LA Times Media critic David Shaw claims in today’s paper that bloggers don’t deserve the reporter’s privilege because they are lazy, careless and inaccurate. In the process of explaining why, he makes a couple of whopping mistakes that one can only assume he makes because he is lazy and careless. (subscription only, sorry):
It isn’t easy to define what a journalist is — or isn’t. Forty or 50 years ago, some might have dismissed IF Stone as the print equivalent of a blogger, writing and puhlishing his muckraking ‘I.F. Stone Weekly.” But Stone was an experienced journalist, and his Weekly did not traffic in gossip or rumor. He was so highly regarded by his peers that he was widely known as “the conscience of investigative journalism.”
Bloggers require no journalistic experience. All they need is computer access and the desire to blog. There are other, even important diofferences between bloggers and journalists, perhaps the most significant being that bloggers pride themselves on being part on an unmediated medium, giving their readers unfiltered information. And therein lies the problem.
When I or virtually any other journalist writes something, it goes through several filters before the reader sees it. At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column for example.
[…]
If I’m careless — if I am guilty of what the courts call a “reckless disregard for the truth” — The Times could be sued for libel … and could lose a lot of money. With that thought — as well as out own personal and progessional copmmittments to accuracy and fairness — very much much in mind, I and my editors all try hard to be sure that what appears in ther paper is just that, accurate and fair.
[…]
Many bloggers — not all, perhaps or even most — don’t seem to worry much about being accurate. or fair. They just want to get their opinions — and their scoops — our there as fast as they pop into their brains.
[…]
But the knowledge that you can correct errors quickly,combined with the absence of editors or filters, encourages laziness, carelessness and inaccuracy, and I don’t think the reporter’s privilege to maintain confidential sources should be granted to such practitioners of what is at best psuedo-journalism.
[…]
Certainly, some bloggers practice what anyone would consider “journalism” in its roughest form — they provide news. And just as surely, bloggers deserve credit for, among other things, being the first to discredit Dan Rather’s use of documents of dubious origin and legitimacy to accuse President Bush of having received special treatment in the National Guard.
But bloggers alos took the lead in circulating speculation that what appeared to be a bulge beneath Bush’s jacket during his first debate with Sen John Kerry might have been some kind of transmission device to enable advisors to feed him answers.
No credible evidence has emerged to support such a charge.
In the first case, the Columbia Journalism Review did a thorough debunking of the blogging “journalism” in the Dan Rather case.
And there is ample evidence from real gen-u-wine accurate ‘n fair jernlists that the NY Times pursued the Bush bulge story, was ready to run with it and killed it as it drew too close to the election. A NASA scientist came forward with sophisticated imaging to prove it (as Salon magazine reported at the time.) The Times’ science editor Andrew Rivkin, who contributed the bulk of the reporting, had told [ombudsman]Okrent that the scientist’s assertions “did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly because of who he is. … He essentially put his hard-won reputation utterly on the line.” Certainly, the bizarre denials by the white house — that it was “bad tailoring” should have made any legitimate journalist question what was going on. This was not just idle blogging gossip.
So, in his scathing article about blogging malfeasance and inaccuracy, David Shaw missed the mark in both of his examples.
I’m only sorry that you can’t link to the whole story. If there has ever been a better example of self-righteous elitism from a total fuck-up, I’ve never seen it. Mr Shaw makes quite the fool of himself.
The uniqueness—one could say oddity, or implausibility—of the story of Jesus’ resurrection argues that the tradition is more likely historical than theological.
If anyone hasn’t had the opportunity to read the Newsweak story from which that quote is lifted, do yourself a favor and read it. It is onstensibly about the fascinating story of the historical Jesus and Christian history. But, in the media’s new committment to religious sensitivity it is filled with strange intellectual gyrations like that above.
As far as I’m concerned, the metaphorical beauty of the resurrection ought to be enough for anyone. But that’s just me. It’s an incredible spring day here in southern California, the flowers are bursting into bloom, everything is green and new and lovely. Whether you are a literalist Christian or a non-believer like me, anyone can appreciate the glory of rebirth.
But turning yourself into a pretzel in an alleged work of journalism to say that because a story is unbelievable it is more believable, well, that’s just silly. Faith is faith and reason is reason. You can’t just split the difference.
