. My guess is that they chose to hide the identity of the source because it adds drama to conceal faces, distort voices, and pretend the source is like some kind of spy who risks grave peril for disclosing the dirty secret.
But here the dirty secret was the source's own wrongdoing. Regardles of whether the rule violated was justified, this same station that flaunted that wrongdoing, and its complicity in abetting it, has frequently in the past run special reports where it exposes individual wrongdoers. The distinction here appears to be the reporter didn't like the rule. The station made a value judgment that the rules they collaborate in enforcing are good rules, and this rule was a bad rule. They decide. They would not have to decide whether they liked the rule if their goal was simply to report the facts. The point of the story was not the violation of the rule, but the fact that the rule exists and is questionable. They could still point out that they'd received reports of the rule's violation, but to do so was less important than to be neutral.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
More gripes
Just wanted to add a couple more gripes to my growing list regarding the local news:
1) I hate it when they say "we all..." or "everybody" as in, "We all know how annoying it is when..." "We've all wondered..." or "Everybody loves to..." or (most of all) "Everybody's been waiting to hear..." or other phrases indicating particularly that the entire viewing area has had the same experiences or tastes or, especially, that we've all been following and care about some story that they've been covering excessively. I wonder, wouldn't people who call themselves journalists, who make it a business to report on the diversity of things that happen, have a broader perspective than that? Can these people really not be aware that there are others that think differently? How can their worlds possibly be so small?
2) If I haven't said it already, I hate the way stories are spun out into a daily series by adding a speck of information each day that is so small it should in no way qualify as a story. Day 1: Brett Favre's game tomorrow will be the last of the season, and we're going to wonder aloud for two and a half minutes whether it will be his last. Day 2: Yes, the game happened (see separate report); someone else has asked the question we were wondering about yesterday, and here's the non-answer response. Day 3: we asked again and here's a follow-up non-answer. Day 4: Guess what? We asked again, except this day, we got the views of some of his teammates, and they had no information. Day 5: See day 3. Day 6-7: weekend, we repeat the highlights of our previous reports. Day 8: Report fresh non-information. Day 9: see day 8. Et cetera.
1) I hate it when they say "we all..." or "everybody" as in, "We all know how annoying it is when..." "We've all wondered..." or "Everybody loves to..." or (most of all) "Everybody's been waiting to hear..." or other phrases indicating particularly that the entire viewing area has had the same experiences or tastes or, especially, that we've all been following and care about some story that they've been covering excessively. I wonder, wouldn't people who call themselves journalists, who make it a business to report on the diversity of things that happen, have a broader perspective than that? Can these people really not be aware that there are others that think differently? How can their worlds possibly be so small?
2) If I haven't said it already, I hate the way stories are spun out into a daily series by adding a speck of information each day that is so small it should in no way qualify as a story. Day 1: Brett Favre's game tomorrow will be the last of the season, and we're going to wonder aloud for two and a half minutes whether it will be his last. Day 2: Yes, the game happened (see separate report); someone else has asked the question we were wondering about yesterday, and here's the non-answer response. Day 3: we asked again and here's a follow-up non-answer. Day 4: Guess what? We asked again, except this day, we got the views of some of his teammates, and they had no information. Day 5: See day 3. Day 6-7: weekend, we repeat the highlights of our previous reports. Day 8: Report fresh non-information. Day 9: see day 8. Et cetera.
Friday, November 17, 2006
I just can't stop
Okay, tonight, it's an update on deadbeat dads, and a report on the roads where one is supposedly most likely to encounter a drunk driver. I just want to make a few notes about the latter. It did something that I noticed last night too. The reports are incredibly self-referential. "We tracked him down." "It took a lot of effort." "We searched for three weeks." Who cares? This stuff serves two apparent functions. First, it sensationalizes the story by creating a phony drama and suspense over whether the investigation will be successful. This is Geraldo outside Capone's vault. It's entertainment and it follows the strictures of entertainment. Nothing the I-Team does is newsworthy. They make the story about themselves to inject entertainment value into stories that would otherwise be simply news. Second, it's a big advertisement for the station -- look at us! Look see how hard we worked. This took a lot of effort. Be impressed. Now that I think about it, there's a third function: distract from the story so you won't see how deeply flawed it is.
Speaking of which, okay. The newsguys tallied reports of traffic arrests and noted the drunk driving arrest hotspots. Here's the big surprise -- the busiest major highways tended to be the source of the most arrests. One thing the report didn't ask anyone was, "Mr. Expert, is our methodology sound?" I'd have asked that before doing all that work. I suspect the answer would be, no.
Sections of the city that are more dense with roads are correspondingly likely to have more traffic and hence more arrests. Highways with higher speed limits and no stoplights simply see more traffic, even though the highways tend to be better lit, better maintained, and easier to drive (no intersections, constant speeds) than city streets. Some areas may have more arrests simply because they are better patrolled. Areas near police stations are likely to be more patrolled. One high arrest area is close to a part of the city that has late night traffic jams due to large public events -- unsafe, or just better patrolled?
A better methodology would be to compare number of accidents with city engineers' estimates of traffic flow. If a high ratio of cars on the road are involved in accidents, this is a sign of unsafety, rather than, "we counted more drunk driving arrests within a mile radius of the huge highway interchange near downtown than in any other circle with an area of pi miles." Duh!
