Month: September 2015

Now is the time to change how the media covers shootings


by Spocko

Andy Parker looked into the camera and spoke directly to CNN’s Chris Cuomo and the media covering the live shooting of his daughter Allison.

“I know how you guys are, this will be a good story for a couple of days and then it will move to the back burner.”   

This astute comment really stuck me. I don’t know his background, but he is exactly right about how the media works.

Parker wants change and is urging people to call their senators. That’s great, but because of his daughter’s profession I think he could also lead a change in how the media covers gun violence.

Here are some suggestions on what he could do and how you could help if you are interested.

Have Parker contact the media directly on follow-up stories about shootings. 

This is the reality of our celebrity culture. Parker now has standing as a type of celebrity. Journalists will take his calls. But he needs to offer more than just another interview with a shooting survivor or grieving loved one. What new story can he bring the media?

Parker can talk about the barriers to change he is seeing. This is an important topic since all shooting follow-up stories now ask, “Why didn’t the Sandy Hook shooting bring change?”

Stories don’t move forward unless some new information is revealed or an event happens. Now is the time to ask different questions that can reveal new information. He can also talk to the media about how they cover other non-shooting gun-related events. I have some ideas about that, but I’ll save them for another piece.

It’s not news and not their job–anymore
Most journalists aren’t aware of all the ways the pro-guns activists have blocked change in multiple areas. That’s because it’s not news–until the next shooting.

In the olden days it would be the job of journalists to answer these question, “Why did this happen? Why was there no change?”

Now it’s up to our activists to connect the dots for the journalists, to reveal the corrupt process that blocks sensible laws, then show how funding is cut or how enforcement is lacking. They also need us to name names. These could be interesting stories for the print media, but isn’t dramatic enough for TV. That needs another tact. Make it personal and local.

Dealing with the “It’s too soon” problem

Following each mass shooting, there are cries of “It’s too soon to discuss this!”

The NRA knows emotional stories like Parker’s are especially powerful right after a shooting.  They have already criticized Parker for being too emotional.

The NRA doesn’t have a problem using people’s emotions, just the kind they don’t want happening when they don’t want it.  As we know, emotional stories to the base leads to action. The NRA’s brilliant marketing move is to use each shooting event to trigger gun sales. “THIS time they will come for your guns! Buy more now!”

The NRA counts on the media’s short attention span. They also know the media has a problem covering the long game played at the state level by lobbyists and politicians. But what if we used one media problem to solve another?

Each new shooting is a media opportunity to see why previous proposed changes either stalled or were blocked in different states.  This gives the media a current news hook to use but without the, “It’s too soon” attacks. They also have a local angle to follow up on.  It moves from a “too soon” national story, to a “what happened to this?” local story.

A politicized story doesn’t mean politicians are in it
Politicians are often asked to comment on big news events. They know to give the usual safe comments about shootings, “My prayers go out to the families.” But instead of asking about the current shooting, the media can ask them to explain their previous actions, or lack of actions–in light of current events. Again, this moves from a generic question to a specific one and can reopen doors. Examples:

 “Congressman, you led the fight to block the bill that would make it harder for mentally ill people to legally get guns. What is your comment on that in light of this recent shooting?” or

“Congresswoman, last year you proposed the bill to make it harder for mentally ill people to get guns. It died in committee. Who stalled that? What was their reasoning? Any plans to do bring it back now?”

Be the media 
Now if I wanted to really push the envelop I’d like the media ask the people who blocked previous bills to explain their reasoning to survivors from Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook or other big local shootings. “Why can crazy people can still legally get guns in our state?”

This is probably too risky for broadcast TV, but it could be done. Maybe somebody will set it up and put it on YouTube. I mean seriously, most of us have the power of a portable TV studio in our pockets, learn to use it in ways other than hilarious cat videos. The point is to get answers to the question they ask now after every shooting, “Why was there no big change following Sandy Hook?” Listen to the answers and then figure out how to do something different this time around.

I understand why people get overwhelmed by this issue, even when it happens to one of their own the media throw up their hands and say, “There is nothing we can do.” But there is. We can take advantage of the medias’ own coverage formulas to move the issue forward. We just need to act. I’ve laid out several suggestions here based on real experience. I have more for other media, but now is the time to help the broadcast media do their job better.

 There is hope. Positive change in how the media covers gun violence is possible.

“The Southerners are eyeballing the young Muslim males”


by digby

You have probably heard about this infuriating story of a sweet 14 year old science geek by the name of Ahmed who built a clock and brought it to school and was arrested for doing it.  Why? Because a bunch of idiotic, racist white Texans in the school and the police department thought it looked like it could be a bomb like they saw once in a movie. I’m not kidding.  But don’t worry, the kid has promised never to bring one of his inventions to school again so we’re all safe.

