Seems like it's been a while but I guess it really hasn't been. I have been sitting on a couple of thoughts, but what stirs me to log on is the thing that always gets to me: the stupid local news. Tonight on the WTMJ news with Mike:
Mike talks about an event that happened today. He attended with his wife. There's a picture of him smiling and waving. Now to our interview. Mike finds out that the famous interview subject used to listen to the radio broadcast by the sister station of his TV news station. How about that! Mike tells the celeb what an honor it was to meet the guy. Thanks, Mike. It's really more important to hear your opinion than anything else he might say that isn't somehow about you. And they opened a new lane of highway. This is great news. I know because Mike gave his opinion that it was great news. Also, he smiled so wide at announcing the news that he looked like he'd been drugged, so either he really was on drugs, or this was an intentional means of making absolutely sure that we understood his very strong opinion what great news this was.
Also, I'm not sure how much of what he reported on the McGee trial was what McGee said on tape that was played in court, and how much was Mike's characterization and interpretation of what was played, but in Mike's version, McGee sure must be guilty, so I guess I know where you stand, Mike. Yessiree, I went into that newscast with only a guess of what Mike thought, and now it's like I've met him and his wife and got to know what makes him happy and how he feels about stuff. Just like the local news is supposed to do. Now if I want to know the facts, I can just read a newspaper.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Scalia's Derangement
I'm just setting down to read the big Habeas decision from SCOTUS. Thought I'd dash out one point that seems incredibly obvious about one of the dissents. Scalia is a smart guy who says incredibly stupid things, despite access to smart clerks and concurring justices, their clerks, and a community of lawyers who all presumably don't point out these stupidities because of some combination of laziness, subservience or groupthink. The NYT quoted his dissent, which makes a point in passing about the seriousness of the threat America is facing from its enemies in the GWOT. In the third paragraph of his dissent, Scalia says, "one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane anywhere in the country, to know the threat is a serious one." I find this remarkable.
Translating, Scalia is saying, look, we've received no evidence here that there is a serious ongoing threat, and we're not going to ask for any. Our chief of intelligence has told us that our enemies are on the ropes, their capacities destroyed, their entire organization on the verge of elimination. We're just going to take for granted that that's a load of political bullshit, and yet when the same government insists that the threat is so serious that it must buttress and barricade the capital city, we choose to accept this without question. In fact, why even refer to these signifiers of danger. All we need to look at is the government's decision to strip its accused enemies of habeas protections. Would they do that if the threat were not severe? Of course not. We're not going to doubt the sincerity or the wisdom of the political branches.
Having assumed at the outset that whatever is done is therefore justified, hence having disposed of every question before the court, Scalia goes on for 24 superfluous pages. This little piece of dicta is nothing less than the virtual repudiation of judicial review. Of course it's all just rhetorical garbage. Scalia will say anything that suits his immediate purposes and backtrack the next day, because it's all activism and no principle.
Translating, Scalia is saying, look, we've received no evidence here that there is a serious ongoing threat, and we're not going to ask for any. Our chief of intelligence has told us that our enemies are on the ropes, their capacities destroyed, their entire organization on the verge of elimination. We're just going to take for granted that that's a load of political bullshit, and yet when the same government insists that the threat is so serious that it must buttress and barricade the capital city, we choose to accept this without question. In fact, why even refer to these signifiers of danger. All we need to look at is the government's decision to strip its accused enemies of habeas protections. Would they do that if the threat were not severe? Of course not. We're not going to doubt the sincerity or the wisdom of the political branches.
Having assumed at the outset that whatever is done is therefore justified, hence having disposed of every question before the court, Scalia goes on for 24 superfluous pages. This little piece of dicta is nothing less than the virtual repudiation of judicial review. Of course it's all just rhetorical garbage. Scalia will say anything that suits his immediate purposes and backtrack the next day, because it's all activism and no principle.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Hillary's Derangement
For a long time, there has been a perspective out there that Hillary, or at least her surrogates, were going out of their way to exploit racism to better position her against Obama. It was and remains a topic on which I remain agnostic. Some of the evidence out there I think is pretty unconvincing, and I think when you have a machine that's speaking a million words a day on a subject, it's easy to build a case for almost anything by cherrypicking statements, but I think it's still a very plausible position. I don't think Hillary is anything close to what we paradigmatically call "a racist" but she obviously is smart enough to see the racial dimensions in what she says, enough to know that they exist at least to some degree in almost anything she could say, so it was always going to be a question of how much one could draw on that strain of thinking without getting queasy over it.
Her extreme tenacity, to the point of ridiculousness, over remaining in contention despite having lost the race irretrievably months ago, relates to the race-baiting charge in two ways, both as a cause and as an effect. This stubborn resolve to fight obviously evinces the kind of passion to win that would tempt her to accept a degree of racist support that she otherwise would not. That is the causal side.
On the effect side, one sees the deep denial of defeat and wonders at what has gotten into her most avid supporters. Getting carried away, locked in a Hillary bubble, being wedded to the historic symbol her victory would represent, they're all poweful. But maybe it's cynical, but I find it very easy to imagine that racial animus is furnishing some of this intensity.
Watching her poison Obama's candidacy by comparing him negatively to McCain; hold a gun to the head of the Party to get her way; arguing incessantly that she should win regardless of what the rules say, and demanding the rules be broken or changed to accommodate her ambitions, her supporters, and her view of the party's interests; and failing to concede after victory has become all but impossible (as it is now and has been for months) and after the mainstream has finally reasoned this, thanks to an absolute majority of delegates won by her opponent; where has one ever seen this? Hostage situations? Suicide cults?
In politics, this kind of resistance to law can work. It plays on mass support of great intensity. I am increasingly reminded of some stalwart recalcitrant like Orval Faubus, placing his body in front of the advancing forces of morality and law, to hold off the inevitable one more day. In his case, the national guard was coming to desegregate the schools. Yesterday it was the Rules Committee voting to allow the imminent desegregation of the presidency. It's an uncomfortable comparison, but apt. Even if it were not apt, it is a comparison that grows in resonance every hour that Hillary does not stand aside to let her biracial opponent pass. When it becomes too evident, it will blight her image indelibly.
Her extreme tenacity, to the point of ridiculousness, over remaining in contention despite having lost the race irretrievably months ago, relates to the race-baiting charge in two ways, both as a cause and as an effect. This stubborn resolve to fight obviously evinces the kind of passion to win that would tempt her to accept a degree of racist support that she otherwise would not. That is the causal side.
On the effect side, one sees the deep denial of defeat and wonders at what has gotten into her most avid supporters. Getting carried away, locked in a Hillary bubble, being wedded to the historic symbol her victory would represent, they're all poweful. But maybe it's cynical, but I find it very easy to imagine that racial animus is furnishing some of this intensity.
Watching her poison Obama's candidacy by comparing him negatively to McCain; hold a gun to the head of the Party to get her way; arguing incessantly that she should win regardless of what the rules say, and demanding the rules be broken or changed to accommodate her ambitions, her supporters, and her view of the party's interests; and failing to concede after victory has become all but impossible (as it is now and has been for months) and after the mainstream has finally reasoned this, thanks to an absolute majority of delegates won by her opponent; where has one ever seen this? Hostage situations? Suicide cults?
In politics, this kind of resistance to law can work. It plays on mass support of great intensity. I am increasingly reminded of some stalwart recalcitrant like Orval Faubus, placing his body in front of the advancing forces of morality and law, to hold off the inevitable one more day. In his case, the national guard was coming to desegregate the schools. Yesterday it was the Rules Committee voting to allow the imminent desegregation of the presidency. It's an uncomfortable comparison, but apt. Even if it were not apt, it is a comparison that grows in resonance every hour that Hillary does not stand aside to let her biracial opponent pass. When it becomes too evident, it will blight her image indelibly.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Day Whatever
A brief note on the local news tonight. There was a tuition hike throughout the UW system. The station's online text and video reports are different from what I recall seeing on the air. I just wanted to reference the nomenclature here: "schools" versus "colleges" versus "campuses" or "universities." The UW system consists of a central administration, 26 campuses, UW Extension, UW Colleges Online, and maybe some other parts. The campuses include two institutions, UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, that grant graduate and professional degrees (each of which has numerous schools and colleges such as the UW School of Law, and UW-Milwaukee College of Letters and Sciences), 11 "comprehensive" campuses with 4-year schools, and the 13 "UW Colleges," which only have freshman and sophomore curricula. There are UW "Centers" in every county that lacks a comprehensive campus or doctoral insitution, which serve the Extension.
So what did the news say? The video online says "students at UW schools will pay more next year" and gives figures for undergrads in Milwaukee and Madison. "Schools" is at best ambiguous, and the sentence suggests all but could mean some. The text is better, clarifying that the increase does not affect the UW Colleges. In the report that I actually heard on TV, there was specific reference to an increase at "colleges" which is at best misleading.
Also, none of these reports, going back to the AP report or the UWS press release, captures the ways in which tuition varies among students at a campus. The press release and AP at least are precise enough to refer to resident undergraduates, whose tuition is lower than out-of-state students or grad students. But a majority of the comprehensive campuses charged differential tuition, attaching greater rates to students of particular schools and colleges. There are also segregated fees that vary by campus, which are paid as part of the tuition bill although they are not technically part of the tuition. And at least when I was a student, there was not just a flat fee to attend, regardless of the credit load. If you took an overload schedule of 21 credits, it cost more than auditing a one-credit summer class. So this idea that your tuition went up X dollars has a lot of built-in assumptions.
So what did the news say? The video online says "students at UW schools will pay more next year" and gives figures for undergrads in Milwaukee and Madison. "Schools" is at best ambiguous, and the sentence suggests all but could mean some. The text is better, clarifying that the increase does not affect the UW Colleges. In the report that I actually heard on TV, there was specific reference to an increase at "colleges" which is at best misleading.
Also, none of these reports, going back to the AP report or the UWS press release, captures the ways in which tuition varies among students at a campus. The press release and AP at least are precise enough to refer to resident undergraduates, whose tuition is lower than out-of-state students or grad students. But a majority of the comprehensive campuses charged differential tuition, attaching greater rates to students of particular schools and colleges. There are also segregated fees that vary by campus, which are paid as part of the tuition bill although they are not technically part of the tuition. And at least when I was a student, there was not just a flat fee to attend, regardless of the credit load. If you took an overload schedule of 21 credits, it cost more than auditing a one-credit summer class. So this idea that your tuition went up X dollars has a lot of built-in assumptions.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
McClellan, McCain...
Just a few thoughts, not as developed as I would like...
First, McCain. I've been saving up a thought from a few days ago when McCain was criticizing Obama on foreign policy. Two salient critiques: (1) it demonstrates unfitness for the presidency that Obama would meet with leaders of adversary countries without preconditions; and (2) he hasn't been to Iraq as often as McCain.
Obama in July was in a debate and he was asked whether in his first term as president, he would meet without preconditions with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and North Korea. Obama, apparently not wanting to overlawyer the question, said "yes" when he probably should have said, "Will I? Well, anything can happen, so I can't commit to that, but it would be fair to say that as a matter of policy I would be inclined to talk with our adversaries, and under appropriate circumstances, I would go and meet leader-to-leader with those states you mentioned." None of it is literal anyway. "Preconditions" is a term of art. "I will meet but only if I can being a Secret Service detail" is not considered a "precondition" though literally it is one.
Getting to the point, Obama took a little crit. On the margins, that's justified. But in essence, what he articulated as policy is pretty standard. The countervailing view, that meeting with, say, an Assad, gives the guy prestige and makes him a winner just by the fact that he got to talk to you, is really silly. It's considered a credible view, but it makes sense only in exceptional cases. If a person runs a country, has for more than a week, the world recognizes their government, and they haven't just done something so egregious that the world is withdrawing its ambassadors in protest, you talk. Talking may eventually be something you want, and if you set the rules in advance that talking is a victory for them, then it will be. I don't understand this fearful, counterproductive foreign policy view that wants to define every eventuality as a failure except for the unobtainable ideal of having all your wishes come true without effort or compromise. Why is there prestige for them in just talking to us? I'd say, "hey, I've met with thousands of people, and nearly every minor head of state, what's so special?" You can meet with someone and dis them. Or you can not meet with them, and talk about them constantly, which lends a lot of backhanded prestige.
Again, trying to focus here on what I wanted to say, Obama's perspective is pretty mainstream. He's got good advisors. He's given some high-profile foreign policy addresses. He basically gets how this stuff works in the mainstream DOS framework. You can disagree marginally, or disagree fundamentally. But one thing it's not, is embarassingly naive. So for McCain to assert that this was a failed test, and a disqualifying one, is either extremely disingenuous from someone promising straight talk, or way out of touch, from someone who never showed much originality or nuance on foreign policy. It shows a lack of preparation or honesty on his part. Plus, the don't-talk unless they pay a toll first doctrine is so third-term-Bush, it's an instant club for Obama to hit him with (which is why he had to come back later and nuance it).
Speaking of clubs for Obama, number (2) on this topic is Obama's untraveledness. Again, the reply is, you John went to a marketplace with a kevlar vest and 100 troops and helicopter gunships to protect you, and you couldn't tell that it wasn't really safer than main street USA, so either you're not making the most of those trips to learn something, or you need to spend more time at home, so you understand the comparisons you're making.
Second, McClellan. I'll try to get this out quick and not get distracted. The responses to this: (1) Ari Fleischer makes the rounds with some talking points, which boil down to: "Garsh, it's like it's not the same guy; I don't know what happened to him; he was always happy to spout our lies, er, um, information, before; he must just be spiteful now." (2) A dozen media bozos say what amounts to, "I find it hard to remember my own performance more than one or two days back, but as I recall, I was pretty comfortable with my performance then, so it must be that I did nothing wrong, you know, we asked questions, we did our homework, we had the issues pretty much mastered that came to us from the White House and the mainstream of the pro-war Democrats. No one really saw an issue then, at least no one that I paid attention to." So the Bush team goes ad hominem and avoids the substance. The media puts its hands over its eyes and repeats circular rationalizations. Neither seems very persuasive.
First, McCain. I've been saving up a thought from a few days ago when McCain was criticizing Obama on foreign policy. Two salient critiques: (1) it demonstrates unfitness for the presidency that Obama would meet with leaders of adversary countries without preconditions; and (2) he hasn't been to Iraq as often as McCain.
Obama in July was in a debate and he was asked whether in his first term as president, he would meet without preconditions with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and North Korea. Obama, apparently not wanting to overlawyer the question, said "yes" when he probably should have said, "Will I? Well, anything can happen, so I can't commit to that, but it would be fair to say that as a matter of policy I would be inclined to talk with our adversaries, and under appropriate circumstances, I would go and meet leader-to-leader with those states you mentioned." None of it is literal anyway. "Preconditions" is a term of art. "I will meet but only if I can being a Secret Service detail" is not considered a "precondition" though literally it is one.
Getting to the point, Obama took a little crit. On the margins, that's justified. But in essence, what he articulated as policy is pretty standard. The countervailing view, that meeting with, say, an Assad, gives the guy prestige and makes him a winner just by the fact that he got to talk to you, is really silly. It's considered a credible view, but it makes sense only in exceptional cases. If a person runs a country, has for more than a week, the world recognizes their government, and they haven't just done something so egregious that the world is withdrawing its ambassadors in protest, you talk. Talking may eventually be something you want, and if you set the rules in advance that talking is a victory for them, then it will be. I don't understand this fearful, counterproductive foreign policy view that wants to define every eventuality as a failure except for the unobtainable ideal of having all your wishes come true without effort or compromise. Why is there prestige for them in just talking to us? I'd say, "hey, I've met with thousands of people, and nearly every minor head of state, what's so special?" You can meet with someone and dis them. Or you can not meet with them, and talk about them constantly, which lends a lot of backhanded prestige.