Another thing which I neglected to mention last night is that within the report, they keep throwing in teasers: "you'll see" this, or "we'll show you" that, or "just wait until you see what we found." Just tell us, dammit. Don't make a 45-second report into a 3-minute report by telling us three times that you're going to show us something before you do. If you don't have a full report, then it isn't soup yet. Stick it back on the burner until it's ready.
Speaking of which, okay. The newsguys tallied reports of traffic arrests and noted the drunk driving arrest hotspots. Here's the big surprise -- the busiest major highways tended to be the source of the most arrests. One thing the report didn't ask anyone was, "Mr. Expert, is our methodology sound?" I'd have asked that before doing all that work. I suspect the answer would be, no.
Sections of the city that are more dense with roads are correspondingly likely to have more traffic and hence more arrests. Highways with higher speed limits and no stoplights simply see more traffic, even though the highways tend to be better lit, better maintained, and easier to drive (no intersections, constant speeds) than city streets. Some areas may have more arrests simply because they are better patrolled. Areas near police stations are likely to be more patrolled. One high arrest area is close to a part of the city that has late night traffic jams due to large public events -- unsafe, or just better patrolled?
A better methodology would be to compare number of accidents with city engineers' estimates of traffic flow. If a high ratio of cars on the road are involved in accidents, this is a sign of unsafety, rather than, "we counted more drunk driving arrests within a mile radius of the huge highway interchange near downtown than in any other circle with an area of pi miles." Duh!
Another thing which I neglected to mention last night is that within the report, they keep throwing in teasers: "you'll see" this, or "we'll show you" that, or "just wait until you see what we found." Just tell us, dammit. Don't make a 45-second report into a 3-minute report by telling us three times that you're going to show us something before you do. If you don't have a full report, then it isn't soup yet. Stick it back on the burner until it's ready.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
More Stupidity from WTMJ
It's one thing after another. Tonight, the worst of the worst, John Mercure, left, had an expose on two "deadbeat dads." This is a recycled theme that they run every once in a while, it seems, because it's dear to their hearts, and, after all, they don't have many original ideas. Again, please note, I don't mean to defend categorically real deadbeat dads, but so bad is the reporting from Channel 4, that when Mercure or one of his imitators accuse someone, I instantly begin to doubt. If they accused O.J. Simpson of being black, I'd start to wonder if he weren't really Chinese or something.
So this time, two guys. One -- and I admit this was clever -- they got to brag about all their successful enterprises in real estate, making tons of money. They confronted him and he denied everything. Later, they presented testimony that he was a big liar. So, if he's a liar, doesn't that undercut his claims of being such a bigshot, with all this money? It sounded all pretty vague to me. If there really was a big pot of money this guy had, couldn't Johnnie find it? Has he ever heard of research -- go down to the Register of Deeds, or just check on the City's website. If he had no evidence to support his claims other than the braggery of a known liar, it's premature to report. Adding his opinion that the guy is "deplorable" does nothing to change that. John's opinion is not news. In fact, it's utterly predictable.
Go to guy number two. This guy was depicted as a gambling addict who probably burns through every cent he earns and is left with nothing. This makes him a deadbeat? Yes, but the guy should have his wages garnished and get some treatment. It doesn't sound like he's concealing any big money from his kids. It doesn't sound like he's laughing his way to the bank. More to the point, John left in the segment a telling retort from this guy, something like, "shit, man, I just explained that to you!" This has happened before. We never seem to get this side of the story. If the guy's story is preposterous, let us hear it. If it's reasonable, let us hear it. If it's checkable, check it. Don't just hide it from us.
Beyond all this, the report is just disgustingly manipulative and one-sided. Once again, Johnny has confused law enforcement for journalism: "We're tracking them down, and authorities could soon be locking them up." Note to John: quit your job and enroll in the police academy. Our culture can withstand one more bad cop better than it can withstand one more hack reporter taking up our precious airwaves.
Last night, the expose was on Arturo Jimenez. Read and listen here. Here I have the usual complaints and some new ones. Among the usual, interview technique. Here are the questions News 4's "I-Team" cleverly asked Jimenez to gain his trust and elicit his version of the story: "You have taken people's money and not done the work," we said to him. All he could say was no. "No, no.""Talk to me about it," we tried again. "I'm going to give you a chance. You have taken people's money and not done the work.""I have nothing to talk about," he said.... "Why are you ripping people off in your own community?" we asked him. See how the interviewer slyly elicits the most informative comments from Jimenez by shouting accusations at him and simply rejecting anything he answers? It takes years of journalism school to master that. I smell another award!
Among the more special, I liked the I-Team's suggestion that because Jimenez was dishonest, he should not work at all but maybe just steal outright, or sponge off friends or the state:
"Courts have ruled against Jimenez. The Better Business Bureau has complaints on file. Yet, he keeps working..."
Mostly, though, I noticed how they focused not on the allegation that Jimenez was a crook, or that his victims were Hispanic, but that he was Hispanic, and this is what made him a louse. One talking head said he was someone who "takes advantage of their heritage." (Lazy minorities have all the breaks. How unfair that white people can never manage to prey on nonwhites.) Another guy said he made all Latinos look bad to Anglos. Some truth to this, but only because 1) Channel 4 is there to make sure all the white people know about this guy who previously had a bad name mainly among his own, and 2) people make racist generalizations, but Channel 4 never says they shouldn't -- it puts the entire blame for their racism on Jimenez. How ironic. Channel 4 is doing just what they accuse Jimenez of -- purveying a stereotype of Hispanics as lazy and corrupt.
