Atop the front page, the Times gets it right!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Your Howler keeps getting results: Right at the top of today’s front page, the New York Times gets it right!

In a report which is long overdue, Appelbaum and Gebeloff report about the way tax burdens have fallen in recent decades. Even better, they adopt a very important framework—they note the way we misinformed rubes may misunderstand such key points:
APPELBAUM AND GEBELOFF (1/30/12): Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others—the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits—are not paying their fair share.

“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”

These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes—federal, state and local—than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.
American citizens have been aggressively disinformed about taxation issues for a good many years. This disinformation campaign has been pursued all over the talk-show and think-tank right.

The campaign has been very effective. Did you know that, if we lower tax rates, the government gets extra revenue?

We’ve begged and pleaded for work of this type. Today, once again, your DAILY HOWLER is getting results!

Much more work like this should be done. Whatever got into the New York Times, that it would dish key information?

IDIOCRACY BENGHAZI STYLE: Great and good!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2012

The liberal world’s darling child speaks: How does the idiocracy thrive?

Guild members let it persist. They kiss the asses of major colleagues, insuring that their own keisters will get kissed in return.

They defer to powerful players like Dowd. Criticism of such major powers simply isn’t allowed.

Consider what the liberal world’s darling child said Wednesday night. The analysts retched and ran for the door when they saw her say it:
MADDOW (11/28/12): Earlier this afternoon, the great and good Andrea Mitchell did some digging on this. She asked Senator Kelly Ayotte directly about this strange set of circumstances.
“The great and good Andrea Mitchell?” Has anyone ever kissed major press ass the way this horrid child does?

Is Andrea Mitchell great and good? We have no idea. But she has done some very poor work concerning the jihad against Susan Rice—until her name pops up on Maddow’s show, in which case her ass gets kissed.

In recent days, you may think that you’ve seen Maddow defending Rice. But you will never see this inveterate hustler criticize Schieffer or Dowd. She’ll criticize Collins and McCain, inventing tapestries as she does.

But she will never criticize major mainstream press figures. Among this horrid group of hustlers, it's simply never done.

Maddow colors inside the lines, getting rich as she does. Unfortunately, we liberals swallow her comfort food the way drowning swimmers gulp air.

Rachel welcomes her hero: Some of the analysts are still having nightmares from the first time Gwen Ifill appeared as a guest on the Maddow show.

Needless to say, Ifill had a book to sell. Rachel had keister to kiss.

Sometimes the analysts wake in the night, screaming and clawing for air:
MADDOW (1/28/09): We are very fortunate to have joining us on the show tonight, ace broadcaster, one of my heroes, Gwen Ifill. She’ll be here to discuss whether sometimes, friendliness in Washington doesn’t equal effectiveness in Washington.

[...]

MADDOW: Joining me now for a much more balanced take on the politics of the new president is Gwen Ifill who is host and managing editor of PBS' Washington Week and a senior correspondent with the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Her book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, is available now.

Gwen Ifill, thank you so much for coming on the show tonight. It’s a real honor to have you.

IFILL Hey Rachel girl, what do you really think?

MADDOW: Oh, you know, secretly, I’m a deep conservative. I just do this for the money.
Somehow, we almost believed that last joking comment by Maddow.

Ifill isn't one of our heroes, based on the way she rolled over and died when she interviewed Condi Rice, her home-cooking friend. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/1/03. For the personal background to the roll-over, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/11/03 (scroll down to MINUTE RICE).

Rachel forgot to ask Ifill about that. We’ll guess she understood Ifill's conduct, based on the way she pulled her own punches when she interviewed Colin Powell.

Darlings, among the upper-class set, hard questions mustn’t be asked!

Back to the future: You will never, ever see Maureen Dowd criticized on Maddow’s program. Dowd slimed Rice real hard this week, in a completely moronic way. But Maddow didn’t notice that—and she never will.

She’ll hand you your piddle about Sheriff Joe. You’ll see Scott Brown get batted around. She’ll even go after McCain at this point.

But you will never see a major mainstream journalist criticized on Maddow’s program. Republicans get criticized here. Highly influential journalists get a lifetime pass.

This is the way the idiocracy thrives. This helps explain how the Dowdism crept into every part of our lives.

IDIOCRACY BENGHAZI STYLE: Continued!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2012

635 comments: The ongoing state of U.S. intelligence may not be all that good.

Consider what happened when Maureen Dowd wrote that ridiculous column about Susan Rice—her latest ridiculous column.

(For background, see our award-winning previous post.)

Dowd's column was a real groaner this Wednesday. Breaking with recent precedent, Dowd’s editors allowed Times readers to post a full set of comments.

635 readers did. To read the column and those comments, go ahead—just click here.

We’ve read through hundreds of those comments. We haven’t found a single one which challenged Dowd’s most ridiculous criticism of Rice. We refer to the absurd complaint Dowd advanced in this blindingly foolish passage:
DOWD (11/28/12): When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? “Why wouldn’t she think what the Libyan president said mattered?” Collins wondered.
That criticism of Ambassador Rice is so stupid it squeaks. It virtually defines the idiocracy in which we all seem to live.

It would be hard to make a dumber complaint. But go ahead! Try to find a single comment which mentions this problem.

635 people left comments. Can you find a single person who challenged the idiocracy of that complaint by Dowd?

Let’s be fair. It isn’t fair to expect Times readers to know every fact about this topic, or about any other topic.

But the foolishness of this criticism of Rice doesn’t turn on matters of fact. On its face, it’s just blindingly stupid to think that Rice would abandon U.S. intelligence so she could agree, right there on the spot, with claims by a Libyan pol.

Question: Who would think that someone like Rice would ever do something like that? Answer: Apparently, 635 readers! And many, many thousands more, the ones who didn’t comment.

Is it fair to think that readers should spot such absolute nonsense? Maybe it is, perhaps not.

But surely, other journalists can see through such nonsense! Readers, guess again!

Question: Have you seen a single journalist complain about this ridiculous criticism of Rice? Have you seen Dowd criticized, even once, for advancing such absolute nonsense?

How about the ridiculous Schieffer? Has anyone criticized him?

This ridiculous criticism of Rice has been getting pimped for weeks. The criticism is dumb beyond dumb.

Have you seen any journalist say so? If you haven’t, why not?

Before life is done, we’ll look at Joan Walsh’s mumble-mouthed criticism of an earlier column by Dowd. But you do live in an idiocracy when people like Collins, Schieffer and Dowd can advance such a blindingly stupid complaint without a single word of pushback. And yes, to state the obvious once again:

This is the way George W. Bush ended up in the White House.

Our world is not the world described in your eighth-grade civics text. Mike Judge described our world rather well.

Your journalists have agreed to pretend.

Next: What the liberal world’s darling child said!

IDIOCRACY BENGHAZI STYLE: You may live in an idiocracy if...!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2012

The ongoing state of U.S. intelligence: Do you live in an idiocracy, as Mike Judge once suggested?

Consider one of the dumbest complaints being made against Susan Rice—a criticism which has been made by a succession of major journalists

In her most recent New York Times column, Maureen Dowd presented a scattershot grab-bag of claims against Rice. She used Susan Collins as her beard.