Again, trying to focus here on what I wanted to say, Obama's perspective is pretty mainstream. He's got good advisors. He's given some high-profile foreign policy addresses. He basically gets how this stuff works in the mainstream DOS framework. You can disagree marginally, or disagree fundamentally. But one thing it's not, is embarassingly naive. So for McCain to assert that this was a failed test, and a disqualifying one, is either extremely disingenuous from someone promising straight talk, or way out of touch, from someone who never showed much originality or nuance on foreign policy. It shows a lack of preparation or honesty on his part. Plus, the don't-talk unless they pay a toll first doctrine is so third-term-Bush, it's an instant club for Obama to hit him with (which is why he had to come back later and nuance it).
Speaking of clubs for Obama, number (2) on this topic is Obama's untraveledness. Again, the reply is, you John went to a marketplace with a kevlar vest and 100 troops and helicopter gunships to protect you, and you couldn't tell that it wasn't really safer than main street USA, so either you're not making the most of those trips to learn something, or you need to spend more time at home, so you understand the comparisons you're making.
Second, McClellan. I'll try to get this out quick and not get distracted. The responses to this: (1) Ari Fleischer makes the rounds with some talking points, which boil down to: "Garsh, it's like it's not the same guy; I don't know what happened to him; he was always happy to spout our lies, er, um, information, before; he must just be spiteful now." (2) A dozen media bozos say what amounts to, "I find it hard to remember my own performance more than one or two days back, but as I recall, I was pretty comfortable with my performance then, so it must be that I did nothing wrong, you know, we asked questions, we did our homework, we had the issues pretty much mastered that came to us from the White House and the mainstream of the pro-war Democrats. No one really saw an issue then, at least no one that I paid attention to." So the Bush team goes ad hominem and avoids the substance. The media puts its hands over its eyes and repeats circular rationalizations. Neither seems very persuasive.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The consumer beat
The other night, Channel 4 celebrated another decennial if its "4 on your side" series, a copy of a a rival station's original "contact 6" consumer help segment. I like most people have always felt these segments were a service, but looking at them disinterestedly, I see two sides. The consumers that are helped are not always necessarily in the right. The companies that are on the other side of these segments, who usually do something to make the customer whole, deserved or not, probably aren't due a great deal of sympathy overall, but given the unfairness of a lot of what the local news does, it's worth looking at the process here. I have never seen a report where the customer was acknowledged to be wrong, and the local station advertised the fact that it took their case, discovered the client was undeserving, and abandoned them in order to avoid effecting undeserved relief. The station is advertising its services as an advocate, which is a problematic position for it since it also is the only entity available to serve as neutral judge. Assuming the client passes whatever initial screening the station does, it employs the same shame ethic that it so vulgarly applies to the deadbeat dads, revoked drivers, and miscellaneous petty offenders who are targets of its "investigative" segments. The alleged corporate offender, innocent or guilty, has an interest in avoiding or mitigating negative exposure, and so has motivation to give the consumer something, and be seen as contrite and helpful in setting right whatever is wrong.
I also want to relate this to the "Dirty Dining" segments that the station airs. It would be a service to note, as the newspaper has, that the frequency of public inspections has not met federal standards, and that a concerned individual can simply look up all the information online that the station is using as the basis of its reports. I have no idea that any of the reporters on these segments, primarily Courtney Garrish, have any training or expertise in this area, although I must admit that after holding this beat and reading all the reports she has, she must be pretty familiar at least with some of the standard violations. But this does nothing to quantify the risk or place into perspective the position of one restaurant with respect to its peers. There is always a risk that by the process of reporting, the news will foster a misimpression that the ordinary or insignificant is extraordinary or severe. It would be interesting to know whether these reports actually contribute any deterrent effect to restaurants. Maybe it encourages them to relocate to where the inspection reports are not so public.
Tonight, I was shocked because the station actually aired the side of an accused. It relayed the denials of a man who confessed (in terms he says were misunderstood) to the beating of a bus driver in footage repeatedly aired on the station. I must note this to be fair.
I also want to relate this to the "Dirty Dining" segments that the station airs. It would be a service to note, as the newspaper has, that the frequency of public inspections has not met federal standards, and that a concerned individual can simply look up all the information online that the station is using as the basis of its reports. I have no idea that any of the reporters on these segments, primarily Courtney Garrish, have any training or expertise in this area, although I must admit that after holding this beat and reading all the reports she has, she must be pretty familiar at least with some of the standard violations. But this does nothing to quantify the risk or place into perspective the position of one restaurant with respect to its peers. There is always a risk that by the process of reporting, the news will foster a misimpression that the ordinary or insignificant is extraordinary or severe. It would be interesting to know whether these reports actually contribute any deterrent effect to restaurants. Maybe it encourages them to relocate to where the inspection reports are not so public.
Tonight, I was shocked because the station actually aired the side of an accused. It relayed the denials of a man who confessed (in terms he says were misunderstood) to the beating of a bus driver in footage repeatedly aired on the station. I must note this to be fair.
Monday, May 26, 2008
What is the greatest spiritual threat to our nation?
Coral Ridge Ministries, the prototypical rightwing Christian outfit, has released its annual survey of spiritual threats. Drawing a little attention is Question 2: "How dangerous are the following to the spiritual health of America?" Responses to fourteen subparts are recorded, ranked by the number calling the threat very dangerous. All of the responses were rated somewhat or very dangerous by 98-99 percent of respondents. The report does not indicate that anyone failed to respond to any question. But I have not seen the original survey, and I've assumed that these fourteen all represent prompts in the survey, but there could have been other prompts. No n is reported, or any margin of error. So, at the point of highest concensus (95+% argee very dangerous) we have (1) the ACLU and similar groups and (2) Pro-homosexual indoctrination.
The second order of threats (90+% agree very dangerous) are (3) Abortion and (4) Islamic terrorism.
I'm not really sure why Islamic terrorism is considered spiritually dangerous, unless you're a Muslim and you think that the mystique of martyrdom in the lesser jihad is apt to lure people from the true path. Or if you're a sincere Christian who believes in foregiveness, and see how Islamic violence is exploited to create fear and hatred.
By the way, one ambiguity to note here: how dangerous are bears to health? The answer could be very, or not very, depending on whether one is rating the scale of the threat each time it appears, or whether one is factoring the rarity of its appearance.
Third order threats: 80%+ very dangerous: (5) Hollywood, (6) News Media, (7) Darwinism/evolution, (8) Cults and false religion, (9) Atheism, (10) Courts. The relatively moderate threats (67%+) are (11) Apathetic/uninformed Christians, (12) Colleges and Universities, and (13) Public education (K-12). Congress (14) is relatively un-feared. Obly 63% consider it a very serious threat.
This presents an interesting question: what are the real spiritual threats? I happen to think that the lust for money is the root of most evil, and that it is rivaled only by other false pursuits that absorb us: classical deadly sins like jealosy and wrath, and modern obsessions like drugs. For America, we have the the adversarial system of doing everything competatively, which results in preoccupation with victory and comparative measures of success, and obsessive promotion of the market as savior; excessive nationalism, including national security extremism and anti-immigrant hysteria; the urge to punish; the reification of conceptual liberty and individualism, divorced from the real world, and perversely implemented to protect freedom to exploit others; consumerism, globalism, and attenuation of responsibility, that allows everyone to participate in violent and unsustainable modes of life by consuming at a distance from the conditions in which our products are made.
Even among the Christian right, one wonders if, allowed to pick their own answers, the laity would identify internet pornography or drug addiction as threats. One might imagine that it would be a particular threat to spiritality to have corruption in the heirarchy of the church, such as insincere televangelists who are motivated by the desire for personal wealth, or sex offenses by clergy against parishoners. Those who come back traumatized from war might see war and the experience of killing or entering mortal combat as having been an impediment to their spiritual wefare. Racial minorities might have some understanding of how racism eats away at our national soul.
If I had a regular sermon to give every week or every day, I would spend every sermon decrying some threat to the nation's spiritual welfare. I would have to perform a reality check every now and then to see that I was addressing the most important matters. It wouldn't be a list of angry political wedge issues or anything as stupid as fighting the science of evolution.
The second order of threats (90+% agree very dangerous) are (3) Abortion and (4) Islamic terrorism.
I'm not really sure why Islamic terrorism is considered spiritually dangerous, unless you're a Muslim and you think that the mystique of martyrdom in the lesser jihad is apt to lure people from the true path. Or if you're a sincere Christian who believes in foregiveness, and see how Islamic violence is exploited to create fear and hatred.
By the way, one ambiguity to note here: how dangerous are bears to health? The answer could be very, or not very, depending on whether one is rating the scale of the threat each time it appears, or whether one is factoring the rarity of its appearance.
Third order threats: 80%+ very dangerous: (5) Hollywood, (6) News Media, (7) Darwinism/evolution, (8) Cults and false religion, (9) Atheism, (10) Courts. The relatively moderate threats (67%+) are (11) Apathetic/uninformed Christians, (12) Colleges and Universities, and (13) Public education (K-12). Congress (14) is relatively un-feared. Obly 63% consider it a very serious threat.
This presents an interesting question: what are the real spiritual threats? I happen to think that the lust for money is the root of most evil, and that it is rivaled only by other false pursuits that absorb us: classical deadly sins like jealosy and wrath, and modern obsessions like drugs. For America, we have the the adversarial system of doing everything competatively, which results in preoccupation with victory and comparative measures of success, and obsessive promotion of the market as savior; excessive nationalism, including national security extremism and anti-immigrant hysteria; the urge to punish; the reification of conceptual liberty and individualism, divorced from the real world, and perversely implemented to protect freedom to exploit others; consumerism, globalism, and attenuation of responsibility, that allows everyone to participate in violent and unsustainable modes of life by consuming at a distance from the conditions in which our products are made.
Even among the Christian right, one wonders if, allowed to pick their own answers, the laity would identify internet pornography or drug addiction as threats. One might imagine that it would be a particular threat to spiritality to have corruption in the heirarchy of the church, such as insincere televangelists who are motivated by the desire for personal wealth, or sex offenses by clergy against parishoners. Those who come back traumatized from war might see war and the experience of killing or entering mortal combat as having been an impediment to their spiritual wefare. Racial minorities might have some understanding of how racism eats away at our national soul.
If I had a regular sermon to give every week or every day, I would spend every sermon decrying some threat to the nation's spiritual welfare. I would have to perform a reality check every now and then to see that I was addressing the most important matters. It wouldn't be a list of angry political wedge issues or anything as stupid as fighting the science of evolution.
Day 20
Do these "ad" stories come from press releases, or does some reporter encounter them and really think,"people need to know about this?"
May 25 there was a long piece that had taps playing in the background, over a flag and an honor roll of names, preceded by a homily about how these people had given their lives for freedom. This is a religious ceremony, not a news report. It brings to my mind a question, which is a reporting question as well as a political one: what does this rhetoric mean? Is it objective or subjective? Is it literal or does it have some figurative meaning? I think the plain reading of the report is objective and literal: this course of military service and this death in particular promoted freedom. (There is also an implicit assumption that the U.S. military member promoted freedom willingly: that it was not the enemy that promoted his own freedom by causing the death of an occupier.) But since the literal truth of all this is controversial at best -- no one appears to be happy with anything that has come out of this war, Americans are less safe and less free, Iraqi and Afghani women, secularists, local religious minorities, and various groups are confronting new oppression, and everyone else is under the gun, living in ruins, confronting multiple humanitarian disasters -- since the claim of actually producing freedom is a weak one, I think the report relies on ambiguity that maybe this is what the soldier was seeking to do: it was his or her subjective purpose. In this case, there would be the problem of generalizing, not having the soldier to ask anymore, not knowing how views may have changed, and finally, not being able to fully interrogate what each meant in expressing this purpose. It is also a bizarre interpretation given that the soldier is a subordinate who has given up most decisionmaking power, is under both orders and intense indoctrination and coersion to do certain things, so the question of what they were objectively seeking when they did something largely fades under the assumption that what they did was not even their choice. There is also a problem in this analysis because if an objective standard is used, then the enemy is also fighting for some positive goal, whether freedom, the security of his family and people, rigteousness or divine grace, national dignity and sovereignty, et cetera. Finally, is it literal? To be literal, one must be thinking what the words mean and not simply repeating them as some kind of rehearsed prayer or shibboleth. They way they are used, this seems unlikely.
May 25 there was a long piece that had taps playing in the background, over a flag and an honor roll of names, preceded by a homily about how these people had given their lives for freedom. This is a religious ceremony, not a news report. It brings to my mind a question, which is a reporting question as well as a political one: what does this rhetoric mean? Is it objective or subjective? Is it literal or does it have some figurative meaning? I think the plain reading of the report is objective and literal: this course of military service and this death in particular promoted freedom. (There is also an implicit assumption that the U.S. military member promoted freedom willingly: that it was not the enemy that promoted his own freedom by causing the death of an occupier.) But since the literal truth of all this is controversial at best -- no one appears to be happy with anything that has come out of this war, Americans are less safe and less free, Iraqi and Afghani women, secularists, local religious minorities, and various groups are confronting new oppression, and everyone else is under the gun, living in ruins, confronting multiple humanitarian disasters -- since the claim of actually producing freedom is a weak one, I think the report relies on ambiguity that maybe this is what the soldier was seeking to do: it was his or her subjective purpose. In this case, there would be the problem of generalizing, not having the soldier to ask anymore, not knowing how views may have changed, and finally, not being able to fully interrogate what each meant in expressing this purpose. It is also a bizarre interpretation given that the soldier is a subordinate who has given up most decisionmaking power, is under both orders and intense indoctrination and coersion to do certain things, so the question of what they were objectively seeking when they did something largely fades under the assumption that what they did was not even their choice. There is also a problem in this analysis because if an objective standard is used, then the enemy is also fighting for some positive goal, whether freedom, the security of his family and people, rigteousness or divine grace, national dignity and sovereignty, et cetera. Finally, is it literal? To be literal, one must be thinking what the words mean and not simply repeating them as some kind of rehearsed prayer or shibboleth. They way they are used, this seems unlikely.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Day 14
Three quick points:
1) They pronounced Mr. Marroquin's name as "Marrow Quinn." Could be, but I doubt it.
2) Speedbusters took us to the "third worst" place in terms of speeding in the City of Brookfield. Worst measured how? Average speed, number of speeders, tickets, accidents, injuries, what?
3) John Mercure. Last night their teaser warned us that our kids could be at risk at day care. This was a report you had to see to save your kids. So, it starts. Cue up the heart-wrenching sad piano music. John starts talking about this infant. Tiny feet, tiny hands. The father who said goodbye to his son and did not realize: it would be goodbye forever. So you get the idea that this child is going to be presented as an example of the kind of tragedy that the report is going to warn us against. If only he had known to do X, then the child might not have died. Here comes at last the reveal of what the report is about. So what does he say. The child's death was never explained. It happened while he was in daycare. Was the daycare responsible somehow? Um, well, it's John Mercure, so any important question basically goes unanwered. Insert sound of crickets. No, the solo piano and photos of a dead child, the scary teaser, were all there for a cheap emotional bait-and-switch. After getting this far, Mercure says that other parents had complaints against the daycare? Abuse? Safety issues? Hours too short? Too expensive? Shortage of crayons? John leaves the innuendo hanging that these complaints might have something to do with unexplained death. Then the transition to the real topic. When we wanted to learn more, we found out that (1) there are very few inspectors to look at all the licensed daycares. (Mercure asks, would you feel a lot better if there were twice as many inspectors? Surprise, the answer's yes! Good leading question, John.) Also, (2) there is no website or helpful staff that will help parents find out quickly what the record of a given daycare is. He points out that they have ways to inspect the records of all sorts of other kinds of licensees, like manicurists.
Well, there was a potential story here, had Johnny tried to develop it, rather than lather on sentiment through an unconnected tragedy. Is it an important issue? How many kids in daycare? How many deaths, illnesses, injuries, or ill effects of any type attributable to bad day care? What do the inspectors actually do, are they effective? What constitutes a regulatory violation. If a violation is found, what happens? What would be the effect of more enforcement? How do we make daycare better? Do we need to promote alternatives to daycare, provide greater subsidies for daycare? This is a compelling topic. For John to poop on.
1) They pronounced Mr. Marroquin's name as "Marrow Quinn." Could be, but I doubt it.
2) Speedbusters took us to the "third worst" place in terms of speeding in the City of Brookfield. Worst measured how? Average speed, number of speeders, tickets, accidents, injuries, what?