Another report, this one not an I-Team report, but a "Special Investigation." The supposed problem, long lines at the DMV. It starts with an anecdote from some guy who waited two hours. I was at the DMV recently and waited about 20 minutes. Not great; I wish they'd hire more people. Still, it leads me to doubt that 2 hours is typical. The report had no average wait times, it just reported how long the lines were, and again just with anecdotes, not real data: 77 at one place. So what? Is that 77 waiting with one person on duty and each person has 15 minutes worth of business? (That would be a 19-hour wait for the last person in line, which is essentially like having an appointment for the next day.) Or maybe there are 12 checkout aisles, they take care of you in three minutes, which comes out to a 19-minute wait.
After inventing or exaggerating a big problem (which I say because they reported that customers at the DMV had an 80% satisfaction rate -- painting this as a horrible, horrible thing), they turn to the solution... privatization!
Privatization is not a solution. It does not magically make things better. Anything private businesses can do, governments can do just as well, except for screw over workers and rip people off, and they're getting pretty good at those things too. The only plus for privatization is that it can lead to a greater nimbleness and incentive to implement solutions. But once those solutions are identified, government can copy them. So, if Ohio went private and it was a huge success, I would want to know how that private company does things so much better. What did they do? Hire more people? Invest in technology?Allow people to make appointments? Allow more tasks to be done online? Cut corners on accuracy or security? Correct some unique Ohio problem that Wisconsin corrected 20 years ago? Take advantage of some unique Ohio characteristic we don't have? It would make a sound piece of reporting to find out these things and then ask whether they would work here.
That was not done. There was a reference to one possible solution to some problems -- allow customers to take care of some of their business online. Sounds like a great idea. A FAQ could answer your questions. You could download the forms and submit them, rather than waiting in line to hand them in. The computer could check for missing blanks. Even things that required you to be there, like having your picture taken, or take a vision test, could be shortened -- set up everything in advance and make an appointment. This would take most of the people out of the line, making it shorter for everyone else. Also mentioned, better technology. Stop walking back to the row of filing cabinets for a record, get it from the computer in a second. That should speed things up. In all likelihood, this is what Ohio did.
However, the reporter dismissed this with a wave of the hand: "Their solution is more online services and better technology. But that's little comfort for people losing hours of their lives at the DMV." No? Why not? Listen, Mike Trevey, if you don't understand it, ask a question. Don't seek to impose your own ignorance on viewers.
The best part of the report came after it was over. Carole Meekins asks, so, is there any downside? Oh, yeah, Mike neglected to mention that in Ohio privatization worked, but elsewhere it's been an abysmal failure. Thanks, Carole, for shooting that suggestion entirely to hell with one question the answer to which Mr. "Special Assignment" decided he shouldn't bother to tell us.
Before I go back to last week, let me also mention the repeated reports on "fainting goats" and where you can get them. Why are they running and re-running livestock advertisements disguised as news? Do they get a cut from every goat sold?
Now back to the I-Team. Their commercials talk about how when you investigate, you get to take on the powerful. Usually, it’s people who park illegally. They just did another one of those. Or you get divorced dads with gambling convictions, or Hispanic contractors who don't perform. So last week it’s…student loan deadbeats!
Now, don’t get me wrong. As usual, the story is half true. There are folks out there who have the money and should be doing a better job of servicing their student loans. Many were improvident in having borrowed. A very few may be scammers. But as usual, many of not most of the “powerful” whom the station seeks to afflict are themselves victims.
The station goes to great lengths to tell us over and over that when student borrowers default, the taxpayers wind up paying.
But who’s really responsible? Here are some things the broadcast doesn’t tell you:
1) Some schools are frauds, designed to suck up student loan money, without actually preparing their students with the marketable skills needed to pay back their loans. These schools can sometimes be spotted by the fact that most of their students default on their loans.
2) Even legitimate schools consciously overcharge because they know the government, by subsidizing loans and grants, will take up the slack. The formula is need-based, which means the higher the tuition, the more students need, and hence the more they get – which they immediately give to the schools. Hence tuition has overall grown at several times the rate of inflation.
3) The banks make money off making these loans, charging both interest and extra charges like administration and origination fees, despite the fact that they bear zero risk on the investment. (Remember, when students default, the government insures the loans, so the banks never pay, the taxpayers do.)
4) Student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. So there are graduates out there who can’t keep ahead of the interest, and can’t start over.
The story focused on doctors. Student loans for medical school can be enormous. If you don't finish, you'll just have this huge debt and no profession to show for it that can help you pay that off. The interest on that mountain of debt can by itself overwhelm any income that you can get from half a medical degree, which is to say minimum wage.
So what does TV-4 propose? Throw them in jail? That'll save the taxpayers a lot of money. (Actually, it may discourage people from going to medical school. But that would also hurt medical schools and cause a shortage of doctors, which is already a problem.)
Thanks, WTMJ. With you on the air, at least we'll never face a shortage in stupidity.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Reagan Stamp
I was having a conversation with friends about last year's Ronald Reagan stamp. One friend was sent the stamp on a SASE and, despising Reagan, was horrified at having to use it, but not so horrified as to spend 39 cents on another stamp. After all, it's just a stamp.Another friend said he liked the stamp. He also thought Reagan sucked, but liked the idea that a machine would be pounding into his face, smearing it with ink as the stamp as cancelled.
Another potential view, I remarked, although impolite, might be to recall that by federal law, no stamp or coin can bear the likeness of anyone still alive -- a law, by the way, which I think has been violated by the Ohio state quarter, since no one can honestly argue, I think, that the "astronaut" on the back is not simply John Glenn -- anyhow, one might recall that law and look upon the Reagan stamp and look at it as reassurance that "that f**ker's finally DEAD."
