Tag: what agenda?

No Nuance Here

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Today’s MSNBC piece by Howard Fineman wherein he announces the death of the “American Mainstream Media Party” (“party” in the political sense) is one of the most concise and cogent explanations I have seen for what the news media has become, and I think his declaration that the party was founded by the action of Walter Cronkite “step(ing) from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam” is absolutely true. In fact, I keep expecting Peter Jennings to stand up any night now and declare the “quagmire in Iraq” lost and unrecoverable, (I know, he does pretty much nightly, but I mean blatantly in an editorial statement as Cronkite did after Tet) fully expecting that his declaration will cause an immediate loss of national support and a subsequent withdrawal in shame. (But then again, perhaps he actually reads his Nielsen numbers.)

When I read this paragraph though, it reminded me of something from much earlier last year:

Texas Gov. George W. Bush arrived on the national scene in the 1990s intent on dictating the terms of dealing with the AMMP — or simply ignoring it altogether. Already well-known as the son of a president, he focused on raising money and holding private chit-chats with donors and political supporters who would journey to Austin for off-the-record talks. His guru was not an image-making man (as Ailes had been for Nixon, and Deaver with Reagan) but a direct-mail expert, Karl Rove. Rove and Bush decided that most forms of “exposure” offered by the AMMP would be likely to do more harm than good. So why bother unless they could completely dictate the terms of engagement?

Back in April, PressThink did a piece on Bush’s attitude towards the press, from which I excerpted this:

…a reporter says to the president: is it really true you don’t read us, don’t even watch the news? Bush confirms it.

And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You’re making a powerful assumption, young man. You’re assuming that you represent the public. I don’t accept that.

Which is a powerful statement. And if Bush believes it (a possibility not to be dismissed) then we must credit the president with an original idea, or the germ of one. Bush’s people have developed it into a thesis, which they explained to Auletta, who told it to co-host Brooke Gladstone:

That’s his attitude. And when you ask the Bush people to explain that attitude, what they say is: We don’t accept that you have a check and balance function. We think that you are in the game of “Gotcha.” Oh, you’re interested in headlines, and you’re interested in conflict. You’re not interested in having a serious discussion… and exploring things.

Further data point: The Bush Thesis. If Auletta’s reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren’t a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role– official or otherwise.

Fineman’s piece illustrates that, not only did the Bush campaign have that policy and execute it, it was correct (and successful). Rather and CBS attempted a major “Gotcha” and had their asses handed to them by the new media – a voice that even four years ago would probably have not been powerful enough to be heard. To Mapes and Rather it didn’t matter whether the story was true (though I’m certain they believe it yet) it only mattered that they would be believed, banking on CBS’s reputation as “the Tiffany Network.” But that credibility, previously only eroded, has now been completely washed away.

Regardless, the attack on Bush was, in the fevered imaginations of Burkett, Mapes, and Rather, “to represent the interests of a broader public.” It was to save us Red-Staters from ourselves by convincing enough of us not to vote for Bush. Bush and his advisors understood from the outset the adversarial nature of the press and did its best to neuter it. Open attack was all that was left to the American Mainstream Media Party as the election drew near. All their other teeth had been effectively pulled.

Glenn Reynolds corrects Fineman on an important point, though:

Political parties aren’t noted for their honesty or lack of bias, and when the media became a sort of political party (which it denied for years, but which is now so obvious that Fineman can pronounce its death) it became less honest, though it’s not clear that the press was ever as disinterested as it sometimes pretended. That’s why when Fineman writes, “Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto,” I think he’s wrong.

The reality of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press would be worth holding onto — if it had ever existed.

To that I say, “Amen.”

The Lying “News” Media, Part: “They Never, EVER Stop”

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I was alerted via a post in rec.guns that MSNBS has done it again. Residents of Lampasas, Texas are holding a raffle to pay for new fencing around a school, and in fine Texan tradition, the prize is two rifles. One is a Kimber model 84 in 7mm-08, and the other is Marlin model 25N Ducks Unlimited collector edition.

MSNBS ran an appropriately shocked and tsk-tsking story on the raffle, and interviewed Texas Congresswoman Susanna Hupp. Here’s the transcript as I heard it. Unfortunately, I was unable to do a screen capture of the… Well, you’ll see.

Lisa Daniels:

A school raffle in Texas is raising a few eyebrows because of the grand prize. Tomorrow night one lucky winner will walk away with a deer rifle. Some are in favor of the raffle, while others are wondering whether that prize is appropriate.

With us today from Austin, Texas is Republican State Representative Susanna Hupp. Representative Hupp supports the rifle raffle, and Representative, thanks for spending some time with us today.

At this point, the picture has shifted to a split-screen showing talking-head Daniels on the left, and Hupp on the right.

Hupp:

Thanks, Lisa.

Daniels:

So, you’ll be raffling off the rifles tomorrow, and the purpose, of course, is to raise enough money, uh, to fence in a portion of a school… and I, I know that hunting is a popular sport over there, but…

Hupp:

Yes.

Daniels:

…you know what I’m going to say in this age of…

Hupp:

I like the way you say “BUT!” (laughing)

Daniels:

But! Yes. ‘Cause in this age of Columbine and a lot of other school-related shootings, can you understand why some people think this is not only a bad idea, but a really dangerous one?

Here the screen switches to full-screen Hupp.

Hupp:

Well, I can’t imagine why they would think it was a dangerous one. Um, in answer to the rest of your question, you know, here in Lampassas and central Texas we live in the land of common sense. And if we lived in another area, perhaps we would be raffling off a, uh, season tickets to a sporting event.

AT THIS POINT THE IMAGE CHANGES TO A WALL OF MACs, CAR-15’s, AK’s, folding-stock shotguns, etc., while Hupp’s voice-over continues, calmly and logically. To me, it looks like the evidence room of a police precinct, as most of the weapons are heavily worn.

But the fact of the matter is, we live in a hunting area, so we chose a deer rifle we knew the hunters would slobber over.