3) John Mercure. Last night their teaser warned us that our kids could be at risk at day care. This was a report you had to see to save your kids. So, it starts. Cue up the heart-wrenching sad piano music. John starts talking about this infant. Tiny feet, tiny hands. The father who said goodbye to his son and did not realize: it would be goodbye forever. So you get the idea that this child is going to be presented as an example of the kind of tragedy that the report is going to warn us against. If only he had known to do X, then the child might not have died. Here comes at last the reveal of what the report is about. So what does he say. The child's death was never explained. It happened while he was in daycare. Was the daycare responsible somehow? Um, well, it's John Mercure, so any important question basically goes unanwered. Insert sound of crickets. No, the solo piano and photos of a dead child, the scary teaser, were all there for a cheap emotional bait-and-switch. After getting this far, Mercure says that other parents had complaints against the daycare? Abuse? Safety issues? Hours too short? Too expensive? Shortage of crayons? John leaves the innuendo hanging that these complaints might have something to do with unexplained death. Then the transition to the real topic. When we wanted to learn more, we found out that (1) there are very few inspectors to look at all the licensed daycares. (Mercure asks, would you feel a lot better if there were twice as many inspectors? Surprise, the answer's yes! Good leading question, John.) Also, (2) there is no website or helpful staff that will help parents find out quickly what the record of a given daycare is. He points out that they have ways to inspect the records of all sorts of other kinds of licensees, like manicurists.
Well, there was a potential story here, had Johnny tried to develop it, rather than lather on sentiment through an unconnected tragedy. Is it an important issue? How many kids in daycare? How many deaths, illnesses, injuries, or ill effects of any type attributable to bad day care? What do the inspectors actually do, are they effective? What constitutes a regulatory violation. If a violation is found, what happens? What would be the effect of more enforcement? How do we make daycare better? Do we need to promote alternatives to daycare, provide greater subsidies for daycare? This is a compelling topic. For John to poop on.
Tweety getting it right
Just saw this.
Normally, in an interview, the process is something like this: The interviewer asks a question. The guest gives a little hint of an answer and then launches into a message point. If it's a close connect, that it all seems responsive enough, then the interviewer may just go on to the next planned question. Otherwise, the interviewer either listens to the point, finds it interesting, surrenders any unfinished remainder of the old point and asks a follow-up on the new point, or thinks that he hasn't quite finished with the old point, so asks another question about it. It could be the same question, but it will probably be a little different, which helps smooth over the lack of a sufficient answer the first time. The guest gets the drift that the easiest way to move on is to gratify the original question a little more than last time before going back to talking points, and does exactly that. The interviewer is satisfied, or else the process repeats until the interviewer either gets an adequate answer, or moves on.
If the guest does not play by the rules and courteously attempt to answer the question before getting in his owned canned ad for his or her position, the occasional interviewer will throw a fit and end the interview, but usually, they sit for it, and at worst the guess is not invited back.
In this case, Chris Matthews would not abandon his question. If you were in court, refusal to answer a question put to you two dozen times would suggest the judge had some mental infirmity such as narcolepsy that caused him not to have the witness held in contempt in a small cell until ready to answer the question. Poor Kevin James skipped history in high school and did not know what Neville Chamberlain had actually done which constituted appeasement. As Matthews later put it, he didn't just sit down and talk, he gave away countries. I might debate Matthews on that, but James could not because he simply had no clue. He gave no indication that he knew who Chamberlain was, what his office was, what nation he represented, or what he said or did that made him the poster boy for everything wrong with appeasement. Yet he went through the motions of a nationally televised debate with Matthews, characterizing Chamberlain's actions as no different from Obama's allegedly proposed actions, (or maybe just Obama's statement advocating talks was appeasement enough.)
I would have done it a little differently from Matthews. I would have said, "Look, be quiet a second. You have to give me a turn to ask the question. What I'm asking is not whether Chamberlain's actions constituted appeasement. You've given me your view of that several times. I'd like for you to go through the particular things that he did, and tell me which in your view were appeasement and which were not," instead of saying "what did he do" over and over.
In a perfect world, I would have added, "Let's start with May 28, 1937, what affirmative steps should he have taken then? Should he have moved to cancel the changes to the bilatreal naval agreement? Why was the remilitarization of the Rhineland not a crisis? Walk us through it just through the Anschluss and tell me what you consider appeasement up to that point."
It would be very interesting to get knee deep into comparisons between Chamberlain's situation and that which will face our next president, and the lead-ups to those points. Distracted by flare-ups in the Empire, lacking good intelligence, military forces allowed to fall behind what was needed, not strong enough to act unilatertally, strategic resources at stake, an adversary seen as a counterweight to other forces in a complex field, and influenced by a past of recent injury with its ideological echoes, a polity came to decisions. Not the best nor the worst, but inadequate to stop the bad that happened next. The biggest difference is that now there is no agreed-upon Hitler, just a lot of players whom the Republicans are eager to audition for the role because they really want a Hitler.
Okay, I'm babbling now, I'll stop. It's just good to see someone in the media not putting up with the crap.
Normally, in an interview, the process is something like this: The interviewer asks a question. The guest gives a little hint of an answer and then launches into a message point. If it's a close connect, that it all seems responsive enough, then the interviewer may just go on to the next planned question. Otherwise, the interviewer either listens to the point, finds it interesting, surrenders any unfinished remainder of the old point and asks a follow-up on the new point, or thinks that he hasn't quite finished with the old point, so asks another question about it. It could be the same question, but it will probably be a little different, which helps smooth over the lack of a sufficient answer the first time. The guest gets the drift that the easiest way to move on is to gratify the original question a little more than last time before going back to talking points, and does exactly that. The interviewer is satisfied, or else the process repeats until the interviewer either gets an adequate answer, or moves on.
If the guest does not play by the rules and courteously attempt to answer the question before getting in his owned canned ad for his or her position, the occasional interviewer will throw a fit and end the interview, but usually, they sit for it, and at worst the guess is not invited back.
In this case, Chris Matthews would not abandon his question. If you were in court, refusal to answer a question put to you two dozen times would suggest the judge had some mental infirmity such as narcolepsy that caused him not to have the witness held in contempt in a small cell until ready to answer the question. Poor Kevin James skipped history in high school and did not know what Neville Chamberlain had actually done which constituted appeasement. As Matthews later put it, he didn't just sit down and talk, he gave away countries. I might debate Matthews on that, but James could not because he simply had no clue. He gave no indication that he knew who Chamberlain was, what his office was, what nation he represented, or what he said or did that made him the poster boy for everything wrong with appeasement. Yet he went through the motions of a nationally televised debate with Matthews, characterizing Chamberlain's actions as no different from Obama's allegedly proposed actions, (or maybe just Obama's statement advocating talks was appeasement enough.)
I would have done it a little differently from Matthews. I would have said, "Look, be quiet a second. You have to give me a turn to ask the question. What I'm asking is not whether Chamberlain's actions constituted appeasement. You've given me your view of that several times. I'd like for you to go through the particular things that he did, and tell me which in your view were appeasement and which were not," instead of saying "what did he do" over and over.
In a perfect world, I would have added, "Let's start with May 28, 1937, what affirmative steps should he have taken then? Should he have moved to cancel the changes to the bilatreal naval agreement? Why was the remilitarization of the Rhineland not a crisis? Walk us through it just through the Anschluss and tell me what you consider appeasement up to that point."
It would be very interesting to get knee deep into comparisons between Chamberlain's situation and that which will face our next president, and the lead-ups to those points. Distracted by flare-ups in the Empire, lacking good intelligence, military forces allowed to fall behind what was needed, not strong enough to act unilatertally, strategic resources at stake, an adversary seen as a counterweight to other forces in a complex field, and influenced by a past of recent injury with its ideological echoes, a polity came to decisions. Not the best nor the worst, but inadequate to stop the bad that happened next. The biggest difference is that now there is no agreed-upon Hitler, just a lot of players whom the Republicans are eager to audition for the role because they really want a Hitler.
Okay, I'm babbling now, I'll stop. It's just good to see someone in the media not putting up with the crap.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Damaged Brand.
Watching Meet the Press. The Republican brand is damaged? Is that all?
Brand Republican is now poison. The "conservative" brand is deeply damaged. The coattails of national Republican leaders are whatever the opposite of coattails are. Ground Zero of the rot is George Bush, and the stink has spread to everything associated with him: the party, the ideology, his policies, his associates. No one knows exactly what made him so bad, but anything he touched bears the stigma that it might be the carrier of the infection.
The government's conservative policies have demonstrably failed. The very basis of being able to enact and continue those policies is crumbling: the army is unready for war; the economy is already wrecked in many areas and bled dry. The administrators of these polices and their spokespersons have destroyed their own credibility not just by unmet promises but by blatant lies. The bubble of drawing investment because the party and the ideology were assured victors in everything has burst hard, leaving a scramble to get out. The ideology has never been that popular and Republican candidates have always run on distractions anyway. Now even the distractions appear in a different light. Those bad habits of the shortening attention span and blind conformity that worked to amplify the noise of Republican talking points now amplify the noise of conservative failure and humiliation.
If it were just the Republican brand, you could change the logo and go on from there. It's everything about that half of the politcal spectrum that has problems, and the problems are more than some superficial matter of where the brand is positioned.
But 50% of reality is just appearance, and if you can persuade people that it's just the brand, then the brand will recover, and it will really just be everything else.
Brand Republican is now poison. The "conservative" brand is deeply damaged. The coattails of national Republican leaders are whatever the opposite of coattails are. Ground Zero of the rot is George Bush, and the stink has spread to everything associated with him: the party, the ideology, his policies, his associates. No one knows exactly what made him so bad, but anything he touched bears the stigma that it might be the carrier of the infection.
The government's conservative policies have demonstrably failed. The very basis of being able to enact and continue those policies is crumbling: the army is unready for war; the economy is already wrecked in many areas and bled dry. The administrators of these polices and their spokespersons have destroyed their own credibility not just by unmet promises but by blatant lies. The bubble of drawing investment because the party and the ideology were assured victors in everything has burst hard, leaving a scramble to get out. The ideology has never been that popular and Republican candidates have always run on distractions anyway. Now even the distractions appear in a different light. Those bad habits of the shortening attention span and blind conformity that worked to amplify the noise of Republican talking points now amplify the noise of conservative failure and humiliation.
If it were just the Republican brand, you could change the logo and go on from there. It's everything about that half of the politcal spectrum that has problems, and the problems are more than some superficial matter of where the brand is positioned.
But 50% of reality is just appearance, and if you can persuade people that it's just the brand, then the brand will recover, and it will really just be everything else.
Day 13
You can see I'm not staying with it, but I have a few notes:
1) Why does the weatherman always refer to Fond du Lac as "Fondy"? That's so annoying. Who else does that? I've never seen a rule of journalistic ethics against neologisms or vernacular, but it just seems to go along with the other problems. Sports guys deliver their entire report in a shout, peppered with cheering and dumb jokes. I have a very traditionalist preference (moreso than I can probably justify) for a direct, subdued demeanor that will give the facts respectfully and without embellishment. It's impossible to engage in silliness, banter, or shouting without conveying subtle commentary. If you're reporting on a major tragedy, you wouldn't be making up silly nicknames. So even by doing this, you're telling us what is and is not serious enough to force you to report soberly.
2) Two stories caught on tape: a five year old drives a truck, and some other nonsense. Not important, not local, just crap you happen to have video for. Oh, and a celebrity marriage. Because celebrity updates are news you can use.
3) Another carp about the weather report. I can always pretty much get the weather, but my roommate and other people are constantly telling me BS that they say they got from broadcast weather reports. It's almost always wrong. I can see why. The northern half of the state is under a frost advisory. I guess just to be cute, weatherguy says that it will be "frosty" in the viewing area for those not close to the lake. But not apparently cold enough for frost. So the confusion is: we're going to get frost, there's a warning, et cetera, when in fact it will not even be that cold, but the misleading exaggerated language, coupled with a report of conditions far away, leave a misimpression. Similarly, I think that all the wind chills and heat indexes are misleading because people confuse them for actual temperatures. I wish more would be done to idiotproof those reports,
4) There was a "4 your health" segment, that I did not even recognize as such until it was done. It was basically an ad for weight loss equipment. I'm not completely against stories that help make people aware of new products, but the sales information should be included because it answers a question that would have been posed with or without someone else's motive to sell merchandise. Otherwise, the journalist is ceding control to the marketer out of laziness.
5) A teaser about something that may be putting my child at risk. I don't like the presumptuous familiarity of assuming I have a child, and if I had one, I'd want to know right away what the risks are. I understand that if you give away all the spoilers, the report won't be much of a draw, but I don't believe in journalists holding back information for profit. Can you give us a hint? Is it the drinking water, the playground equipment, child molesters, sick building syndrome? Oh my god, it's sick building syndrome, isn't it? I knew it. I'm keeping Junior in a tent out back from now on.
By the way, I looked at the John Mercure blog. What vapid pabulum there. Short entries, mostly. A lot of promotion: you gotta see this story I'm doing tonight! Occasionally a dumb joke off the internet, or an opinion (completely conventional and thick-headed of course) about a story from somewhere else, the somewhere else being the new's station's sister newspaper. Sample opinions: They should put that drunk driver away for 50 years! That deadbeat sure is a loser for not paying child support! I guess the station expects him to have a blog even if he has nothing interesting to say. Actual decent blogging demands commitment (which I muster in little spurts from time to time, and John does not). I don't understand why the station pushes everyone to do a bad blog. Instead, why not have a few decent bloggers who work full time, and let the TV crew do their thing full time, and have them interact to help each other?
1) Why does the weatherman always refer to Fond du Lac as "Fondy"? That's so annoying. Who else does that? I've never seen a rule of journalistic ethics against neologisms or vernacular, but it just seems to go along with the other problems. Sports guys deliver their entire report in a shout, peppered with cheering and dumb jokes. I have a very traditionalist preference (moreso than I can probably justify) for a direct, subdued demeanor that will give the facts respectfully and without embellishment. It's impossible to engage in silliness, banter, or shouting without conveying subtle commentary. If you're reporting on a major tragedy, you wouldn't be making up silly nicknames. So even by doing this, you're telling us what is and is not serious enough to force you to report soberly.
2) Two stories caught on tape: a five year old drives a truck, and some other nonsense. Not important, not local, just crap you happen to have video for. Oh, and a celebrity marriage. Because celebrity updates are news you can use.
3) Another carp about the weather report. I can always pretty much get the weather, but my roommate and other people are constantly telling me BS that they say they got from broadcast weather reports. It's almost always wrong. I can see why. The northern half of the state is under a frost advisory. I guess just to be cute, weatherguy says that it will be "frosty" in the viewing area for those not close to the lake. But not apparently cold enough for frost. So the confusion is: we're going to get frost, there's a warning, et cetera, when in fact it will not even be that cold, but the misleading exaggerated language, coupled with a report of conditions far away, leave a misimpression. Similarly, I think that all the wind chills and heat indexes are misleading because people confuse them for actual temperatures. I wish more would be done to idiotproof those reports,
4) There was a "4 your health" segment, that I did not even recognize as such until it was done. It was basically an ad for weight loss equipment. I'm not completely against stories that help make people aware of new products, but the sales information should be included because it answers a question that would have been posed with or without someone else's motive to sell merchandise. Otherwise, the journalist is ceding control to the marketer out of laziness.
5) A teaser about something that may be putting my child at risk. I don't like the presumptuous familiarity of assuming I have a child, and if I had one, I'd want to know right away what the risks are. I understand that if you give away all the spoilers, the report won't be much of a draw, but I don't believe in journalists holding back information for profit. Can you give us a hint? Is it the drinking water, the playground equipment, child molesters, sick building syndrome? Oh my god, it's sick building syndrome, isn't it? I knew it. I'm keeping Junior in a tent out back from now on.