Photo Retouching 101
Well, I'm a little nonplussed by the way blogger lets you add photos. It took me a few tries to get the photo on the left to be on the left.In any event, what you see us the before and after pictures from a photo retouching job I did. I wanted to post this because it's not something I do a lot of and I'm proud of this result. On the left is the original photo of a friend of mine. On the right, the adjusted product. The changes include changing the saturation and color balance to make the complexion a bit less ashen, thinning the face, moving the right jowl inward and eliminating the bulge a the neck, lowering the forehead, evening out the hairline, making the stubble less obvious and less grey, eliminating the veins on the forehead, darkening the eyebrows, and, of course, covering my tracks so the retouching job isn't totally obvious. I left plenty of clues for FBI laboratory staff if they ever wanted to test the authenticity of this photo, but with limited time for the project, I think I made it look pretty convincing to the naked eye.
So, beyond that bragging, I did have a retouching thread that I've been wanting to post for a while. Remember that Reuters photographer who retouched some of his photos of Israeli strikes in Iraq, Adnan Hajj? He basically added some dark smoke to a photo depicting an Israeli airstrike.
He also did a crappy job. You can see that he basically copied a billow of smoke on photoshop and repasted it at intervals to add additional volume.But of course the issue is not that he's an unskilled manipulator. Nor is it that there was any material misrepresentation involved. While supporters of the Israeli attacks screamed bloody murder and got Hajj suspended, let's be clear. The attack was real. It did make smoke. The photo was not fabricated out of whole cloth. Nor was the amount of smoke an important issue for which the photo provided evidence. Opponents of the attacks objected on the grounds that they killed, injured, or displaced a million people, mostly innocent people, violated international law, inflicted huge damage on the economy of Lebanon, and were counterproductive to their own stated goals. I don't recall a lot of people saying, Israel should stop its war because it makes too much smoke and that's really affecting air quality in the region.
No, the issue was, or supposedly would be, that any manipulation threatens the credibility of the publisher, so there is a need to be circumspect with respect to the integrity of photos regardless of whether they are used as evidence of a material point, or merely seek to entertain the eye and illustrate an event. But if that is true, what about all the other manipulation that takes place?
Take for example, the famous occasion of Time magazine darkening the mug shot of O.J. Simpson, making him look more African and at the same time, more sinsiter and obscure. This was done reportedly for asthetic reasons rather than editorial ones. The cover was conceived as an illustration rather than a photo attesting to reality, and it was assembled with a symbolic black-and-white theme. You can see that an iris effect was added to the background, the colorsaturation was reduced, and even the color balance changed to be more reddish. The slate reading "BK4013970 061794 Los Angeles Police Jail Div" was also shrunk, and everything unrelated to the article is kept off the cover. So I get that the idea was conceived as being artistic rather than racist, but I think the manipulation was consequential and rightly criticized.
Other examples are, contempraneous to the Lebanon manipulation story, slimming down Katie Couric as she was slated to become CBS' new anchor, in CBS magazine, which was arguably an effort to sell the CBS Nightly News based on her looks. In this case, it's a matter of both false advertising, and debasing both the news and Couric by treating her as eye candy and the evening newscast as a form of entertainment whose essential quality is represented by the looks of its anchor.
More serious, though it involves a pretty standard photo trick requiring less sophisticated manipulation.
This was the April 9, 2003 toppling of the statute of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. Although the initially released photos appeared to show a substantial crowd of cheering Iraqis spontaneously pulling down the statue and celebrating, photos available at the time and later released showed that the crowd was insubstantial, concentrated entirely within the visual field of the cropped photo that appeared in countless papers.Outside of that field, cropped off the bottom and sides of the picture, were two things:
1) the emptiness of a mostly deserted square, and
2) a U.S. military presence, which included the tank which actually pulled down the statue.
(Observers also noted that some of the members of the crowd were apparently plants, since the same individuals appeared in other crowd photos around the country and at least one was photographed as part of Ahmed Chalabi's entourage as they arrived in the country.)
Here the manipulation was not any sophisticated retouching, but merely cropping. Another common device is foreshortening. When a long lens is used, the viewer seems to be close to the action, because the image is large, but the sense of perspective is diminished, as when a scene is viewed from far away. The effect is that objects in the foreground and background appear to be separated by little distance along the axis of viewing, though they may in fact be a considerable distance apart.
Of course the point with Couric and OJ and Firdos Square is that, to my knowledge, none of these tricks prompted anyone to be suspended, or have their entire portfolio scanned for deceptions. A story on the Couric affair had a CBS exec laughing the whole thing off and treating it as trivial. It may be, simply given how common manipulation is in one form or another.
One could itemize other forms of manipulation, such as the mere decision to cover staged pseudo-events, which comprise perhaps a majority of all news, or helping to stage photos, or selecting subjects or angles or filters that make photographs dramatic and asthetic and thus fail to capure the boring reality that is their real subject.
Anyhow, the big deal over Hajj is overblown in relative terms, or perhaps all the other cases are simply underblown.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Potpourri, again
Once more I have a lot of ideas saved up. Here are some:
1. Blushing Bride. The local news had a story maybe 10 days ago, which again I'm in too much of a rush to link to, about a store that sold wedding dresses that suddenly shut its doors and declared bankrupcy. It featured, as might be expected, distraught brides to be, complaining about the awful situation they were in, because they trusted the company and then they suddenly closed, without notice.