The image pans over the wall of eeeeevil “assault weapons” while Representative Hupp’s voice-over continues showing at least two dozen of these “spray-firing bullet-hoses.” The camera zooms in on an Uzi, then a MAC-11, then a Thompson, then pans over a suppressed Ingram, then the shot jumps to another MAC with a suppressor in a case. The text at the bottom of the screen states “Texas School to Raffle Deer Rifle Tomorrow Night.” This shot takes 28 seconds while Hupp continues to explain in a calm, reasonable voice the idea behind raffling off a DEER RIFLE. Continuing,

Hupp:

And it’s something that is, has worked far better than all the, the bake sales and cookie-dough sales and Krispy Kreme sales and everything else that they’ve done. Uh, it’s a very popular thing in Lampassas, and it’s working well, and frankly my child is a third-grader at that school, and this money is going to protect him as well as the others at that school.

At this point the image switches back to the split-screen between Daniels and Hupp.

Daniels:

And, and that’s definitely… I know the community overwhelmingly supports what you say, but I can hear parents right now watching their TV monitors thinking “Hey, this is ludicrous,” you want to put deer rifles in the hands of these kids. You’re not only sending them the wrong message, but you’re basically inviting trouble. What would you say to those moms and dads?

Let me interject here. First, Rep. Hupp didn’t see what was on the monitor while she was speaking, or I’m certain she’d have (rightly) gone orbital. Second, at the statement that “you want to put deer rifles in the hands of these kids” she got a shocked look on her face. If I was an ignorant Blue-stater with no more knowledge of firearms than Sarah Brady, the “Wall of Doom” they put up would have shocked and angered me. Knowing what I know, the fact that MSNBS was propagandizing under the VPC’s “anything that looks like a machine gun” strategy doesn’t shock me, but I’m pissed off!

Hupp responds:

Wait a minute, wait a minute! You said we’re putting deer rifles in the hands of kids? Whoever wins this raffle has to be in compliance with all the federal and state regulations. In other words, we cannot hand it to a child. But I will tell you this, again,

(as the picture switches from Hupp to a school hallway full of children)

again, in the land of common sense, uh, there are a lot of children who do go deer hunting in our area.

(Image switches to a classroom)

But that’s, but that’s not what this raffle is for. It has to go to an adult, and they have to comply with federal and state regulations.

Daniels:

We should mention that in 1991 after leaving your gun in the car, you watched as your parents were among twenty-one other people who were gunned down in a mass shooting in a local restaurant. Obviously… is, is that a big reason for the way you feel about guns? I know you’re a strong advocate of the Second Amendment…

Hupp, as the image switches to her, full-screen:

Yeah. Um, let just say that, as a friend of mine in the PTSO put it, uh, she said, “We’re use.. We are mothers using guns to protect our children.” We’re putting up… We’re… We’re raffling this rifle to raise money to put a fence around the school to protect our children. But frankly, I don’t think the double entendre or the double-meaning is lost on, uh, I don’t think it’s lost on too many people.

(Image switches back to split-screen)

Daniels:

And I know that you’re, Representative, that your defending your position, but can you understand why people think that this sounds like a bad idea?

(Image switches to a smiling Hupp who’s just been asked if she’s a moron:)

Well, you’ve asked me that a couple of times…

(Image switches BACK TO THE “WALL OF DOOM!”)

…and again I have to tell you that I’m very proud of the area I live in. Um, it is a common sense area. I will tell you that there is a six year-old girl on my little boy’s soccer team who just went out and shot her first ten-point buck.

(Image switches to that hallway full of targets students.)

Now I am not a hunter. My family are not hunters, but it is a reasonable thing to use a deer rifle as a, uh, a fundraiser in our area.

(Back to a smiling Hupp, then to the split screen again.)

Daniels:

All right, state Representative Susanna Hupp, we appreciate your coming on the show.

Hupp:

Thank you so very much for having me.

End of tape.

Somehow I think if Hupp knew how she’d been manipulated for a propaganda piece, she wouldn’t have been anywhere near as pleased or as gracious.

If you’d like to see the clip for yourself (for however long it’s up) you can view it here. Broadband is recommended, and you’ll have to watch a short commercial first. Internet Exploder is apparently required as well.

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What a Complete and Utter Crock of a Retraction.

Kerry obviously needs to directly hire CBS‘s newswriters. They obviously know “nuance” and spin. Let me fisk their own report on RatherGate:

CBS: Bush Memo Story A ‘Mistake’

(CBS/AP) CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush’s National Guard service and that airing the story was a “mistake” that CBS regretted.

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized.

CBS News claimed a source had misled the network on the documents’ origins. The network pledged “an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken.”

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.”

Rather spoke with Burkett about the deception:

Dan Rather: “Why did you mislead us?”
Bill Burkett: “Well, I didn’t totally mislead you. I misled you on the one individual. You know your staff pressured me to a point to reveal that source.
Rather: “Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession.”
Burkett: “I understand that.”
More of Rather questioning Burkett.

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush’s National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

“Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report,” said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush had seen the CBS statement.

“There are a number of serious questions that remain unanswered and they need to be answered. Bill Burkett, who CBS now says is their source, in fact, is not an unimpeachable source, as was previously claimed,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Monday.

“Bill Burkett is a source who has been discredited in the past. So this raises a lot of questions. There were media reports about Mr. Burkett speaking with senior — or having senior-level contacts with the Kerry campaign. That raises questions,” McClellan said.

In a separate statement, Rather said that “after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.

“I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers,” he said.

“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather added. “I feel like hell,” he told WCBS reporter Marcia Kramer.

The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in the Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes.

CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they were obtained.

Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have denied the charge.

In the statement, CBS said: “Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point.”

Questions about the president’s National Guard service have lingered for years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft and possible service in Vietnam.

Some people have answered that charge in that Bush volunteered for a six-year stint in order to be a pilot. The waiting list for that was not as long. Again, nobody holds Clinton accountable for outright lying to avoid the draft, so what’s the big freaking deal?

In the Sept. 8 60 Minutes report, former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes — a Democrat — claimed that, at the behest of a friend of the Bush family, he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Guard.

Yet Mr. Barnes – a major fundraiser for Kerry and personal acquaintance of Dan Rather – who, by the way, Dan attended a DNC fundraiser for – has sworn under oath that he did no such thing. Lying through omission, Exhibits, “A” and “B.”