Out of a bog of confusing complaints, the complaint which follows was dumbest by far. Dowd slammed Rice for something she did on the September 16 Face the Nation:
DOWD (11/28/12): When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? “Why wouldn’t she think what the Libyan president said mattered?” Collins wondered.
In fairness, we don’t have the transcript of Collins’ interview with Dowd. It may be that Collins’ full presentation made some sort of sense.

But as presented by Dowd, this particular complaint about Rice is just monumentally stupid. You may live in an idiocracy if:

Such a complaint can be widely advanced, with absolutely no reaction from the public or other journalists.

Rice should have agreed with the Libyan president! She should have done so right on the spot! Sadly, Collins and Dowd weren’t the first to criticize Rice on this ridiculous basis. On November 18, Bob Schieffer pimped the same framework on Face the Nation:
SCHIEFFER (11/18/12): Well, I would point out just one thing. She came on this broadcast immediately after the president of Libya, who said flatly this was the work of terrorists, some of them from Mali, others from outside the country. And Secretary Rice stuck to her—stuck to her story, as it were, and said, “No, our best information is it was a result, a reaction of those demonstrations that were happening in Egypt.”

I guess what I would ask you, Senator [Durbin], do you honestly believe that, as an ambassador, as one of our key ambassadors to the United Nations, that all Secretary Rice would have known about this is what somebody gave her in a set of talking points to be on television?
Extending a pre-existing complaint, Schieffer seemed to criticize Rice for “sticking to her story”—presumably, for failing to agree with the things the Libyan president said. Quoting Collins, Dowd advanced the same complaint—a complaint which is so dumb that if virtually defines idiocracy.

First, one basic correction: When Rice appeared on the September 16 Face the Nation, she did not express a view about the motives of the “extremists” who launched the deadly Benghazi attack. She said an initial demonstration at the consulate had been a reaction to the violent protest in Cairo. She didn't say why those extremists armed with heavy weapons came to the scene and hijacked events.

When she appeared on Face the Nation, Rice didn’t say that those extremists were reacting to demonstrations in Egypt. Schieffer may believe that Rice said that. If so, he ought to review his own transcripts—and he might try reading with care just for once.

That said, it’s true that Rice declined to agree with several judgments made by the Libyan president. Appearing just before Rice, Yussef Magariaf told Schieffer that the deadly attack had been preplanned for months. He said the attackers were “affiliated with” al Qaeda “and maybe sympathizers.”

Following Magariaf's interview, Rice appeared on the program. Stating the need for a fuller investigation, she declined to agree with those claims. Here are the statements in question:
SCHIEFFER (9/16/12): But you do not agree with him that this was something that had been plotted out several months ago?

RICE: We do not— We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.

SCHIEFFER: Do you agree or disagree with him that al Qaeda had some part in this?

RICE: Well, we’ll have to find out that out. I mean, I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.
According to Collins, this is the passage where Rice revealed that she “didn’t think what the Libyan president said mattered.” According to Dowd, this is the place where Rice "pushed back with the video story."

In Schieffer’s formulation, that is the passage where Rice “stuck to her story.” Immediately, he suggested that Rice was being less than honest.

Do you live in an idiocracy? On its face, that criticism of Rice is just blindingly stupid. It would have been crazy for Rice to go on TV on September 16 and accept those judgments right there on the spot—to accept judgments which didn’t agree with the state of U.S. intelligence.

In the passage we have posted, Rice presented U.S. intelligence as it existed at the time. Earlier, she had told Schieffer, again and again, that she was giving our best current assessment—that the investigation continued.

More than two months later, Schieffer, Collins and Dowd are criticizing Rice for failing to accept Magariaf’s judgments right there on the spot. But should she have accepted those judgments? Should she have agreed with Magariaf, right there on the spot?

Maybe not so much! Five weeks later, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller provided an update on the state of U.S. intelligence.

And uh-oh! As of October 20, U.S. intelligence still didn’t agree with Magariaf’s claims about the preplanning. As of October 20, U.S. intelligence still agreed with the suggestion advanced that day by Rice.

We’ll include the headline which sat atop Miller’s report:
MILLER (10/20/12): U.S.: Evidence doesn’t show planning in Libyan attack

U.S. intelligence officials said Friday that no evidence has surfaced to indicate that the Sept. 11 assault on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya was planned in advance, a conclusion that suggests the attack was spontaneous even if it involved militants with ties to al-Qaeda.

[...]

"There isn't any intelligence that the attackers pre-planned their assault days or weeks in advance," a U.S. intelligence official said. "The bulk of available information supports the early assessment that the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo."

That emerging consensus among analysts at the CIA and other agencies could lend new support to the Obama administration, which has struggled to fend off Republican allegations that it has been reluctant to admit that the attack in Benghazi was an act of terrorism.

Much of that Republican criticism has focused on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice, who appeared on television talk shows days after the attack and attributed it to violent protesters angered by an anti-Muslim YouTube video.

The latest assessment indicates that the timing of the attack in Benghazi was triggered by protests, but also supports subsequent accounts by Obama administration officials describing the siege as a terrorist assault.

[...]

U.S. officials have backed away from claims that protesters had gathered around the Benghazi mission before it was overrun. Instead, analysts now think that the siege involved militants who "may have aspired to attack the U.S. in Benghazi," and mobilized after seeing protesters scale the walls of the embassy in Cairo to protest the controversial video.

The violence in Benghazi appears to have involved militants with ties to al-Qaeda in North Africa, but no evidence indicates that it was organized by al-Qaeda, or timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, officials said.
Should Rice have agreed with Magariaf on September 16? Five weeks later, U.S. intelligence was still saying that the attack had not been preplanned—that the attack had developed in reaction to protests about the video.

But so what?

In an idiocracy, facts and logic don't matter! Two days ago, one of the nation’s most famous columnists was still rolling her eyes at the way Rice “pushed back with the video story.” Collins was quoted, dumbly saying that Rice didn’t think Magariaf mattered.

Ten days before that, Schieffer had issued the same absurd complaint. The tired old burnout whined that Rice had “stuck to her story”—a “story” U.S. intelligence was still advancing as of October 20!

When a final report is issued, what judgments will be made about this deadly attack? We can’t tell you that. Nor can we tell you if those judgments will be accurate.

But we started today with a simple question: Do you live in an idiocracy? Over and over, the answer seems clear—and it seems to be yes.

Should Susan Rice have rushed to agree with the Libyan president? Should she have accepted his judgments right there on the spot, even though his judgments didn’t reflect the state of U.S. intelligence?

The very suggestion is dumb beyond dumb—so dumb as to define a new world. You may live in an idiocracy if:

People like Schieffer and Collins and Dowd are marching in lockstep with such complete unvarnished nonsense. And you may live in an idiocracy if:

Other journalists are unable to see how blindingly stupid this is. Or if journalists are simply unwilling to say so, given the influence of halfwits like Schieffer and Dowd.

Do you live in an idiocracy? To review how other journalists—and New York Times readers—have reacted to this absurd criticism of Rice, please see our next post.

You live in a troubling type of world. We think you ought to know what type of world it is.

Next: 635 comments

BANANA REPUBLIC BENGHAZI: Any complaint will do!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Concerning the Libyan president: Do you live in a banana republic?