By the way, I looked at the John Mercure blog. What vapid pabulum there. Short entries, mostly. A lot of promotion: you gotta see this story I'm doing tonight! Occasionally a dumb joke off the internet, or an opinion (completely conventional and thick-headed of course) about a story from somewhere else, the somewhere else being the new's station's sister newspaper. Sample opinions: They should put that drunk driver away for 50 years! That deadbeat sure is a loser for not paying child support! I guess the station expects him to have a blog even if he has nothing interesting to say. Actual decent blogging demands commitment (which I muster in little spurts from time to time, and John does not). I don't understand why the station pushes everyone to do a bad blog. Instead, why not have a few decent bloggers who work full time, and let the TV crew do their thing full time, and have them interact to help each other?
Friday, May 16, 2008
Day 9
I'm noting this on Day 10, but it refers to day 9. Just two brief notes from a glimpse and little more of the news:
(1) There was follow up to the rich bus driver story. To their credit, they ran some feedback, including from the bus drivers' union. They also admitted to an error: they overstated by a factor of ten the number of new buses that could be purchased with all the large salaries. Coming back to that, I think it was misleading because the long term cost of a bus is much higher than the purchase price. To put them into use you have to pay insurance, storage, fuel, cleaning and maintenance, drivers, supervisors, and so on, unless the plan is to just let them sit and depreciate. There was also a new statement that seemed misleading, a reference to the millions the bus drivers are making. They make millions collectively. The highest paid bus driver makes a million in gross bus driving income in ten years, or will if he happens to continue to be the highest paid every year for ten years.
(2) Saw just a little of the deadbeat story. Because it felt just too lazy to comment wothout looking at the full report, I checked it out online. Watching it again, I remember the mournful piano music accompanying the pictures of the children. Apart from this maudlin effort there is amazingly little there. Two deadbeats. Johnny Mercure shoves microhones in their faces as usual, and comes back with his typical information-packed report. It's virtual information overload when you get to dense portions like this:
We caught up with Brian one recent morning.
John Mercure: "Im John Mercure. I work for channel four."
"How you doin?" Cuthbert said.
John Mercure: "I'm doin all right."
John Mercure: "I wanted to know if I could talk to you about your child support."
"No," Cuthbert said.
John Mercure: "You owe 40 grand."
"I cant talk about it," Cuthbert said.
John Mercure: "Your son needs you."
"I cant talk about it," Cuthbert said.
Cuthbert slammed his car door and drove off.
Did you keep up with all that? Mercure is doing "all right" and Cuthbert has a son who need his 40 grand. And we can see it all for ourselves because Mercure says so himself. Without even asking a single question! How's that for a feat of journalism. (Though admittedly, "I wanted to know if I could talk to you" was pretty question-like.)
Johnny Mercure was exposing the fact that one of the deadbeats was "also a scofflaw" because he continues to drive after the revocation of his license. This is just habit for John, since OAR offenses are another story he has done repeatedly. What does that add to the story? John spins it as: bad person, violates laws. I looked the guy up. He was divorced in 1997. In 2002, his child support was converted from a percentage to a fixed $300 a month. In 2004, his arrearage from 1997 to 2002 was set by the court at almost $19,000. In the last 72 months, that has increased by about $24k, so he has paid roughly nothing since then. But the guy has 61 court cases listed against him, including five for tax warrants totalling $15k or so in unpaid taxes, and many thousands more owed in small claims actions, unemployment tax warrants, and then there's the criminal cases. I counted guilties for 10 misdemeanors and six felonies. Bail jumping, possession of THC, possession of drug paraphenalia, resisting/obstructing, damage to property. So that's probably some restitution payments, some lost bail money, and some money wasted on drugs. So maybe the guy has lots of money coming in, but I would guess he doesn't have a lot. Prison time does not do much for one's economic standing. John told us nothing about any of this. Nor what he does for a living. Whether he has a job. Whether he has assets. I wonder what this guy's story is.
If only Mercure had the curiosity that makes for a decent journalist, but to him, the deeper issues that account for why some people don't keep up (is it spite, laziness, drugs, or just giving up on a bad life?) and how they could be prodded to do so, just aren't interesting. How to solve the problem is not interesting. Whether the court's order is really just is not interesting. As he responds to the other "deadbeat":
We decided to ask Christina about the obligations she's not meeting. When we caught up with her she told us, "You don't know the story. So until you can understand the story, dont blame it on me."
OK. Here's the story: Christina was ordered to pay $515 a month. She paid $627 all last year. Ten months she paid nothing.
Simple, huh? If Mercure actually gave a damn about these poor kids, or about doing decent journalism, he'd have to give us a little more background. Show us that there's a problem, and look at possible solutions. First, was the order justified? I'll assume yes, but maybe not. How is each parent and the child doing? Is the brunt being taken by the child, the ex, the whole family, or some benefactor who is pitching in to make up the difference? Assuming that this is unjust, how can it be fixed? Will throwing Brian in jail again help his kid any? Is that what mom wants? Maybe the loser dad needs help, maybe he needs motivation. We just don't know anything useful at the end of the report, because John doesn't think there are any questions to ask.
At root, I think this is the big problem with everything Mrecure does in his "investigative" reports (what an irony that is!): It isn’t about informing the people so that an enlightened public can recognize and understand problems and find sound solutions; it’s about using the power of the press to expose, humiliate, and present object lessons along the lines of Greek drama to pressure people to comply with authority. The promotional segments for the newscast go about half way in honestly representing this obsession: it says that when you investigate, you expose the bad guys. It's not clear that it requires much investigation to do what Mercure does. He definitely makes it a point to "expose" people in the most vulgar manner. But then the promo says something about getting to the truth, which has always been odd, because one assumes that everything they cover is being presented as the truth, and nothing in Mercure's antics has seemingly ever led to that Perry Mason moment where the subject cracks and admits hedunnit. If the distinction is between covering and uncovering, Mercure looks more like covering.
(1) There was follow up to the rich bus driver story. To their credit, they ran some feedback, including from the bus drivers' union. They also admitted to an error: they overstated by a factor of ten the number of new buses that could be purchased with all the large salaries. Coming back to that, I think it was misleading because the long term cost of a bus is much higher than the purchase price. To put them into use you have to pay insurance, storage, fuel, cleaning and maintenance, drivers, supervisors, and so on, unless the plan is to just let them sit and depreciate. There was also a new statement that seemed misleading, a reference to the millions the bus drivers are making. They make millions collectively. The highest paid bus driver makes a million in gross bus driving income in ten years, or will if he happens to continue to be the highest paid every year for ten years.
(2) Saw just a little of the deadbeat story. Because it felt just too lazy to comment wothout looking at the full report, I checked it out online. Watching it again, I remember the mournful piano music accompanying the pictures of the children. Apart from this maudlin effort there is amazingly little there. Two deadbeats. Johnny Mercure shoves microhones in their faces as usual, and comes back with his typical information-packed report. It's virtual information overload when you get to dense portions like this:
We caught up with Brian one recent morning.
John Mercure: "Im John Mercure. I work for channel four."
"How you doin?" Cuthbert said.
John Mercure: "I'm doin all right."
John Mercure: "I wanted to know if I could talk to you about your child support."
"No," Cuthbert said.
John Mercure: "You owe 40 grand."
"I cant talk about it," Cuthbert said.
John Mercure: "Your son needs you."
"I cant talk about it," Cuthbert said.
Cuthbert slammed his car door and drove off.
Did you keep up with all that? Mercure is doing "all right" and Cuthbert has a son who need his 40 grand. And we can see it all for ourselves because Mercure says so himself. Without even asking a single question! How's that for a feat of journalism. (Though admittedly, "I wanted to know if I could talk to you" was pretty question-like.)
Johnny Mercure was exposing the fact that one of the deadbeats was "also a scofflaw" because he continues to drive after the revocation of his license. This is just habit for John, since OAR offenses are another story he has done repeatedly. What does that add to the story? John spins it as: bad person, violates laws. I looked the guy up. He was divorced in 1997. In 2002, his child support was converted from a percentage to a fixed $300 a month. In 2004, his arrearage from 1997 to 2002 was set by the court at almost $19,000. In the last 72 months, that has increased by about $24k, so he has paid roughly nothing since then. But the guy has 61 court cases listed against him, including five for tax warrants totalling $15k or so in unpaid taxes, and many thousands more owed in small claims actions, unemployment tax warrants, and then there's the criminal cases. I counted guilties for 10 misdemeanors and six felonies. Bail jumping, possession of THC, possession of drug paraphenalia, resisting/obstructing, damage to property. So that's probably some restitution payments, some lost bail money, and some money wasted on drugs. So maybe the guy has lots of money coming in, but I would guess he doesn't have a lot. Prison time does not do much for one's economic standing. John told us nothing about any of this. Nor what he does for a living. Whether he has a job. Whether he has assets. I wonder what this guy's story is.
If only Mercure had the curiosity that makes for a decent journalist, but to him, the deeper issues that account for why some people don't keep up (is it spite, laziness, drugs, or just giving up on a bad life?) and how they could be prodded to do so, just aren't interesting. How to solve the problem is not interesting. Whether the court's order is really just is not interesting. As he responds to the other "deadbeat":
We decided to ask Christina about the obligations she's not meeting. When we caught up with her she told us, "You don't know the story. So until you can understand the story, dont blame it on me."
OK. Here's the story: Christina was ordered to pay $515 a month. She paid $627 all last year. Ten months she paid nothing.
Simple, huh? If Mercure actually gave a damn about these poor kids, or about doing decent journalism, he'd have to give us a little more background. Show us that there's a problem, and look at possible solutions. First, was the order justified? I'll assume yes, but maybe not. How is each parent and the child doing? Is the brunt being taken by the child, the ex, the whole family, or some benefactor who is pitching in to make up the difference? Assuming that this is unjust, how can it be fixed? Will throwing Brian in jail again help his kid any? Is that what mom wants? Maybe the loser dad needs help, maybe he needs motivation. We just don't know anything useful at the end of the report, because John doesn't think there are any questions to ask.
At root, I think this is the big problem with everything Mrecure does in his "investigative" reports (what an irony that is!): It isn’t about informing the people so that an enlightened public can recognize and understand problems and find sound solutions; it’s about using the power of the press to expose, humiliate, and present object lessons along the lines of Greek drama to pressure people to comply with authority. The promotional segments for the newscast go about half way in honestly representing this obsession: it says that when you investigate, you expose the bad guys. It's not clear that it requires much investigation to do what Mercure does. He definitely makes it a point to "expose" people in the most vulgar manner. But then the promo says something about getting to the truth, which has always been odd, because one assumes that everything they cover is being presented as the truth, and nothing in Mercure's antics has seemingly ever led to that Perry Mason moment where the subject cracks and admits hedunnit. If the distinction is between covering and uncovering, Mercure looks more like covering.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Day Next
Watched the news tonight, and have a small harvest of observations:
1) Story about a kid beaten bloody from a school "tradition" of everyone lining up to punch the celebrant of a birthday. Report adoped the frame of whether it went "too far." Did not like that frame, because it seemed dubious to me that this was in any way a "fun" "tradition." It left me with questions: if one kid was suspended and no others, because he supposedly beat down the birthday boy as no one else did, then perhaps the injured child had nothing really to do with the tradition. No mention of any girls. Is this a male-only phenomenon? No evidence that it is really a tradition other than it having been repeated among a group of kids -- any official awareness? Where did this come from? How long has it been around? And what evidence is there that it is entitled to any respect even if it is a tradition -- who is willing to stand up and say why the tradition is important? Without such data, the frame of "too far or not" is unjustified -- what evidence is there that any level of violence above zero is the right amount?
2) That story about overpaid bus drivers. Actually a good story. Yes, it's a handful of drivers who, because of massive unscheduled overtime, have very high incomes. They explained a couple of factors: bus drivers cope with violence and policing issues on their buses, bad weather, and miscellaneous problems. The people who schedule the overtime are saving money on benefits by not overstaffing. The search for short term solvency is pushing decisions that are not on track for the long term. It's a private company that gets an exclusive contract with the county. Confronted with the issue, the conservative Republican County Exec is now rumbling threats against the contract, apparently seeking to micromanage the business decisions of a private business -- a transparently craven political response that might be correct, but contradicts the ideological excuses for attacking the bus system. The report considered the value of the bus system, the recent economic pressures to cut routes. Very interesting and informative. Now to the complaints. First the fancy graphics: not sure if that is a complaint or not. Someone did a nice job. It's only a possible complaint because one fears that the graphics take attention away from other aspects of the assignment. Those: I never heard a statement how many drivers there are, so that we don;t really understand the scope of the overpayment issue. I also didn't get anything about whether the bus drivers have a union, or whether seniority is a factor in pay. They talked to a guy from the Public Policy Forum but did not really identify the PPF for me in terms of ideology, funding, tenure or credentials. So missing information was a problem, but not a huge one. Actually there was only one big problem, and that was mostly but not entirely in the anchor's intro. Before the report could begin, the salaries in question (not even "salaries" as stated but incomes based on hourly rates) were characterized as "shocking" results of a "broken system" that allows some pampered employees to start "cashing in, big time." I wish the newscast was free of this kind of overt spin, telling me why I should be outraged.
3) There was a crime of some kind on the East Side. We got some anchor spin about how the goods stolen were not the only things the criminals took: they also took away some people's sense of security. They talked to some guy, I don't know if he was the victim or not, whom they gave a platform to opine about what should be done, which apparently he thinks would be "more aggressive" policing or else a blanket of security cameras. I never like when they have this unanalyzed kind of toss-off policy proposal from someone who is driven by emotion. It's like offering a sound bite to the guy in the angry mob who yells "kill 'em!"
4) Another crime story. Introduced by a line something like "you'll never believe who is responsible!" Middle-aged women. You can just imagine them saying "middle-aged white women" but no, they left race out of it. Nevertheless, I'm not comfortable with this framing, which is: you expect people of certain demographic groups to be criminals and others not to be. Why should we have our expectations validated or our generalizations like this reinforced, when the evidence in the story is the exact opposite. As a general rule, I would not underline the race or religion of criminal suspects unless it was for some reason important to consider. I am a little less nervous about age or gender, but I still think there needs to be a point beyond simply pointing to one group as more criminally inclined than another.
5) There was a report that Obama launched a new ad, with a clip and a helpful hint that the ad would be aired during the news broadcast. This is an odd story. There was also an ad for an amusement park during the news but I don't recall there being a news story about it. It seems more like a reminder to patronize the broadcast sponsors than it does real news.
6) Footage from Baltimore. Thankfully no one was hurt. This is one of those, hey -ook-we-have-footage-from-somewhere-let's-show-it-for-no-reason stories.
7) Another brief crime report, with a John Mercure-style lunge at the accused to ask, "How do you respond to the charges" which resulted in he accused's sister interposing herself and yelling, "Go away!" Thanks for that. I really feel like I learned a lot. It makes about as much sense as playing a recording of the reporter calling a source and getting a busy signal.
8) A long report about some victim of something or another. Seemed like endless minutes of hearing about how all of her cats have been found and will be just fine. Maybe it's crass of me, but I have a hard time imagining that somewhere in the world or even in the city, something more important is not happening than this woman's cats being okay.
9) Teaser for yet one more confrontation with deadbeat moms and dads, i.e., people who owe child support. I think newscasts should be used to inform the audience, not shame the subjects. We've seen this a million times. I noticed this time that they referred to one of their subjects as the "worst." What does that mean? Really, it's just somebody's opinion, but I suspect it's intended by the station to be measured by the amount owed. This makes little sense to me. What to me would make it worse is a variety of factors: (a) kids in need; (b) "deadbeat" has a lot; (c) kid gets little; (d) "deadbeat" acts maliciously to reduce or conceal income; (e) "deadbeat's" actions brought on the divorce; (f) "deadbeat" did not seek custody; (g) continuation persisted despite time and remedial orders; (h) ex-spouse is a saint. Probably a bunch of other things. Divorces can be really complicated. Although the law is the law and evading child support obligations harms innocent people, these situations often have two sides that bear consideration and I don't think the kind of simplistic, ham-handed judgments passed out by Channel 4 really lead to any understanding.
10) More speculation about Brett Favre's future. Give it a rest. This is a story they run constantly even when there is literally nothing to report.