Other questions concern why Mr. Bush missed a physical in 1972, and why there are scant records of any service by Mr. Bush during the latter part of 1972, a period during which he transferred to an Alabama guard unit so he could work on a campaign there.

Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Lying through innuendo, Exhibit “A.”

The CBS documents suggested that Mr. Bush had disobeyed a direct order to attend the physical, and that there were other lapses in his performance. One memo also indicated that powerful allies of the Bush family were pressuring the guard to “sugar coat” any investigation of Lt. Bush’s service.

No, the documents made it explicit that President Bush disobeyed a direct order while a pilot in the TANG. There was no “suggestion” about it. That’s what had Hurricane Dan salivating.

Skeptics immediately seized on the typing in the memos, which included a superscripted “th” not found on all 1970s-era typewriters. As the controversy raged, CBS broadcast interviews with experts who said that some typewriters from that period could have produced the markings in question.

What unmitigated horseshit. “Not found on all 1970s-era typewriters” my ass. Not found on any 1970s-era typewriters. What typewriters that did have a reduced-case “th” were not capable of superscripting them, and the only machines available at the time that could superscript weren’t typewriters at all. The only “expert” they brought in was a 1970s-era typewriter repairman. By checking the Blogosphere, they could have gotten six real experts that could prove otherwise. Lying by omission, Exhibit “C.”

Other critics saw factual errors in the documents, stylistic differences with other writing by Killian and incorrect military lingo.

Yeah, that P.O. Box 34567 was a dead giveaway, too. As was the B.S. Zip Code. But does CBS mention those? No. Lying by omission, Exhibit “D.”

Some relatives of Col. Killian disputed that the memos were real. His former secretary said the sentiments regarding Mr. Bush’s failures as an officer were genuine, but the documents were not.

Did CBS interview “some relatives of Col. Killian” for the original 60 Minutes piece?

No, it would have detracted from the strength of the attack.

Did they interview his former Secretary for the original piece? After all, she’s the one who would have typed them, and would have told them unequivocally that they were fake.

No. That would have detracted from the strength of the attack. Lying through omission, Exhibits “E” and “F.”

Some document experts whom CBS consulted for the story told newspapers they had raised doubts before the broadcast and were ignored. CBS disputed their accounts, pointing to the main document expert the network consulted, Marcel Matley.

Except Mr. Matley is a handwriting expert not a document expert, and apparently not much of an expert at any rate, as Beldar discovered. More pajama blogging.

Matley insisted he had vouched for the authenticity of the signatures on the memos, but had not determined whether the documents themselves were genuine.

And, as Jim Geraghty found, Mr. Matley violated his own rules by authenticating a signature on a photocopied document.

Some expert. Of course they “disputed their accounts.” Their accounts made CBS look like exactly what they were – partisan attack dogs for the DNC willing to ignore anything that disagreed with the Official Party Line. Lying by obfuscation, Exhibit “A.”

Last week, CBS News stood by its reporting while vowing to continue working the story. The network acknowledged there were questions about the documents and pledged to try to answer them.

Mr. Bush maintains that he did not get special treatment in getting into the Guard, and that he fulfilled all duties. He was honorably discharged.

On Saturday, a White House official said Mr. Bush has reviewed the disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972, and did not recall having seen them previously.

Which he wouldn’t have since A) they were forgeries, and B) they were supposed to be personal memos in Col. Killians’ private records. CBS was playing “GOTCHA!” and got burned, but they’re still trying to spin the story frantically – ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, Mr. PRESIDENT! WE DON’T CARE THAT THEY’RE BOGUS, ANSWER THEM!

In his first public comment on the documents controversy, the president told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., “There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered.”

The Bush campaign has alleged that their Democratic rivals were somehow involved in the story. John Kerry’s campaign denies it. In an email revealed last week, Burkett said he had contacted the Kerry campaign but received no response.

Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about Mr. Bush’s Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press.

Which raises the question, “Why won’t Kerry sign a Form 180, and why hasn’t the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to have his records released?” No partisanship there, no sir!

The White House and Defense Department have on several occasions claimed that they had released all the documents only to make additional records available later on.

It would have been nice if CBS had shown the same interest in the delayed appearance of the Rose Law Firm billing records. And have those later-appearing records shown anything damaging? If they had, would the forged memos have been necessary?

You’ll note that not one of CBS‘s links tie to anything outside CBS, such as Saturday’s Washington Post’s graphic comparison of the forged memos with known real ones. Lying through omission, Exhibit “G.”

What they didn’t say was far more revealing than what they did.

Why the CBS Document Scandal is Important

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As I noted in my missives to Professor of Journalism Ethics Edward Wasserman, the problem we, the “loud and bullying sliver of the audience” have with the Mainstream Media is that they’re no longer reporting facts, but instead are deliberately, and increasingly blatantly trying to tell us what to think, how to think, and when to think it. They’re manipulating us every bit as obviously as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, yet they still think they are hiding behind a curtain of pure objectivity.

Well, Connie du Toit put the matter in stark perspective, as Les Jones noted in a recent post.

The fact that we’re arguing over issues in Iraq (if we should be there or not, if it is going well or as planned or not) also is very much related to the same issue. Has the MSM been leading, suggesting, inferring, selectively reporting, or outright distorting the issues in Iraq? Many of us on the right side of the aisle believe that the press has been doing that. We’ve never had such blatant proof of their partisanship before.

It’s not a separate story. It is not irrelevant in the grand scheme of the more important issues. If we’re deciding issues based on what the press tells us, and the press is a fraud, then on what basis can we discuss anything?
Posted by Mrs. du Toit September 15, 2004 02:10 PM

If you read the blogs, you know that the MSM is reporting only the horrific. Anything positive must nearly be dragged out of the newsrooms. The media is repeating its Vietnam experience – doing everything it can in an effort to, in its view, extract us from our self-inflicted quagmire. Dan Rather’s self-immolation is providing a light with which to illuminate this fact. As I told Mr. Wasserman, we no longer trust the media because they no longer deserve to be trusted. As Connie points out, if we don’t have reliable information, how can we make considered decisions?

Burn, Dan, burn. Burn brightly. Maybe something good will come of it.

Ed Wasserman, Part II

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Here’s my reply to Mr. Wasserman’s email:

Mr. Wasserman:

Thank you for your reply. While I could wax poetic (and epic) in a reply, I will attempt to make this brief. I’m sure you don’t need or want to read a 5,000 word essay in refutation of your single paragraph.