We think you do. Consider this:

Susan Collins thinks that Ambassador Rice should have agreed, right there on the spot, with the Libyan president. And Maureen Dowd thinks that makes sense! (See our previous post.)

Sadly, that doesn’t make sense. Just to refresh you, here is the passage from yesterday’s column in which Dowd transmitted this nonsense:
DOWD (11/28/12): When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? “Why wouldn’t she think what the Libyan president said mattered?” Collins wondered.
Should Rice have agreed with the Libyan president? Obviously, no. Just ask yourself this: What ever happened to the fifty people who “had been arrested?”

Uh-oh! By September 26, the number of miscreants had been bumped back. On that date, Magariaf told the Today show that “at least forty people” had been “interrogated.”

Is it possible that Magariaf had rounded up the usual suspects? We have heard little follow-up about what happened to all those people who got arrested—and as you’ll recall, the criticism quickly turned to the claim that no one had been apprehended for the Benghazi attack.

None of that matters to Maureen Dowd. Inside a banana republic press corps, any complaint will do!

Meanwhile, this was Magariaf on the Today show on September 26. Do you think Ambassador Rice should have rushed to agree with him ten days earlier, right there on the spot?
ANN CURRY (9/26/12): Would you call the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi an act of terrorism?

MAGARIAF: I have no doubt about that, and that it's a pre-planned act of terrorism directed against American citizens.

CURRY: What is your evidence that it was a pre-planned act of terrorism?

MAGARIAF: Number one is choosing the date, 11th of September. It has all the significance. If we take the facts about the, the way it was executed, we can see that there's enough proof that it is a pre-planned act of terrorism.

CURRY: Describe the attack based on your investigation.

MAGARIAF: It’s too early for me to give the details, I have minor details about this. But it was launched in—with a high degree of accuracy, which means that the perpetrators must have some kind of exercise on how to hit and how to launch these rockets.

[...]

CURRY: So do you know then who is behind this attack and what the motive was?

MAGARIAF: I think it’s—it's al Qaeda elements who are hiding in, in Libya.

CURRY: Is there any direct evidence that it is al Qaeda behind this attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi?

MAGARIAF: No, so far not—so far not. As the investigation progresses, there is the, there is the likelihood that we’ll—we’ll reach that. The attack on the consulate was, was pre-planned. Whether with the intention of killing Ambassador Stevens or not, that’s—it’s too early to say.
Ten days later, Magariaf still had no direct evidence that al Qaeda was behind the attack! But ten days earlier, Rice was supposed to agree with him, right on the spot, when he said it did!

His evidence that the attack was preplanned seemed to consist in the date.

Susan Rice would have been out of her mind to agree with Magariaf on the spot. But so what? Almost eleven weeks later, Maureen Dowd shows no sign of grasping this fact.

Banana republics are like that. You live in such a republic.

BANANA REPUBLIC BENGHAZI: Dowd!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Screeching and mashing bananas: Banana republics are often fueled by the things which don’t get said.

Last evening, Wolf Blitzer didn’t speak up when two of his guests made obvious misstatements. This morning, Scott Shane didn’t list the (frequently crazy) accusations still being made against Rice.

Yesterday, Maureen Dowd did. Dowd had spoken to Susan Collins, the deeply troubled Republican senator from Maine who is up for re-election, not that that matters a whit. According to Dowd, Collins had a list of questions which had her troubled in mind.

In this passage, Dowd described Collins’ first question:
DOWD (11/218/12): Collins drew up a list of questions to ask Rice at their one-on-one hourlong meeting slated for Wednesday. She wants Rice to explain how she could promote a story “with such certitude” about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video that was so at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access. (It was also at odds with common sense, given that there were Al Qaeda sympathizers among the rebel army members that overthrew Muammar el-Qaddafi with help from the U.S.—an intervention advocated by Rice—and Islamic extremist training camps in the Benghazi area.)
Already, Dowd was making little sense. In fairness to Dowd, it's amazing to see how much confusion can be crammed into just one paragraph.

That passage is puzzling in various ways. Banana republics are like that.

Before we consider Collins’ first question, was Maureen Dowd herself making sense in that passage? According to Dowd, Rice’s story on September 16 had been “at odds with common sense,” since there were “Islamic extremist training camps in the Benghazi area.”

But Rice had used that very word—“extremists”—to describe the people who launched the attack. Meanwhile, why wouldn’t “al Qaeda sympathizers” take part in a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video?

On the day of the Benghazi attack, al Qaeda sympathizers were taking part in such demonstrations all over the Muslim world.

Alas! That single paragraph by Dowd is loaded with claims and implications which are hard to parse, make little sense and stand unsupported by evidence. But let’s try to get back to the list of questions which had Susan Collins so troubled.

Did the senator’s first question make sense? Here it is, as described by Dowd:

She wants Rice to explain how she could promote a story “with such certitude” about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video that was so at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access.

Question: Was the story Rice told on September 16 “at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access?” Dowd made no attempt to explain what that claim means. What was the classified information which contradicted the ambassador’s story?

Dowd made no attempt to say. We were asked to buy this on faith.

At any rate: As we noted yesterday, this first question from Collins doesn’t seem to make sense. When Rice appeared on those Sunday shows, she spoke with almost no “certitude” about the Benghazi attack. Again and again, she said her assessments were preliminary—that she was waiting for the full investigation.

Dowd didn’t seem to know that. She simply accepted this hackneyed script from the troubled Collins. She bought this bullshit on faith.

Did that first question from Collins make sense? As presented by Dowd, it pretty much didn’t. But Dowd eats bananas for all three meals. She moved to Collins’ next question:
DOWD (continuing directly): The F.B.I. interviewed survivors of the attack in Germany and, according to some senators, had done most of the interviews of those on site by Sept. 15, the day before Rice went on TV, and established that there was no protest. Collins wants to learn if the F.B.I. had failed to communicate that, or if they had communicated it and Rice went ahead anyway?
Had Rice been told there was no demonstration? That’s a perfectly valid question. But note how weak the evidence is suggesting that Rice had been told.

“According to some senators”—now there’s a very weak standard of proof!—the FBI had done most of the relevant interviews by September 15.

Uh-oh! That means that the relevant interviews were still being conducted as Rice went on air. Why would we think that the FBI had even formulated its conclusion by that time, let alone sent it to Rice?

Collins’ third question was the dumbest one yet. The question is so dumb it squeaks. But banana mashers aren’t able to notice. If they noticed, they wouldn’t care:
DOWD (continuing directly): When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? “Why wouldn’t she think what the Libyan president said mattered?” Collins wondered.
At this point, decent folk will avert their gaze from the manifest dumbness of Collins (and Dowd). That quotation from Collins is dumb beyond dumb, but its sentiment can be answered:

Why didn’t Rice agree with what the Libyan president said? Perhaps because his statements didn’t agree with the state of U.S. intelligence? Perhaps because U.S. intelligence still doesn’t seem to agree with his claims? (For more on this topic, see our next post.)