This is, of course a direct outgrowth of the paranoia and nativism that’s been with us since 9/11. I wrote about how we reacted to 9/11 in this piece for Salon yesterday and I highlighted this 2002 article by Peggy Noonan that speaks directly to this attitude:

“So the Southerners are eyeballing the young Muslim males. Maybe these guys are bad guys. They allow themselves to think this in part because one of the things Americans regret most since Sept. 11 2001 is their lack of suspicion. We’re all very live-and-let-live. Before Sept. 11, young Muslim males could tell someone in passing that soon those towers in New York will go boom. And fearing to offend, fearing to hurt the feelings of another person, we’d let it pass. We’d mind our business, give them the benefit of the doubt. And now we wish we’d been less friendly, less trusting, less lazy or frightened. We wish we’d been skeptical. Hell, we’re the only nation on earth that is now nostalgic for paranoia.”

You may recall that as the “Shoney’s incident” where a middle aged white woman from Georgia got panicked at the sight of 3 “Middle eastern looking” medical students eating and joking around in a restaurant and called the police who instigated a three state manhunt.  The students were detained for more than 17 hours and lost their medical residencies at the Florida hospital to which they were enroute. Jeb Bush called the woman to commend her for her sharp observation skills. It was widely celebrated on the right as you can see by Noonan’s ugly screed.

13 years later we are arresting 12 year old inventors for bringing a homemade clock to school. How proud Noonan must be.

Glenn Greenwald wrote this morning:

There are sprawling industries and self-proclaimed career “terrorism experts” in the U.S. that profit greatly by deliberately exaggerating the threat of Terrorism and keeping Americans in a state of abject fear of “radical Islam.” There are all sorts of polemicists who build their public platforms by demonizing Muslims and scoffing at concerns over “Islamaphobia,” with the most toxic ones insisting that such a thing does not even exist, even as the mere presence of mosques is opposed across the country, or even as they are physically attacked.

The U.S. government just formally renewed the “State of Emergency” it declared in the aftermath of 9/11 for the 14th time since that attack occurred, ensuring that the country remains in a state of permanent, endless war, subjected to powers that are still classified as “extraordinary” even though they have become entirely normalized. As a result of all of this, a minority group of close to 3 million people is routinely targeted with bigotry and legal persecution in the Home of the Free, while fear and hysteria reign supreme in the Land of the Brave.

What happened in Irving, Texas, yesterday to a 14-year-old Muslim high school freshman is far from the worst instance, but it is highly illustrative of the rotted fruit of this sustained climate of cultivated fear and demonization. The Dallas Morning News reports that “Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High,” but “instead, the school phoned police.”

Despite insisting that he made the clock to impress his engineering teacher, consistent with his long-time interest in “inventing stuff,” Ahmed was arrested by the police and led out of school with his hands cuffed behind him. When he was brought into the room to be questioned by the four police officers who had been dispatched to the school, one of them — who had never previously seen him — said: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” As a result, he “felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion.”

This is, by the way, part and parcel of our equally ugly attitude toward Latinos and our ongoing ill-treatment of African Americans. Xenophobia and racism have always been with us but we’re in one of those awful times where it seems to be growing instead of going away.

And it shouldn’t be happening anymore at all. We are the richest, most powerful nation on earth and we should be above this primitive nonsense by now. There are no more excuses.

Here’s the dangerous terrorist being led away in handcuffs:

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Biden Met Secretly with Elizabeth Warren: What’s the Takeaway?

by Gaius Publius

I’m starting to look at the Biden surge (the surge in news stories about him), and think I see three things happening:

• A media push by the Biden camp to position him as the “acceptable mainstream alternative” to Sanders
   
• A quiet push by the Biden camp to make sure insiders know he’s available if the non-Sanders frontrunner “stumbles”
   
• A media push by the Biden camp to make him acceptable to Sanders supporters

The goal would be to allow Democrats to swap out one Establishment-friendly candidate with another, bypassing the anti-Establishment Sanders. (If you like, you can help Sanders here; adjust the split any way you wish at the link.)

About those three pushes: I think we’ve seen the first in stories like the one discussed here (and sadly, the Colbert interview). I’ll skip discussion of the second push above, since if the first is true, the second is also true. So let’s look at the third, the courting of Sanders supporters.

Biden and Warren

Elizabeth Warren is clearly a touchstone for Sanders supporters, someone who would be perfectly acceptable, even desirable, as an alternative candidate, someone who could reliably and credibly carry his message — which is, in fact, their message.

