I’m copying the whole of this post by Atrios because I think he really hits it as to what has changed fundamentally now about many American’s relationship to the news media…
In the post below I had meant to prominently include the 2000 election recount/selection as a cause of a major online lefty boom. While that was the time when I began to turn to the web for news/perspectives I couldn’t find elsewhere, it wasn’t actually until the inauguration that I finally concluded that something was seriously messed up, and that the problem was the media. I never had any illusions that Supreme Court Justices were noble people above reproach or that politicians could be trusted. I did at some point, however, have the sense that the mainstream media – CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, network news – while imperfect wasn’t completely broken. It was the coverage of the inauguration that did it for me.
You may remember that this was a cold and rainy day, truly miserable. Nonetheless thousands of protesters had gathered. However, most Americans would have no idea this was happening. Switching back and forth between coverage by the television networks, and the somewhat more raw footage carried by C-SPAN, it was apparent just how much effort the networks were expending to hide this fact from their viewing public. They would frequently cut away from the parade, provide odd camera angles, and do anything to maintain the illusion that the coronation was proceeding blissfully. The following day, for its inauguration coverage, the New York Times published a photo of George W. Bush walking the parade route. As discussed in Dennis Loy Jonson’s The Big Chill, this was an entirely staged photo. Bush had been unable to follow in the tradition established by Carter and carried on Ronald Reagan, Bush’s father, and Bill Clinton. The presence of the protesters prevented this, and it wasn’t until after Bush had left the public parade route, and was behind a barrier, that he could briefly hop out of the limousine and wave for the cameras. The Times had established a practice which impacted much of the media’s reporting on the activities of the Bush administration. They signaled a willingness to report things not as they necessarily were but as the administration wished to present them.
Emphasis above are mine. For me, the moment when I finally came to the conclusion that something is seriously messed up and the problem is the media, came at the tail end of a slow steady accumulation of small observations that they were becoming part of the spin. And that was preceded by many years of watching the quality of the news broadcasts getting thinner and thinner, as the right wing became more and more skilled at intimidating and undermining the press.
For decades, literally, I’d watched the news media cover the gay rights movement with that faux even handedness that demands that gutter crawling bigots be granted equal stature while on camera, even when it meant they could spread one filthy lie after another about gay and lesbian Americans without any of it being challenged as nonfactual, because to do so would be "taking sides" in a "controversial topic." I’ve been writing here for years now that this behavior, this faux even handedness on the part of the news media was probably more painfully familiar to gay America then to straight. Even so, my jaw kept dropping again and again during the Bush years, as staringly obvious Bush white house lies were simply passed along without comment by the press.
I don’t know when exactly I’d finally concluded that the media had embedded themselves in the Bush spin machine, but the ghastly performance during MISSION ACCOMPLISHED day was what finally convinced me that they really were part of the problem. As a gay man, all the fawning adoration of Bush’s "masculinity" on that carrier deck by the news media and the Washington pundocracy that day, and in the weeks that followed, struck me as…weird. Very, very weird.
The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 m.p.h. to zero in two seconds. Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.
He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics.
Compared to Karl Rove’s ”revvin’ up your engine” myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer’s movies look like ”Lizzie McGuire.”
This time Maverick didn’t just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MIG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.
–Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, May 4, 2003
……
MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?
LIDDY: Well, I—in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know—and I’ve worn those because I parachute—and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count—they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.
…..
MATTHEWS: Let’s go to this sub–what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo op in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I’ve got to say.
Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on–onboard that ship loved this guy.
Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I’m not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn’t do it for me personally, especially not when he’s in a suit, but he arrived there…
MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.
Ms. KAY: …he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn’t he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.
MATTHEWS: I want him to wa–I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.
It was only later I heard from other pilots that the usual thing is to take off your parachute harness once you’re out of the airplane. But you knew he was deliberately calling attention to his genitals the moment you saw it. Bush kept the parachute harness on and swaggered around that carrier deck in pure frat boy jock sneerage, like some alpha ape wagging his dong around looking for a fight after he’s just beaten the crap out of another poor ape half his size. It was amazing. Another time, it seemed long long ago, I might have been appalled. But the longer its gone on, the more desensitized I’ve become to it. There is a sizable portion of America that a man like that really does adequately represent. And they really do enjoy making the rest of us flinch at the sight of that open sewer they call a conscience.
We are sexual beings, yes. And brazen male sexuality can be an awesomely thrilling thing to behold. This gay boy has beheld lots of defiantly brazen sexual posturing among human males. But there is a difference when it’s meant to get you all hot and bothered and when it’s sneering and disdainful and meant only to intimidate and threaten. And even then, even in the old human struggle for status and power and glory, the sexual posturing of the more recently evolved alpha males among us is more a subtext then a crude locker room joke. But for those males among us with small frontal lobes, the sexual component of aggression takes center stage the minute the chest thumping begins.
"Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out."
It was always obvious what kind of man Bush was. It was clear to me after November 2000 that there were enough people in this country just like him to take the nation straight into the gutter if the rest of us didn’t start fighting back hard, and quickly. What really bothered me that day, and in the weeks that followed, was watching how many people in the mainstream news media were actually turned on by the sight of Bush swaggering around that carrier deck all but flashing his dick at the world…
I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking–how to put it?–really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly "hot," as in virile, sexy and powerful.