Happy Easter everyone. Whether religious or secular, spring has sprung and that’s something we can all celebrate.
For the secular humanists among us, check out this post by James Wolcott.
I described the liberal as having a two-stage view about end of life issues. First, comes something like the “life as continuum” view Brooks attributes to us. Second, comes a principle of free choice — I think that I should make my own decision on this, but that my view should not control others, though I may try to persuade others that my view is correct (non-relativism). The problem here is that I think a lot of liberals don’t recognize that the second principle really does depend on something akin to the first. If you hold views about the sanctity of life and the doing/allowing distinction that lead you to the conclusion that failing to keep alive someone who could be kept alive is the equivalent to murder, then adopting a principle of free choise at the second level makes no sense. An absolutist view on the first question requires an absolutist view on the second question.
I agree that that the pro-life absolutist view on the first question requires an absolutist view on the second. The only problem is that in practice, the pro-life crowd doesn’t take a pro-life absolutist view on either.
On abortion, which they call murder, they do not believe that the woman who has an abortion should be charged with a crime, which makes no sense. Many of them make an exception in the case of rape of incest, which also makes no sense if abortion is murder.
They do not believe that life support should be kept in place in all circumstances, just certain ones. If it is muder then there really cannot be any situation in which taking a person off life support or denying them a feeding tube (“a natural death”) would be ok.
They believe that stem cell research should be banned because the embryo is a life, but they have nothing to say about the people who fertilize many eggs in the in vitro process which then are either frozen for no use or discarded.
When it comes to the death penalty, many of these same people are arguing for fewer legal rights for the accused, even in the case of evidence of actual innocence, so the idea of “innocent” life doesn’t hold water either.
As Matt makes clear, the liberal position about freedom of choice is not moral relativism. But I would argue that a cafeteria moralism that uses the “life” issue as a cudgel in random situations in which one disagrees with individual decisions is.
Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army.
Investigators had recommended that all 17 soldiers be charged in the cases, according to the accounting by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. The charges included murder, conspiracy and negligent homicide. While none of the 17 will face any prosecution, one received a letter of reprimand and another was discharged after the investigations.
To date, the military has taken steps toward prosecuting some three dozen soldiers in connection with a total of 28 confirmed or suspected homicides of detainees. The total number of such deaths is believed to be between 28 and 31.
In one of the three cases in which no charges are to be filed, the commanders determined the death to be “a result of a series of lawful applications of force.” In the second, the commanders decided not to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. In the third, they determined the soldier involved had not been well informed of the rules of engagement.
A spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command, Chris Grey, said in a statement: “We take each and every death very seriously and are committed and sworn to investigating each case with the utmost professionalism and thoroughness. We are equally determined to get to the truth wherever the evidence may lead us and regardless of how long it takes.”
And if that doesn’t work, we’ll just go for the Schiavo Option. From Rox Populi:
Andy Warhol once mused that “in the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.” If he were alive today, he might say that everyone would get the U.S. Congress to intercede on their personal behalf. As it turns out, the Schavio case wasn’t even the first one this month. Get this:
The North Carolina congressman who represents Camp Lejeune introduced legislation that would dismiss all charges against 2nd Lt. Ilario G. Pantano, the Marine who allegedly wrongfully shot two Iraqis while deployed to Iraq a year ago.
House Resolution 167, introduced by Rep. Walter B. Jones, R, states that Pantano, 33, was “defending the cause of freedom, democracy and liberty” in his actions on April 15 that resulted in the deaths of two Iraqis.
“The ongoing war in Iraq has taken a toll on this nation. Families have been torn apart by the loss of a loved one who has paid the ultimate price in service to our country,” Jones wrote in a Feb. 25 letter to President Bush.
“Charging Pantano with murder is not only wrong, but is also detrimental to morale in America. This sends a potentially flawed message to those considering enlisting in the military.”
The president has received the letter and the matter is under review, a spokesman for Jones’ office said on March 18.
Hey, what’s the use of having control of all three branches of government if you can’t do whatever you want to do? The rule of law is for losers.