1) Story about a kid beaten bloody from a school "tradition" of everyone lining up to punch the celebrant of a birthday. Report adoped the frame of whether it went "too far." Did not like that frame, because it seemed dubious to me that this was in any way a "fun" "tradition." It left me with questions: if one kid was suspended and no others, because he supposedly beat down the birthday boy as no one else did, then perhaps the injured child had nothing really to do with the tradition. No mention of any girls. Is this a male-only phenomenon? No evidence that it is really a tradition other than it having been repeated among a group of kids -- any official awareness? Where did this come from? How long has it been around? And what evidence is there that it is entitled to any respect even if it is a tradition -- who is willing to stand up and say why the tradition is important? Without such data, the frame of "too far or not" is unjustified -- what evidence is there that any level of violence above zero is the right amount?
2) That story about overpaid bus drivers. Actually a good story. Yes, it's a handful of drivers who, because of massive unscheduled overtime, have very high incomes. They explained a couple of factors: bus drivers cope with violence and policing issues on their buses, bad weather, and miscellaneous problems. The people who schedule the overtime are saving money on benefits by not overstaffing. The search for short term solvency is pushing decisions that are not on track for the long term. It's a private company that gets an exclusive contract with the county. Confronted with the issue, the conservative Republican County Exec is now rumbling threats against the contract, apparently seeking to micromanage the business decisions of a private business -- a transparently craven political response that might be correct, but contradicts the ideological excuses for attacking the bus system. The report considered the value of the bus system, the recent economic pressures to cut routes. Very interesting and informative. Now to the complaints. First the fancy graphics: not sure if that is a complaint or not. Someone did a nice job. It's only a possible complaint because one fears that the graphics take attention away from other aspects of the assignment. Those: I never heard a statement how many drivers there are, so that we don;t really understand the scope of the overpayment issue. I also didn't get anything about whether the bus drivers have a union, or whether seniority is a factor in pay. They talked to a guy from the Public Policy Forum but did not really identify the PPF for me in terms of ideology, funding, tenure or credentials. So missing information was a problem, but not a huge one. Actually there was only one big problem, and that was mostly but not entirely in the anchor's intro. Before the report could begin, the salaries in question (not even "salaries" as stated but incomes based on hourly rates) were characterized as "shocking" results of a "broken system" that allows some pampered employees to start "cashing in, big time." I wish the newscast was free of this kind of overt spin, telling me why I should be outraged.
3) There was a crime of some kind on the East Side. We got some anchor spin about how the goods stolen were not the only things the criminals took: they also took away some people's sense of security. They talked to some guy, I don't know if he was the victim or not, whom they gave a platform to opine about what should be done, which apparently he thinks would be "more aggressive" policing or else a blanket of security cameras. I never like when they have this unanalyzed kind of toss-off policy proposal from someone who is driven by emotion. It's like offering a sound bite to the guy in the angry mob who yells "kill 'em!"
4) Another crime story. Introduced by a line something like "you'll never believe who is responsible!" Middle-aged women. You can just imagine them saying "middle-aged white women" but no, they left race out of it. Nevertheless, I'm not comfortable with this framing, which is: you expect people of certain demographic groups to be criminals and others not to be. Why should we have our expectations validated or our generalizations like this reinforced, when the evidence in the story is the exact opposite. As a general rule, I would not underline the race or religion of criminal suspects unless it was for some reason important to consider. I am a little less nervous about age or gender, but I still think there needs to be a point beyond simply pointing to one group as more criminally inclined than another.
5) There was a report that Obama launched a new ad, with a clip and a helpful hint that the ad would be aired during the news broadcast. This is an odd story. There was also an ad for an amusement park during the news but I don't recall there being a news story about it. It seems more like a reminder to patronize the broadcast sponsors than it does real news.
6) Footage from Baltimore. Thankfully no one was hurt. This is one of those, hey -ook-we-have-footage-from-somewhere-let's-show-it-for-no-reason stories.
7) Another brief crime report, with a John Mercure-style lunge at the accused to ask, "How do you respond to the charges" which resulted in he accused's sister interposing herself and yelling, "Go away!" Thanks for that. I really feel like I learned a lot. It makes about as much sense as playing a recording of the reporter calling a source and getting a busy signal.
8) A long report about some victim of something or another. Seemed like endless minutes of hearing about how all of her cats have been found and will be just fine. Maybe it's crass of me, but I have a hard time imagining that somewhere in the world or even in the city, something more important is not happening than this woman's cats being okay.
9) Teaser for yet one more confrontation with deadbeat moms and dads, i.e., people who owe child support. I think newscasts should be used to inform the audience, not shame the subjects. We've seen this a million times. I noticed this time that they referred to one of their subjects as the "worst." What does that mean? Really, it's just somebody's opinion, but I suspect it's intended by the station to be measured by the amount owed. This makes little sense to me. What to me would make it worse is a variety of factors: (a) kids in need; (b) "deadbeat" has a lot; (c) kid gets little; (d) "deadbeat" acts maliciously to reduce or conceal income; (e) "deadbeat's" actions brought on the divorce; (f) "deadbeat" did not seek custody; (g) continuation persisted despite time and remedial orders; (h) ex-spouse is a saint. Probably a bunch of other things. Divorces can be really complicated. Although the law is the law and evading child support obligations harms innocent people, these situations often have two sides that bear consideration and I don't think the kind of simplistic, ham-handed judgments passed out by Channel 4 really lead to any understanding.
10) More speculation about Brett Favre's future. Give it a rest. This is a story they run constantly even when there is literally nothing to report.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Day 8
Well, we see how well my diary project has gone for the last week. I'm basically online to recap some of my old ideas (I'll be brief with each of them), but before proceeding, let me make a couple of belated entries in that diary:
Day 8: A teaser for one of the station's "You paid for it" segments. This time, high pay for bus drivers. I'm guessing this will reflect seniority and overtime, and will not compare to the pay given to police. The think that annoyed me was the statement that it doesn't matter whether you ever ride the bus, you still are paying. I'll wait to see the report, but that sounded to me like an argument more than a fact: why should you have to pay all this money when you don't ride the bus? This is a contentious, politically slanted, and quite stupid argument. I'm never going to use Walter Reed because I'm not in the service. I'll use the bus, but I may never use the 41 line. Even if I do, I'm not going to use the 8:25 stop at X street. I could save a lot of money by vetoing every tax that I don;t personally make use of, and pay only for what directly benefits me. So what? Maybe I want our soldiers to get medical care just because I favor sick people being treated. Maybe I think it's good for people to have access to mass transit so they can get to hospitals, jobs, day care. It benefits me because it benefits the general public. Public transit at least gives our veterans a place to go when it gets cold at night.
2) Some coverage of the new Gitmo trials has mentioned that one of the charges that the US is trying to prove is that of giving material aid to terrorists. This struck me as so bizarre that at first I thought it was a screwup, but even the more detailed reports from legal blogs have included this fact. The problem is, material aid to terrorists has become familiar since 9/11 as a domestic crime. It is controversial because it is so broad: giving money or services for hospitals or schools operated by foreign groups the United States government doesn't like and has labeled as terrorists will get you in trouble. But foreign citizens, those of, say, Yemen, swept up in Afghanistan and associated with al Qaida, are not subject to substantive US domestic law. Giving material support to terrorists is not generally, to my knowledge, a crime in international law. Terrorism, depending on how broadly it is defined, is probably but not necessarily a war crime or crime against humanity, but merely giving aid to such people (perhaps giving them legal representation, or being their driver or bodyguard or physician) is not by itself unlawful. Yes, if you're so involved as to be a party to the actual root crime of terrorism, that might count. But until Nuremberg, conspiracy was not even recognized as a crime much outside the US. So this whole matter still has me questioning.
3) Did I ever mention my idea about Hillary and Barack and the vice presidency? Don't offer her the VP slot, but ask her to lead the search committee. That way, the pick that isn't her will still have her imprimatur.
4) I am a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist believes that while there may be some mysteries about things, some areas of doubt, there is some core that you believe ane what you believe is what you believe and it's absolute and you serve God according to that belief without limitation or exception. It's odd because, even though I am a member of the clergy, I'm not very religious, and I'm not good at practicing what I preach. In fact, I'm against many uses of religion. But I think that what you believe, you believe. So when Mike Huckabee says something pastorish that offends a lot of people, I cut him a little slack: are you explaining that his view is idiotic and evil, or accusing him of being insensitive and mean-spirited, or are you attacking him because he has beliefs that he thinks come from God, and he won't shut up about those beliefs simply to avoid offending somebody? I remember making a defense of Huckabee like that not long ago, and I'll make the same defense for Jeremiah Wright. Disagree with what you want to disagree with, but he was called to preach. He believes some stuff. He thinks it's fundamental to somebody's salvation that he come out and say what he believes. He's been called to witness. So don't expect him to be quiet. There was a piece in the local paper by one of our community columnists, and it attacked Wright very subtly. I had to read it a couple of times before I could break it down and what the argument boiled down to is, whether you agree or disagree with him, the way he presents his case is too black. I wonder how prevalent that is.
5) One thing I don't like about McCain is that he jokes about torture. Now because he's a torture victim, I respect his right to joke about torture privately. But I think it is very disturbing that he does it before masses of people that are not torture victims. What that does is it seems to give permission to other people to maks such jokes. This is no different than if Obama were to start using the word "nigger" on the campaign trail, except that torture victims are a minority that no one much thinks about.
5A) More on torture comments. One of the defenses used to belittle acts of torture as somehow not so serious is to decribe them without the elements of extremity or forced exposure. Hence sleep deprivation, heat or cold, hunger, loud music, maybe getting a little water down your nose. You know, these are things that lots of people have to deal with once in a while. But they are much more like torture when they are being done to you deliberately and prolongedly or repeatedly or harshly and against your will. So much of torture is psychological, about control. For that reason, getting waterboarded by choice in a controlled environment is a lot less devastating than having it done to you against your will. Another thing that could be put on the list is sex, which is also forced on people as a form of torture. The only difference is that we have a words for being violently exposed to unwanted sex: rape, sexual assault, or in more diluted form simply sexual harassment or humiliation. One cannot casually refer to rape simply as sex, the same way one can casually refer to other forms of torture as "sleep deprivation" or "loud music." We need to change the way language is used here. The weak language used to describe torture methods makes them easy to mock, which is grossll misleading and dangerous.
6) Hillary won't quit. She keeps on attacking. She's got so much invested in her war that of course she does not want it all to have been in vain. The problem is, she can't win, that's just the reality. But she doesn't care if this goes on for 100 years, she just has no exit strategy. Good to know Iraq would somehow be different for her.
7) Reality-forcing is a really nifty concept that is too often overlooked. It comes to mid because I read that just a year before Obama's candidacy, some staggeringly high number of folks polled said they could not conceive of themselves voting for a black president. Yet here he is, the likely president. Just being there changed something. Likewise, advocates for Bush's impeachment say what every trial lawyer understands: it does not matter that most people think your case is a loser. You put it together, present it, and when people see it in action they take notice. Once Bush was impeached and the evidence started coming out, it would show how justified the impeachment was. There are numerous and wider examples of this. Airbags were an example of a forced innovation brought about by technology-forcing innovation. If you demand that all cars must have something by year X, chances are it will get invented.
8) Intelligent design. I think maybe here too we should change the language. I don't have a problem with an evolution-compatable "weak ID" theory. You could postulate that there is something analogical to intellligence or design in the way evolution works out by trial-and-error, interated variation and selection, nifty solutions to environmental challenges. The real rub is the notion that the "design" is not taking place over time, organically, but that it was somehow worked out in advance. I recently read on the "Expelled Exposed" website that ID advocates tend to exploit an equivocal use of the word "design." The issue is not design, but predesign. Evidence for evolution is evidence for continuous design as against predesign.
Day 8: A teaser for one of the station's "You paid for it" segments. This time, high pay for bus drivers. I'm guessing this will reflect seniority and overtime, and will not compare to the pay given to police. The think that annoyed me was the statement that it doesn't matter whether you ever ride the bus, you still are paying. I'll wait to see the report, but that sounded to me like an argument more than a fact: why should you have to pay all this money when you don't ride the bus? This is a contentious, politically slanted, and quite stupid argument. I'm never going to use Walter Reed because I'm not in the service. I'll use the bus, but I may never use the 41 line. Even if I do, I'm not going to use the 8:25 stop at X street. I could save a lot of money by vetoing every tax that I don;t personally make use of, and pay only for what directly benefits me. So what? Maybe I want our soldiers to get medical care just because I favor sick people being treated. Maybe I think it's good for people to have access to mass transit so they can get to hospitals, jobs, day care. It benefits me because it benefits the general public. Public transit at least gives our veterans a place to go when it gets cold at night.
Day 7: I didn't see it. Howeverm there was a teaser for a "Speedbusters" segment, and this time a twist: they bring the cops along. I don't get why they think it's their job to participate in this kind of law enforcement. Plus, if they simply reverse rolls: instead of watching and reporting on the police catching people, the news is going to catch people and bring the police along to watch. How is that a benefit to anyone? It's an interesting question to what extent the nightly news should participate in law enforcement. There are disasters out there that happen when the police get more interested in fame and exposure than they should, and let the media crew take the lead. When a defendant gets met at the door by a SWAT team and a television crew for a sex offense charge before having a day in court, that's a problem. The news shouldn't play cops for the entertainment value. In principle, they could be doing a lot of law enforcement if they did it right, but so much of it is one-sided, misleading, with heavy-handed judgments and epithets directed at the supposed bad people. I would like to see a code of ethics and a code of standards for the local news acting as an arm of law enforcement.
Day 6: Three things: (1) A report of four dollar gas. I thought: BS. It's either $3.99 and 9/10 cents, or more than 4. I suppose it could be exactly four, but given that that seems unlikely, and that $4 gas may mean exactly or may mean at least, I find the report ambiguous and unreliable. (2) Sportscast reported that Eva Longoria Parker was in the stands to watch her hubby, and remarks that "that's always worth a peek." Eva worth looking at? I agree, but to hear it reported that way seems sexist, objectifying, lookist, and just vulgar. (3) This is the one that really got my goat: Milwaukee's Archbishop Timothy Dolan was interviewed to give his reaction to a story about a pastor who kept a dead relative at home for two months, cashing her social security checks and claiming that she still might be resurrected by a miracle. (This is similar to what the couple who let their daughter die of untreated diabetes was told: pray hard, and she still might recover.) I would not automatically run to a Roman Catholic heirarch to comment on the beliefs of an obscure non-Catholic religious minority. So what did he say? Well, it was just a perversion of evertything religion is about, and these people are crackpots. Personally, I have no trouble with the notion that this is crackpotism. Keep your dead relative on the toilet for weeks on end? Yikes! But I have some forced respect for religious crackpots; I have to because most religion is at least a little bit crazy. I think some of the Archbishop's beliefs are a little goofy: miracles? People rising from the dead? Jesus? Lazarus? All of us living forever through the "blood of Christ": crazy stuff, for sure. Certifiable for anyone looking at the belief system from outside. So I was yelling at my TV set: who is this fat rich ugly hypocrite to stand there and mock and judge these people for believing in resurrection. Sure, they may be crazy. There are some decisions I would not let them make, and posing a public health hazard by failing to report a corpse is one of them. But what does it mean for this fat rich jerk, representing his fat rich church, with its centuries of crimes and its unravelling factories of child rape, to say that someone else's faith is crazy, perverse, disgusting and intolerable? How is that anything other than sectarian hate speech against a fellow faith tradition? And why is it being aired uncritically?
Day (??): Forget exactly when it aired, but t's in my recent notes: On the same day, two stories: (1) People are upset that the new release of Grand Theft Auto is being advertised on city buses, and this has led public officials to engage in a lot of vituperation and try to cancel contracts; (2) The Republic of Iran has formally denounced and banned Barbie dolls as a negative cultural influence. The first report appears more incritical than the second, but in neither case is there any meaningful analysis.