-Lisa Schiffren, The Wall Street Journal 5/9/2003
So I’m watching all this gushing and fawning, all these media big shots getting the vapors over Junior’s Manly Characteristic, along with thugs like G. Gordon Liddy and I’m getting that same smarmy feeling I’ve had a time or two, stumbling onto something going on in the bathroom stalls at the back of some really seedy gay bar I’d been dragged into. When sex gets dragged into the toilet you don’t know whether to cry or puke. You just want to look away and get the hell out of there. Except the shadowy figures in the toilet stalls have more dignity then these goddamned news media talking heads. At least there is honest desire going on in there. I watched the American news media having hot flashes over Bush all but wagging his dick at the world after he’d just started a war and I think that was when I knew that far too many media big shots nowadays were part of the same open sewer that Bush had risen from, and that was why they were cheering him on, why they thumped their chests for war too, why they hate democrats, why they treat all that bleeding heart liberal peace love and understanding stuff with sneering contempt. It wasn’t that they were stupid. It wasn’t that they’d been co-opted. It was that the smirking boob really was their kind of guy.
It’s not just the news media either. Ever notice how, on the prime time TV cop shows, the good guys can threaten suspects and witnesses with prison rape unless they cooperate, and still remain good guys?
Legalizing gay marriage would "only strengthen New York’s families," according to Governor Spitzer, who laid forth his most detailed argument in favor of recognizing same-sex relationships in a legislative memo.
Mr. Spitzer, who late last month became the nation’s first governor to propose legislation legalizing gay marriage, articulated a legal and moral argument in defense of the bill in a two-page "statement in support" that is being distributed to lawmakers.
The governor’s forceful language adds even more contrast between his position and that of the major Democratic candidates for president, including Senator Clinton, all of whom oppose gay marriage but favor civil unions.
Supporters of the bill said they were heartened and surprised by the governor’s appeal and said they viewed it as another sign that gay marriage could become a more mainstream Democratic position. While Mr. Spitzer’s stance is not shared by his party’s top-tier White House hopefuls, it could become a more widely accepted position within the party by 2012, when Mr. Spitzer, a nationally known political figure, may be a candidate for president.
The memo, which was prepared by the governor’s counsel, directly confronts one of the main arguments made by opponents of gay marriage, who have warned that allowing same-sex couples to marry would erode the institution of marriage.
"Same-sex couples who wish to marry are not simply looking to obtain additional rights, they are seeking out substantial responsibilities as well: to undertake significant and binding obligations to one another, and to lives of ‘shared intimacy and mutual financial and emotional support,’" the memo states.
"Granting legal recognition to these relationships can only strengthen New York’s families, by extending the ability to participate in this crucial social institution to all New Yorkers."
Opponents of gay marriage said the governor was trying to co-opt their argument.
"He’s couching it in this family values language, which is insulting. He’s trying to turn our argument on its head," a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, said. The conference is the public policy arm of the bishops of New York.
Actually Dennis, the insult was you and all your pals in the American political gutter turning the words "Family" and "Values" into code for prejudice and hate. On its head, did you say? I’m laughing in your face bigot. Your kind has turned two precious human institutions, Family and Marriage on Their heads; from things that nurture and sustain us, into instruments of your cheapshit culture war. May. You. Be. Damned.
The bill memo also suggests that civil unions, adopted by a number of states to confer many of the legal rights enjoyed by married couples, offer insufficient protection.
"Civil marriage is the means by which the state defines a couple’s place in society. Those who are excluded from its rubric are told by the institutions of the State, in essence, that their solemn commitment to one another has no legal weight," the memo says.
Mr. Spitzer also tries to place the legislation in a historical context by arguing that the "history of this country" has been a story of excluded groups achieving access to equal rights. New York has long been a main character in that story, the memo says.
You Might Sample “The Death Cookie” Too, While You’re At It…
Andrew Sullivan discovers Jack Chick…
A 1984 evangelical Christian cartoon pamphlet, helpfully put online here. Don’t tell Hewitt. It could upset the Popular Front. (I think the racial stuff is out of date.)
OLBERMANN: Let’s just sit here a moment more as we watch this. And this touches on the idea of regal qualities that were not seen in South Carolina. This is the prosession, this is the parade, these are tonight’s debaters. The ten candidates, filing out, just in fact to our right. We can see them from where we are seated. There is a coronation quality that just was not present in South Carolina.
FINEMAN: Keith, if you look at that picture and took away all of the writing and all of the words, and just had the image, could the American people tell that those were Republicans? I think the answer is yes. There is a hierarchical, there is, dare I say it, male, there is an old-line quality to them that some voters, indeed a lot of voters, find reassuring. And this is something that the Democrats need to understand. The Democrats are the “we are family” party, which is great, but this is the other side of the conversation and this is their home here. We really are in Reagan country.
Anyone remember how Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign on a theme of State’s Rights…in Philadelphia, Mississippi…the town where civil rights workers Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered? Yes, it’s about old male superiority…but not just any old males…
But the "old guard" that so many people find reassuring isn’t just male, is it? The Democrats had a couple of other inappropriate people on that stage last week — a brown one and a black one. (Yet another example of that ridiculous "we are family" stuff.)
I think the Democrats know very well what "the other half of the conversation" is, don’t you?
I, for one, found it extremely "reassuring" that only three out of ten of the Republican candidates for president don’t believe in evolution. And only nine out of ten said it would be a good day if Roe v Wade were repealed. Hey, it could have been worse.
Only nine out of ten? Gosh. They’re really getting liberal over there, aren’t they.
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)
In case you were wondering why the quality of journalism coming out of Washington is so Piss poor, David Broder explains here…
Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove. In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land.