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “As I read through yesterday’s emails, I am struck by the possible fruitfulness of moderate Republican conservatives joining forces with similar folks in the Democratic Party. Perhaps if we leave the extremists of both parties out on their respective limbs and offer a strong ideology of fiscal responsibility, “gentle” hawks only responding in war when clear need is identified, protecting our own public financially from being sold out abroad, protecting our borders (even at the expense of some very wealthy businesspeople) — promising personal rights of privacy in the pew and the bedroom and on the deathbed — I think a strong, pragmatic, sensible, workable “party” could emerge. We MUST ditch religious zealotry ASAP — it is killing real moral values!!”
Can someone explain to me how this substantially differs from the vast mainstream of the Democratic party?
This illustrates how successful the Republicans have been in mischaracterizing themselves as reasonable and the Democrats as a bunch of flaky left wing weirdoes. The last Democratic president was so fiscally responsible he left office with a large surplus for the explicit purpose of funding the social security shortfall in 2040 or so. We all know what happened to that. It is the mainstream Democratic view that we should only use force when “clear need is identified.” We are not pacifists and never have been. We are the party that protests outsourcing and off shore tax evasion and our “public being sold out abroad.” We have never been for open borders, but we do think that if wealthy businessmen want to import cheap,illegal labor they ought to be required to pay a minimum wage and adhere to basic human rights. And clearly, the mainstream of the Democratic party have no interest in legislating what people do in their bedrooms, pews and deathbeds. None.
Your “strong, pragmatic, sensible, workable” party already exists, guys. If you like effective, fiscally responsible government that respects inbdividual rights, including a right to privacy, then come on over. We are not the party that impeaches presidents over private sexual matters. We may drink latte’s and read the New York Times, but that doesn’t actually make us communists. That’s Rush talk. You know that. And while we have our share of crazies, they aren’t running the party. In fact the more extreme on the left have their own Party and cost us the election in 2000. You know that too. And a sad day for this country it was.
All we needed was 60,000 votes in Ohio this time and we could have stopped these guys from doing their worst. Help us out next time. Your country needs you.
“With the departure of Dan Rather, this is a good opportunity for CBS to reach out,” said Ari Fleischer, the former White House press spokesman. “This is almost a curtains-up for CBS to improve relationships.”
Mr. Fleischer—the former Presidential press secretary who has published his Bush explication memoir, Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House—was considering CBS News now that Mr. Rather, the bête noir of the conservative class, has departed the CBS Evening News.
Mr. Rather’s early retirement was good, Mr. Fleischer said.
But it wasn’t quite enough.
“Dan Rather became a symbol,” said Mr. Fleischer, who remains close to President Bush. “That’s why this is a new opportunity for CBS. But there’s a lot more to it besides who was in the anchor chair. There’s CBS as a larger organization. There is still largely a Democratic tilt that goes in their journalism.”
Dan Rather was a good start. But the White House wanted more. “A new chapter has opened up at CBS,” Mr. Fleischer said on March 22, “but we don’t know what’s in it yet.”
[…]
“Relations were really, really horrible during that whole thing, and then the White House took a different view when Dan stepped down,” Mr. Roberts said. “Everything was affected by the tenure of the guy at the head of the Evening News. It’s really subsided.”
In contrast, Mr. Roberts said, he and Bob Schieffer, the 67-year-old Texan and Face the Nation host who is temporarily replacing Mr. Rather as evening anchor, are held in higher esteem by White House officials.
“Now, don’t get me wrong,” he added. The White House was “still good at controlling information. They’re never happy to see you, but they’re less not happy to see you.”
But at the White House, there was a different view of the CBS News–reborn theory.
Adam Levine, who was the assistant White House secretary in charge of television news until January 2004—and who, like Mr. Fleischer, remains close to the Bush administration press office—said CBS News still had “a lot of work to do.”
To measure the relative credibility of news networks with press officials at the White House, Mr. Levine suggested a scale of one to 100: he put Fox News at 90, NBC News at 80 and CBS News at “about 10.”
Asked about that assessment, a current White House official, who declined to be named, said that figure was “probably generous given what happened.”
“It depends on where they go from here,” said the official. “Contrition is always nice, but it all depends on what gets on the air. That’s the true test.”
“Bowing and scraping is not going to please this White House,” said Mr. Levine.
“Results are going to please the White House.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic,” he said, referring to Mr. Roberts’ comments, but “I don’t think removing Dan Rather from the equation—that doesn’t make CBS on par with Fox.”
[…]
The calculus for the White House in granting interviews, said Mr. Levine, was more than just the fairness and balance of the network—it was a combination of “reach, fairness and enjoyability.”