I take the unpopular position that the news treated the bankrupt company unfairly. I don't hold them blameless, but from what little I know about business bankrupcy, the report failed to provide the context that would explain the company's actions. In doing this, it failed to point the way to possible solutions to keep this from happening in the future.
First of all, the company undoubtedly did not set out to go bankrupt. I haven't seen their business plan, but most companies want to make money, not lose it. As far as I know there have been no allegations of fraud, i.e. that the principals of the company overpaid themselves in order to rob the company as much as possible with bankrupcy on the horizon. It is pretty common for the owner of a small business to loan the business money to keep it afloat, hoping it will turn the corner and survive.
I don't know if the company's original plan was reasonable or whether it was reasonable for it to try to ride out the crisis as long as they did. It sounded like the company used a lot of shipping. When gas prices rise, shipping costs rise. That could help explain why things went awry. I do think it was piss poor to get into this situation. I think a company that undertakes an enterprise like this should make damn sure they're not undercapitalized, and there should be some insurance offered to customers to prevent the worst. But society has not set up a strict liability standard. The law and the culture encourage half-assed startups in the name of the market. So the entrepreneur cannot entirely be blamed.
The customers wish they had been informed in advance. My understanding is that there is no such thing. Once there is an announcement of an impending bankrupcy, any hopes of riding out the crisis pretty much go out the window. No one will put anything into the company anymore, because they're on notice they may not get it back. Fraudulent conveyance laws kick into place preventing the company from giving things out -- it's treated as creditor property even before the papers are filed. Basically, the company has no choice but to close its doors. Even to give out dresses kept on the premises would be considered stealing from the creditors.
I think it's shitty that the company did not leave their customers a longer note. It's not enough to say, sorry for the inconvenience, and let people presume the worst. They should have said, now that we're bankrupt, matters are mostly out of our control, but we will do our best working with the lawyers and creditors to get everyone their dresses if possible. That could have alleviated at least some of the stress.
Ultimately, everyone whose weddings were scheduled within two weeks of the bankrupcy were promised their dresses. As far as I know this promise was kept. It was reportedly kept for at lest the first bride with an upcoming wedding. I have no doubt this was the lawyers who worked this out, recognizing the potential for bad publicity against the creditors.
In sum, the company acted badly, but the news media's inept and misleading coverage made them the only culprit, and failed to explain how some of the complaints against them were really attributable to aspects of the law and culture that should have been questioned, but remained unquestioned after all the reporting was done, helping set this up to happen again.
2. McGruff. McGruff, the crime dog, is at it again, teaching the kiddies how to do crimes.
Cartoons are popular with three kinds of viewers: kiddies, the tragically ironic, and no-goods who bust into houses to rape, steal, and watch Tom and Jerry. Adults seeking serious information on how to prevent identity theft generally do not go to Blue’s Clues, Clifford the Big Red Dog or McGruff.
So here he is again on TV, showing us how you can take a picture of someone’s credit card discreetly with a cell phone, and use the numbers to make unauthorized purchases. Cool. Kids don’t have credit cards, though if the kid is over 12 he probably has his own cell number. So you know kids aren’t gonna run and tell their parents this new trick.
No-goods will be sitting in someone’s living room after a home invasion when McGruff comes on during Matlock, and reminds them how they can get a credit card out of the victim’s purse and order a pizza.
And of course, the tragically ironic just think it would be cool to commit a crime suggested to them by a misguided crime-prevention effort, so they order original artworks from the Banksy website and have them sent to the Whitney at Altria.
3. Yellow Ribbons. Yellow ribbons, it turns out, are a fascinating example of semantic drift. Part of the message of the ribbons has remained the same: I support you. But tracing their use backwards, it turns out that the rest of their meaning has reversed almost 180 degrees.
Today, the ribbons are an endemic outgrowth of the Iraq war, and they seem to signify something like, “I support you in your mission. You’re a hero.” Everyone is supposed to have one of the damn things. It’s considered patriotic to consider the mission heroic on the level of the individual soldier, even though most now see the war as a whole as stupid and counterproductive, if not simply wrong – one unnecessary atrocity spangled with smaller atrocities. It’s currently debated whether the ribbons also display support for the war.
I recall earlier uses of the ribbons. The previous Iraq war, or “Persian Gulf War,” then years before the current one, saw the ribbons. Their meaning was not support for the war so much, at least where I was. It was more, we love you and we want you back. Over the decade, the military aspect and even the location were unchanged, but there was a subtle change in tenor from expressing love and the pain of absence to support for the mission.
Ten years before that was the first use of the ribbons that I know of. We’re now back to the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-80, the “crisis” that became “America Held Hostage” and later NBC’s Nightline. The ribbons were for the hostages. Between the Hostage Crisis and Iraq I, the notion of “we want you safely home” remained intact, but shifted from diplomatic hostages to military personnel engaging in a hot war.
The first use was in 1974, when Dawn, featuring Tony Orlando, performed “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.” From some of the lyrics, you might think there was a hint of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war: it begins and ends with simply, “I'm comin' home…” Everyone knows the chorus:
Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak treeIt's been three long years. Do you still want me?If I don't see a ribbon round the old oak treeI'll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me.If I don't see a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
But the context is clear that the singer is actually much more like the hostages in Iran than like our troops. He’s a prisoner. An inmate at one of America’s fine penal institutions:
I'm comin' home, I've done my time…
I'm really still in prison, and my love she holds the key
A simple yellow ribbon's what I need to set me free
So, the yellow ribbon used to say: Yes, it looks like you done wrong and landed in jail. But you’ve done your time, you’ve reformed yourself. You’re willing to accept responsibility and “put the blame on me.” That gives me faith in you to forgive you and take you back.