First, I am certain that a lot of the responses received from “the loud and bullying sliver” of the audience are of the “SHUT UP!” persuasion. There is a least-common-denominator effect, after all. However, there’s a loud and principled set of voices out there who actually want the media to do what it is they claim to do: report FACTS. Impart INFORMATION. Not “tell us what to think.”

The difference now is that the so-called “new media” has given us, the previously voiceless, a real voice – as noted in a piece in today’s LA Times. That link, if you haven’t read it, is here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blog12sep12,1,1043155.story

That piece details how the “loud and bullying sliver” shined a spotlight on the centerpiece of CBS’s 60 Minutes II expose: the Incriminating Memos – memos so obviously forgeries that mere amateur sleuths were able to expose them in just a few hours. Yet CBS, apparently in possession of them for days if not weeks, were (and I’ll be generous) completely duped into running them as credible. Dan Rather (and oh, how I wish I could superscript the “th” in Rather in an email) has stood on the bridge of the sinking ship of his (and CBS’s) stock-in-trade, credibility, and protested that they must be real because they prove what he wants to believe.

And this exposes, in Glitter Gulch technicolor animated two-story lighting, the problem we “the sliver” have with the media: You aren’t doing your job and we can no longer trust you.

Why else do you think the (now derisive) term “mainstream media” was invented? Because that media has become “yellow journalism” once again. Only now they operate under the laughable pretense of “fairness.” And some of you STILL believe you are.

Your colleagues have, more and more often, come out and admitted bias since Bernard Goldberg published his first Wall Street Journal piece on the topic. Most recently the New York Times in the person of “Public Editor” Daniel Okrent in his July 25 piece “Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” A paper that Bernard Goldberg quotes Dan Rather as characterizing as “middle of the road.”

Do you want to know why the Bush National Guard duty story can’t get traction? Because the majority of the public DOESN’T CARE. And we’re the arbiters of what is and isn’t important, in the end. We didn’t care that Bill Clinton actually lied to avoid the draft (letter to that effect available here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/draftletter.html), we don’t care if Bush used connections to avoid dropping napalm on babies in rice paddies, or burning Vietnamese hooches with a Zippo in a free-fire zone. But we DO find it interesting that Senator Kerry has a memory SEARED into him of being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 – a memory that affected his voting record in the Senate. A memory that he now says (though it’s etched forever in copies of the Congressional Record, at least) was in error. We, the irritating sliver, knew about this for WEEKS before the mainstream media decided they could no longer ignore it and had to tell the public “this is wrong and this is why.”

But if Kerry can be in error about that, what else can he be in error about? And why isn’t the media asking? Why is that up to us?

We DO question the “rightness, fairness and timing” of reports now because it’s blindingly obvious to us that the “mainstream media” has an agenda: Get Kerry/Edwards Elected. It’s even been admitted by another of your own, Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek. He said as much in an “Inside Washington” roundtable discussion (available here: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20040712.asp#1) back in July.

Apparently the “mainstream media” wants them to win REALLY badly.

I don’t want to correct you Mr. Wasserman, I want you to do your job. But it’s become blindingly apparent to me and many, many others that you won’t do that job any longer. Especially not when you brush aside our objections with the lame excuse:

“As long as such writers retain some minimal respect for fact, the transparency of their motives may even work to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all.”

RatherGate illustrates that the “minimal respect for fact” has gone right out the window. Right along with media credibility. We don’t trust the media because you no longer deserve to be trusted. So some growing proportion shouts “Shut up!” Perhaps you should think about why, rather than dismiss them offhandedly.

Kevin Baker
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com

P.S.: I’d like to continue this conversation if you’re so inclined, but if not, I certainly understand.

He surprised me once. We’ll see if he does it again.

He Wrote Back!

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I’m a little surprised, actually. A couple of posts below I put up an email I wrote to Edward Wasserman (“Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University” according to the piece I referenced from the Philadelphia Inquirer) concerning truth in journalism and how we, the “loud and bullying sliver of the audience” are asserting an “undue outside influence” on the media.

Or at least, that’s how he sees it.

Well, he responded. Here it is:

With respect, I don’t really think that the protest I’m talking about is fact-driven. (Not to say a fact-based critique isn’t fully warranted, and the instances you cite are disturbing.) But Bush supporters don’t, for instance, dispute the “facts” of his National Guard service. They do dispute the rightness, fairness and timing of the coverage of it. The Kerry people say that even if the Swift guys’ stuff was largely debunked factually, the media gave it so much attention the issue got undue credibility, and Kerry was forced on the defensive. The terrain of controversy isn’t over what’s factual, it’s about what’s important and about how much weight to put on this versus that. The people I hear from don’t want to correct me; they want to shut me up. Present company excepted.
EW

Now I’m going to have to write a rebuttal.

I wonder what he’ll have to say about RatherGate?

My reply to Mr. Wasserman is up.

Last Post for a While

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This morning Instapundit linked to an editorial that complains about Newsrooms Under Siege. (Registration required, but Bugmenot works). I reworked an earlier piece and sent the author the following email:

Mr. Wasserman

I read with interest your column, available on the web at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s site
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/9613682.htm?1c

under the title “Newsrooms under siege”. For your information, it was linked by perhaps the largest of the “small slivers,” University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds at his site Instapundit.com. You seem upset that news sources are now being avidly fact-checked by “a loud and bullying sliver of the audience.” Well, apparently I’m part of that audience. And those sources are being fact-checked because of the bias you apparently embraced when you wrote:

“The attack doesn’t come from ideologically committed journalists and commentators who put together reports clearly selected and spun-dry to sell a political line. As long as such writers retain some minimal respect for fact, the transparency of their motives may even work to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all.”

Here are two examples of why this little “sliver of the audience” is “loud and bullying”, and please, explain to me how these two stories “enrich the variety of information and interpretation available to all.” If you can.