She should have agreed with the Libyan president! This has been the dumbest complaint against Ambassador Rice from the start. But Maureen Dowd was happy to type it, along with this account of Collin’s fourth question:
DOWD (continuing directly): Why did Rice say on ABC News’s “This Week,” that “two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security”? Rice was referring to the two ex-Navy SEAL team members who were C.I.A. security officers working on a base about a mile away. “They weren’t there to protect Ambassador Stevens,” Collins said. “That wasn’t their job.”
There are very few words for the soul-crushing dumbness of that. Why did Rice say that “two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security?” Perhaps because two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security? It’s true—the two men weren’t there to protect Ambassador Stevens. But as you can see just from reading Dowd’s paragraph, that isn’t what Rice said.

In fairness to Collins, there is no transcript of her session with Dowd. It may be that her remarks made more sense before they went through the soul-crushing process of being reworked by Dowd. In fairness, we can imagine Collins’ consternation as Dowd leaped from bar to bar inside her cage at the Times, cramming bananas into her ears and her mouth, screeching loudly and baring her teeth at each new accusation.

We’ll guess that Collins maintained a brave front in the face of this puzzling conduct by Dowd. But we are here to judge the press—and Dowd’s column about this important subject makes almost no sense at all.

Reading Dowd’s column, you get this picture of Collins’ heartfelt concerns:

She wants to know why Rice spoke “with such certitude”—although Rice expressed almost no certitude on those Sunday programs.

She wants to know if Rice had been told that there was no demonstration—although she seems to have no evidence that Rice had been so told.

She wants to know why Rice didn’t accept the claims of the Libyan president. (The answer to that is blindingly obvious.) She wants to know why Rice made an accurate statement about two of the men who were killed.

What does it mean to have a banana republic press corps? Dowd is very influential—she has been so for many years. She’s also a visible basket case—although members of the guild will never betray this knowledge.

That column by Dowd is a screeching mess. She went over her own cliff a long time ago.

Inside a banana republic, careerists agree not to see such things. Regular people will read Dowd's columns and imagine that they make sense.

Next: The Libyan president

BANANA REPUBLIC BENGHAZI: Scott Shane!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Timesman steers clear of the shoals: Do we really have a banana republic press corps?

On the bright side, Scott Shane presents some cogent information in his News Analysis piece in today’s New York Times. What was the source of the “talking points” used by Ambassador Rice on the September 16 Sunday shows?

Shane explains in his front-page report.

In fact, Rice went outside those “talking points” in several ways, a point Shane fails to mention. But he does present a cogent account of the way that official assessment was devised.

According to Shane, “there is now a fairly clear account” of the way the talking points were devised. This is his (cogent) account:
SHANE (11/29/12): The C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies rarely prepare unclassified talking points; more often, policy makers submit proposed public comments, and intelligence analysts check them for classified information or errors of fact. But in the storm of news media coverage after the killings in Benghazi, C.I.A. officials responded quickly to [Rep. Dutch] Ruppersberger’s request [for an unclassified assessment] on Sept. 14.

C.I.A. analysts drafted four sentences describing “demonstrations” in Benghazi that were “spontaneously inspired” by protests in Cairo against a crude video lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. (Later assessments concluded there were no demonstrations.) The initial version of the talking points identified the suspected attackers—a local militant group called Ansar al-Shariah, with possible links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an offshoot of the terrorist network in North Africa.

But during a subsequent review by several intelligence agencies, C.I.A. officials were concerned that such specific language might tip off the malefactors, skew intelligence collection in Libya and interfere with the criminal investigation. So they replaced the names with the blanket term “extremists.”

Ms. Rice has been skewered by Republican senators for her comments on Sunday television news programs on Sept. 16, which they have suggested were part of an administration cover-up of the terrorist nature of the attack and links to Al Qaeda. The criticism has barely been affected by the revelation that she accurately recited the talking points the intelligence agencies prepared.
We’d skip the word “recited” ourselves—especially since Rice went beyond the “talking points” in several ways that morning. But in that account, Shane explains why the names Ansar al-Shariah and Al Qaeda did not appear in that official assessment.

He doesn’t explain why the word “terrorist” didn’t appear. He doesn’t explain if that represented some sort of deliberate decision.

We cite the T-word for an obvious reason. As Shane notes earlier in his piece, Rice is being widely savaged for failing to utter the T-word on those Sunday programs.

It isn’t enough that she described the killers as “extremists” armed with “heavy weapons” who came to the site and “hijacked events.” On those September 16 programs, Rice never called the killers “terrorists.” This is being cited as part of the greatest cover-up since Watergate, or even before.

Shane doesn’t explain why the word “terrorist” was absent from that official assessment. That said, we were struck by a larger omission in his 1200-word piece:

In the course of his report, Shane never lists the various charges which are being made against Rice. This lets him present a rather long piece without going where the rubber meets an extremely hot road.

After explaining the genesis of that official assessment, Shane goes on to report a key fact—even though Rice “accurately recited the talking points the intelligence agencies prepared,” Republican senators are still attacking her conduct. Here’s the way Shane explained it:
SHANE (continuing directly): On Wednesday, as she and Mr. Morell continued their meetings on Capitol Hill, an evident preamble to her possible nomination as secretary of state, Republican senators were not mollified.

“I continue to be troubled by the fact that the United Nations ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine told a throng of reporters waiting for her after her hourlong meeting with Ms. Rice and Mr. Morell.

Ms. Collins said she “would need to have additional information” before she could support Ms. Rice for secretary of state.

Ms. Rice and Mr. Morell also met at length with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who said that he too was deeply troubled by what he has learned. “The whole issue of Benghazi has been, to me, a tawdry affair,” he said. Though he did not mention Ms. Rice by name, he seemed to question whether she would be an appropriate choice for a position as vital as secretary of state.
Corker and Collins were still deeply troubled. But what were they deeply troubled about?

Shane skipped past that obvious question. In doing so, he made his own day a lot easier.

Shane’s analysis ran 1200 words. It included some cogent information, although it skipped past several key points. But one day before, one of his newspaper’s most famous writers had presented a list of the actual questions which have Collins so deeply troubled.

Most of those questions make little sense. Shane’s day became a lot simpler when he failed to review them.

What has Collins so deeply troubled? For whatever reason, Shane didn’t say.

Do any of Collins’ questions make sense? Yesterday, one of the Times’ most famous writers plainly seemed to think they did. On today’s front page, the news division didn’t seem eager to go there.

In our view, New York Times readers are being cheated by that omission. For whatever reason, Shane didn't go there.

In our next post, we will.

Next post: The banana republic of Dowd

BANANA REPUBLIC BENGHAZI: Wolf Blitzer!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Scripted star sticks to the scripts: What does it mean to have a banana republic press corps?

Consider what happened when Wolf Blitzer sat in last night for Anderson Cooper. In his second segment, Blitzer introduced two guests to help him discuss Susan Rice.

One guest came from the center right; the other guest came from the right. In just his second Q-and-A, Blitzer shared an exchange with Reuel Marc Gerecht.

Blitzer cited a minor mistake by Mike Morell, acting CIA director. In his reply, Gerecht unleashed an obvious howler:
BLITZER (11/28/12): And, Raul, you say it's not an insignificant mistake that Mike Morell made.

GERECHT: No. I mean, I don't think so. I mean, the administration got itself into a lot of trouble, particularly Ambassador Rice got herself into a lot of unnecessary trouble, by just being so assertive on television and denying the possibility that you have an organized terrorist attack in Benghazi.