He described the latter as “the respect factor,” in which an interviewer showed due deference to the office of the Presidency, thereby making it a more appealing experience for Mr. Bush.
By this calculation, Mr. Schieffer, the CBS Evening News interim anchor, had “the respect factor” going for him, said Mr. Levine.
“I found him to be very gracious,” said Mr. Fleischer. “The only thing was he seems to really dislike Tom DeLay. I think a lot of reporters do. I always had good workings with Bob Schieffer. I thought he gave issues a fair ear.”
What Mr. Schieffer and Mr. Pelley lacked was “reach,” said Mr. Levine, which meant the network had much less to offer the White House in terms of audience—unlike, say, ABC News, which Mr. Levine assessed as having more on-air real estate for White House officials to send their messages than CBS News, not to mention an esteemed political web site, The Note.
He recalled that when Mr. Pelley interviewed the President for two hours shortly after Sept. 11, the resulting segment was only 13 minutes long. Mr. Levine had arranged that interview, he said, but he might advise the President against it now. “If I’m advising him,” he said, “I’m not sure that’s the best use of the President’s time.”
Mr. Levine said that during his tenure, “NBC was a much more effective tool for us.” He said press officials in the White House liked Meet the Press host Russert, but not because he tossed softball questions
“Nobody is going to tell you that Tim Russert is easiest,” said Mr. Levine. “He’s by far and away the toughest. But he’s fair.”
Oooh, baby. And he’s got big biceps too.
Tim Russert is as fair as Fox news. Proud as a peacock he must be.
Why are they called mediawhores? Because the Republicans treat them like whores and they act like whores. It’s not a nice name and I know that it hurts their feelings, but when you read things like this you ralize that it is the most accurate term you can find for these servile, supplicating chickenshits. Jayzuz.
Avedon Carol reminds us that when reporters become courtiers rather than journalists, bad things result. And when they don’t, when they actually look for the story instead of simpering and posing for those in power, they can actually get the real story.
But, why would they care, really? John Roberts is getting his phone calls returned from the chief liar in the administration. He has rationalized that to mean that he is a fair journalist. “What Liberal Media?” indeed.
I have been reading all this stuff about Wolfowitz’s neocon World Bank girlfriend and her witchy influence over him, but I didn’t know until today that Wolfie is married. To another woman.
The appointment of George Bush’s leading hawk as head of the World Bank was heading for a crisis over his relationship with a senior British employee.
Influential members of staff at the international organisation have complained to its board that Paul Wolfowitz, a married father of three, is so besotted with Oxford-educated Shaha Riza he cannot be impartial.
Extraordinarily, they claim she played a key role in pushing the 61-year-old Pentagon official into the Iraq War. And the row comes amid claims that Wolfowitz’s wife Clare once warned George Bush of the threat to national security any infidelity by her husband could cause.
A British citizen – at 51, eight years younger than Wolfowitz’s wife – Ms Riza grew up in Saudi Arabia and was passionately committed to democratising the Middle East when she allegedly began to date Wolfowitz. She studied at the London School of Economics in the Seventies before taking a master’s degree at St Anthony’s College, Oxford, where she met her future husband, Turkish Cypriot Bulent Ali Riza, from whom she is now divorced.
After they moved to America, Shaha worked for the Iraq Foundation, set up by expatriates to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. She subsequently joined the National Endowment for Democracy, created by President Ronald Reagan to promote American ideals.
Bulent Riza said Shaha started to “talk to Paul” about reforming the Middle East. And New Yorker magazine’s respected commentator Paul Boyer observed that a senior World Bank official “named Shaha Ali Riza” was an “influence”.
I’m most anxious to hear Jerry Fallwell and James Dobson weigh in on this. Is it ethical for the evangelical president to nominate such immoral people to positions of high rank? Doesn’t he care? Quick, check the poker room and see if William bennet can enlighten us about this.
And then there is the espionage. As the bride of Jesu said so long ago, in another time of the Florida passion:
Was Mr. Clinton being blackmailed? The Starr report tells us of what the president said to Monica Lewinsky about their telephone sex: that there was reason to believe that they were monitored by a foreign intelligence service. Naturally the service would have taped the calls, to use in the blackmail of the president. Maybe it was Mr. Castro’s intelligence service, or that of a Castro friend.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
Even his wife thinks he might be a threat to national security. It would be very irresponsible not to speculate that Wolfowitz is being blackmailed by a beguiling, invasion-mad, Tunisian she-devil. It really would.