Now come press reports of a meeting between Biden and Warren — more intriguingly, a “secret” meeting. Business Insider:

Vice President Joe Biden secretly met with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) on Saturday, CNN reports.

What’s perhaps most interesting about the meeting is the conclusion that it’s led everyone to draw: Now he must be serious about a presidential bid!

CNN said it was “the biggest indication yet” that Biden could be feeling out his chances.

Bloomberg called it “a sign that Biden is courting influential members of the party before announcing his intentions.”

They’re not wrong.

Note that while the stated conclusion, the interpreted meaning, is “this means Biden may be running,” the subtext of leading with Warren in the first sentence is, “maybe they’re getting on the same page.” What’s the sourcing of these stories? We get an indication of that in another report of the same “secret” meeting. Bloomberg (my emphasis, explained below):

Vice President Joe Biden met with Senator Elizabeth Warren on Saturday as he considers whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The meeting with Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who once was seen as the strongest potential threat to Hillary Clinton’s bid because of her appeal to liberals and progressives, is a sign that Biden is courting influential members of the party before announcing his intentions. …

An affiliation with Warren may help Biden as he seeks to address the challenge of being a 72-year-old white man courting support in a Democratic Party that increasingly is comprised of women and minorities.

Neither Biden aides nor Warren aides would discuss details of the meeting. Clinton similarly met privately with Warren last December.

About the first bolded phrase, whose camp do you think leaked this story to the press? If Biden’s camp, then the meeting is not much of a secret. In fact, “secret meeting” becomes just more Biden spin, to increase interest in the story. Of course, the Warren camp may have leaked the news … but, why would they do that? I can’t think of a single reason (and see below for more).

About the second bolded phrase, note that “affiliation with Warren” seems exactly the goal of the meeting (and of the leak, if Biden’s people are the source). But note also, in that case, that the writers entirely misstate the reason for that affiliation. Their offered reason is “to address the challenge of being a 72-year-old white man courting support in a Democratic Party that increasingly is comprised of women and minorities.”

Really? He could have met with Barbara Lee to solve that problem. No, I think the writers are, sorry to say, carrying water. More accurate analysis might have read something like this (obviously my writing):

“An affiliation with Warren may help Biden to address the challenge of being a credit-card and banking industry enabler in a Democratic Party whose voters are rebelling against bought-and-paid-for politics.”

Now that would be analysis worthy of smart Bloomberg reporting. Or so it seems to me.

What Does Warren Think of Biden?

We can’t answer that question for sure, of course, since times and minds do change. But we do have indicators from the not-too-distant past, and they aren’t favorable (to Biden). International Business Times:

Sen. Warren’s Criticism Of Joe Biden Complicates Vice President’s 2016 Plans

As Vice President Joe Biden reportedly mulls a bid for the U.S. presidency, his champions portray him as a credible alternative to Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton, who faces accusations that she is beholden to the financial industry. But a Biden campaign risks confronting the scorn of one of the party’s most influential progressives, Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Though Biden has reportedly sought her favor, Warren has historically disdained, charging him with acting as a tool of the credit card industry by limiting debt relief for people grappling with financial troubles.

As a Harvard law professor in 2002, Warren published a journal article excoriating
Biden for playing a leading role in delivering legislation that made it more difficult for Americans to reduce debts through bankruptcy filings. His repeated push for the bill — signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2005 — amounted to “vigorous support of legislation that hurts women,” Warren declared. She said “the group that will be most affected by the changes in the bankruptcy legislation Senator Biden so forcefully supports will be women, particularly women heads of household who are supporting children.” She called Biden a “zealous advocate on behalf of one of his biggest contributors,” singling out the credit card industry, which has a strong presence in Biden’s home state of Delaware.

In a separate 2003 book she co-authored with her daughter, Warren said, “Senators like Joe Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening.”

Of course, the writers of this piece reached out to the Biden camp and got this reply, which they published:

In a statement to International Business Times, Biden’s spokesman, Stephen Spector, said: “Throughout his career, the vice president has been a champion for middle-class families and has fought against powerful interests. As a senator, he succeeded in making the bipartisan bankruptcy bill fairer by demanding protections to help low-income workers, veterans, members of the military, women and children — despite opposition from the largest employer in his state.”

Just the opposite of what Warren has said of him.

What’s the Takeaway?

I’ll leave the takeaway to Elizabeth Warren, from her 2003 book (also quoted above):

Senators like Joe Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening.

Do you think she changed her mind? I don’t. Have you seen anything from Biden that makes you think she should? I haven’t.