I think the narratives of Cairo got conflated with the narratives in Benghazi. And if Ambassador Rice and others in the administration had just been a little less determined to say that this well-known video now was behind it all, I think this problem never would have happened.
Remarkable! According to Gerecht, Rice had just “been so assertive” on the September 16 shows. She had “denied the possibility that you have an organized terrorist attack in Benghazi.”

Except inside a banana republic, that is a very strange claim. Example:

On the September 16 Face the Nation, Rice said that “extremists” armed with “heavy weapons” were responsible for the killings. She then was asked if al Qaeda played some part in the deadly attack.

Schieffer asked; the ambassador answered. This is the way your UN ambassador “denied the possibility that you have an organized terrorist attack in Benghazi:”
SCHIEFFER (9/16/12): Do you agree or disagree with him that al Qaeda had some part in this?

RICE: Well, we'll have to find out that out. I mean, I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.
In reply to Schieffer’s question, Rice said those extremists armed with heavy weapons might have been “al Qaeda itself.”

Eleven weeks later, Gerecht went on TV and said what he said to Blitzer. And here's where thebanana republic comes in:

Blitzer just sat there and took it! He didn’t challenge Gerecht's statement in any way. He let his absurd statement stand.

It's as we've told you for many years. Inside the banana republic, employees like Blitzer know they are paid to stick to Established Press Corps Scripts. In the Q-and-A which immediatelty followed, he continued to play this role:
BLITZER (continuing directly): Reuel, as for the talking points that were used by Ambassador Rice—subject, as you know, of great, great contention still—there are still a number of unanswered questions. As a former CIA officer, you say her performance raises a red flag, that officials are supposed to analyze this information for themselves. But isn't there a danger in having a political appointee like a U.S. ambassador in a sense freelancing when sensitive classified material is concerned?

GERECHT: No, I don't really think so. I think Ambassador Rice could have easily have said that we may have had an organized terrorist group that may have been affiliated with al Qaeda behind the attack in Benghazi. I don't think it would have been compromising of any sensitive information.

I think the administration has used that as an excuse. You know, America has a lot of overclassification, there's no doubt about it. But that's one reason we have adults in senior positions, is that they are supposed to be able to handle this. I don't really think it would have been all that difficult for her to give a somewhat more nuanced discussion of what really transpired in Benghazi.
Say what? As we've just noted, Rice did say that the extremist killers “may have been affiliated with al Qaeda.” In fact, she went Gerecht one better—she said that the extremist killers may have been “al Qaeda itself!”

But so what? Here too, Blitzer stuck to the script, failing to refresh Gerecht’s memory—and failing to inform CNN's misued viewers.

Next, Blitzer turned to the increasingly awful Fran Townsend. She rattled another script:
BLITZER (continuing directly): Fran, you have dealt with classified and unclassified talking points when you served over at the [Bush] White House. You agree with Reuel?

TOWNSEND: Well, normally, Wolf, before a Sunday show, what happens is the communicators and those who have drafted the talking points, in this case perhaps the intelligence community, will prepare the individual who is going out on the Sunday shows, especially when they are going to do multiple shows, to make sure they understand where the lines are.

We don't know if that happened here. If it didn't, it certainly should have. It leads to what Reuel was saying, that you learn how to make a more nuanced argument so that you don't cross classification lines, but you don't speak inaccurately.

Frankly, Wolf, this was just poorly handled. Clearly, the talking points were poorly coordinated, and she went out there, making it sound crystal-clear, and I think she was both poorly served and then she didn't really use the talking points she was given in the way that she might have, to get to Reuel's point.
From September 17 on, this has been a Standard Claim from the right: Ambassador Rice went on TV and made her claims “sound crystal-clear.” (Gerecht had just offered the same talking-point, saying that Rice had been "so assertive" and so "determined" to advance her specific conclusions.)

In the real world, that isn’t what happened. Once again, for the ten millionth time, this is what Rice said that morning on a well-known show, Meet the Press.

By our count, she voiced seven disclaimers in just 170 words:
RICE (9/16/12): Well, let me tell you the best information we have at present. First of all, there is an FBI investigation, which is ongoing, and we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. But putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo—almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.

What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode.

Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation, and the president has been very clear—we'll work with the Libyan authorities to bring those responsible to justice.
Over and over, again and again, Rice said she was offering the "current assessment"— "the best information we have at present." She said she awaited fuller information from the ongoing FBI probe. But so what? By the next day, Liz Cheney was trashing Rice for “saying with 100 percent certitude that this was all because of the movie.”

Just that quickly, all those disclaimers had been disappeared. They remain disappeared to this day.

In a rational world, Blitzer wouldn’t have sat there and swallowed this bullshit last night. But you live in a journalistic banana republic, a reality we will explore in the posts which follow.

SKOOL DAZE: We interrupt our scheduled program!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012

We plan to resume our series tomorrow: In order to follow the Susan Rice mess, we interrupt our award-winning series, Skool Daze.

Incomparably, we expect to resume our award-winning series tomorrow. For yesterday's award-winning report, you know what to do:

Just click here.

Liberal child apes Saint John McCain!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012

Salon explains What Rice Said: The endless attacks on Susan Rice have turned into a graduate course in the (non) science of paraphrase.

What did Susan Rice actually say when she went on those Sunday programs? At Salon, Alex Seitz-Wald has now offered this account.

We’d say this account is not strong:
SEITZ-WALD (11/28/12): Today, for the second straight day, President Obama’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, whom he may nominate to be secretary of state, met with recalcitrant Republican senators on Capitol Hill to try to assuage them. And today, for the second straight day, the Republican senators immediately found reporters and informed the world that they were not satisfied. Today it was Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Bob Corker. Yesterday it was Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Lindsey Graham, along with the ringleader of the opposition, Sen. John McCain. The senators say that Rice misled the American people when she went on Sunday morning political talk shows after the September 11 Benghazi attack and, citing talking points provided to her by the intelligence community that later proved to be false, said the attack grew out of a protest against an anti-Islam film.
Did Ambassador Rice say the attack grew out of a protest against that film? We’d have to say this:

Not really.

When Rice appeared on those Sunday shows, she outlined a two-part chronology. Here’s what she said occurred:

“Initially,” Rice said, a spontaneous protest occurred at the consulate in reaction to the video.

“Then,” Rice said, a second event occurred. “Extremists” armed with “heavy weapons” arrived at the consulate and “hijacked” events. In Rice’s telling, this is when the deadly attack occurred.

That’s the way Rice told the story. In that account, does the deadly attack “grow out of the protest?”

We would have to say no, not really—unless you’re determined to tell this story the way Saint John McCain does. As told by McCain, Rice’s story is essentially silly. A group of protestors are holding a demonstration and all of a sudden, out of the blue, a crazy attack with heavy weapons inexplicably breaks out.

That’s the way McCain tells the story—but that isn’t the way Rice told it. In Rice’s telling, a group of extremists arrived on the scene and “hijacked” ongoing events. She explained why the demonstrators were there; they were protesting the film. But she never explained what motivated the killers—the extremists who arrived on the scene with those heavy weapons.

McCain has told this tale a certain way to make Rice’s story sound silly. Today, an increasingly hapless liberal rag told the story exactly the way Saint McCain wants them to tell it.