Good Friday Middle Aged Mistress Pop Quiz:
Do you know this woman?
answer: Poppi’s little friend Jennifer Fitzgerald. What will we tell the great-great-grandchildren?
I think it’s important to give John Cole credit here for recognizing what a threat to freedom these religious zealots are. It appears that more than a few Republicans are a little bit stunned by the hideous overreaching of the congress and the president in this case.
But I must also point out that this didn’t happen in a vacuum. This started with the moralizing psuedo religious nonsense during the Clinton years when it was everybody’s favorite sport to use the office of the “independent” counsel to rummage through Hillary Clinton’s underwear drawer and clutch their lace hankies about a prosaic mid life crisis as if it were of the highest national importance. They impeached the president on the basis of a private sexual matter. Members of the house and senate stood on the floors of the congress and pontificated endlessly about sexual morality and trumped up a case for lying under oath that you could drive a truck through. And the only thing that stopped them from succeeding in making a federal case out of a blow-job was public opinion, which sharply turned against them as the silly spectacle lumbered on.
It was clear then that the modern GOP’s small government and individual rights rhetoric was a crock. (I blame some Democrats for this too. A fair number of them fed the notion that this was worthy of official government disapprobation with their Liebermanesque preaching about how it was “deplorable” and “reprehensible.”)
Cole notes that the NOW and NARAL slippery slope arguments don’t seem so hysterical now. No they don’t. Neither do those who have been a little bit kooky on the Patriot Act or the executive power grab that says the president can order torture because in wartime the president can do anything he wants. We are seeing this congressional majority and the president pretty much rip out any part of the constitution they don’t care for.
I’ve been hoping that libertarians would realize that these guys not only have no intention of making government smaller but they have absolutely no respect for individual rights either. I realize that taxation is at the top of most libertarians’ list of issues. But I think it’s time for many of them to go back and re-read their John Stuart Mill “On Liberty” and expand their definition of freedom a little bit. Taxation can be onerous and tyrannous. But dear God, it’s not the ONLY definition of tyranny nor are all levels of taxation onerous.
Maybe libertarians don’t feel the yoke tightening around their neck from the corporate oligarchy and the religious right, but I sure as hell do. Maybe this circus is the last straw for some of them too.
Atrios links to another of TAPPED’s great posts about the “pain caucus.” Earlier this week Sam Rosenfeld wrote an interesting piece on the same subject regarding the punditocrisy’s reflexive conventional wisdom that says “political courage” equals average people suffering. He brought up one of the most egregious examples I’ve ever had the misfortune to watch on last week’s Capital Gang:
HUNT: Bob, for Bush to succeed in this or have something he calls success, does he have to get something on — on personal accounts?
NOVAK: To have any success, of course, he does. If he just has a changing of the index, which is a reduction in benefits, that’s not going to do it. And he’s not going to go for a tax increase.
I agree with Mark, which I rarely do, that the Republicans look like chickens. They look like they’re afraid of combat. But I think the Democrats really look bad because I — I was talking to some very prominent ones, and I didn’t realize that not only is personal accounts off the table, any indexing of — of the — of how many — how the benefits will be is off the table. They are saying, We will not go along with any reduction in benefits to our constituents in the future! I mean, they’re being very responsible, and — and…
HUNT: You meant to say irresponsible, I think.
NOVAK: Irresponsible. And Nancy Pelosi…
(CROSSTALK)
NOVAK: Nancy Pelosi, I thought, just typifies exactly what’s going on when she says, Stop him, stop him, stop him.
CARLSON: I agree with Bob, in that Democrats have to pivot now and acknowledge, yes, there’s a problem, and put forward a proposal for fixing…
O’BEIRNE: And when that happens…
CARLSON: … Social Security…
O’BEIRNE: … the Republicans are confident that personal accounts, plus some other things which do affect solvency, will look a lot better than what liberal Democrats are likely to come up, which happens to be tax increases!
CARLSON: Kate, not only would personal…
HUNT: Mark — Mark — hurt Social Security, they’re going to hurt the economy.