As to Sanders supporters and their temptation to switch to Biden should Sanders become “unavailable” … well, I can’t speak for them, but I’m guessing they’d be less than tempted, given his history.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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By their enemies ye shall know them
by Tom Sullivan

Just as tall trees are known by their shadows, so are good men known by their enemies. – Chinese proverb

By all accounts I’ve seen, Britain’s new Labour Party leader is further to the left than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. What they may have more in common than politics are the kinds of attacks they suffer at the hands of their adversaries. Sanders this week faces attacks that try to tie him to Corbin:

WASHINGTON — A super PAC backing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is going negative, circulating an email that yokes her chief rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to some of the more controversial remarks made by Jeremy Corbyn, the United Kingdom’s new Labour Party leader, including his praise for the late Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader who provided discounted fuel to Vermont in a deal supported by Sanders.

Clinton’s camp has long said it has no plans to attack Sanders. But the super PAC, called Correct the Record, departed from its defense of Clinton’s record as a former secretary of state in an email Monday that compares Sanders with Corbyn. Correct the Record, led by Clinton ally David Brock, also has sent trackers after Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The Guardian reports:

According to journalists who received an email from the group, it attacked Sanders for congratulating Corbyn on winning the Labour leadership election and drew attention to the British politician’s “most extreme comments” on foreign policy.

Many of the alleged comments, such as remarks referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” and the death of Osama bin Laden as a “tragedy” are similar to attacks on Corbyn from rightwing critics in Britain that his supporters say are based on distortions of his positions.

Already Corbyn’s opponents have trotted out the kind of attack with which President Obama is well familiar. On the basis of a still photo, Corbyn is accused of not singing the national anthem. On both sides of the Atlantic, this is what passes for a contest of ideas, the kind of propaganda found in pass-it-on emails from your wingnut uncle.

The report continues:

Sanders campaign insiders say they have no desire to escalate any tension with Clinton but felt it necessary to respond to the attack when questioned on it by journalists.

Nevertheless the comparison with Corbyn could raise problems in future for Sanders, who is generally less radical than his leftwing British counterpart, particularly on foreign policy, and is seeking to find out more about his positions.

Coming off his Monday appearance at Liberty University in Virginia, Sanders compared the assault to tactics from the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. The campaign responded in an email to the super PAC ad, saying, “If we stand together to fight back against these ugly attacks, we can ensure this election is about who has the best ideas, and not who has the biggest donors.”

I wonder why people don’t trust the police anymore?

by digby

From the NY Police union:

Going into the belly of the beast

by digby

I can hardly believe that I’m hearing liberals once again making the case that you can entice hard core right wing conservatives to vote for ultra liberal candidates if only Democrats would stop being so rigid on that icky abortion issues and would make a pitch for white, blue collar Republicans. Oy vey, I’ve been hearing this, literally, for 30 years and it’s never worked. Hardcore right wingers do not like Democrats. Period. In fact, they hate them. They will never vote for them.

This is not to say that Bernie Sanders trip to Liberty U is a bad thing to do. It’s the opposite. Ed Kilgore makes the right case for why it made good sense for him to do it:

I figured Sanders might be making two points by doing this: (1) running against the ever-cautious, often-cosseted Hillary Clinton, he’s willing to go anywhere and expose himself to all sorts of potentially hostile reactions, which is a useful trait to have in a presidential nominee; and (2) you don’t have to be one a them squishy, spineless “centrists” to have a civil conversation with people on the other side of political or ideological barricades.

Making these points—and getting the kind of guaranteed publicity that Nixon-goes-to-China moments always get—struck me as worth the trouble and the limited danger involved.

Exactly.

He goes on to note one of the anti-abortion liberals Elizabeth Bruenig, hoping for a miracle:

Since Bruenig herself is a self-proclaimed Christian Socialist (albeit a Catholic, not an evangelical) who is also opposed to abortion, she seems to be hoping against hope that someone will convince conservative evangelicals that their scripturally-required commitment to the poor ought to outweigh their antichoice convictions and their traditions of solidarity with the GOP. So she’s praying Bernie began a trend:

[A]s previously strong relations between evangelicals and the GOP appear poised to fracture and circumstances grow too dire for Christians to leave the troubles of politics to their fellows, an option like the package of policies presented by Sanders seems prime for Christian support.

The odd thing about this comment is that progressive policies already have “Christian support” among the millions of Christians who are pro-choice and haven’t gotten in the habit of marching to Zion with Fox News and the GOP. It disappoints me that Bruenig seems to have forgotten about us as she gazes hopefully towards those students at Liberty.