Now to some other items that are not part of my diary:
1) It's an old issue that has been addressed already, but I was thinking about Bush's low approval ratings and the Republican talking point that Congress has a worse rating. The obvious and well known answer is that people like their own reps, whom they voted for, but just don't like the group made up of 535 people, 533 of whom they did not vote for. In contrast, even most of the people who voted for Bush would like to see him fall out of Marine One and be lost at sea. Then I had another thought, for my brothers and sisters in DC. They had the chance to vote for president but have no votes in Congress. So the difference is, they dislike Bush because they voted against him. They dislike Congress because they never got to vote on Congress at all. Zero for 535. Does that help explain it?2) Some coverage of the new Gitmo trials has mentioned that one of the charges that the US is trying to prove is that of giving material aid to terrorists. This struck me as so bizarre that at first I thought it was a screwup, but even the more detailed reports from legal blogs have included this fact. The problem is, material aid to terrorists has become familiar since 9/11 as a domestic crime. It is controversial because it is so broad: giving money or services for hospitals or schools operated by foreign groups the United States government doesn't like and has labeled as terrorists will get you in trouble. But foreign citizens, those of, say, Yemen, swept up in Afghanistan and associated with al Qaida, are not subject to substantive US domestic law. Giving material support to terrorists is not generally, to my knowledge, a crime in international law. Terrorism, depending on how broadly it is defined, is probably but not necessarily a war crime or crime against humanity, but merely giving aid to such people (perhaps giving them legal representation, or being their driver or bodyguard or physician) is not by itself unlawful. Yes, if you're so involved as to be a party to the actual root crime of terrorism, that might count. But until Nuremberg, conspiracy was not even recognized as a crime much outside the US. So this whole matter still has me questioning.
3) Did I ever mention my idea about Hillary and Barack and the vice presidency? Don't offer her the VP slot, but ask her to lead the search committee. That way, the pick that isn't her will still have her imprimatur.
4) I am a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist believes that while there may be some mysteries about things, some areas of doubt, there is some core that you believe ane what you believe is what you believe and it's absolute and you serve God according to that belief without limitation or exception. It's odd because, even though I am a member of the clergy, I'm not very religious, and I'm not good at practicing what I preach. In fact, I'm against many uses of religion. But I think that what you believe, you believe. So when Mike Huckabee says something pastorish that offends a lot of people, I cut him a little slack: are you explaining that his view is idiotic and evil, or accusing him of being insensitive and mean-spirited, or are you attacking him because he has beliefs that he thinks come from God, and he won't shut up about those beliefs simply to avoid offending somebody? I remember making a defense of Huckabee like that not long ago, and I'll make the same defense for Jeremiah Wright. Disagree with what you want to disagree with, but he was called to preach. He believes some stuff. He thinks it's fundamental to somebody's salvation that he come out and say what he believes. He's been called to witness. So don't expect him to be quiet. There was a piece in the local paper by one of our community columnists, and it attacked Wright very subtly. I had to read it a couple of times before I could break it down and what the argument boiled down to is, whether you agree or disagree with him, the way he presents his case is too black. I wonder how prevalent that is.
5) One thing I don't like about McCain is that he jokes about torture. Now because he's a torture victim, I respect his right to joke about torture privately. But I think it is very disturbing that he does it before masses of people that are not torture victims. What that does is it seems to give permission to other people to maks such jokes. This is no different than if Obama were to start using the word "nigger" on the campaign trail, except that torture victims are a minority that no one much thinks about.
5A) More on torture comments. One of the defenses used to belittle acts of torture as somehow not so serious is to decribe them without the elements of extremity or forced exposure. Hence sleep deprivation, heat or cold, hunger, loud music, maybe getting a little water down your nose. You know, these are things that lots of people have to deal with once in a while. But they are much more like torture when they are being done to you deliberately and prolongedly or repeatedly or harshly and against your will. So much of torture is psychological, about control. For that reason, getting waterboarded by choice in a controlled environment is a lot less devastating than having it done to you against your will. Another thing that could be put on the list is sex, which is also forced on people as a form of torture. The only difference is that we have a words for being violently exposed to unwanted sex: rape, sexual assault, or in more diluted form simply sexual harassment or humiliation. One cannot casually refer to rape simply as sex, the same way one can casually refer to other forms of torture as "sleep deprivation" or "loud music." We need to change the way language is used here. The weak language used to describe torture methods makes them easy to mock, which is grossll misleading and dangerous.
6) Hillary won't quit. She keeps on attacking. She's got so much invested in her war that of course she does not want it all to have been in vain. The problem is, she can't win, that's just the reality. But she doesn't care if this goes on for 100 years, she just has no exit strategy. Good to know Iraq would somehow be different for her.
7) Reality-forcing is a really nifty concept that is too often overlooked. It comes to mid because I read that just a year before Obama's candidacy, some staggeringly high number of folks polled said they could not conceive of themselves voting for a black president. Yet here he is, the likely president. Just being there changed something. Likewise, advocates for Bush's impeachment say what every trial lawyer understands: it does not matter that most people think your case is a loser. You put it together, present it, and when people see it in action they take notice. Once Bush was impeached and the evidence started coming out, it would show how justified the impeachment was. There are numerous and wider examples of this. Airbags were an example of a forced innovation brought about by technology-forcing innovation. If you demand that all cars must have something by year X, chances are it will get invented.
8) Intelligent design. I think maybe here too we should change the language. I don't have a problem with an evolution-compatable "weak ID" theory. You could postulate that there is something analogical to intellligence or design in the way evolution works out by trial-and-error, interated variation and selection, nifty solutions to environmental challenges. The real rub is the notion that the "design" is not taking place over time, organically, but that it was somehow worked out in advance. I recently read on the "Expelled Exposed" website that ID advocates tend to exploit an equivocal use of the word "design." The issue is not design, but predesign. Evidence for evolution is evidence for continuous design as against predesign.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Day 1.
Haven't posted in a while. So I have miscellaneous ideas stored up, but instead, I'll post this:
I had the thought of beginnng a daily diary (that's redundant) reporting what is on the local news every night and noting my reactions. I doubt this will actually happen, but let's pretend for one night:
Today, there were a couple of things that struck me. The first is that the show had a lot of name calling. There was a report about some youths being apprehended by police, suspects in some grafitti vandalism.
This was a follow-up report after a broadcast that mentioned the grafitti itself and speculated that it was not gang related, but the work of gangster wannabes. This struck me as a lot of mind-reading. I generally find it objectionable when reporters say things like "the White House believes" rather than "the White House argues." You can't possibly know what they really believe. If you believe they do not lie, then the viewer can take the report of what was argued and reach their own conclusion what was believed. But to reach that conclusion for the viewer overreports. It goes beyond what the available data supports. It means that if the argument turns out to be spin (does that ever happen), the original report will have been wrong. Why report what you don't really know?
So today the culprits were found -- maybe, I'd have to go back and check what language the report used, maybe "suspects" is better than "culprits" -- and, like last time, the report referred to them as "punks." What does that mean? Do they identify with "punk" subculture, listen to punk music, call themselves punks? Obviously, nothing like this was known at the time of the original report. I mean, conceivably, the grafitti might have included actual punk slogans or symbols, but I did not recognize any. I assume that the report was calling them punks as a term of derision, meaning bad youths. This is, I think, borderline hate speech, "punk" used this way being to young people what "bitch" is to women. It is also, to the extent that punk has a potential factual meaning, a misleading epithet which some might see as identifying these bad acts with punk subculture. And in general, I don't see the point of namecalling in a factual report. How can one be objective and fair while calling someone names? I don't think this kind of expression of personal opinion has a proper place even when the crime is murder. Why heap abuse on kids for petty offenses before they are charged or tried? There could be any number of things to be said in favor of these kids to mitigate the offense. Or aggravate the offense. We don't know any of it. How is that fair?
There was another report tonight that involved a report of some people who gave a 2-year-old marijuana. The online transcript does not include Mike Jacobs' bumpers to the report, referring to the people who did this as "rocket scientists." I assume this is again not to be taken literally but as a petty insult. This is Mike showing how he's one of us by expressing the same opinions we would have. Standing up for conventional opinion, pandering, padding the facts with vapid commentary.
I just read the report again online. Some quotes and comments:
(1) "Exclusive: shocking and sad video." The local news equivalent of a laugh track, so you never have to make your own judgments.
(2) "A toddler caught on tape smoking pot with his mother in the same room." Can I get a verb, please? What is with the style that omits verbs? Grammar is a good way to assure that whatever you say asserts something that has a meaning and a truth value.
(3) "The mother is from Menomonee Falls. She was punished along with two of her friends." Does "from" mean that she is somewhere else now? Japan? Mongolia? Punished when? How? (Let's check ahead... Well, "They were all smoking marijuana inside a Menomonee Falls home..." and "TODAY’S TMJ4’s Heather Shannon showed the tape to several Menomonee Falls moms," so it looks like she was still there when this happened. At almost very end of the report: "Weber's attorney says his client has maintained complete sobriety since her arrest last fall. 'She is gainfully employed and has been doing everything in her power to better her life and the life of her son.' Children's Hospital did run tests on the little boy and they found that he did not have any marijuana in his system." So it looks like the arrest was six months ago, give or take. The punishment might have been five months ago or yesterday. So much for the five Ws. She is apparently not in prison. We're left to guess whether she got probation, for how long, under what terms. We don't know about the friends.
(4) "The cell phone video shows a 2-year-old boy taking a marijuana blunt and smoking. The video shows his mother's friends teaching him how to do it." Was it a blunt? I didn't see the video but I am not confident. Teaching a two year old? How? Telling? Demonstrating? I doubt this too. Just doesn't sound like an easy thing to do.
(5) "Everyone had the same reaction. 'That poor little baby,' one mom said.' Oh, that is disgusting,' another mom said. [Another is] appalled at what she saw. 'Instead of a child, he's a form of entertainment, and that is just awful,'... [Another said,]. 'I am in shock. I just cannot imagine doing something like that with your child and videotaping it and making a joke of it,' Holmes said. Are those all the same reaction? Pity, disgust, shock? I was trained that you never characterize ("appalled") before the quote: let the quote speak for itself. And the woman who said she could not imagine: well, first of all, I hear about stuff like this all the time. But more importantly, the woman is also wrong in how she characterizes the video: the mom was not reported as being the one doing it, she was in the room, and can be heard commenting. Why include a quote that reacts to facts contradicting those reported?
(6) "were all charged with giving the marijuana to the boy." Again, they always say "charged with" followed by the substance of the accusation rather than the name of the alleged offense. That is a big problem. If a report says, "he was charged with killing his housekeeper," is it negligent homicide, first degree murder, manslaughter, party to a suicide? Is the fact that the victim was a housekeeper relevant to the offense as an enhancer?
Next story: free breast implants. The teaser talks about doctors being outraged, bit the item struck me as spun in exactly the opposite way, as a horrible, big ad for women to seek free breast implants by, hinted but not stated, offering sex. I need to check this again tomorrow when there is a transcript online and not just a teaser. At the end of the report, Carole Meekins makes a comment about the sad lack of self esteem among girls. Well, I might agree with that, but why I didn't really feel that perspective came through that well in the report, with any facts. It seemed like a wierdly schizophrenic report, slanted in one direction, but with a commentary at the end completely contradicting that spin, unsupported by any facts. Plus it basically charged the woman in the story with acting irrationally out of self-hatred, which she would probably resent. More mind-reading. And no chance to respond. Maybe I'm wrong. I;ll check.
Finally, I remember that yesterday John Mercure had a report that was actually interesting: they put a boy in a lobby of a heavily trafficked city building surrounded of posters of him, in the identical coat, calling him missing. Almost no one noticed. The only problem is that I can remember maybe a few months or a year ago they ran an almost identical report. So this was really lazy and not new. Does that justify fake posters? Why keep running the same "unscientific experiment" and reporting all the unreliable results on who tends to notice more? Why not just do it once, right? And then find something different to do that will move us forward.
I had the thought of beginnng a daily diary (that's redundant) reporting what is on the local news every night and noting my reactions. I doubt this will actually happen, but let's pretend for one night:
Today, there were a couple of things that struck me. The first is that the show had a lot of name calling. There was a report about some youths being apprehended by police, suspects in some grafitti vandalism.
This was a follow-up report after a broadcast that mentioned the grafitti itself and speculated that it was not gang related, but the work of gangster wannabes. This struck me as a lot of mind-reading. I generally find it objectionable when reporters say things like "the White House believes" rather than "the White House argues." You can't possibly know what they really believe. If you believe they do not lie, then the viewer can take the report of what was argued and reach their own conclusion what was believed. But to reach that conclusion for the viewer overreports. It goes beyond what the available data supports. It means that if the argument turns out to be spin (does that ever happen), the original report will have been wrong. Why report what you don't really know?
So today the culprits were found -- maybe, I'd have to go back and check what language the report used, maybe "suspects" is better than "culprits" -- and, like last time, the report referred to them as "punks." What does that mean? Do they identify with "punk" subculture, listen to punk music, call themselves punks? Obviously, nothing like this was known at the time of the original report. I mean, conceivably, the grafitti might have included actual punk slogans or symbols, but I did not recognize any. I assume that the report was calling them punks as a term of derision, meaning bad youths. This is, I think, borderline hate speech, "punk" used this way being to young people what "bitch" is to women. It is also, to the extent that punk has a potential factual meaning, a misleading epithet which some might see as identifying these bad acts with punk subculture. And in general, I don't see the point of namecalling in a factual report. How can one be objective and fair while calling someone names? I don't think this kind of expression of personal opinion has a proper place even when the crime is murder. Why heap abuse on kids for petty offenses before they are charged or tried? There could be any number of things to be said in favor of these kids to mitigate the offense. Or aggravate the offense. We don't know any of it. How is that fair?
There was another report tonight that involved a report of some people who gave a 2-year-old marijuana. The online transcript does not include Mike Jacobs' bumpers to the report, referring to the people who did this as "rocket scientists." I assume this is again not to be taken literally but as a petty insult. This is Mike showing how he's one of us by expressing the same opinions we would have. Standing up for conventional opinion, pandering, padding the facts with vapid commentary.
I just read the report again online. Some quotes and comments:
(1) "Exclusive: shocking and sad video." The local news equivalent of a laugh track, so you never have to make your own judgments.
(2) "A toddler caught on tape smoking pot with his mother in the same room." Can I get a verb, please? What is with the style that omits verbs? Grammar is a good way to assure that whatever you say asserts something that has a meaning and a truth value.
(3) "The mother is from Menomonee Falls. She was punished along with two of her friends." Does "from" mean that she is somewhere else now? Japan? Mongolia? Punished when? How? (Let's check ahead... Well, "They were all smoking marijuana inside a Menomonee Falls home..." and "TODAY’S TMJ4’s Heather Shannon showed the tape to several Menomonee Falls moms," so it looks like she was still there when this happened. At almost very end of the report: "Weber's attorney says his client has maintained complete sobriety since her arrest last fall. 'She is gainfully employed and has been doing everything in her power to better her life and the life of her son.' Children's Hospital did run tests on the little boy and they found that he did not have any marijuana in his system." So it looks like the arrest was six months ago, give or take. The punishment might have been five months ago or yesterday. So much for the five Ws. She is apparently not in prison. We're left to guess whether she got probation, for how long, under what terms. We don't know about the friends.
(4) "The cell phone video shows a 2-year-old boy taking a marijuana blunt and smoking. The video shows his mother's friends teaching him how to do it." Was it a blunt? I didn't see the video but I am not confident. Teaching a two year old? How? Telling? Demonstrating? I doubt this too. Just doesn't sound like an easy thing to do.
(5) "Everyone had the same reaction. 'That poor little baby,' one mom said.' Oh, that is disgusting,' another mom said. [Another is] appalled at what she saw. 'Instead of a child, he's a form of entertainment, and that is just awful,'... [Another said,]. 'I am in shock. I just cannot imagine doing something like that with your child and videotaping it and making a joke of it,' Holmes said. Are those all the same reaction? Pity, disgust, shock? I was trained that you never characterize ("appalled") before the quote: let the quote speak for itself. And the woman who said she could not imagine: well, first of all, I hear about stuff like this all the time. But more importantly, the woman is also wrong in how she characterizes the video: the mom was not reported as being the one doing it, she was in the room, and can be heard commenting. Why include a quote that reacts to facts contradicting those reported?