It isn’t simply that they’re mindlessly parroting the talking points of whoever occupies the White House, as even a faint recollection of the unmitigated hostility Bill Clinton got from them recalls. No. They’re see themselves as part of that republican ruling elite now. There’s David Broder, the man they call the "dean" of Washington journalism, happily recalling his times eating quail…Quail, mind you…with Karl Rove in his historic cabin. And no…I strongly doubt they went out hunting quail beforehand. Not with Cheney anyway.
Sorta puts Broder’s crack about how the Clinton’s came in and "trashed the place" into perspective doesn’t it? Read that Sally Quinn column…it’s one big long inside the beltway bellyache about Clinton and Monica…and ask yourself where the puffed up moral outrage is over…oh say, Guantanamo Bay, the shredding of the Geneva Convention, torture, the destruction of New Orleans, the use of the Department of Justice as a weapon against political opponents and against dissent, being lied into a war that’s killed thousands of young Americans who had their whole lives ahead of them, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of the people we allegedly went to war to liberate. Don’t see it? Well there’s a reason for that. The Washington news establishment all regarded the Clinton team as nothing more then poor southern white trash in Their Town and that’s why they hated them. That’s all that mattered to them then, and it’s all that matters to them now.
One should note here that Step 5, the Final Stage, is almost always sponsored by those who endlessly proclaim how irresponsible and substance-free and unserious political bloggers are, and who thereafter write pieces which do nothing other than repeat the latest Drudge gossip.
You should go read it, because we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing when the 2008 presidential campaign really gets going.
As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.
The other was a nine millimeter Glock. Yes, in fact you Can hose down a place with a semi automatic handgun. Ask me how I know. And according to news accounts, he had a lot of ammo with him.
At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him.
You’re a kid sitting peacefully in class and then someone bursts in and starts shooting. Never mind you have not clue one at that point what kind of gun it is, let alone how many rounds it can hold. Never mind the blast of even a small caliber handgun inside a closed space can be positively disorienting. Never mind that with practice you can drop the clip on that Glock and have another in it and a round chambered faster then someone could probably rush you unless you were practically standing right over them. Just fucking for once in your life try to put yourself in someone else’s place you drooling soulless right wing babbling moron. You’re a kid…you are in class peacefully going on about your school day and then suddenly you and your classmates are being shot at. By the time the first few shots are fired your thoughts are a frightened scrambled mess. Count? Count? Grow a fucking brain Derbyshire, you pathetic warrior male wannabe.
Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat.
Why is that not surprising. I shoot mine all the time too John, and I figure I’m not all that exceptional at hitting what I’m shooting at, because most of the other folks at the range there with me usually do too. But you probably think the gun adds several inches to your dick and that’s why you’re not really working it. You think just holding it in your hand makes you something. No. It doesn’t. It’s just a damn gun and you’re still the sorry brain dead soulless asshole you were before you picked it up.
Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything?
Moron! Asswipe! The people on Flight 93 were grown Adults dealing with a situation that allowed them the means to find out what was happening to them (via their cell phones) and time to get themselves organized and together. And their attackers didn’t have guns, only crude knifes. The passengers of flight 93 had a chance the kids at VA Tech never did.
Point of fact, I read of at least one adult, a professor, who seems to have actually tried to save as many of his kids as he could, by staying behind and trying to block the doorway as his kids jumped out the classroom windows. Apparently the killer managed to get in anyway because that professor was one of the dead. But he stayed behind to try and save some of his kids. There’s a hero.
Another Reason Why Public Education In America Is Under Attack…
No…not because the religious right doesn’t want anybody to learn any science that contradicts the bible. Not because right wing republicans don’t want an educated public going to the polls. Yes…it’s all that…but it’s also this: a lot of American adults have bad memories of their treatment at the hands of teachers, administrators, principals. Not quite as extreme as this kid’s…but similar in kind…
A Hempfield Area High School sophomore spent 12 days in juvenile detention after authorities in Westmoreland County mistakenly charged him with making a March 11 bomb threat, in part because the district had not changed its clocks to reflect daylight-saving time.
Cody Webb, 15, of Hempfield, was arrested March 12 and charged with a felony count of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction and misdemeanor counts of making false alarms to public entities, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and making terrorist threats.
Webb, an honors student involved in student council, tennis and the Japanese Club, was immediately taken to the county’s juvenile detention center.
"Cody never even had a (school) detention," said his mother, Linda Webb. "It was a nightmare."
Cody called the school’s automated delay announcement system. An hour later someone called in a bomb threat. But the time stamp was off by an hour because of the new start of daylight savings time this year.
Now…the school officials also had, by the time they dragged Cody into the Principal’s office, a recording of the threat, but…well…like I said…there are a lot of Americans who know by now, how this story is going to go…
"Mrs. Charlton asked me if I had a cell phone. I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said, ‘What’s the number?’ I told her, and she started saying, ‘We got him. We got him.’ I was completely oblivious to what they were talking about," he said.
In the Principal’s office, administrators demanded that Webb admit to calling in the bomb threat, he said.
"I wasn’t going to admit to something I didn’t do," he said. "Me and God know I didn’t do it."
Webb’s parents, Linda and Budd Webb, arrived at the school and listened to the recorded bomb threat. Linda Webb told administrators it wasn’t her son.
"They kept saying that it was his voice. They didn’t even know him," she said.
After a state trooper arrived, Charlton told the teen he was being arrested, and the trooper read Webb his Miranda rights.
"I was in shock," Webb said.