It happens so often that it’s almost shocking when it doesn’t. Yes, Virginia, there are millions and millions of Christians in America who vote for Democrats. But I’m willing to bet my meager IRA that the kids who are going to the most right wing evangelical college in America are not ever going to be among them. There could be some moderate GOP evangelicals out there somewhere who could be convinced to vote for a centrist like Clinton over a libertine like Trump, but even that’s a long shot. They are conservatives for a reason. They believe in conservatism.

But never let that stop the anti-abortion lefty from hoping she can turn the Democrats into an anti-abortion party by flooding it with conservatives —who then turn it into a conservative party. We tried that. It didn’t end well.

As for the blue collar workers coming back home to Bernie, let’s just say that most of them are in their dotage by now and will be shuffling off their mortal coil before they vote for a left wing liberal guy from Vermont who calls himself a socialist. There could conceivably be some younger blue collar workers who might vote for Bernie but I don’t think Liberty U is the place they will be found. Those kids aren’t exactly working class.

And by the way, way too many white working class types, even millennials, don’t want to be in the party of African Americans:

Baby Boomers stick out as the more revolutionary generation, at least compared to the Silent Generation that immediately preceded it (and was born before 1946). Boomers are between 8 and 17 points less apt than the Silent Generation to express openly prejudiced views toward blacks, amounting to the greatest shift from one generation to the next. Xers are less prejudiced than Boomers on just one of five measures, interracial marriage.

Beyond generational comparisons, the poll suggests substantial minorities of white millennials hold racial prejudices against blacks. Over 3 in 10 white millennials believe blacks to be lazier or less hardworking than whites, and a similar number say lack of motivation is a reason why they are less financially well off as a group. Just under a quarter believes blacks are less intelligent, while fewer express opposition to interracial marriage or living in a 50-percent black neighborhood. Holding these attitudes is not the same as making racist comments in public or even among close friends, but there’s clearly an audience for race-based judgment among the Millennial generation.

Yes, things are getting better. But the dynamics still hold as you can see by the Trump phenomenon.

Anyway, none of this is to say that politicians shouldn’t speak to anyone who’s willing to listen. They should! You never know who might be convinced. But when liberals start pinning their hopes on building coalitions between far right conservatives and far left liberals it’s time to sober up. That won’t happen. It never does.

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The most sobering statistic you will see all day

by digby

Via Mother Jones, here is a chart which shows that we have had more Americans killed by gun violence since the Reagan Administration than have been killed in all of our wars combined:

I don’t know how we can let this go on.

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The question is, who made it?

by digby

And so the

The comments are precious:

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Seven days in wingnutville

by digby

I wrote about a new poll for Salon today. And it has nothing to do with 2016 — at least not directly:

“Republicans (43%) are more than twice as likely as Democrats (20%) to say that they could conceive of a situation in which they would support a military coup in the United States.”

1) Republicans say by 64-35 that Trump is “qualified to serve as president.”

2) Republicans say by 60-35 that Trump is “honest and trustworthy.”

3) Republicans say by 53-45 that Trump understands the problems of people like them.

4) Republicans say by 54-42 that Trump “has the kind of personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively as president.”

And this isn’t all that new, is it?

h/t

A right of passage for a young fascist

by digby

A man known as “The Donald”:

Mr. Trump attended the New York Military Academy after years of rowdy and rebellious behavior at Kew-Forest, a more traditional prep school in Queens. Mr. Trump once recalled giving a teacher at Kew-Forest a black eye “because I didn’t think he knew anything about music.”

A man known as “Il Duce”:

Born on July 29, 1883, Mussolini gained a reputation for bullying and fighting during his childhood. At age 10 he was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand, and another stabbing incident took place at his next school.

It doesn’t prove anything, of course. But still …

This is sort of interesting too:

With Italy’s leading non-fascist politicians hopelessly divided and with the threat of violence in the air, on October 29 the king offered Mussolini the chance to form a coalition government. But although the premiership was now his, Il Duce—a master of propaganda who claimed the backing of 300,000 fascist militiamen when the real number was probably far lower—wanted to make a show of force. As a result, he joined armed supporters who flooded the streets of Rome the following day. Mussolini would later mythologize the March on Rome’s importance.

After becoming prime minister, Mussolini reduced the influence of the judiciary, muzzled a free press, arrested political opponents, continued condoning fascist squad violence and otherwise consolidated his hold on power. However, he continued working within the parliamentary system at least somewhat until January 1925, when he declared himself dictator of Italy. Following a series of assassination attempts in 1925 and 1926, Mussolini tightened his grip even further, banning opposition parties, kicking out over 100 members of parliament, reinstating the death penalty for political crimes, ramping up secret police activities and abolishing local elections.

I believe he also said that he was going to make the country great again …

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