HUNT: Mark, the problem is that people say the concept of personal or private accounts is not such a bad concept, but the minute you say it has to be accompanied by benefit cuts, that’s when…
SHIELDS: And tax increases.
HUNT: … it plummets.
SHIELDS: No, that’s absolutely…
CARLSON: And all that borrowing.
SHIELDS: That’s absolutely right, Al. And the reality is that the president said there was a crisis. The president said, I have a plan. He said that in the 2000 campaign, said it in 2004 campaign. We just haven’t seen the plan unveiled.
O’BEIRNE: Oh!
SHIELDS: And I would — I would point out if the people in the White House feel so good about the polls, thank goodness they haven’t seen the CNN/”USA Today” Gallup poll, which shows 35 percent approval for the president’s handling of the Social Security issue.
O’BEIRNE: And it shows 76 percent of people under age 50 like the idea of the personal accounts, and people above that age won’t be affected by them!
NOVAK: Let me just say that the idea that you have the benefit cuts, Mark, because you have personal accounts is ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. You’re going to have to have benefit cuts. Pat Moynihan said you had to have benefit cuts. Everybody knows it, and the demagogueing that’s going on — I was — I was talking with two members of the Social Security subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee. They say, We will not have any benefit cuts for our constituents. They’re crazy! They’re going to have to have them!
HUNT: You know, Bob, you’re right on that. I think there are going to have to be benefit cuts, but I also think that if you move to some — (UNINTELLIGIBLE) some kind of indexing, you can do it in a very progressive way.
NOVAK: I agree with that!
HUNT: And I think that’s what…
NOVAK: But it’s still — they say they — they want no benefit cuts!
CARLSON: Do you think borrowing a trillion dollars…
SHIELDS: Did the president…
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: … personal accounts is a good idea? (CROSSTALK)
SHIELDS: … any of his three dozen appearances when he mentioned it, ever mentioned benefit cuts? He never did.
NOVAK: But he told…
SHIELDS: He never did! No, Bob, but I mean, seriously, he never has.
HUNT: Kate, they at some point…
NOVAK: Do you think — you think you can get by in this — with this system without benefit cuts?
SHIELDS: I think — I think you have to have benefit cuts. I’d like to see you struck from the Social Security rolls, and people of your ilk
The sheer inanity of that dialog is just so depressing. How much money do you suppose those guys all make a year? Do you think that any of them will actually be affected by “benefit cuts?”
We will have to have benefit cuts. Just because we will. There is no other option and the Democrats are just being obstinate in not accepting what we all know will have to happen which is benefit cuts. Pat Moynihan said so! You Americans who will depend on Social Security top keep the wolf from the door are just going to have to deal. That’s the way it is. Taxes? What are these taxes you speak of?
This relates to a Talking Points post from last week in which Johnathan Chait wrote:
Yesterday, Josh argued here that “One of the Democrats’ greatest problems — far more insidious than many realize — is their desire to gain the approval and approbation of establishment Washington and its A-list pundits.”
Interestingly, a reporter friend of mine came across some evidence of this proposition that very night. As he told me:
I was talking yesterday with a very influential Democratic congressman who firmly defended the current Democratic position of not having a specific Social Security ‘plan’ on the table. Yet at the same time he was a little defensive about it. Why? “Because I keep hearing from you guys” — i.e., Washington reporters — “that we’re going to be in trouble for not having a plan,” he said. “And it makes me nervous.”
It occurs to me that liberals should spend more time writing reasoned e-mails to the punditocrisy than we do. It would be nice to break the lock that these gasbags have on the Democrats but we shouldn’t just pin our hopes on that alone. We should be working these refs with wily cunning. They seem to be pretty vacuous. It can’t be that hard.
While there were probably more votes of conscience in Congress on the bill than the public thinks, it is also pretty clear that the Christian conservative movement now has the clout on life-and-death issues to do what the National Rifle Association has done for years on gun control. Strengthened by the results of the November elections, the movement can convey to legislators that the intensity of their constituents’ beliefs is more important than the balance of national public opinion. Swayed by this reasoning, more than a few Democrats may be more interested in moving to the right on moral values than in staking out the middle of the political landscape.