They had their man and nothing was going to change their minds about it…let alone the facts. Yes…it gets better. But you probably knew that…
The next day, Webb had a detention hearing and was held for court. After 10 more days in detention, Webb was back in court for his case to be heard. He was released to his parents’ custody that day after Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge John Driscoll continued the hearing when the state police failed to appear.
The kid, an honor roll student, has now been held in a juvenile detention center for 12 days and the police can’t be bothered to show up for his hearing because…why…? Well…
Trooper Jeanne Martin, spokeswoman for state police at Greensburg, said the time change was an issue. Driscoll dismissed the charges March 27.
The teen said he did call the school’s delay hot line early Sunday, March 11. But that was an hour before the bomb threat was phoned in, said the family’s attorney, Tim Andrews. After Webb’s parents obtained his cell phone records, Andrews found the call times did not match.
"I found out the district had not changed their clocks to reflect daylight-saving time," Andrews said. "They were changed Monday morning."
Somebody else besides the kid’s attorney was also looking at the evidence…
"The district attorney subpoenaed the cell phone records, and it didn’t take more than a minute to see the times didn’t match," Andrews said.
Whoops! Of course…the school considers itself blameless…
Hempfield solicitor Dennis Slyman said law enforcement did not question administrators about the school’s clocks.
"The authorities never, never asked us anything about the clocks and daylight-saving time," Slyman said. "Whatever they did was with their own investigation and outside the auspices of the school district."
It’s their fault they arrested a kid we told them had made a bomb threat, and threw him in jail…
Yes…it gets better… You knew it did…
Budd Webb wept as he described learning that his son would be cleared.
"I got a callfrom our attorney that said he had paperwork signed by Judge Driscoll dropping the felony and misdemeanor charges against my son," he said.
County juvenile detention officials wanted to keep Webb in custody, Andrews said. "They wanted him to have a mental health evaluation because he wouldn’t admit to making the call."
(emphasis mine). They had the wrong person, but since they couldn’t make him admit to making a bomb threat that he had not made, they felt that was evidence of a mental problem.
And of course…they’re blameless too…
County officials said Tuesday that Webb was in custody no longer than the law requires.
"Legally, we were OK. We didn’t step on this kid’s rights," said Mike Sturnick, supervisor for the juvenile probation office.
Well thank goodness they only kept an innocent kid in jail no longer then the law allows.
Now…at this point…if you haven’t attended public school in America, or you had a much, Much better experience with teachers and school officials during your childhood then most people, that tape recording of the bomb threat may still be nagging at you. How could they sit a kid and his mother down and play a recording of that does not sound like that kid making a bomb threat, and still insist that it was that kid making that threat…you may be wondering. I see you’ve never been accused by a teacher or a principal of something doing something that you didn’t do…
Webb gave an insight into the school’s impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied ‘she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”’
‘They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,’ he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: ‘Well, why should we believe you? You’re a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.’
Upon further reflection, you can see how the whole republican right wing attack on public education, even, how their attack on our system of justice, plays on a deeply felt resentment a lot of Americans have toward their childhood experiences at the hands of ignorant kid hating louts who only became teachers because they couldn’t master the art of flipping hamburgers at McDonalds.
Home schooling…it isn’t just for religious fanatics anymore…
Webb’s mother arranged home-schooling for him until he decides where to continue his education. He doesn’t want to return to Hempfield.
The kid was an honors student. He had an active academic life. Was in the school council. And in an instant, a jackass principal taught him a lesson about life, hard work, academic excellence and achievement he’ll never fucking forget. And lesson about the public schools. Somewhere, Pat Robertson is smiling.
Oh…and…
Martin said the state police investigation into the bomb threat remains open.
No shit Sherlock. Gotta love those awesome police investigative skills you folks there have. When someone at the station complains their computer isn’t working, how long before someone checks to see if it’s plugged in…? Just curious…
I caught a reference to a 2005 article in the Boston Globe about the propaganda machines of the religious right. It was one I’d read before, but I don’t think I’d managed to blog about it then. It’s a good one…well worth reading still. These are religious right front organizations that take on the trappings of legitimate science and then inject themselves into the news stream as opposing viewpoints to well established institutions. They’re completely fake, but the mainstream news media, and in particular the TV networks, all give them a platform to spread their lies under a bogus effort at "balance", and because it suits the money at the top of the media corporations to keep republicans in power…
President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ”Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.
Bush’s assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.
But Bush’s statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ”Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" — a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.
The president’s statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ”dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.
That pediatric study asserted a ”considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.
The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.
Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.
For example, Cameron’s Family Research Institute, with an annual budget of less than $200,000, tries to counter the views of the 150,000-member American Psychological Association, which has an annual budget of $98 million. The tiny American College of Pediatricians has a single employee, yet it has been quoted as a counterpoint to the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.
(emphasis mine) The quickest way to deflate the propaganda of these religious right front groups is to shine a light on them. More often then not you find their bogus studies and stats getting injected into the political conversation without acknowledgment of where it came from. That’s because these outfits are well understood to be propaganda mills and not real scientific institutions, whatever their names make them sound like. So whenever politicians like president Nice Job Brownie start quoting their numbers, reporters need to ask where those numbers came from.
Senior Bush aides, asked for the basis of the comment about adoption, now say they are unaware of any studies comparing heterosexual and same-sex adoptions — by Cameron or by any pediatric association. The president, they say, was probably referring to studies that show children are better off living with both biological parents — though those studies have nothing to do with adoption by same-sex couples.