Appropriate for Lynddie England, perhaps. Certainly not the meaning the ribbons have today.
4. Other. Here is just a reminder to me of things I want to write for this space:
a) The Activism Amendment, b) Venezuela or Guatemala for the Security Council? c) Democrats criticize Chavez, d) Dogcross, e) Westphalia, f) The purported rights of nations to persist, g) 911 and immigarants, h) guns in schools and nukes for nations, i) Sex talk, j) God Talk, k) Cry Wolf, l) Eden.
1. Blushing Bride. The local news had a story maybe 10 days ago, which again I'm in too much of a rush to link to, about a store that sold wedding dresses that suddenly shut its doors and declared bankrupcy. It featured, as might be expected, distraught brides to be, complaining about the awful situation they were in, because they trusted the company and then they suddenly closed, without notice.
I take the unpopular position that the news treated the bankrupt company unfairly. I don't hold them blameless, but from what little I know about business bankrupcy, the report failed to provide the context that would explain the company's actions. In doing this, it failed to point the way to possible solutions to keep this from happening in the future.
First of all, the company undoubtedly did not set out to go bankrupt. I haven't seen their business plan, but most companies want to make money, not lose it. As far as I know there have been no allegations of fraud, i.e. that the principals of the company overpaid themselves in order to rob the company as much as possible with bankrupcy on the horizon. It is pretty common for the owner of a small business to loan the business money to keep it afloat, hoping it will turn the corner and survive.
I don't know if the company's original plan was reasonable or whether it was reasonable for it to try to ride out the crisis as long as they did. It sounded like the company used a lot of shipping. When gas prices rise, shipping costs rise. That could help explain why things went awry. I do think it was piss poor to get into this situation. I think a company that undertakes an enterprise like this should make damn sure they're not undercapitalized, and there should be some insurance offered to customers to prevent the worst. But society has not set up a strict liability standard. The law and the culture encourage half-assed startups in the name of the market. So the entrepreneur cannot entirely be blamed.
The customers wish they had been informed in advance. My understanding is that there is no such thing. Once there is an announcement of an impending bankrupcy, any hopes of riding out the crisis pretty much go out the window. No one will put anything into the company anymore, because they're on notice they may not get it back. Fraudulent conveyance laws kick into place preventing the company from giving things out -- it's treated as creditor property even before the papers are filed. Basically, the company has no choice but to close its doors. Even to give out dresses kept on the premises would be considered stealing from the creditors.
I think it's shitty that the company did not leave their customers a longer note. It's not enough to say, sorry for the inconvenience, and let people presume the worst. They should have said, now that we're bankrupt, matters are mostly out of our control, but we will do our best working with the lawyers and creditors to get everyone their dresses if possible. That could have alleviated at least some of the stress.
Ultimately, everyone whose weddings were scheduled within two weeks of the bankrupcy were promised their dresses. As far as I know this promise was kept. It was reportedly kept for at lest the first bride with an upcoming wedding. I have no doubt this was the lawyers who worked this out, recognizing the potential for bad publicity against the creditors.
In sum, the company acted badly, but the news media's inept and misleading coverage made them the only culprit, and failed to explain how some of the complaints against them were really attributable to aspects of the law and culture that should have been questioned, but remained unquestioned after all the reporting was done, helping set this up to happen again.
2. McGruff. McGruff, the crime dog, is at it again, teaching the kiddies how to do crimes.
Cartoons are popular with three kinds of viewers: kiddies, the tragically ironic, and no-goods who bust into houses to rape, steal, and watch Tom and Jerry. Adults seeking serious information on how to prevent identity theft generally do not go to Blue’s Clues, Clifford the Big Red Dog or McGruff.
So here he is again on TV, showing us how you can take a picture of someone’s credit card discreetly with a cell phone, and use the numbers to make unauthorized purchases. Cool. Kids don’t have credit cards, though if the kid is over 12 he probably has his own cell number. So you know kids aren’t gonna run and tell their parents this new trick.
No-goods will be sitting in someone’s living room after a home invasion when McGruff comes on during Matlock, and reminds them how they can get a credit card out of the victim’s purse and order a pizza.
And of course, the tragically ironic just think it would be cool to commit a crime suggested to them by a misguided crime-prevention effort, so they order original artworks from the Banksy website and have them sent to the Whitney at Altria.
3. Yellow Ribbons. Yellow ribbons, it turns out, are a fascinating example of semantic drift. Part of the message of the ribbons has remained the same: I support you. But tracing their use backwards, it turns out that the rest of their meaning has reversed almost 180 degrees.
Today, the ribbons are an endemic outgrowth of the Iraq war, and they seem to signify something like, “I support you in your mission. You’re a hero.” Everyone is supposed to have one of the damn things. It’s considered patriotic to consider the mission heroic on the level of the individual soldier, even though most now see the war as a whole as stupid and counterproductive, if not simply wrong – one unnecessary atrocity spangled with smaller atrocities. It’s currently debated whether the ribbons also display support for the war.