The Associated Press has put out two stories in the last week that are unadulterated, blatant, partisan hit pieces for the Democrats. The first was a report that, and I quote: “President Bush on Friday wished Bill Clinton “best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery.” “He’s is in our thoughts and prayers,” Bush said at a campaign rally. Bush’s audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. “ This was bullshit, and the AP yanked the offending lines – without initially issuing a retraction, and not before this lie had been picked up and spread by other news services. Links to this story in chronological order are:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007712.php

http://spinswimming.blogspot.com/2004/09/ap-bias-strikes-again.html

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3765.html

http://galleyslaves.blogspot.com/2004/09/what-story-about-ap.html

Links to audio and video of the rally in question are here so you can fact check it yourself: http://instapundit.com/archives/017600.php

Second, the AP put out an article critical of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s RNC speech, accusing him of lying about the Russians in Austria during his childhood, and Austria having a socialist government.

The AP story can be read here: http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=2257941

Unfortunately, again, it’s bullshit, as aptly detailed here: http://www.freewillblog.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4179/

These people have been, along with Reuters and UPI and other “news services,” the gatekeepers of the information the public gets. It’s supposed to be their job to INFORM the public, yet it’s obvious just from these two examples that they see their job is not to inform, but to MOLD public opinion. We must ask ourselves, what else are they lying to us about, and why should we trust ANYTHING coming from untrustworthy sources? People in the industry such as yourself who believe that slanting the news “enrich(es) the variety of information and interpretations available to all” are the reason for the backlash. So much for the much-vaunted neutrality of the media, eh?

You’ll appreciate this: James O’Shea, managing editor of the Chicago Tribune was quoted on the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth accusations in an August 24 column in Editor and Publisher magazine: “There are too many places for people to get information. I don’t think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore — to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why.”

(Link: http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000617053)

Or in the case of the AP and your “enriching the variety of information and interpretation,” newspapers and other media sources get to just make stuff up and pass it off as news, and it’s up to us, the “loud and bullying sliver of the audience” to say “this is wrong and here is why.”

As one blogger put it recently: “The Internet has detected the mainstream media as a form of censorship and simply routed around them.” Not quite yet. Not completely. But I intend to do my part in that routing.

Kevin

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/

Part of that small sliver that’s stuck under your fingernail.

I doubt seriously that I’ll hear back from him.

UPDATE: Wasserman replied!

I See Mark Moron Morford Still Has a Job

KevinLeave a comment

Seen his latest screed phillippic rant primal scream column?

An Uzi Up Your Liberal Nose
Who cares if the assault-weapons ban is
about to expire? The gun lobby can’t wait
to blow stuff away

Assault weapons. Aren’t they just the cutest things?

And isn’t it just so sweet and fall-down uproarious how the NRA and all its knuckle-draggin’ right-wing pals in the U.S. Senate are all cheering right this minute, as the much-loathed 10-year-old ban on assault weapons, the one outlawing Uzis and TEC-9 semiautomatics and AK-47s and all other way-cool manly guns that have no other purpose in this world than to annihilate crap at 200 rounds per minute, is about to expire?

Let’s see, that’s one insult, one lie, and one exaggeration in the mere first paragraph! (I’ll ignore the opening sentence and title.)

Because, get this: The ban will not be renewed. It’s true. Even if that commie liberal Feinstein somehow gets it passed in the Senate, the NRA lobby has promised to keep it from ever coming up for a vote in the House, and the law will just expire and they will all cheer and slather each other in gun-barrel polish and go off and shoot stuff, because that’s the only thing that seems to give life any meaning.

He seems perturbed, doesn’t he?

Isn’t that great? To hell with logic and to hell with your kids’ safety and to hell with even trying to prevent moron gangbangers and terrorist wanna-bes and imbecilic white supremacists from easily getting their hands on a nice AK-47 that can mow down a schoolyard full of tots in 10 seconds flat. Instead: Down with liberal scum who would take away our God-given right to bear nasty ultraviolent weaponry that no one anywhere can justify the existence of. Go, NRA!

Except even gun control groups like the VPC have admitted that the “Assault Weapon Ban” didn’t do any of the things Mr. Moron Morford attributes to it. Doesn’t he realize that you can buy an American-built AK-47 clone (without, of course, a folding stock or a bayonet lug) right now?

Of course he does. He’s just doing his job, trying to scare the poor idiot populace into doing what he wants, like all good Leftists do.

What, too sarcastic? Well, hold onto your sides, because it gets even funnier. Even little gun-lovin’ Bushie himself declared during the 2000 campaign that he actually supported an extension of the ban (pretty hard, even for Shrub, to defend Uzis in the wake of Columbine and 101 California, et al.), a law that outlaws 19 types of insidiously lethal weaponry, the very guns most highly prized by jittery meth-lab owners and killing-spree advocates and homophobic militia members deep in the Montana woods. Oh, and also by upstanding, white-bread NRA members. Oh my yes. They need assault weapons. Must have them. Or so they claim.

Well, thank you Mr. Moron Morford. You’ve done such a marvelous job of associating people like me (I own an AR-15) with homophobic meth-lab owning spree killers. But I live in Arizona. Such awesome literary skills floor me.

But Bush, he is just so happy. He won’t have to see that bill at all. He won’t have to sign a thing before the election and risk annoying the Bible-quotin’ gun lovers of America. The NRA lobby will kill it before he even has to try to pronounce the phrase “high school gun rampage.” Oh man is he ever relieved.

I bet he is. There’s a lot of us gun lovers. (I don’t happen to be a bible-toter, but if Bush signed an AWB renewal, I don’t believe he would be receiving my vote come November.) It is good that my NRA dues go, at least in part, towards goals that I support. That’s what representative government means! My lobby is stronger than your lobby!

Because to the NRA, the rule is absolute: No gun law is a good gun law, and any ban of any kind is a slippery slope (always, always a slippery slope) until the government stomps in and takes away all your rights to do anything fun at all, and so screw the painfully obvious, skull-crushingly sad fact that allowing assault weapons back into the culture is the equivalent of allowing, say, convicted rapists loose in a sorority house.

Once again, Mr. Moron Morford asserts that which is undeniably false – that the “Assault Weapon Ban” removed anything from “the culture” in the first place. This is most obviously not so. But since it doesn’t fit in his worldview, it simply is ignored. If he actually recognized reality, his head might explode.