(6) "were all charged with giving the marijuana to the boy." Again, they always say "charged with" followed by the substance of the accusation rather than the name of the alleged offense. That is a big problem. If a report says, "he was charged with killing his housekeeper," is it negligent homicide, first degree murder, manslaughter, party to a suicide? Is the fact that the victim was a housekeeper relevant to the offense as an enhancer?
Next story: free breast implants. The teaser talks about doctors being outraged, bit the item struck me as spun in exactly the opposite way, as a horrible, big ad for women to seek free breast implants by, hinted but not stated, offering sex. I need to check this again tomorrow when there is a transcript online and not just a teaser. At the end of the report, Carole Meekins makes a comment about the sad lack of self esteem among girls. Well, I might agree with that, but why I didn't really feel that perspective came through that well in the report, with any facts. It seemed like a wierdly schizophrenic report, slanted in one direction, but with a commentary at the end completely contradicting that spin, unsupported by any facts. Plus it basically charged the woman in the story with acting irrationally out of self-hatred, which she would probably resent. More mind-reading. And no chance to respond. Maybe I'm wrong. I;ll check.
Finally, I remember that yesterday John Mercure had a report that was actually interesting: they put a boy in a lobby of a heavily trafficked city building surrounded of posters of him, in the identical coat, calling him missing. Almost no one noticed. The only problem is that I can remember maybe a few months or a year ago they ran an almost identical report. So this was really lazy and not new. Does that justify fake posters? Why keep running the same "unscientific experiment" and reporting all the unreliable results on who tends to notice more? Why not just do it once, right? And then find something different to do that will move us forward.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Less babytalk. Less trivia.
The other day my local news referred to vegetables as "veggies" and bees as little "stingers." Assuming most viewers are adults, it would be good to not have the language cutesified.
Also, some very good things have been said by Glenn Greenwald and by Rachel Maddow concerning the whole Obama "bitter" flap. Not only is the coverage loaded with misinformation, as I noted, but of course the whole issue is stupid. Of course, the whole thing shows a disingenuous bit of circular reasoning: the media covers this stupid trivia about little things a candidate says or does that are not really very important otherwise, on the excuse that they may have the power to influnce the election. And of course they do have that power, because the media covers them obsessively, to the exclusion of actual news.
These two topics raise broader ones. I love media criticism, and I think the topic is vitally important. The fact that the Obama story here is so trivial raises a question of news values. One project which would be important would be to identify actual news values and interrogate them. For example, it has been commonly said for 40 years that negativity is a news value, and people have asked, why is bad news more important than good news? Or, if it is sometimes, when? Perhaps we should eliminate or at least refine this news value so that we do not overemphasize negative coverage. Of course, the local news have a habit of trying to be upbeat, which is just as disgusting. They still follow the formula that if it bleeds it leads, then produce "positive" segments for balance that are awful and do nothing to balance out the obsession with crime news.
A few days ago, for some reason I've forgotten, I had to look up standard western news values. I think those values have some serious shortcomings. I like Wikipedia's entry, on which I have based the following synopsis. They utilized three sources: Johan Galtung & Mari Holmboe Ruge's classic, "The Structure of Foreign News. The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers, " from the Journal of Peace Research, vol. 2, pp. 64-91 (1965). This gave them 10 values. They added four more from Allan Bell's book, The Language of News Media. (Oxford, 1991), and a final two from Philip Schlesinger, Putting "Reality" Together (London, 1987), making a total of 16. I recite them below with my own explanations based on Wikipedia's, and put in my own order to reflect what I see as supercategories among them. I have put an asterisk on each of Bell's contributions and two on each of Schlesinger's.
Narrative structure:
Frequency (events at a convenient time versus other events or slow trends).
Unexpectedness (unusual versus everyday occurrence).
Unambiguity (simple background and obvious implications versus complexity).
Drama:
Personalization (individual actions versus no human interest).
Conflict (dramatic opposition versus none).
Negativity (bad news versus good).
Subjects important or culturally proximate:
Meaningfulness (culturally proximate subjects versus foreign).
Reference to elite nations (global powers versus other nations).
Reference to elite persons (celebrities and decisionmakers over everymen).
Relating to synergy or countersynergy:
Consonance (fit media's expectations versus unreadiness to report).
Continuity (inertia from being already in the news versus new subjects).
Co-optation* (related to major story versus not).
Competition* (endorsed by other news outlets versus not).
Composition (balances overall news output versus not).
Relating to the ease of production:
Prefabrication* (supplied verus requiring work "from the ground up").
Predictability* (pre-scheduled versus not).
Time constraints** (able to be covered quickly versus not).
Logistics** (nearby, accessibile and secure location versus not).
If one thinks about it, though, this list is plainly inadequate. Here are some I would add:
Exclusivity: (proprietary versus reported by others).
Currency: (recent, breaking, or imminent verses temporally distant).
Aesthetics: (compelling audio or video available versus words-only).
Uncontroversialiaty: (free of legal, security, or social restraints versus problematic).
Structure: (having a standardized narrative, like a legal proceeding or election, versus developing randomly).
Reproducability: (able to be repeated as a new story with small changes versus not).
Categorized: (belonging to a staple type like sports, weather, or crime versus miscellany).
Source-value: (known and considered important by frequent sources versus information scattered among those not frequent sources).
Another, broader project that I have had in mind for a long long time would be to gather up the various criticisms of media coverage and sort them out and evaluate them. Some, I think, would fall away as cases of a very intuitive but ultimately unsatisfying and unprincipled approach: if it does not reflect my values, it is biased. Without a set of neutral procedural and substantive criteria that identify how to present the news objectively, the tendency is to navigate between critics, covering things however intuitively feels fair. It's a start but it only goes so far, and explains why there is so much failure in objectivity in the present media output.
Wikipedia has a nice little entry on objectivity, but it highlights this shortcoming. It fails to mention Westerstahl's definition of objectivity, which I've always liked. More on this later.
Of course, the criticisms do not all center on bias. The problems of clutter, narrowcasting, entertainment values, horserace journalism, and stuff like the babytalk I mentioned above all pretty much grate on me. The local alternative weekly actually had a very nice cover story about a year ago, drawing together dozens of particular criticisms, to which I could have added a dozen more. I thought I had done a blog entry on it at the time, but I see that I never did, and have only my rough notes. This is something I want to come back to. It's a rich subject, important, and something I like to think about.
More later.
Also, some very good things have been said by Glenn Greenwald and by Rachel Maddow concerning the whole Obama "bitter" flap. Not only is the coverage loaded with misinformation, as I noted, but of course the whole issue is stupid. Of course, the whole thing shows a disingenuous bit of circular reasoning: the media covers this stupid trivia about little things a candidate says or does that are not really very important otherwise, on the excuse that they may have the power to influnce the election. And of course they do have that power, because the media covers them obsessively, to the exclusion of actual news.
These two topics raise broader ones. I love media criticism, and I think the topic is vitally important. The fact that the Obama story here is so trivial raises a question of news values. One project which would be important would be to identify actual news values and interrogate them. For example, it has been commonly said for 40 years that negativity is a news value, and people have asked, why is bad news more important than good news? Or, if it is sometimes, when? Perhaps we should eliminate or at least refine this news value so that we do not overemphasize negative coverage. Of course, the local news have a habit of trying to be upbeat, which is just as disgusting. They still follow the formula that if it bleeds it leads, then produce "positive" segments for balance that are awful and do nothing to balance out the obsession with crime news.
A few days ago, for some reason I've forgotten, I had to look up standard western news values. I think those values have some serious shortcomings. I like Wikipedia's entry, on which I have based the following synopsis. They utilized three sources: Johan Galtung & Mari Holmboe Ruge's classic, "The Structure of Foreign News. The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers, " from the Journal of Peace Research, vol. 2, pp. 64-91 (1965). This gave them 10 values. They added four more from Allan Bell's book, The Language of News Media. (Oxford, 1991), and a final two from Philip Schlesinger, Putting "Reality" Together (London, 1987), making a total of 16. I recite them below with my own explanations based on Wikipedia's, and put in my own order to reflect what I see as supercategories among them. I have put an asterisk on each of Bell's contributions and two on each of Schlesinger's.
Narrative structure:
Frequency (events at a convenient time versus other events or slow trends).
Unexpectedness (unusual versus everyday occurrence).
Unambiguity (simple background and obvious implications versus complexity).
Drama:
Personalization (individual actions versus no human interest).
Conflict (dramatic opposition versus none).
Negativity (bad news versus good).
Subjects important or culturally proximate:
Meaningfulness (culturally proximate subjects versus foreign).
Reference to elite nations (global powers versus other nations).
Reference to elite persons (celebrities and decisionmakers over everymen).
Relating to synergy or countersynergy:
Consonance (fit media's expectations versus unreadiness to report).
Continuity (inertia from being already in the news versus new subjects).
Co-optation* (related to major story versus not).
Competition* (endorsed by other news outlets versus not).
Composition (balances overall news output versus not).
Relating to the ease of production:
Prefabrication* (supplied verus requiring work "from the ground up").
Predictability* (pre-scheduled versus not).
Time constraints** (able to be covered quickly versus not).
Logistics** (nearby, accessibile and secure location versus not).
If one thinks about it, though, this list is plainly inadequate. Here are some I would add:
Exclusivity: (proprietary versus reported by others).
Currency: (recent, breaking, or imminent verses temporally distant).
Aesthetics: (compelling audio or video available versus words-only).
Uncontroversialiaty: (free of legal, security, or social restraints versus problematic).
Structure: (having a standardized narrative, like a legal proceeding or election, versus developing randomly).
Reproducability: (able to be repeated as a new story with small changes versus not).
Categorized: (belonging to a staple type like sports, weather, or crime versus miscellany).
Source-value: (known and considered important by frequent sources versus information scattered among those not frequent sources).
Another, broader project that I have had in mind for a long long time would be to gather up the various criticisms of media coverage and sort them out and evaluate them. Some, I think, would fall away as cases of a very intuitive but ultimately unsatisfying and unprincipled approach: if it does not reflect my values, it is biased. Without a set of neutral procedural and substantive criteria that identify how to present the news objectively, the tendency is to navigate between critics, covering things however intuitively feels fair. It's a start but it only goes so far, and explains why there is so much failure in objectivity in the present media output.
Wikipedia has a nice little entry on objectivity, but it highlights this shortcoming. It fails to mention Westerstahl's definition of objectivity, which I've always liked. More on this later.
Of course, the criticisms do not all center on bias. The problems of clutter, narrowcasting, entertainment values, horserace journalism, and stuff like the babytalk I mentioned above all pretty much grate on me. The local alternative weekly actually had a very nice cover story about a year ago, drawing together dozens of particular criticisms, to which I could have added a dozen more. I thought I had done a blog entry on it at the time, but I see that I never did, and have only my rough notes. This is something I want to come back to. It's a rich subject, important, and something I like to think about.
More later.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Precision, please. Balance, please.
I hate the fact that when I listen to news and talk programs I always have to second guess them as I would a scatterbrained friend who comes to me with a "Did you hear?" story. Im writing at the end of the News Hour and beginning of Charlie Rose and I've just heard a series of statements that are false in various minor aspects, regarding the statement Obama made that people in hard economic times unsurprisingly tend toward bitterness and cling to their religion and so on. Regarding what he said, what it meant, reharding what others said about it. What was particularly frustrating concerning this affair, is that both shows spent good lengths of time debating the parsing of the statement, and then wrap it all up with a paraphrase that adopts a particular, innacurate reading of what was said.
There was a nice piece in the local paper yesterday on the local cold case unit, looking at two cases from 1990. It was all very well done. But it was one of those pieces that assumes at the outset that balance does not matter. It referred to one of the cold cases as having been solved, because someone has confessed to it. That always annoys me because to me, the case is not solved when the prosecutor decides it is, or when the police decide it is, but when someone has been found guilty. The other cold case the article examined still exists as a cold case only because it was not considered solved eighteen years ago when a suspect confessed after a long grueling interrogation. Beyond the individual defendants' perspectives not being included, there was a more general question which the article did not consider: is there a downside to solving these old cases and prosecuting them? Does that mean reopening old wounds? How do you go about defending against a nearly 20-year-old charge? I'm not taking a position, but I think the article did.
There was a nice piece in the local paper yesterday on the local cold case unit, looking at two cases from 1990. It was all very well done. But it was one of those pieces that assumes at the outset that balance does not matter. It referred to one of the cold cases as having been solved, because someone has confessed to it. That always annoys me because to me, the case is not solved when the prosecutor decides it is, or when the police decide it is, but when someone has been found guilty. The other cold case the article examined still exists as a cold case only because it was not considered solved eighteen years ago when a suspect confessed after a long grueling interrogation. Beyond the individual defendants' perspectives not being included, there was a more general question which the article did not consider: is there a downside to solving these old cases and prosecuting them? Does that mean reopening old wounds? How do you go about defending against a nearly 20-year-old charge? I'm not taking a position, but I think the article did.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Earth Hour
I don't know if I should even spend my time noting this, but it seems like the commentary from the Journal-Sentinel's community columnists just gets stupider and stupider. They seem to include a small minority of reasonables set against a crowd of...
Well, best to avoid sputtering insults at them, which would only prove the phenomenon is contageous. I've been sitting on this for a week, since I read Al Smith go off on Earth Hour. The guy is apparently some ridiculous old crank who gets whipped into a frenzy by some news outlet that he takes far too seriously. Or maybe it's performance art -- imitating a slobberjawed hysteric as a kind of hoax. Or maybe he's really a good guy but had been involuntraily drugged on hallucinogens when it come time to write last week's article. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I tend to suspect he belongs in a place where the friendly nurse will remind him to eat his jell-o and take his meds.
Judge for yourself. Here is the article in question. I've shown it to a few folks who have said what I think is obvious: if this came in as a letter, it would be attributed to a crackpot and thrown in the dustbin with the old sandwich wrappers or at best the "maybe if we're really desperate" pile. It certainly wouldn't get spotlight treatment. But here he is, a columnist. And advertising his freelance writing availability in his ID tag.
I shall now give my analysis of his argument.
Earth Hour, in the real world, is a sort of a stunt event promoted by various cities and countries around the world, where near the end of March, people are encouraged to douse the lights for one hour. The idea is to draw a little attention to global warming and also just to get people to try just a tiny taste of conservation, on the notion that some might see that it isn't so bad and try it more. It's designed to be minimally demanding, an admittedly negligible start in terms of actual conservation, but significant to the extent that it commands some attention and breaks some resistence to further steps. It's basically costless. The only negative is that some people might decide that participation in this trivial act of conservation is sufficient to purge their guilt over their Hummer and do even less than they otherwise might.
Smith, on the other hand, calls it first a "charade" of "staged" "propaganda" for the "gullible."
Huh? How can any of this apply? What's the message that we shouldn't fall for? Is it a charade because even when you turn your lights off, they aren't really off?
Al's wife: Will you turn out the light when you come up, honey?
Al: Propaganda and lies! You won't trick me!
Well, apparently, despite being obviously intended to deceive us, this effort is in fact the exact opposite. It is, Al informs us, extremely revelatory. "It all becomes clear now" because nothing more perfectly reveals "the true intent" of Earth Hour: it is "merely the prelude" to an even more diabolical scheme. The manufacturers of Earth Hour want to "turn off the lamps forever" and achieve their "longed-for dark age." Really! This is their "vision," their "only approved endpoint": the "dismantling" of capitalism, consumerism, and civilization altogether. (How this all becomes clear from asking people to conserve electricity is not exactly spelled out in detail. I assume this is because Al considers it too self-evident to bother to explain. Somewhere in his fevered brain, it came to him that this was true, and all he need do is point it out to the rest of us, and we would see too. Yes! It's so obvious now! Thanks, Al!)
Al appropriately labels these enemies of civilization. They are not just "extreme" "radical" "zealots" who push "insanity", "absurdity", "buffoonery" and "tragicomic...farce." They are "Goths". Worse, their campaign is "anti-human" based on "self-loathing" and "self-flaggelation."