And yes, it does make a difference. That's why McCain tells it that way!

Can someone take the children aside and help them straighten their heads? In Rice’s telling, “extremists” armed with “heavy weapons” arrived on the scene and “hijacked” ongoing events. She didn’t say why these extremists did that. She didn’t say who they were or who they weren’t. But they didn’t seem to be the same people who were staging the demonstration.

(When she was asked by Bob Schieffer, she said these extremists might have been “al Qaeda itself.”)

Note to Alex Seitz-Wald: Just because Andrea Mitchell tells it that way, that doesn’t mean you have to.

Further note to our hapless children:

You don’t have to tell this the way McCain does. You can read the transcripts for yourselves and explain What Rice Actually Said.

Yes, we know—that would be hard work! But it actually does make a difference:

McCain is telling the story that way because it makes Susan Rice look dumb. How the freak do you think you look when you ape the pathetic Saint Johnny?

Our ranking journalists just can’t explain What Susan Rice Actually Said!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012

Blind scribes keep groping the elephant: At some point, we’ve all heard the famous tale about the blind men and the elephant.

The world’s foremost authority on folk tales describes the famous old story this way:
WIKIPEDIA: The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies. At various times it has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behavior of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.
Whatever! We’ve been thinking of those famous blind men when we watch our major journalists try to explain What Susan Rice Actually Said.

Last night, on NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell gave the task another try. Did Mitchell get the elephant right?
MITCHELL (11/27/12): The U.N. ambassador hasn’t even been nominated to be secretary of state but, today, she volunteered for a grilling in the Senate. Her critics were not satisfied.

MCCAIN (videotape): We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn’t get.

GRAHAM (videotape): The bottom line, I’m more disturbed now than I was before.

MITCHELL: Rice acknowledged today she was wrong on a key fact, when she went on five Sunday morning programs and said Benghazi was a copycat attack.

RICE (videotape): What happened in Benghazi was, in fact, it was initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo.

MITCHELL: Today, Rice acknowledged there was no protest in Benghazi, but she blamed the CIA as she did last week.
Andrea Mitchell is fully sighted. But try as she might, she seems completely unable to limn this particular elephant.

Did Susan Rice really go on five Sunday shows and “say Benghazi was a copycat attack?” Sadly, no—that’s not what she said. For perhaps the ten millionth time, this is the transcript from Meet the Press, the show to which Mitchell referred:
RICE (9/16/12): ...But putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo—almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.

What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode.

Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation...
Pitiful, isn’t it? In reality, Rice said that the initial demonstration was “almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo.” She didn’t say that about the attack itself, which transpired when “extremist elements” arrived on the scene with “heavy weapons,” creating “a much more violent episode.”

By now, U.S. intelligence seems to hold that there was no protest at the consulate before the deadly attack. But the intelligence assessment given to Rice did say that a demonstration occurred. For that obvious reason, so did Rice, on four of those Sunday programs. (She wasn't asked about Benghazi on CNN. When you see journos discussing five shows, they haven't examined the transcripts.)

But even now, ten weeks later, Mitchell can’t seem to form an accurate account of What Rice Actually Said. Assuming good faith, this particular (sighted) journalist just doesn’t seem up to the task.

And by the way: If you can’t hear the difference between those accounts, you aren’t up to the task of perform this function either.

Again and again, you see the remarkable lack of intellectual skill within our mainstream press corps. This is what the Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe writes in this morning’s front-page news report:
O’KEEFE (11/28/12): For several weeks, Rice has defended herself against allegations that she knowingly misled the public about the assault during a series of appearances on Sunday political talk shows five days afterward. She said repeatedly then that a spontaneous demonstration led to the violence, a claim later debunked by intelligence officials and reports from the ground.
Is that an accurate paraphrase? Quite plainly, Rice did say, on those Sunday shows, that a spontaneous demonstration preceded the violence. But did she say it led to the violence?

We would say no, she did not. And if you can’t hear the difference between those dueling accounts, this task is over your head, just as it has persistently seemed to exceed O’Keefe’s capacity.

What did Rice actually say that day? In this morning’s New York Times, Mark Landler offers a rare double paraphrase! We get Landler’s account of Rice’s account of What Rice Actually Said:
LANDLER (1/28/12): In a statement after the meeting, Ms. Rice said she incorrectly described the attack in Benghazi, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, as a spontaneous protest gone awry rather than a premeditated terrorist attack. But she said she based her remarks on the intelligence then available—intelligence that changed over time.

“Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in the process,” said Ms. Rice, who was accompanied at the 10 a.m. meeting by the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael J. Morell.
Is that what Rice said on September 16? Did she describe the deadly attack as a spontaneous protest gone awry? In our view, that is a horrible paraphrase of What Rice Really Said. Beyond that, you’ll note that Landler doesn’t even quote what Rice said in yesterday's statement. Instead, he gives us his own paraphrased account of what Rice said she said!

Again and again, the most striking characteristic of our upper-end journalists is their lack of intellectual skill. As those sighted men and women have struggled to describe that elephant, they have persistently failed to explain What Rice Actually Said. As recently as yesterday morning, CNN still wasn’t sure if Rice had said that she was giving preliminary information. At that point, the failure of journalistic skill at CNN was total.

As we noted yesterday, Rice plainly said, again and again, that her information was preliminary. That brings us to Maureen Dowd’s latest hapless attempt to discuss What Rice Actually Said.

Dowd is one of the emptiest people in this broken-souled guild. For that reason, she is regarded by the guild as one of its brightest stars.

In this morning’s column, Dowd quotes an array of nit-picked complaints by Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine. Incredibly but inevitably, this is the first complaint cited, with Dowd betraying no earthly sense of how crazy this complaint is:
DOWD (11/28/12): Collins drew up a list of questions to ask Rice at their one-on-one hourlong meeting slated for Wednesday. She wants Rice to explain how she could promote a story “with such certitude” about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video that was so at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access.
Did Rice promote her account of the deadly attack with some form of “certitude?” Again and again and again and again, she stressed the fact that her assessment was preliminary. But all over Fox, crackpots instantly started complaining about the “100 percent certitude” Rice had expressed in telling her story. (Liz Cheney, September 17.)

In right-wing swamps, this upside-down talking-point persists to this very day. In typical fashion, Dowd rushed today to type the krazy klaim up.

The mainstream press corps has behaved this way for a very long time. Career liberals have very rarely complained.

This was routine in the Clinton-Gore years. The silence our "leaders" brought to those slanders has come back to haunt us today.

Why is Susan Collins behaving this way: Susan Collins has never been a nut. Why is she acting like a nut in Dowd’s new column, with Dowd buying every cashew?

Just a guess:

Collins is up for re-election in 2014. As a long-standing moderate Republican, she remains highly vulnerable to challenge in a primary. (Her moderate colleague, Olympia Snowe, retired from the senate this year, thereby avoiding a challenge.)

Presumably, Lindsey Graham is currently acting like a nut for the same reason. Graham and Collins may be planning to agree to some sort of budget deal. If you plan to engage in such heresy, a modern Republican has to engage in some visible craziness as a form of balance.

It’s known as romancing the base. This morning, Dowd bought every word.