What, too extreme? Bull. Even “normal,” responsible gun owners — and, yes, they do exist, in huge numbers — know there is zero justification for allowing Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk back onto the market, just as there is no validation for suddenly legalizing, say, bazookas and flamethrowers and a swell grenade launcher for the Hummer. Dude! Wouldn’t that be so cool! Imagine a flame-throwing grenade-launching badass H2 with roof-mounted machine guns, barreling down I-5 and shooting up those goddamn wimpy Priuses and Mini Coopers! Ha! High five! Goddamn liberals!

Hmm…Bazookas are actually legal – like machine-guns they’re Class III devices, and so are the individual rocket rounds. Flamethrowers, to my knowledge, are unrestricted. No thanks to the goddamn liberals. I think, if Mr. Moron Morford looked around, he would find that “Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk” are still available all over the country. (Hey, if he can repeat his lie, I can repeat the truth.)

But huge numbers of responsible gun owners happen to own “assault weapons” too. There have literally been millions sold in this country, and the overwhelming majority, like the overwhelming majority of all guns, have ended up in the hands of us (check the scare quotes) “normal” responsible gun owners. So we disagree with the assertion that there is “zero justification,” don’t we?

Whoops, sorry. Getting carried away again. Hard not to, really. Because you simply have to love that NRA logic. It is pure genius, their insidious small-minded one-note hunk of reasoning that says banning assault weapons is just one step away from the government breaking down the door and taking away their shotguns and their Cheez Puffs and their Guns & Ammo subscription and their secret stash of gay porn.

I’m not sure, but I think the “gay porn” comment is supposed to be insulting. Now, I don’t know the man personally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff of Alphecca had a bit of that laying around, and I don’t see it as an insult unless the person writing it has a problem with gays. (Isn’t Moron Morford outspokenly gay? Does this mean he hates himself?) Now, the “insidious small-minded” comment is another thing, as that’s precisely how I see the gun-control supporters. And since they’ve been using the “slippery slope” method to achieve gun bans (as the English did) pardon the hell out of us for seeing the “Assault Weapon Ban” as precisely what it is: one great big step down the Slippery Slope that Mr. Moron Morford doesn’t want to admit exists, but would obviously be more than happy to shove us knuckle-dragging, insidious, small-minded, CheezPuff-eating, G&A reading gun nuts down.

Fuck you very much, Mr. Moron Morford.

This is the thinking. And it applies to all aspects of the frightening NRA mind-set. What, damn libs make me wear a seat belt in the car? Won’t let me breed African killer bees in my backyard? Make homemade bombs out of weed killer and turpentine? Buy cop-killer bullets at Wal-Mart? What’s next, invading my home and making my kids read feminist lit and stealing my kidneys while I sleep? I knew it! Damn liberals!

Ah, yes. The infamous “cop killer” bullets. Can’t have a good anti-gun rant without that old bromide. And you make homemade bombs out of fertilizer and diesel fuel. Don’t you know anything?

It gets better. It gets funnier. It gets sadder. Let us note how the current, about-to-expire legislation is already full of loopholes and flaws of sufficient breadth that gun manufacturers can mostly skirt the ban by making simple cosmetic changes to their guns and then selling them as something else, completely legal, even though the gun is essentially the same, ha ha suckers.

So, even though Moron Morford has been claiming that the law “banned” some weapons and removed them from “the culture,” and that sunset will cause these banned and removed weapons to be available for consumption by meth-dealers, spree-killers, NRA members and the like, NOW he admits that the law was useless and did nothing that he claimed? Yet it is cruicial to him that this useless, ineffective law be renewed! So that the next incremental step down the slippery slope….

Don’t pay too close attention to his writing, folks. You might get whiplash.

And if you are at all sentient and aware and feel even the slightest twinge of humanitarian concern for the spiritual progress of the human animal, a bitter, uncontrolled, fall-down fit of pained hilarity would seem to be the only real reaction you can possibly have.

Here, let me translate that for you fellow NRA members: Anyone who supports the sunset of this stupid law is:

A) Not sentient (that means “thinking” and “self-aware” for you knuckle-draggers) – so Mr. Moron Morford was being redundant (that means “repetitive.”)

B) Uncaring about “spiritual progress of the human animal” – i.e. “we hate everybody!

I get the impression that he doesn’t like us very much.

Seems only fair as the feeling is mutual.

Because if you don’t laugh it off, right now, at the bloody cosmic circus of it all, you will tear out your hair and start popping Vicodin like candy and pound a large nail into your own skull to deflect the pain, and then move to Canada, where they look down at America’s bizarre right-wing macho inbred obsession with guns and just go, oh my freaking God what the hell is wrong with you people.

Please, Mr. Moron Morford, take option “B”!! Canada needs more self-inflicted lobotomy patients. You could run for a seat in Parliament!

And the kicker? The cutest aspect of all? There is no effort to hide it. The NRA is making not the slightest stab at concealing how their snide little lobby controls the right-wing side of the senate, nor are those same senators denying how they happily and with full enthusiastic intent suck at the bitter macho metallic tit of the gun lobby.

As opposed to the gun control movement that hides each and every new attempt to slide us down the slippery slope? We’re proud and unrepentant because we really believe that the Second Amendment means something, Mr. Moron Morford, and not what you think it means. We’re quite happy to live here with our guns. I recall once in a flamewar on the talk.politics.guns group a commenter who said something on the order of “Why don’t all of you gun-freaks go form your own country!” To which one quite bright respondent replied, “We did. Who the hell let YOU in?”

So? Who did let you in?

Simply put, they just do not care whether you know. Why? Because the Right, they still have majority control. They still make the rules, and, no matter how many Dems or progressives or commonsense Americans still think the assault-weapons ban is a good idea overall, they just don’t give a crap. The NRA is in charge. The sheer force of the gun lobby will make Uzis available again, just because they can. Don’t like it? Suck my shotgun barrel, commie liberal tree hugger. God bless America.

I believe Mr. Moron Morford just outed himself as being against democracy when it doesn’t happen to agree with his personal politics. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

Yes, Mr. Moron Morford, we have majority control. More than that, though, we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC and not a democracy, so there are certain fundamental rules that no mere majority can overturn. And that galls you, doesn’t it? The Left is constantly thwarted by the great unwashed (but numerically superior) masses that just won’t do what you want. We who are so stupid and easily lead, but who you cannot seem to lead to anything. And you are further thwarted by that useless old peice of paper with words written by evil slave-owning rich white men that just can’t still mean what it says in this modern age.