I recall earlier uses of the ribbons. The previous Iraq war, or “Persian Gulf War,” then years before the current one, saw the ribbons. Their meaning was not support for the war so much, at least where I was. It was more, we love you and we want you back. Over the decade, the military aspect and even the location were unchanged, but there was a subtle change in tenor from expressing love and the pain of absence to support for the mission.
Ten years before that was the first use of the ribbons that I know of. We’re now back to the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-80, the “crisis” that became “America Held Hostage” and later NBC’s Nightline. The ribbons were for the hostages. Between the Hostage Crisis and Iraq I, the notion of “we want you safely home” remained intact, but shifted from diplomatic hostages to military personnel engaging in a hot war.
The first use was in 1974, when Dawn, featuring Tony Orlando, performed “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.” From some of the lyrics, you might think there was a hint of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war: it begins and ends with simply, “I'm comin' home…” Everyone knows the chorus:
Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak treeIt's been three long years. Do you still want me?If I don't see a ribbon round the old oak treeI'll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me.If I don't see a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
But the context is clear that the singer is actually much more like the hostages in Iran than like our troops. He’s a prisoner. An inmate at one of America’s fine penal institutions:
I'm comin' home, I've done my time…
I'm really still in prison, and my love she holds the key
A simple yellow ribbon's what I need to set me free
So, the yellow ribbon used to say: Yes, it looks like you done wrong and landed in jail. But you’ve done your time, you’ve reformed yourself. You’re willing to accept responsibility and “put the blame on me.” That gives me faith in you to forgive you and take you back.
Appropriate for Lynddie England, perhaps. Certainly not the meaning the ribbons have today.
4. Other. Here is just a reminder to me of things I want to write for this space:
a) The Activism Amendment, b) Venezuela or Guatemala for the Security Council? c) Democrats criticize Chavez, d) Dogcross, e) Westphalia, f) The purported rights of nations to persist, g) 911 and immigarants, h) guns in schools and nukes for nations, i) Sex talk, j) God Talk, k) Cry Wolf, l) Eden.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Republican Scandals
Well, it's been a month and I have a pile of items that I had planned to post that are all backed up in the pipeline. I'm going to continue that bout of laziness by being a lazy linker and not giving the hotlinks to a few references here, which is like filing a legal paper without the exhibits, but oh hell, maybe I'll find them later.
Crooks and liars has a video of some talking heads talking about the Foley scandal. It's a hoot because the Democrat guy spreads like a 1N debater, rattling off more than a dozen high-profile Republican scandals. I remember a great video they posted months ago with Howard Dean saying again and again how the Abramoff scandal had touched not one Democrat.
Counterpunch has an article with an analysis if why so many times Republicans get caught literally with pants down (With links to an about.com list of scandals that is redacted from Wikipedia).
My own thought is that this is at once a hard and an easy issue for the Democrats. It's hard because attention span is so short that any smart Republican can run out the clock listing Democratic scandals and make it look like a bipartisan failing. (Note however that the Crooks and Liars video shows that Republicans often aren't smart.) On the other hand, there must be some way to make the point that Republicans dominate in the area of scandal, because they do.
Beyond the lists you could make from this administration, one could compare the relatively clean Clinton, Carter, and Johnson white houses with the corrupt administrations of Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. (Ford was apparently not so bad.) For Johnson you had, what, a petty scandal regarding a Supreme Court appointee? Compare to Nixon: president resigned and pardoned, top advisors sent to jail. Ford restored and Carter restored some of the reputation the government had lost. Then recall when Time magazine presented its "Wall of Shame" showing a hundred-odd Reagan officials who'd been indicted or left under a cloud. Bush I had his own set of pardons of a half dozen of his top people right before leaving office. Clinton, in spite of being impeached and ultimately surrendering his law license for a misleadingly captious denial about sex with Monica Lewinsky, had a relatively clean house. Now Bush II and you have numerous investigations reaching into the White House, with various spy scandals, Plamegate, Abramoff, etc...
You read about the slimy environment in which young Republicans are trained to fight dirty, and I've seen these shenanigans in student politics. Anything goes, because the issues are always black and white to the authoritarian personality. John Dean has recently discovered this and written a book about it. It's no accident that the new breed of Republicans includes a disproportionate share of grifters, liars, and pedophiles.
Foleygate has been amusing and disturbing in part because of the lack of unified Republican spin. Of course, many want to shoot the messenger. Wonkette caught Fox News letting the Republicans off the hook by labeling Foley a Democrat. The FRC Christians have blamed the scandal on the Republican's coddling of gays. Drudge blames the kid victims for going along. Boehner blames Hastert. Foley blames alcohol. Hannity invented the fact that the twentysomething Lewinsky was actually still a tender child while servicing the Presidential staff, a comparison that O'Reilly had said only an extremist lunatic would make (but in Hannity's defense, you would only be a lunatic to compare the real facts of the cases, and as a Fox News pseudojournalust, he was dealing in made-up facts). How many different stories and scapegoats are we up to? Oh yeah, Stephen Colbert blames himself. Thanks for owning up.
Locally, we have a governor's race that is all about scandals. The Democratic governor, running for reelection, received a lot of campaign money from people who benefited from his policies, making him exactly like 100% of other politicians. He has not been the target of any investigation and exactly one person in state government, a minor functionary, has left under a cloud. This is the substance of all the negative Republican adds. Plus, they've added a new charge -- he tried to rig the election.