One of the first big skirmishes in the culture wars was gun control. It seemed for a long time that the forces of progress and enlightened self interest would dictate that we would enact reasonable restrictions on the ownership of guns. Even the police backed such measures as a matter of self defense. I took it for granted for many years that common sense would prevail. But in the end the right won that battle hands down. It’s over. There isn’t even a discussion about it when a kid gets his hands on a bunch of guns and mows down ten people. Nothing. Just collateral damage, folks. The price we pay for the right to bear arms.
Does the “culture of life” extend to the victims of gun violence?
That’s the question critics are asking after President Bush’s contrasting responses to the two events dominating national attention this week.
Although Bush made a special trip back to Washington from vacation to sign legislation offering a new federal right of appeal to Terri Schiavo’s parents, the president and his aides have said almost nothing about the mass shooting in Red Lake, Minn. — the deadliest outbreak of school violence since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo.
The Minnesota tragedy has increased alarm among some school safety professionals about Bush’s efforts to eliminate funding for two major programs meant to prevent classroom violence, including a Clinton administration initiative to help schools hire more police officers.
“It makes absolutely no sense that at a time when we are talking about better protecting bridges, monuments, dams and even the hallways of Congress, that we are going backward in protecting the hallways of our schools,” said Kenneth S. Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm.
Bush’s responses to the Schiavo case and the school shootings track with the preferences of two of his core constituencies.
Conservative Christians pressed Bush to intervene for Schiavo, while the National Rifle Assn. and other gun-owner groups generally look to minimize the relevance of political responses to mass shootings.
“It seems callous to talk about politics or to try to push a legislative agenda on the back of this heart-rending crime,” the NRA’s chief spokesman, Andrew Arulanandam, said in response to the Minnesota shootings.
I wrote earlier that I had given up on that battle because of the bill of rights. While I think that most sentient beings would interpret the 2nd amendment to mean that members of the militia (a sort of national guard in today’s parlance) should have access to weapons, I came to believe that any “interpretation” of the bill of rights was a mistake. In light of the zealots on the other side I decided that it was best to interpret the bill of rights as literally as possible or risk having these nutcases fool around with the fundamentals.
And they would. As Eugene Volokh said the other day, he doesn’t see the BOR as sacred writ and it’s pretty clear that these radical Republican Theocrats don’t either. Normally, I would agree that enlightened people could look at the BOR and make changes to it as their culture evolved in different ways, so of course it isn’t a sacred writ. But clearly we are not enlightened. I say now, don’t touch it in any way.
The right had a very powerful weapon to gain the support of civil libertarians in the battle over gun rights but they don’t have use of it in this next one. In fact, they are attacking the Bill of Rights and just as fundamentally, the independent judiciary that unholds them this time. And they are being quite open about it. Here’s the smarmy Hugh Hewitt:
WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS, the latest in a string of judicial decrees that run contrary to the will of the representative branch? Here’s one reaction that arrived in my email account an hour after the 11th Circuit chose to ignore Congress:
We are no longer a nation of laws. We are a nation of lawyers. It doesn’t matter how carefully we frame a law. It doesn’t matter what sort of initiative the voters pass. The elite judges do whatever they want. . . .
Lest you think I’m some sort of ignorant red-neck, I have a Ph.D. in History from the University of California. I am deeply troubled by the rise of the rogue courts. Unless there is radical change–revolutionary change–we are doomed.
I don’t share my correspondent’s pessimism, but I think his anger is very widespread and fuels not only the strong support for Senator Frist’s decision to break the Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, but also a backlash against any Republican who sides with the Democrats on the coming rules change vote.
The polls don’t support their position in the Schiavo case, but neither did they support the NRA. It’s the zealousness of this constitutncy that will fuel their decision. Right now I am hearing that the zealots want to force Jeb Bush to send in troops to take custody of Schiavo and that he is thinking of doing it. (And BTW, any comparison between this and the Elian case is spurious. The Clinton administration was upholding the court’s decision while Jebbie would be going expressly against it. That’s something that normal people would call a constitutional crisis.)
If Democrats think that moving right on these alleged religious and “life” issues will help them, however, they are wrong. This is much bigger than the gun issue. If the GOP can destroy Americans’ faith in the judiciary as being capable of making unbiased, apolitical decisions, and if they succeed in intimidating judges the way they have intimidated the media, we will see the Bill of Rights radically reinterpreted. (And the big money boys will slither along behind collecting all the money.)