And we will continue to thwart you.

Suck on that.

And, finally, here is NRA prez and noted ball of rancid cottage cheese Wayne LaPierre, talking up the sheer orgiastic joy of watching the ban expire: “I’m here to promise you that’s the end of [the ban]. It’s over. On Sept. 14, the sun will rise and it will never see the light of day again as long as we stay strong.” Yes, he’s actually comparing buying Uzis and AK-47s to a sunrise. And lo, the Earth shuddered, children everywhere felt suddenly soiled and defiled and lightning, sadly, did not strike LaPierre dead on the spot.

It’s gotta be tough when even God Gaia isn’t on your side, Mark.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to type this column.

It’s that nail in your skull, isn’t it?

Please?

I am now laughing so hard at the warped hypocritical savagery of it all, at so many Republicans wailing about, you know, the necessity of war on terror and war on drugs and war on gays and war on women’s rights and war on just about everything they don’t understand, and then how they turn right around and fall prostrate in front of Mr. NRA Lobbyist and say yes yes, what this country really needs goddammit is to get those Uzis back into the hands of angry Americans.

Those would be the Uzis that you admitted above that the law didn’t really remove or stop the manufacture of? Those Uzis? And what about that war on gays? I thought we knuckle-draggin’ NRA members had secret stashes of gay porn? Like it’s a bad thing?

I was going to suggest that you be consistent, but you’re a Leftist, and the two seem mutually exclusive.

Laughing. Laughing so very hard. Oh you poor, sad senators, lobbyists, NRA chiefs, stroking your Uzis and cheering your right to own multiple TEC-9s and not caring a whit for how anyone thinks. Or feels. Or intuits. Or loves.

Sure they do, Markie-boy! Sure they do! Say, that nail in your brain really is affecting you. Don’t you remember noting that the Right Wing is in the majority? Why else do politicians support anything? It’s the only way they get re-elected! And they know it.

Democracy. Ain’t it wonderful?

Do you really not see? Do you really not understand the sad dose of malevolence your agenda pumps into the cultural bloodstream? Do you not, finally, when you go to bed at night, get hit with a white-hot realization of what comical, bleak little clowns you are? No, I suppose you don’t.

And to that I have but this to say:

Pot? Meet Kettle.

This One’s a Must-Read

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Via Ipse Dixit comes this excellent piece. A taste:

A Movie Not Made

Let’s imagine it’s November, 1944. Allied troops are bogged down in Northern Europe and Italy. A film maker, disgusted by the progress of the war in Europe, American war strategy (“Europe first”) and American culture in general decides to make a movie to “speak truth to power” and counteract the propaganda coming from Hollywood.

Let’s call his movie Celsius 127, a scathing documentary suggesting that President Roosevelt lied about keeping America out of the European conflict and withheld vital intelligence from commanders in Hawaii in order that the Japanese attack would be all the more devastating. With that, he could do what he always wanted to do: commit American troops and America’s fortune against Germany.

Celsius 127 would relentlessly focus on every shortcoming of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Corps. It would show that American troops were ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-supplied, slaughtered in pointless attacks, guilty of atrocities against unarmed enemy troops that surrendered.

This piece makes the point perfectly that in this war, as in every war, bad things happen. How you see it is very much up to the people who produce our media.

Cathy Siepp has a related piece up on NRO that should also be read (via Instapundit). Hers is about the upcoming A&E movie Ike: Countdown to D-Day and its co-executive producer Lionel Chetwynd. Money quote:

Now in his early 60s, Chetwynd is a longtime naturalized American citizen who was born in England and raised in Montreal. He’d remembered from Canadian regimental history that of the 4,400-odd Canadians sent to Dieppe, about 3,600 were killed. Although they knew it was basically a suicide mission, not one man failed to report for duty. Chetwynd asked one of the old soldiers in his regiment, Sgt. Gordon Betts, why.

“My generation had to figure out what we were ready to die for,” Chetwynd recalled Betts telling him. “You kids don’t even know what to live for.”

Many years later, when Chetwynd was a successful Hollywood writer specializing in historical dramas, he told the Dieppe story during a Malibu dinner party — as a sort of tribute to the men who died there so people could sit around debating politics at Malibu dinner parties. One of the guests was a network head who asked Chetwynd to come in and pitch the story.

“So I went in,” Chetwynd told me, “and someone there said, ‘So these bloodthirsty generals sent these men to a certain death?’

“And I said, ‘Well, they weren’t bloodthirsty; they wept. But how else were we to know how Hitler could be toppled from Europe?’ And she said, ‘Well, who’s the enemy?’ I said, ‘Hitler. The Nazis.’ And she said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. I mean, who’s the real enemy?'”

“It was the first time I realized,” Chetwynd continued, “that for many people evil such as Nazism can only be understood as a cipher for evil within ourselves. They’ve become so persuaded of the essential ugliness of our society and its military, that to tell a war story is to tell the story of evil people.”

These people are not only producing our entertainment, they are producing our news.

Each evening on CNN we’re seeing – if not to the same intensity – Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11. It’s in the New York Times, the AP, Reuters, ABCNBCCBSMSNBCPBS et al. People in the news media wants us to lose, and they report the news in such a way as to convince us, as they did in Vietnam, that we cannot win. That we cannot define “winning.” That there is nothing good going on in Iraq. In early February there was a piece on ABC’s news blog The Note that I saved for posterity. From it comes this:

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are “conservative positions.”

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation’s problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don’t have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war — in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

It believes President Bush is “walking a fine line” with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between “tolerance” and his “right-wing base.”

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush’s base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him — and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

They’re not looking to find cracks in the base, they’re out there with hammers and chisels. And it’s not just the Washington press corps. If you believe, as I do, that political cartoonists reflect the general attitude of the press, go read the daily political cartoons on Slate, like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. I find this one particularly disgusting.

Trust me, there are plenty more.

Now they’re hooking up jackhammers.