To be fair, Al does not completely eschew evidence. He makes, as far as I can tell, two observations of fact supporting his epithets against environmentalists. First, they obstinately reject the obvious solutions to all our problems, such as simply finding more gasoline and burning it. I guess Al remembers thirty years ago when the issue was more about shortages than it was about climate change. He should check into this milennium. Fighting pollution with more pollution is at best unproven as a panacea. Other solutions they reject: burning more coal, burning more corn, and building nuclear plants. They also supposedly hate hydroelectric power, because rivers should run free. I must confess I had not heard this. He does not explain why they supposedly reject harnessing hydroelectric power from the oceans.
His other item of evidence is that he quotes a single climate and public policy specialist as saying that Earth Hour, while nice, will not stop global warming on its own. No private inititive ever will. The government must step in. I suspect he meant applying a range of policy tools, a carbon cap-and trade system, or a tax, clean power subsidies, tax breaks or other incentives, government limiting its own wastefulness, and assisting with public awareness, research and effort coordination.
Al, however, is certain that what this means is that the black helicopters are coming to get him the next time he forgets to turn his porch light off. He has figured out that "government is to have the power" to cut off your energy. Oh, the Constitution! he raves. People sadly are too "afraid" to defy the Nazi "Uber Greens" or the Communist greens of the "People's Republic of San Francisco" and their worldwide "fellow travelers."
So, I'm right, am I not? This guy is a nut and the Journal's standards are dropping like a stone.
Well, best to avoid sputtering insults at them, which would only prove the phenomenon is contageous. I've been sitting on this for a week, since I read Al Smith go off on Earth Hour. The guy is apparently some ridiculous old crank who gets whipped into a frenzy by some news outlet that he takes far too seriously. Or maybe it's performance art -- imitating a slobberjawed hysteric as a kind of hoax. Or maybe he's really a good guy but had been involuntraily drugged on hallucinogens when it come time to write last week's article. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I tend to suspect he belongs in a place where the friendly nurse will remind him to eat his jell-o and take his meds.
Judge for yourself. Here is the article in question. I've shown it to a few folks who have said what I think is obvious: if this came in as a letter, it would be attributed to a crackpot and thrown in the dustbin with the old sandwich wrappers or at best the "maybe if we're really desperate" pile. It certainly wouldn't get spotlight treatment. But here he is, a columnist. And advertising his freelance writing availability in his ID tag.
I shall now give my analysis of his argument.
Earth Hour, in the real world, is a sort of a stunt event promoted by various cities and countries around the world, where near the end of March, people are encouraged to douse the lights for one hour. The idea is to draw a little attention to global warming and also just to get people to try just a tiny taste of conservation, on the notion that some might see that it isn't so bad and try it more. It's designed to be minimally demanding, an admittedly negligible start in terms of actual conservation, but significant to the extent that it commands some attention and breaks some resistence to further steps. It's basically costless. The only negative is that some people might decide that participation in this trivial act of conservation is sufficient to purge their guilt over their Hummer and do even less than they otherwise might.
Smith, on the other hand, calls it first a "charade" of "staged" "propaganda" for the "gullible."
Huh? How can any of this apply? What's the message that we shouldn't fall for? Is it a charade because even when you turn your lights off, they aren't really off?
Al's wife: Will you turn out the light when you come up, honey?
Al: Propaganda and lies! You won't trick me!
Well, apparently, despite being obviously intended to deceive us, this effort is in fact the exact opposite. It is, Al informs us, extremely revelatory. "It all becomes clear now" because nothing more perfectly reveals "the true intent" of Earth Hour: it is "merely the prelude" to an even more diabolical scheme. The manufacturers of Earth Hour want to "turn off the lamps forever" and achieve their "longed-for dark age." Really! This is their "vision," their "only approved endpoint": the "dismantling" of capitalism, consumerism, and civilization altogether. (How this all becomes clear from asking people to conserve electricity is not exactly spelled out in detail. I assume this is because Al considers it too self-evident to bother to explain. Somewhere in his fevered brain, it came to him that this was true, and all he need do is point it out to the rest of us, and we would see too. Yes! It's so obvious now! Thanks, Al!)
Al appropriately labels these enemies of civilization. They are not just "extreme" "radical" "zealots" who push "insanity", "absurdity", "buffoonery" and "tragicomic...farce." They are "Goths". Worse, their campaign is "anti-human" based on "self-loathing" and "self-flaggelation."
To be fair, Al does not completely eschew evidence. He makes, as far as I can tell, two observations of fact supporting his epithets against environmentalists. First, they obstinately reject the obvious solutions to all our problems, such as simply finding more gasoline and burning it. I guess Al remembers thirty years ago when the issue was more about shortages than it was about climate change. He should check into this milennium. Fighting pollution with more pollution is at best unproven as a panacea. Other solutions they reject: burning more coal, burning more corn, and building nuclear plants. They also supposedly hate hydroelectric power, because rivers should run free. I must confess I had not heard this. He does not explain why they supposedly reject harnessing hydroelectric power from the oceans.
His other item of evidence is that he quotes a single climate and public policy specialist as saying that Earth Hour, while nice, will not stop global warming on its own. No private inititive ever will. The government must step in. I suspect he meant applying a range of policy tools, a carbon cap-and trade system, or a tax, clean power subsidies, tax breaks or other incentives, government limiting its own wastefulness, and assisting with public awareness, research and effort coordination.
Al, however, is certain that what this means is that the black helicopters are coming to get him the next time he forgets to turn his porch light off. He has figured out that "government is to have the power" to cut off your energy. Oh, the Constitution! he raves. People sadly are too "afraid" to defy the Nazi "Uber Greens" or the Communist greens of the "People's Republic of San Francisco" and their worldwide "fellow travelers."
So, I'm right, am I not? This guy is a nut and the Journal's standards are dropping like a stone.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Elections as IQ Tests
I believe it somehow made it into this blog that I have referred to the election of George Bush as a failed national IQ test. There is currently a wave of debate that has consumed the local papers and local bloggers regarding whether the election of Mike Gableman to the state supreme court over Louis Butler represents such a failed test.
Butler's advocates (including blacks, liberals, most of the state's judges, and me) saw him in this race as clearly superior: he has more experience, is more scholarly, has more integrity, lends the court some diversity of perspective (the only justice from Milwaukee, as well as the only African American), and was generally far better qualified (as ratings from the bar confirm). His sense of justice may be labeled as more liberal or pro-criminal defendant (but more pro-civil plaintiff) than Gableman's, but it probably corresponds better than Gableman's to the actual values that most people can agree with: injured people should have decent access to the courts, even people accused of terrible crimes should receive a fair trial.
It is also easy to account for the votes against him on the basis of misinformation. Even when the local paper here was pointing out the lies in Gableman's ads, it assumed the framing of the Gableman campaign that the election was about which candidate would better use his position to fight crime. Since this is not the function of the court, there was an implicit contradiction in the Gableman campaign: I will not be an "activist" judge: rather, I will subvert the position to reach outcomes that I am running on today. Gableman's supporters and Gableman himself implicitly and explicitly argued that Butler's experience, dedication, and success as a public defender were negatives, a position that has profoundly negative implications for justice.
Joel McNally said on InterCHANGE, a local public television panel show, that the voters knew nothing abot Gableman, which is not entirely true. But it is hard to see what positive information got out about him other than: he was a prosecutor and judge, which is probably enough to show most voters that he is at least minimally qualified (notwithstanding that the bar buried him in "not qualified" votes), and he promises to be "conservative" (a term that probably confuses more than it explains) and anti-crime (which given the role of the court, also probably does more to confuse).
More to the point of course is the misinformation about Butler. As suggested above, he could be called more liberal than average. He treats Constitutional protections for the accused seriously. Ads regarding him worked hard to create the false impression that he was happy to see criminals run free and reoffend. Voters may never realize what a great justice they had in Butler, because he will leave his seat and who knows what they will hear of him in the future.
But the buyers' remorse over Gableman may be starting before Gableman is even seated. As the press continues to play out on this, and as ethics investigations proceed, and then when the court starts issuing opinions with his deciding vote, there will be almost certain regrets. It should be amazing, except that it is completely commonplace: the day after an election, the local papers report what the outcome will mean for the public. This was front page in the Sunday paper here. I can think of few things the press regularly does that are more absurd. Either the press has done their jobs and reported what the likely results of this victory would be before the election, or they have not. If they did so, then this is old news. If they did not, then they only indict themselves by reporting the information after its utility has fallen from 100 to nothing overnight.
This is one of those elections where one feels that if the truth had gotten out, the result would change. In that sense, it is a test failed. Failed by the system, and yes, failed by voters, but only because the test was made harder for them and they were led to think they did not need to study.
There is now a push led by liberal Butler supporters to reform the system. One (liberal proposal) is to eliminate judicial elections altogether. (Others include public financing and the Illinois retain-or-dismiss election system.) Any of the above would probably be an improvement. All deserve consideration. But ultimately, it is hard to see where any of this will make any difference if the public remains completely bewildered regarding what the court actually does and what qualities really make a good judge. To some extent, the fault is out in the democracy itself. As the saying goes, you always get the rulers you deserve, or else we would have gotten the metric system.
The conservative conventional wisdom is now that the liberals are animated by "sour grapes" to make any changes, and that the whole thing is profoundly undemocratic and dismissive of voters.
Of course, it is not that anybody wants to impose upon the public something that the people don't want; it is rather a paternalistic desire to protect voters from making the dumb decisions they make and regret. Time and experience show that there are some decisions people make that they frequently (or nearly always) regret. Like flirting casually with dangerous things (unsafe sex, unsafe drugs, unsafe explosives). Like falling for con artists, absusive husbands' promises to stop hitting, and conservative political ads. We make some of these deals voidable, grant rights of rescission, require some terms to be in bold print, and outlaw others. Some actions can only be taken with a license. But not voting for Gableman. The system really looks broken when 95% of judges support the incumbent justice, and an upstart under and ethical cloud is able to steal the seat by massively advertising distortions or lies.
I cannot buy all the righteous piety regarding how we should respect the voters. The same conservative conventional wisdom, before Gableman won, was very pronounced in the opposite direction on another race. There was a contest here in Milwaukee where the voters were constantly being second-guessed and there was rampant speculation over whether they would make the obvious right choice or be fooled. But that was the race for the Sixth Aldermanic District, the voters were nearly all black, and the second-guessers were white folks from outside who assumed they would get it "wrong" by re-electing the imprisoned Michael I. McGee to another term.
McGee lost, and I happen to think the voters in that district made a good decision, but I would not have faulted them for keeping McGee, either. Those who would have, though, dominated the discussion prior to the election, and they were the same conservative segment of the punditsburo that now find second-guessing of the Gableman vote distasteful. Was the supreme court race afford fewer unfair advantages to Gableman, whose victory we cannot question, than the Aldermanic race did to McGee, whose victory we could have? McGee was in jail, impeded from serving his district, under a cloud he could not answer without injuring his defense, and his whole budget was spent for legal defense rather than ads. He had no unfair advantage, and in fact was saddled with disadvantages. But his opponent's victory is not suspect, and his somehow would be. The only explanations for this doublestandard are political convenience, and, of course, race.
Butler's advocates (including blacks, liberals, most of the state's judges, and me) saw him in this race as clearly superior: he has more experience, is more scholarly, has more integrity, lends the court some diversity of perspective (the only justice from Milwaukee, as well as the only African American), and was generally far better qualified (as ratings from the bar confirm). His sense of justice may be labeled as more liberal or pro-criminal defendant (but more pro-civil plaintiff) than Gableman's, but it probably corresponds better than Gableman's to the actual values that most people can agree with: injured people should have decent access to the courts, even people accused of terrible crimes should receive a fair trial.
It is also easy to account for the votes against him on the basis of misinformation. Even when the local paper here was pointing out the lies in Gableman's ads, it assumed the framing of the Gableman campaign that the election was about which candidate would better use his position to fight crime. Since this is not the function of the court, there was an implicit contradiction in the Gableman campaign: I will not be an "activist" judge: rather, I will subvert the position to reach outcomes that I am running on today. Gableman's supporters and Gableman himself implicitly and explicitly argued that Butler's experience, dedication, and success as a public defender were negatives, a position that has profoundly negative implications for justice.
Joel McNally said on InterCHANGE, a local public television panel show, that the voters knew nothing abot Gableman, which is not entirely true. But it is hard to see what positive information got out about him other than: he was a prosecutor and judge, which is probably enough to show most voters that he is at least minimally qualified (notwithstanding that the bar buried him in "not qualified" votes), and he promises to be "conservative" (a term that probably confuses more than it explains) and anti-crime (which given the role of the court, also probably does more to confuse).
More to the point of course is the misinformation about Butler. As suggested above, he could be called more liberal than average. He treats Constitutional protections for the accused seriously. Ads regarding him worked hard to create the false impression that he was happy to see criminals run free and reoffend. Voters may never realize what a great justice they had in Butler, because he will leave his seat and who knows what they will hear of him in the future.
But the buyers' remorse over Gableman may be starting before Gableman is even seated. As the press continues to play out on this, and as ethics investigations proceed, and then when the court starts issuing opinions with his deciding vote, there will be almost certain regrets. It should be amazing, except that it is completely commonplace: the day after an election, the local papers report what the outcome will mean for the public. This was front page in the Sunday paper here. I can think of few things the press regularly does that are more absurd. Either the press has done their jobs and reported what the likely results of this victory would be before the election, or they have not. If they did so, then this is old news. If they did not, then they only indict themselves by reporting the information after its utility has fallen from 100 to nothing overnight.
This is one of those elections where one feels that if the truth had gotten out, the result would change. In that sense, it is a test failed. Failed by the system, and yes, failed by voters, but only because the test was made harder for them and they were led to think they did not need to study.
There is now a push led by liberal Butler supporters to reform the system. One (liberal proposal) is to eliminate judicial elections altogether. (Others include public financing and the Illinois retain-or-dismiss election system.) Any of the above would probably be an improvement. All deserve consideration. But ultimately, it is hard to see where any of this will make any difference if the public remains completely bewildered regarding what the court actually does and what qualities really make a good judge. To some extent, the fault is out in the democracy itself. As the saying goes, you always get the rulers you deserve, or else we would have gotten the metric system.
The conservative conventional wisdom is now that the liberals are animated by "sour grapes" to make any changes, and that the whole thing is profoundly undemocratic and dismissive of voters.
Of course, it is not that anybody wants to impose upon the public something that the people don't want; it is rather a paternalistic desire to protect voters from making the dumb decisions they make and regret. Time and experience show that there are some decisions people make that they frequently (or nearly always) regret. Like flirting casually with dangerous things (unsafe sex, unsafe drugs, unsafe explosives). Like falling for con artists, absusive husbands' promises to stop hitting, and conservative political ads. We make some of these deals voidable, grant rights of rescission, require some terms to be in bold print, and outlaw others. Some actions can only be taken with a license. But not voting for Gableman. The system really looks broken when 95% of judges support the incumbent justice, and an upstart under and ethical cloud is able to steal the seat by massively advertising distortions or lies.
I cannot buy all the righteous piety regarding how we should respect the voters. The same conservative conventional wisdom, before Gableman won, was very pronounced in the opposite direction on another race. There was a contest here in Milwaukee where the voters were constantly being second-guessed and there was rampant speculation over whether they would make the obvious right choice or be fooled. But that was the race for the Sixth Aldermanic District, the voters were nearly all black, and the second-guessers were white folks from outside who assumed they would get it "wrong" by re-electing the imprisoned Michael I. McGee to another term.
McGee lost, and I happen to think the voters in that district made a good decision, but I would not have faulted them for keeping McGee, either. Those who would have, though, dominated the discussion prior to the election, and they were the same conservative segment of the punditsburo that now find second-guessing of the Gableman vote distasteful. Was the supreme court race afford fewer unfair advantages to Gableman, whose victory we cannot question, than the Aldermanic race did to McGee, whose victory we could have? McGee was in jail, impeded from serving his district, under a cloud he could not answer without injuring his defense, and his whole budget was spent for legal defense rather than ads. He had no unfair advantage, and in fact was saddled with disadvantages. But his opponent's victory is not suspect, and his somehow would be. The only explanations for this doublestandard are political convenience, and, of course, race.
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