Duck and weave, duck and weave. You may remember the time Mr. Book Of Virtue Bill Bennett got caught on ABC’s This Weekquoting Paul Cameron’s bogus figure for the average lifespan of homosexuals. He first denied he got it from Cameron, then he said there were other researchers who got the same figures. And so there were. The other researcher Bennett pointed to, Jeffrey Satinover, had in fact, gotten his figures from Cameron too. When that was pointed out to him, Bennett retracted the claim, only to make it again some years later.
In June, the Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York chapter of the Christian Coalition, said in a speech protesting Gay Pride Day that gays should be legally required to wear warning labels, not unlike Jewish stars under the Nazis.
"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one or two years off the average life span, yet we celebrate a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span, according to the 2005 issue of the revered [sic] scientific journal Psychological Reports."
One month later, Dr. John Whiffen, chairman of the board of the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, a faith-basped advocacy group that was contracted by Bush Administration federal health officials to develop an abstinence education curriculum, said that, "There are obvious effects for male homosexuals from a health standpoint. Parents should discuss those with their child." Then he added: "It’s fairly well-accepted that smoking is not a good idea. It takes seven years off your life. It appears that male homosexuality takes more than that off your life. Naturally you should warn them about that."
You notice that none of these people said anything about where they got their information about homosexuality. That’s because they know full well that it comes from a completely untrustworthy source. And yet even knowing that, they continue to cite it, and all those other bogus groups with names that mimick actual institutions of science. All the while posturing as defenders of virtue and morality and godliness…that pesky ninth commandment exempted.
What Digby said… See…what you need to paying attention to in the story about Imus…isn’t what Imus did…
As the media elite and various political insiders continue to behave as if they’ve just been hit over the head with a cudgel on this Imus matter, perhaps they should wake up and recognize that there have been people out there noticing the raw hypocrisy among this Imus Elite for years. And this does not just come from the more recent bloviating by scruffy bloggers in their deplorable "efficiency" apartments…
Hey man…don’t fuck with Vinny…
There have always been a handful of columnists and journalists who got it. And no one got it better than the late Lars Erik Nelson:
. . .
Washington Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) came to the Senate floor with a look of sad concern on his face. He was deeply troubled, he said, at the vulgar, morally repugnant content of the new TV season. "We are lowering the standards of what is acceptable in our society and we are sending a message to our children," he said. He denounced an "acceptance of rude language, foul imagery and gross behavior in the entertainment mainstream."
Then, warning parents who might be watching on C-SPAN to move their little children away from the TV sets, Lieberman cited a few of the outrages: On ABC’s "Wilde Again," a character asks to be called "Daddy’s little whore." Another ABC program showed an upraised middle finger. CBS’ "Bless This House" used the phrase "little hooters" in reference to a girl’s breasts. "Profoundly disturbing," Lieberman intoned. "Sophomoric."
Funny thing: The previous morning, Lieberman had been a guest, as is his regular custom, on the Don Imus radio show on WFAN…
And as it turns out, there were a lot of other self righteous congressional scolds stopping by the Imus show back then. Democrats and republicans, chasing the vote in Imus’ young white male demographic. And did our mainstream news media ever bother to point out the hypocrisy of politicians bellyaching about the decay of television entertainment while appearing regularly on one of talk radio’s biggest cesspools? Oh grow up.
There’s a phrase you hear now and then in political campaigning…Dog Whistle Politics. It’s the art of using certain words and catch phrases that a specifically targeted audience will hear and respond to, while going over the heads of most of the rest of the audience as a whole. The republicans, and in particular the Bush team, are masters of the dog whistle. A good example of it was when Bush said that the Iraq war would "look just like a comma" to future historians. It raised a lot of hackles that Bush would trivialize a war that had killed so many, wounded so many and was still killing and wounding. But as Ian Welsh pointed out in The Agonist, it was a dog whistle to his hard core religious right base, recalling the proverb "Never put a period where God has put a comma."
It may be hard to think of Imus as a kind of dog whistle, but bear with me. The audience that Lieberman and all the others were trying to appeal to when they went on their crusade for TV decency wouldn’t be caught dead tuning into Don Imus cesspool, even out of curiosity. That kind of thing just disgusts the hell out of them. So all the voters who would have been nodding their heads approvingly while Lieberman and other politicians were puffing themselves up condemning all the tits and ass on prime time TV, wouldn’t be regular listeners to Imus anyway. The only people who would have known the extent of their hypocrisy, because they’d seen it with their own two eyes, were the news media talking heads who were also Imus regulars…and they kept their mouths shut too because they had books to sell on his show. So the politicians get to troll Imus for votes among that hard to reach resentful young white male demographic at the same time they’re trolling for votes among the shocked middle class soccer mom demographic.
And now the lot of them are all looking like they’ve just been caught in a police raid on a whorehouse.
By all means, Lieberman, Bradley, Dole and the rest should go on Imus. But if they do, spare us the sanctimonious sermons about the vulgarity of modern broadcasting.
They never stopped. in fact three years later Lieberman took to the floor of the Senate and "helped" Bill Clinton by saying to the whole world that he was immoral. All of these moral scolds, but most especially Lieberman, are rank hypocrites.
I do not want to hear another word from these people about civility, rudeness and the decline of the discourse. And I certainly don’t want to hear any more BS about blogging ethics and good manners on the internet from any of them. For more than a decade we had to endure lectures from many of these people about "values" and more recently we’ve had to listen to them call for the smelling salts over the degradation of the public square from the barbaric polloi. Yet throughout they loved to hang around with that overgrown adolescent and let him sell their books for him when he wasn’t cruelly disparaging everything in his sights, including them. If those are the decent values Joe Lieberman has been braying about incessantly for the last decade, he certainly got what what he was looking for.