Now, I'm no great fan of this guy but I defend people who are attacked with stupid arguments. How did he attempt to rig the election? His lawyer lobbied the elections board to make a ruling favorable to him concerning his opponent's illegal activities. Scandalous -- a lawyer presenting an argument to a legal body. The Journal-Sentinel, only mass daily paper of the state's largest city, ran this "scandal" on page 1; it reported later on page 6B that the lawyer for the Republicans did the same thing, apparently not a scandal. The elections board voted along party lines, but a judge affirmed its ruling.
The substance of that ruling, as I understand, was that the Republican candidate, who is currently in Congress, transferred his entire Congressional campaign warchest into his budget for election to the statehouse. A bit over 1/3 of that money was raised from national donors who had never complied with the restrictions for giving to a state campaign. Its transfer violated federal law. The television station owned by the Journal's parent company covered the story last night in a condescendingly simple manner, apparently because it presumes its viewers are idiots who would not otherwise understand. They treated the whole warchest as suspect, and said that a Democratic congressman had done something similar in the last election -- but no word on whether his actions were significantly different in legal terms. It's like saying that a cop is partisan because he pulls over the Republican for driving drunk, but not the Democrat, even though the Democrat is also driving (and not mentioning that maybe he's sober). I believe about 10% of what this station airs as news.
Crooks and liars has a video of some talking heads talking about the Foley scandal. It's a hoot because the Democrat guy spreads like a 1N debater, rattling off more than a dozen high-profile Republican scandals. I remember a great video they posted months ago with Howard Dean saying again and again how the Abramoff scandal had touched not one Democrat.
Counterpunch has an article with an analysis if why so many times Republicans get caught literally with pants down (With links to an about.com list of scandals that is redacted from Wikipedia).
My own thought is that this is at once a hard and an easy issue for the Democrats. It's hard because attention span is so short that any smart Republican can run out the clock listing Democratic scandals and make it look like a bipartisan failing. (Note however that the Crooks and Liars video shows that Republicans often aren't smart.) On the other hand, there must be some way to make the point that Republicans dominate in the area of scandal, because they do.
Beyond the lists you could make from this administration, one could compare the relatively clean Clinton, Carter, and Johnson white houses with the corrupt administrations of Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. (Ford was apparently not so bad.) For Johnson you had, what, a petty scandal regarding a Supreme Court appointee? Compare to Nixon: president resigned and pardoned, top advisors sent to jail. Ford restored and Carter restored some of the reputation the government had lost. Then recall when Time magazine presented its "Wall of Shame" showing a hundred-odd Reagan officials who'd been indicted or left under a cloud. Bush I had his own set of pardons of a half dozen of his top people right before leaving office. Clinton, in spite of being impeached and ultimately surrendering his law license for a misleadingly captious denial about sex with Monica Lewinsky, had a relatively clean house. Now Bush II and you have numerous investigations reaching into the White House, with various spy scandals, Plamegate, Abramoff, etc...
You read about the slimy environment in which young Republicans are trained to fight dirty, and I've seen these shenanigans in student politics. Anything goes, because the issues are always black and white to the authoritarian personality. John Dean has recently discovered this and written a book about it. It's no accident that the new breed of Republicans includes a disproportionate share of grifters, liars, and pedophiles.
Foleygate has been amusing and disturbing in part because of the lack of unified Republican spin. Of course, many want to shoot the messenger. Wonkette caught Fox News letting the Republicans off the hook by labeling Foley a Democrat. The FRC Christians have blamed the scandal on the Republican's coddling of gays. Drudge blames the kid victims for going along. Boehner blames Hastert. Foley blames alcohol. Hannity invented the fact that the twentysomething Lewinsky was actually still a tender child while servicing the Presidential staff, a comparison that O'Reilly had said only an extremist lunatic would make (but in Hannity's defense, you would only be a lunatic to compare the real facts of the cases, and as a Fox News pseudojournalust, he was dealing in made-up facts). How many different stories and scapegoats are we up to? Oh yeah, Stephen Colbert blames himself. Thanks for owning up.
Locally, we have a governor's race that is all about scandals. The Democratic governor, running for reelection, received a lot of campaign money from people who benefited from his policies, making him exactly like 100% of other politicians. He has not been the target of any investigation and exactly one person in state government, a minor functionary, has left under a cloud. This is the substance of all the negative Republican adds. Plus, they've added a new charge -- he tried to rig the election.
Now, I'm no great fan of this guy but I defend people who are attacked with stupid arguments. How did he attempt to rig the election? His lawyer lobbied the elections board to make a ruling favorable to him concerning his opponent's illegal activities. Scandalous -- a lawyer presenting an argument to a legal body. The Journal-Sentinel, only mass daily paper of the state's largest city, ran this "scandal" on page 1; it reported later on page 6B that the lawyer for the Republicans did the same thing, apparently not a scandal. The elections board voted along party lines, but a judge affirmed its ruling.
The substance of that ruling, as I understand, was that the Republican candidate, who is currently in Congress, transferred his entire Congressional campaign warchest into his budget for election to the statehouse. A bit over 1/3 of that money was raised from national donors who had never complied with the restrictions for giving to a state campaign. Its transfer violated federal law. The television station owned by the Journal's parent company covered the story last night in a condescendingly simple manner, apparently because it presumes its viewers are idiots who would not otherwise understand. They treated the whole warchest as suspect, and said that a Democratic congressman had done something similar in the last election -- but no word on whether his actions were significantly different in legal terms. It's like saying that a cop is partisan because he pulls over the Republican for driving drunk, but not the Democrat, even though the Democrat is also driving (and not mentioning that maybe he's sober). I believe about 10% of what this station airs as news.
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