This Terri Schiavo thing is a perfect paradigm for our politics. Republicans are fundamentally contravening their own alleged principles by trying to put the federal government in the face of an intimate family decision-making process—“In interviews, some conservatives either dismissed the argument that the vote was a federal intrusion on states’ rights or argued that their opposition to euthanasia as part of their support of the right-to-life movement trumped any aversion they might have to a dominant federal government.”– and ignoring the structural problems (more here) they helped create vis-à-vis the nation’s health care coverage that are actually quite germane to the larger issues it raises. The Democrats, meanwhile, are taking a sensible position but are lack the confidence to defend it in public. And the media is covering the story as if it’s the Democrats who are risking the wrath of voters despite that fact that voters tell pollsters that 70 percent of the public supports their position.
The media, particularly the cable “news” networks, are what they are. Infotainment shows for news and tabloid junkies. (I just saw a story on CNN about a cat that was fitted with artificial limbs. I’m not kidding.) This is a problem.
But it is also a problem that Democrats can’t seem to step forward and take the mantle of straight talking common sense on issues like these. We are intimidated on these social issues because we are buying into the frame the right wants us to use — “the Bible” and “life.” I think our frame for these social issues should be “the constitution” and “freedom.” And from that we defend the judiciary on the basis of the separation of powers (checks and balances)and we defend people’s right to live their lives freely on the basis of the Bill of Rights. Frank Luntz wants to use the symbolism of the constitution for his side and I think we are nuts to let him do it. They treat the constitution like toilet paper and plenty of people will see that if we just point it out to them, particularly if we repeatedly invoke the constitution as the means of protecting their right to live as they choose without interference from busy bodies.
While the Democrats may still be scarred by its alleged association with 60’s libertinism, as Noam Scheiber writes here, the Republicans are revealing themselves to be contemporary radicals who are far more threatening. Scheiber uses the example of Bush flouting the UN as illustrative of how they win even when they are losing. But these issues that affect everyday lives are substantially different. People may be willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt on national security, about which they acknowledge that the experts in the government know more than they do. But on issues like social security and medical care they are many degrees more confident in their own experience and many degrees more skeptical of the government’s motives.
During the Clinton scandals, for instance, the Democrats came very close to taking back the congress in 1998 when the GOP went too far with their intrusion into his sex life. The public rejected the sanctimonious moralizing of the Republicans. Middle aged men having extra marital affairs is not shocking, nor is it something that most people believe is a public matter. Similarly, most people see this public spectacle of the Schiavo case for the political stunt that it is.
The problem is that Democrats failed last time to stake out for themselves the common sense argument with which people already agree and run on it. It’s a terrible mistake because this is the very basis of the culture war.
These people want to dictate how you live your private life. They want to tell you who you can marry, how to raise your kids, what religion to practice (and you must practice it) and what “values” you must hold. And they want to use the strong arm of the government to do it. Sure, there are problems in our society. Yes we are living in a fast paced society in which it is difficult to raise children and the world is changing so quickly that it’s hard to keep your balance sometimes. But most Americans don’t wish for others to make decisions for them about how to live their day to day lives, regardless of the challenges. It’s just not the American character.
That is not to say that we have no concept of the common good. Americans once came to a consensus that the government was the most democratic means of helping people to mitigate the pitfalls of capitalism and ensuring all of its citizens a fair shake. But we have never seen it as a means to legislate what people do behind closed doors or when making the most personal life decisions about their marriages, families or their own bodies. We believe that the government is far too clumsy a mechanism for such delicate matters. The individual reigns supreme over himself. All we ask is citizens pitch in for the national defense, the running of the government, social services to help the weakest among us and insure themselves against the risks they must take in a dynamic capitalistic system.
It’s just this simple: The Republican party wants to tell you how to live your personal life while they systematically remove all government cooperation in ameliorating the risks this fast paced world creates. The Democrats want the government to leave you to make your own personal decisions while having it help you mitigate the social and economic risk our fast paced world creates. It is a stark choice. There is no reason we cannot begin to make the affirmative case for ourselves on this basis.
I don’t know who it will be, but I think that the Democrats will win when they find a candidate who can speak in common sense terms to the American people about who we are and who they are. I think people are nervous about these guys but they don’t know if we are any better. They are yearning for some clarity. If we provide it, they will come.