A 15-year-old gay Centennial High School student was taunted and attacked by six classmates last week because of his sexual orientation.
The victim was undergoing surgery for a broken nose and facial injuries today, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Gay Alliance.
The incident happened last Thursday afternoon, when Anthony Hergesheimer was walking home from Centennial High School along Denver Boulevard, the organization said. Six male students, ages 15 and 16, in a vehicle apparently passed by Hergesheimer several times before they stopped and hurled anti-gay insults at him.
One of the students also got out of the vehicle and threw a can of Lysol at Hergesheimer, who suffered a broken nose and severe facial injuries.
Lysol. Like they were cleansing the street of some kind of human garbage…
The six male Centennial students, who were not identified, were suspended Monday until a decision is made about possible expulsion. The district usually has 25 days to make a recommendation on whether to expel a student.
Pueblo police is also investigating the attack and possible criminal charges may be filed against the youths.
But it’s not the teenagers who attacked the gay kid who need to be ashamed of themselves, according to The Alliance Defense Fund…
God has condemned them. They should live in shame. What was I saying the other day? You can’t paint a bulls-eye on a group of kids, tell their peers that those kids are condemned by god, and not expect that every now and then one of them will get the shit beaten out of them. But…that’s the intent isn’t it? A fearful homosexual is a good homosexual. You have to beat the pride out of them young. Christianity has come to this in the Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave: Accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior means you can set kids loose on other kids, and still look at yourself in a mirror. Who would Jesus throw the first can of Lysol at?
I don’t know when this aired, and I’ve never seen it on any list of Imus’s racist bits, but it’s pretty awful.
You can listen to it at the link here, and also here and here.
Transcript:
IMUS: Some of you may know, who listen to the Imus in the Morning program on a regular basis, there is a new group being formed called the Black Beatles.
BLACK BEATLES MEMBER (in a stereotypical black accent): That’s right, Don. My name is Tyrone McCartney…
IMUS: Uh-huh.
TYRONE McCARTNEY: … bass player for the fabulous Black Beatles, and me and my friends Leroy Lennon, George Jellybean Darnell Rashad Mustafa Muhammad Harrison, and Bingo Starr, we have a new album out of our very famous #1 hits called Beat the Meatles.
IMUS: What’s that?
TYRONE McCARTNEY: Beat the Meatles. We wanted y’all to get it ’cause it’s got some of our famous #1 hits, like this one: (singing) "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary come to me and speak those woids of wisdom, ‘What it be.’"
And how ’bout this one? (singing) "I shoulda known better with a bitch like you." "Jo Jo was a man who only had three inches, but he knew it wouldn’t last, Jo Jo never had much luck with all the bitches, but I said, ‘Hey, Jo, get black. Get black, get black, get black and watch your johnson grow.’" "Lucy in the sky with a lot of jewelry on." "Strawberry-flavored malt liquor." "Here come my son, he play football. Here come my son, and I say, ‘He bad.’" "I’m back on the old FDR." "Yesterday, my parole came through just yesterday." "Hey dude, lend me a dollar." "I can play center, I can play forward, I be six foot four."
And, of course, my personal favorite: (singing) "We all live in a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville. And my friends is all aboard, many more of them is in the trunk, vinyl tires with wire wheels, in my yellow Coupe de Ville."
Swell. Just swell.
IMUS: A lot of friends of mine called, but I didn’t want to put up — put anybody on this morning who wasn’t scheduled, because I can make my own case, and it is what it is.
OLIPHANT: But to me, that only means that those of us who, through an accident, were scheduled, who know better, have a moral obligation to stand up and say to you, "Solidarity forever, pal."
Right Tom. "We all live in a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville.
Trash Talk Radio – New York Times: LET’S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather. The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen.
In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee’s Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers’ Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That’s the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It’s what explodes so many March Madness office pools.
But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded “nappy-headed ho’s” — a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The “joke” — as delivered and later recanted — by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny.
The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he’s done some version of this several times before. I know, because he apparently did it to me.
I was covering the White House for this newspaper in 1993, when Mr. Imus’s producer began calling to invite me on his radio program. I didn’t return his calls. I had my hands plenty full covering Bill Clinton. Soon enough, the phone calls stopped. Then quizzical colleagues began asking me why Don Imus seemed to have a problem with me. I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program. It was not until five years later, when Mr. Imus and I were both working under the NBC News umbrella — his show was being simulcast on MSNBC; I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network — that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat.
“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”
I was taken aback but not outraged. I’d certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show.
I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me. It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.
Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’s program? That’s for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don’t know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far.
Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It’s more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well. So here’s what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field. Let’s see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.
I’m old enough to remember when it was merely taken for granted that white males had the right to piss on everyone who wasn’t white and male. That was in addition to having the right to piss on everyone who Was white and male and below them on the economic ladder. Ever wonder why poor whites consistently vote republican against their better economic interests, especially in certain parts of this country? It’s because racism gives them status, even over well-off people of color. Without racism they’re just another face on the bottom of the pile. The resentment these people feel, and have felt ever since the black civil rights movement began tearing down the walls of race segregation in America, are enormous and run very, very deep. They feel as though they’ve lost their place, their status, Their Manhood, in a country that was once theirs…them and the rich white men holding them and everyone else down on the economic ladder. Rich white men like Don Imus…but more to the point, his producers…the people that make his radio and TV platform possible with their money, and their radio and TV networks.