I’ve said it before, our opponent cannot win. But we can beat ourselves. And our media is hellbent, for whatever reason, to see that we do. If the media in 1943 had the same attitude it has now, we’d have lost WWII. This conflict is no less important. Are we destined, as a nation, to die with a whimper? Are we what the Russians accused us of, what the jihadis accuse us of? Weak-willed, soft, corrupt and unwilling to fight?

What the fuck happened to us?

UPDATE 5/27: Ann Coulter has a related piece up, Tit for Tet. Recommended.

Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools – Homeschooling Starts to Hurt

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This month’s Time magazine has a three-page cover article on homeschooling entitled Seceding from School. It makes a passing attempt at “fairness,” with comments and quotations from both sides of the issue, but (IMHO) it leans towards public schooling with a near declaration that parents who homeschool are being elitist and shirking their civic duty by not making their children suffer through the same educational morass that less fortunate families cannot escape.

Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history. In the little red brick schoolhouse, we would pursue both “democracy in education and education in democracy,” as Stanford historian David Tyack gracefully puts it. Home schooling forsakes all that by defining education not as the pursuit of an entire community but as the work of one family and its chosen circle. Which can be great. Despite some drawbacks, there are signs that home-schooling parents are doing a better job than public schools at teaching their kids. But as the number of kids learning at home grows, we should pause to wonder: Better at teaching them what? Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?

That’s the fourth paragraph of the article.

That last sentence left my mouth agape.

I think that if Jefferson saw what passed for “education” in many if not most of today’s public schools, he’d be in favor of burning the existing “system” to the ground and starting over.

My stepdaughter graduated from high school in 1997. Her knowledge of American history, civics, and even geography is essentially nil. When the movie Pearl Harbor came out, I asked her if she knew what Pearl Harbor was. No clue.

She is hardly an exception to the rule.

Perhaps we should look to what the author might mean by “better citizens,” then. Founding Father Thomas Paine (whom my daughter has never studied) said “Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

Connie du Toit once wrote

The other day our Carpenter’s helper heard me say something along the lines of, “it is difficult to conclude that incompetence is the reason why our public schools have deteriorated. There comes a point where you have to suspect sabotage, or a conspiracy.”

He asked me if I really meant that. I gave him the five minute explanation of John Dewey’s known affiliation with communists, his frequent essays and articles about the wonders of the Soviet education system, and his quote, “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”

I then went on to tell him about how public schools changed at the turn of the last century. That there were others involved in turning Americans from free-thinking individualists to factory drones. I also added that many people probably went along with it because it seemed like a good idea, but there were certainly enough people behind the scenes, who knew that the goal posts had been moved. THAT is a conspiracy.

Yes. There does come that time when you are forced to don the tinfoil hat.

The incompetence excuse only works once. Incompetence this great is impossible to attribute to accident.

Count me in the tinfoil-hat brigade. Especially when I see peices like this Time one suggesting that it’s our civic duty to indoctrinate our children and make them better citizens.

In my opinion, the homeschooled are far more likely to be reasoning, free-thinking individualists, and that means better AMERICAN citizens – the kind willing to make decisions unpopular with the UN.

The Time article continues:

To see how home schooling threatens public schools, look at Maricopa County, Ariz. The county has approximately 7,000 home-schooled students. That’s only 1.4% of school-age kids, but it means $35 million less for the county in per-pupil funding. The state of Florida has 41,128 children (1.7%) learning at home this year, up from 10,039 in the 1991-92 school year; those kids represent a loss of nearly $130 million from school budgets in that state. Of course the schools have fewer children to teach, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t get as much money, but the districts lose much more than cash. “Home schooling is a social threat to public education,” says Chris Lubienski, who teaches at Iowa State University’s college of education. “It is taking some of the most affluent and articulate parents out of the system. These are the parents who know how to get things done with administrators.”

Get things done? Like what? They seem to be completely unable to alter curricula so that the kids get an actual education.

I’ve said before that my sister is a teacher, so I have a little bit of insight into just who has the ability to ‘get things done with administrators.’ It’s the ones who threaten lawsuits for not advancing little Johnny to the next grade, even though he’s illiterate, because not doing so will “hurt his self-esteem.” People are pulling their kids out of public schools because they can’t affect the system – it’s far too ingrained at this point. The Titanic doesn’t take course corrections any longer, even though it’s obvious the iceberg is dead ahead.

Look at this example of supposed balance in the Time story:

Despite its growing acceptance, there are nagging shortcomings to home schooling. If you spend time with home schoolers, you get a sense that some of them have missed out on whole swaths of childhood; the admirable efforts by their parents to ensure their education and safety sometimes seem to have gone too far. In 1992 psychotherapist Larry Shyers did a study while at the University of Florida in which he closely examined the behavior of 35 home schoolers and 35 public schoolers. He found that home schoolers were generally more patient and less competitive. They tended to introduce themselves to one another more; they didn’t fight as much. And the home schoolers were much more prone to exchange addresses and phone numbers. In short, they behaved like miniature adults.

Which is great, unless you believe that kids should be kids before they are adults. John McCallum, 20, of Wheaton, Ill., began learning at home after fourth grade. On the whole, he valued the experience. But if he could change anything about his teen years, he would want more interaction with people his age. “I don’t date, and that’s something I attribute to home schooling,” he says. Or consider Rachel Ahern, 21, of Grand Junction, Colo., who never set foot in a classroom until she went to Harvard at 18. As a child, she socialized with older kids and adults at church and in music classes at a nearby college. “I never once experienced peer pressure,” she says. But is that a good thing? Megan Wallace of Atlanta says if she had gone to high school, “I would have gotten into so much trouble.” One could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble to learn how to handle temptations and their consequences.”

They’re complaining that homeschooled kids aren’t little hooligans. One “could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble” but I’m not one of them. I prefer to let them mature and see the errors that they missed. I think that eighteen year-old mature adults are, by definition, good citizens, and something to strive for.

We used to get them out of the public school system, not all that long ago.

(Homework assignment: Read Francis Porretto’s most recent piece, The Assault on Accuracy for more illustration of the collapse of our schools.)

UPDATE, 3/24/04: Chris O’Donnell of O’DonnellWeb points out that this Time piece is actually a couple years old. I don’t know where I first ran across it, but I assumed it was current. All the better, as homeschooling has had a couple more years to irritate the Statists.