This talking-point emerged quickly: Back in September, the crackpots quickly began to complain about Rice’s “total certitude.”

In fact, Rice had stressed, again and again, that she was only offering a current best assessment—that the investigation continued. She said it and said it and said it again.

So what? Instantly, the crackpots were saying things like this:
CHENEY (9/17/12): Well, I think that Steve is right when he talks about the importance of looking at the overall policy here. You know, my sense of what happened in Libya—I watched Ambassador Rice yesterday say with 100 percent certitude that this was all because of the movie, and I found that to be preposterous.
That was Liz Cheney, on Fox. Speaking with the hapless Erin Burnett on CNN, Rep. Mike Rogers was pimping the same line:
BURNETT (9/17/12): As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, do you believe her?

ROGERS: I'm not sure I believe her or not. I disagree with her clearly. All the information I see from the Department of Defense and our intelligence agencies, they're recommending at what something they call, Erin, a moderate degree of confidence, which is not solid, that they think it was a spontaneous event. But there is lots of other information, some classified, some public, some open source, when you put it all together, when I look at the information, I mean it had indirect fire, artillery type fire from mortars. They had direct unit action. It was coordinated in a way that was very unusual. They repulsed a quick reaction force that came to the facility and then you look at other bits of information that we had including some that your reporter reported on that, hey, they were getting information that these extremists, some coming from other countries were coming around and they were having a very difficult time—

BURNETT: Right.

ROGERS: —that all doesn't make sense to me. That certainly looks like it was a planned and coordinated event. Now, none of us know for sure, to be fair, but to say for sure and for certain that this was a spontaneous event I just can't get it.

BURNETT: You don't see it.

ROGERS: No, I can't see it.
By that Friday, Kirsten Powers was pimping this same bullshit on Special Report:
POWERS (9/21/12): Look, the administration is either lying or is dangerously clueless and it is not getting covered by the media. And I think that is the point that David is trying to make. You can't have a political impact if people don't know about it. They are not held accountable. The president said in interview you put up we don't want to speculate about this. They did more than speculate. They said definitively what happened. They sent out Ambassador Rice to tell us all the stories that didn't make sense. That's why they stayed clueless because we all watched that and thought, “Nobody believes this is what happened. Nobody believes it was spontaneous, that there are reports showing otherwise.”
Rice had stressed, again and again, that this was preliminary information. Even today, the appalling Dowd is willing to type the opposite line.

SKOOL DAZE: New York Times delivers a Brick!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012

Part 2—Deceptive snark about skools: In a rational world, it would be hard to believe the strange things Mark Strama said.

Strama is a Democratic member of the Texas legislature. He sits on the public education committee in the Texas House. He’s plainly very bright.

(For part 1 in this series, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/27/12.)

And yet, when Strama spoke at last month’s Texas Book Festival, he made a set of surprising admissions. Until recently, Strama hadn’t known that Texas students score quite well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the widely-praised “gold standard” of educational testing.

In fact, Texas students routinely score quite high on the NAEP, especially in math. They’ve been scoring quite high on these heralded measures since at least the mid-1990s.

You’d think that Texans (and other people) would be aware of these facts. But when he spoke at last month’s event, Strama said he was surprised when he recently learned this news.

If you lived in a rational world, these comments would seem quite surprising:
STRAMA (10/27/12): I got a press release from the Texas education agency a couple of months ago that said that, on the fourth grade science NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Texas African-American students performed fourth best of all African-American students in the country, comparing ours to every other African-American cohort in every other state in the country. Our Hispanic students were the sixth best on the fourth grade science NAEP. Our Anglo students were the eighth best of all the Anglo students in the country.

And I thought, “That’s a pretty impressive record. That’s a little different than what I expected, actually.”
As he continued, Strama described the way he gathered additional information about Texas test scores after being surprised by these facts. He described his additional puzzlement concerning a very basic aspect of these test scores.

In a rational world, these statements by Strama would seem quite strange. It would be strange to think that a Texas legislator—a member of the education committee—didn’t know such basic facts about his state’s public schools.

It would be strange to think that Strama was surprised by those high test scores. It would be strange to think that he had a hard time solving that additional puzzle.

That’s the way Strama’s discussion would seem in a rational world. But you don’t live in any such world. You live in a world where major journalists enjoy reciting Standard Tales about the hapless children and teachers of the benighted and dumb red state, Texas.

Earlier this year, Gail Collins pimped this pleasing tribal tale in a disgracefully uninformed book. If you lived in a rational world, a “journalist” who wrote such a ludicrous book would have her keister kicked down the stairs, out the door, across the sidewalk and into the street.

But you don’t live in a rational world. To date, no one has said a single word about Collin’s stunning collection of disinformation. And sure enough! Concerning the public schools of Texas, the New York Times was spreading this tribal tale again in an op-ed column last week.

The column was written by Michael Brick, a former New York Times sports reporter who is now pimping himself as an expert on public schools. Brick has written a worthless new book about a high school in Austin, Texas—a book which largely focuses on the school’s basketball team.

Last Friday, the Times let Brick promote his book through a worthless, misleading op-ed column. Early on, the former sports maven typed the highlighted bricks:
BRICK (11/23/12): In his speech on the night of his re-election, President Obama promised to find common ground with opposition leaders in Congress. Yet when it comes to education reform, it’s the common ground between Democrats and Republicans that has been the problem.

For the past three decades, one administration after another has sought to fix America’s troubled schools by making them compete with one another. Mr. Obama has put up billions of dollars for his Race to the Top program, a federal sweepstakes where state educational systems are judged head-to-head largely on the basis of test scores. Even here in Texas, nobody’s model for educational excellence, the state has long used complex algorithms to assign grades of Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable to its schools.

So far, such competition has achieved little more than re-segregation, long charter school waiting lists and the same anemic international rankings in science, math and literacy we’ve had for years.
In this opening passage, Brick advanced several Standard Press Corps Tales about American public schools. But right there in his second paragraph, he offered some standard snark about Texas, pleasingly describing the state as “nobody’s model for educational excellence.”

Messing with Texas provides great pleasure to the modern pseudo-liberal. Collins’ entire book was built around this theme.

Collins grossly misled her readers about Texas schools in the course of providing this tribal joy. Right at the start of Friday’s column, Brick played the same pleasing card, advancing the same tribal narrative.

You’re right! Brick’s snarky aside makes no specific assertion. Are the public schools in Texas a “model for educational excellence?”

Inevitably, that is a matter of judgment. But how many readers exposed to Brick’s snark would come away with the slightest idea that Texas students routinely outscore their national peers, often by rather large margins? That black kids in Texas routinely outscore their peers in other states in the way Strama described? That the same is true of the state’s white and Hispanic students?

Snark like this actually matters. Snark like Brick’s is so widespread that even a smart, involved person like Strama seems to have had no earthly idea that Texas students have been outperforming their peers for years.

Meanwhile, here was the utterly loathsome Collins last June, lecturing readers in Chicago about the brown peril found to the south (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/1/12):
COLLINS (6/10/12): [Texas] has not integrated its Hispanic residents into its political and business power structure in the way you would expect by now. And two, it’s not doing the job of educating young Hispanic children that it needs to do if they’re going to become critical skilled workers for the next generation.