They give Imus his platform to play his Good ‘Ol Boy shtick, knowing full well who it plays to, knowing full well it allows that audience to imagine itself as part of the same privileged class as the rich white guys who own the airwaves. They’d be escorted quickly to the door by well dressed butlers wearing gloves so as not to get their hands dirty if they ever showed up in any of the exclusive clubs and playgrounds the people who pay for Imus’ broadcasts enjoy. But for a few moments listening to him going through his crude, racist, bigoted Good ‘Ol Boy patter routine, they can imagine that they’re all comrades in arms, all sharing the same bitter resentments toward the uppity darkies, women, and faggots who used to know their place.
So it’s spectacularly unsurprising to see the simple, straightforward reflex of Imus and his crew to spit in the faces of a group of young black girls who had succeeded where nobody thought they would. That’s What They’re On The Radio For. This gutter crawling racism on Imus’ part isn’t anything new…nor is it anything particularly out of place on Talk Radio. That’s why talk radio has the large audience it does.
And that large audience, is why Talk Radio’s big names are held in high regard by the guardians of mainstream media opinion…why Rush Limbaugh and Imus and others of their kind can command the respect of the mainstream news media and its pundocracy, even as that pundocracy wags, wags, wags its finger at bloggers…well…progressive bloggers anyway…for being such an uncouth, uncivilized rabble. There’s no double standard here. No hypocrisy. The moral standard is, as always, money. How many of copies of our books can you sell?
OLIPHANT: What I thought would be instructive for people is to go back on the tape to a minute or so before this happens and see if you can see it developing. Now, believe me, as you well know, I don’t know beans about hip-hop culture or trash-talking, or what do you call those things where you run on forever? Riffs, or whatever.
But even I could see the beginning of what appeared to me to be a riff. And the train went off the tracks, which, you know, can happen to anybody. And, of course, what counts when the train goes off the tracks is what you then do. And that’s why I, you know, didn’t have a moment’s hesitation talking to this guy from The New York Times yesterday. Of course I didn’t think about reacting like that because I saw the whole episode in context, including your statements about it.
IMUS: A lot of friends of mine called, but I didn’t want to put up — put anybody on this morning who wasn’t scheduled, because I can make my own case, and it is what it is.
OLIPHANT: But to me, that only means that those of us who, through an accident, were scheduled, who know better, have a moral obligation to stand up and say to you, "Solidarity forever, pal."
Solidarity Forever…
IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between — a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women’s final.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night — seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.
IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and —
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
Solidarity Forever…
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don’t know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
Solidarity Forever…
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes — that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough —
McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Solidarity Forever…
IMUS: I don’t know if I’d have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
RUFFINO: Only tougher.
McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.
Solidarity Forever…
“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”
Welcome to the gutter Tom. I hear book sales are pretty brisk once you get that initial sale of your soul taken care of…
Another “homosexual lifespan" study has hit the news. According to a flurry of press releases making rounds, married gays in Scandinavia die 24 years younger than everyone else:
Once more, Burroway completely destroys Cameron’s propaganda (even calling it junk science ennobles it, really) by way of the simple trick of actually looking at the data. This is Cameron’s essential technique…one he has perfected over the decades he’s been generating bogus statistics on homosexuality for the religious right: first gerrymander the data, then analyze it as though you hadn’t. His classic study which is still being used today as proof that the lifespan of gay people is significantly shorter then that of heterosexuals, was conducted on data Cameron pulled from the obituary pages of two gay newspapers. At the height of the first wave of AIDS deaths. He averaged the age of death in those obituaries and compared it with that of the average lifespan of the population as a whole. His supporters have argued since that you can compare the average age at death in mainstream news papers and even in small ethnic ones and get a figure that is comparable to the average lifespan figures of the population as a whole. But this still makes the same essential mistake of assuming that the social and cultural context gay community papers exist in isn’t different enough that it would skew the data you’re pulling out of the obituary notices. In fact it is. Staringly obviously so.
The local gay paper was then, and is now, a fairly new phenomena in a nation that only until the latter part of the twentieth century was even disposed to admit that homosexuals existed, much less allow them to print their own newspapers. In fact, until the hated Warren Court decided that homosexuals could in fact, distribute their own magazines and newspapers through the mail in 1958 in One v Olesen, it was pretty much impossible. So you have the fact that local gay papers are a recent phenomena. You have the fact that older gay people grew up in a climate of repression that marked most of them for life. You have the fact that even by the time Cameron started collecting gay obituaries the out and proud part of the gay community was decidedly skewed toward younger generations. You have the fact that obituaries are generally not placed in newspapers by the person who died but by their families, many of whom even today are reluctant to acknowledge the homosexuality of a dead relative (a number of obituaries in the mainstream press back then were written so as to conceal the fact that the deceased had succumbed to an AIDS related illness). They would be unlikely then to even consider placing an obit in a gay paper. You have the fact that the readership of gay papers then, as now, played to a largely urban and younger and more sexually active slice of the community as a whole. And on top of that you have the fact that Cameron was collecting his data while the death toll from AIDS was just coming off its peak. This is what Cameron was comparing to the average lifespan in the nation as a whole.
That’s his trademark: not so much falsifying the data, although he won’t shrink from doing that either whenever he thinks he can get away with it…but skewing the initial dataset, so right from the get-go any conclusions drawn from it will break in the direction he wants them to.
And his latest artwork may be his masterpiece:
Statistics Denmark and Statistics Norway publish official population cross-tabulations of marital status by age for each sex in their annual statistical yearbooks. Since 1994 in Denmark and 1995 in Norway, these tables have included separate categories for homosexual-partnered individuals…
Cameron is comparing the ages at death of married heterosexuals with same sex couples in registered partnerships. At first glance it seems shocking that the average age at death is so much lower for the same sex couples. But in reality it’s nothing more then a brilliant slight-of-hand…maybe his best yet. The problem, as Burroway notes, is that the statistics for married couples have been gathering for an entire century, but for the same sex couples, only for as long as there had been domestic partnerships in Denmark…just since 1989. There was no rush of older gay couples to register. So as Burroway put’s it…
Why is this important? The heterosexual sample has been accumulating under-forties for an entire century.(In 2005, the average age of the groom was 37.4 years; for the bride, 34.7 years) But registered same-sex partnerships have only been available in Denmark since 1989, which means the gay sample got a late start. And if the typical age of someone entering into a same-sex partnership is around forty, then it stands to reason that the typical age at death of someone who has died so far would be similarly young.
If I have a flock of mostly young sheep, and in one year five are eaten by wolves and two more die of disease I can’t look at that and say what the average lifespan of a sheep is. The age of my flock is skewed young to start with. I’d need to keep collecting lifespan data on my flock for a period of many years before I could assume I was getting a handle on the average lifespan of my sheep. What Cameron does is use data that only amounts to snapshots, and he is very careful to get just the right snapshots he wants, to end up with the results he wants:
Cameron’s Danish and Norwegian statistics show an average age at death in the fifties for registered partners simply because there aren’t many older partners in those samples to begin with. And the reason they aren’t in that sample is because for whatever reason, they haven’t registered their partnerships.
Now what might the reason for that be? Once again, you have the generational differences between those of us who grew up before Stonewall, and those of us who grew up after…
Cameron dismisses the idea that homophobia is a major factor in Scandinavia because “Canada, Norway, and Denmark are far more accepting of homosexual practitioners than the United States (where homosexuals are still barred from the military and ‘gay rights’ laws do not exist in most states).” But saying that homophobia is lower in Scandinavia isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t exist. For example, it is still illegal in Denmark for gay couples to adopt children except for the children of their registered partners. And homosexuality is still not acceptable among many Danes and Norwegians, particularly among those living in rural areas and among the older generations — precisely the populations that haven’t availed themselves of registered partnerships.
This generational difference in the willingness of people to be open about their homosexuality, or that of their family members, is something every honest scientific investigation of the gay community must acknowledge and deal with somehow. But for Paul Cameron its a handy way to filter out the old people, when he wants to prove that there aren’t any. Cameron’s trademark is to pull from pools of data that are intrinsically skewed strongly towards a young, urban, and sexually active slice of the gay community and then analyze that data as if it were a random sample that was representative of the whole. Wherever possible, he finds snapshots of those data pools…timeframes…that he knows will skew the results even further in the direction he wants them skewed.
We software engineers have long had a saying for it: Garbage In – Garbage Out. Give the man his due…Paul Cameron is a master at selecting just the right garbage to put in, to get the garbage he wants back out. And he’s getting better at it. In this latest propaganda missive of his he displays an impressively deft hand. Thank goodness for people like Jim Barroway.
Go read the rest of his report: Paul Cameron’s Footprint. And if you haven’t already, go read some of his other magnificent takedowns of this man’s propaganda. If you are someone who is gay, or knows someone who is, you will likely have some of Paul Cameron’s claptrap waved in your face at one time or another. He is, as he likes to call himself, the wellspring of all the anti-gay statistics religious right groups use to demonize homosexual people. He gets away with it because so few people bother to actually look closely at his work and see where he’s pulling his numbers from. Do the one thing they’re counting on you not to do: look behind the curtain.
I’m going to steal this shtick from Atrios, but I don’t think he’ll mind…
So I make myself some coffee and open my dead tree version of the NY Times this morning only to see a call for blogger ethics on the front page. How interesting. Another call for "managed civil speech" (which is claimed to be "freer" than unfettered free speech.) There was no word on who would be the managers of such speech, but I think we can count on those who call for it to be the ones who feel they are most qualified to define and enforce it. (Apparently, this will all be done "voluntarily" and will be dealt with through purges and link boycotts and the novel concept of moderated comment sections. Or something.)
Meanwhile, on the media page is a story about the execrable Don Imus and the fact that he routinely makes racist, misogynistic and eliminationist jokes on his show while half the Washington press corps spends time there kissing his ring. For some reason that kind of "incivility" doesn’t upset the journalistic prima donnas half as much as the uncivil blogosphere does.
So what’s up with this? The blogosphere is admittedly an uncivil place. Nobody disputes that. But it is comprised of a bunch of disparate individuals who are arguing amongst themselves with varying degress of seriousness and talent as part of the national (and international) dialog. There is a corner of it that is despicable and revolting, as the misogyny that set off this latest debate clearly demonstrates. But for inexplicable reasons it’s the liberal blogosphere that is being particularly attacked for our alleged incivility by the mainstream media. (I suspect it’s the fact that we drop the "F" bomb too much, which is simply shocking in American life)
However, for almost two decades now, talk radio has been spewing vile racist, misogynistic and eliminationst spew — and their stars have been feted and petted for it among the highest levels of the capital cognoscenti. I don’t know for sure why that would be, but I have my suspicions.
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