Right now, Texas imports college graduates. It imports as many as it creates on its own. So when you are paying to help make the universities in Illinois top-tier universities, you are paying to help staff businesses in Texas because a lot of your graduates are going to wind up down there.

Now, unless Texas antes up and really, really, really steps up to the education plate—

In the future, ten percent of the work force of America is going to be Texas born, bred and educated. And unless they do a better job than they’re doing now, that’s when we all go south.
Collins warned Chicago readers about the hordes of Hispanic dumb-asses being produced in the south. Those Collins fans had no way of knowing the truth: Hispanic students in their own state of Illinois are vastly outscored, year after year, by their peers in Texas!

Tribal pleasure was being dispensed! In the process, Collins’ readers were being made much dumber.

A similar process took place last week when the New York Times invited Brick to snark about Texas schools. We were especially struck by Brick’s instant snark because we had recently seen him in a public forumon C-Span.

Where had we seen this very bad person—this tool of pseudo-liberal derision? Of course! Brick was one of the authors who sat on the panel Strama conducted at the Texas Book Festival! The aptly-named scribe was sitting right there as Strama explained what he’d learned.

Presumably, Brick heard every word Strama said. Just a guess—given the power of tribal lore, Strama’s words clanged off Brick’s forehead:
STRAMA (10/27/12): I got a press release from the Texas education agency a couple of months ago that said that, on the fourth grade science NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Texas African-American students performed fourth best of all African-American students in the country, comparing ours to every other African-American cohort in every other state in the country. Our Hispanic students were the sixth best on the fourth grade science NAEP. Our Anglo students were the eighth best of all the Anglo students in the country.

And I thought, “That’s a pretty impressive record. That’s a little different than what I expected, actually.”
If Brick possessed an ounce of intellectual integrity, he might have explored the surprising facts Strama described that day. Had he done so, he might have thought twice about dishing that snark about the children and teachers of Texas.

Among other things, Brick could have learned that black students in Texas scored second among the fifty states in last year’s eighth-grade NAEP math test. He could have learned that Hispanic students in Texas also scored second among the fifty states—and that white students in Texas scored third among their national peers.

Does that mean that the Texas schools should be “somebody’s model for educational excellence?”

Not necessarily, no.

It does mean that the Texas schools could perhaps serve as a model for 48 other states. In a rational world, it would mean that the time has come for players like Collins and Brick to stop their stupid snarking.

Collins’ conduct in writing and selling that book was simply inexcusable. In a rational would, she would no longer be able to work as a journalist.

But in large part, Collins, like Brick, was simply playing a tribal game—a game in which the desire for tribal pleasure is placed ahead of the need for actual knowledge about the public schools.

Collins is a terrible person. Terrible also are the “journalists” who wink and nod at the disinformation she spewed in her pitiful, misinformed book.

That said, where does this horrible process end—the process by which pseudo-journalists keep spewing these pleasing tribal tales?

For the third time, let’s quote Strama. This is where the process ends when these deeply terrible people engage in these tribal games:
STRAMA (10/27/12): And I thought, “That’s a pretty impressive record. That’s a little different than what I expected, actually.”
Plainly, Strama is a very bright person. But even Strama didn’t know the basic facts about his state's public schools! So it goes when hacks like Collins gambol and play—when the New York Times invites hacks like Brick to spread the snark even further.

In a discourse conducted by people like these, the public is constantly being misled. Tomorrow, we’ll continue to see where this process leads.

Visit our incomparable archives: Starting in late September, we examined Collins’ gruesome book in our award-winning series, Disaggregation Nation.

For part one in that series, just click here. You’ll have to maneuver from there.

To date, no journalist has said a single word about Collins’ mountain of disinformation. When it comes to the public schools, misinformation is the expected norm.

Tribal snark is assumed.

Bruni mocks Norquist, then pimps his line!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Breaking: Grover has won! Like Frank Bruni, we happen to know Grover Norquist a small tiny tad.

Like Bruni, we happen to like Grover Norquist, although we think his policy ideas are patently nuts.

That said, Norquist has been a powerful player over the past twenty years. He remains a powerful player today, although Bruni doesn’t seem to recognize this fact.

How can we tell that Grover rules? The force of his narrative is evident in Bruni’s new column, even as its author celebrates Grover’s demise.

Some Republicans have announced that they are no longer bound by Norquist’s famous anti-tax pledge. Bruni says that’s a wonderful thing—but as he does, he quickly repeats the talking points that spring from Norquistism:
BRUNI (11/27/12): All three Republican lawmakers were echoing previous comments of their own and of a small but significant cluster of colleagues, whose numbers continued to grow on Monday, when Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, appearing on CBS’s “This Morning,” pronounced himself “not obligated on the pledge.” It’s as if some spell has at long last been broken, and the formerly bewitched villagers are rising up to defy their evil overlord and insist on the possibility of life and even mirth without a deduction for corporate jets.

I celebrate this not because I think tax increases are some budget panacea. They’re not even close. In fact there’s a serious risk of focusing too much on them and too little on entitlement reform and other potential savings, and one of the real values of the Republican Party has been its insistence, in theory if not always in practice, on careful attention to expenditures.
Even as he “celebrates” Grover’s demise, he starts reciting Grover’s points! We shouldn’t focus too much on tax increases! The main thing we should focus on is cuts to entitlement programs!

(Before long, Bruni was hitting another mark, saying that “Lincoln” helps us see that we have to come to a compromise concerning the fiscal cliff right now. Already, this standard conclusion is sacred writ within the guild.)

Norquistism rules our discourse in every conceivable way. Its basic tenets are all around us. We are surrounded by Grover’s tenets as fish are surrounded by water.

We’ll take a wild guess: In our major newspapers, Frank Bruni has never so much as seen an account of what would happen if we approached our deficit problem through an emphasis on higher taxes.

One example: He has never even seen an account of what would happen if we simply returned to all the Clinton-era tax rates. In his own New York Times, has he ever seen a front-page discussion of the crazy tax breaks the Masters of the Universe get?

In our current circumstance, could tax increases turn out to be “some budget panacea?” It’s against the law to consider such a notion! That helps us see that Grover rules. He and his allies won this game a very long time ago.

Yesterday morning, Paul Krugman said “the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout.” If he meant its political clout, we’d have to say that he was dreaming, although he was right on the substance.

This morning, Bruni helped drive home our point. He celebrated Grover’s demise, then started reciting Grover’s points! We have to focus on entitlement cuts, he quickly averred.

Translation: Grover has won!

A second miscalculation: We’d say that Bruni miscalculates a second time in his next paragraph:
BRUNI (continuing directly): But over recent years the party lost much of its credibility in this discussion, by dint of the lavish spending and escalating debt under George W. Bush and because of a sophomoric, gimmicky purity that’s incarnate in Norquist, who has done his party real damage. He might as well have been onstage during that infamous Republican debate in August 2011 when all eight candidates for the party’s presidential nomination said that they wouldn’t accept even one dollar in tax increases for $10 in spending reductions. They had devolved into dummies, and Norquist was their ventriloquist.
Has Norquist done the GOP real damage? Maybe, although we wouldn’t feel real certain. But he has produced tremendous return to the wealthy interests which invest in his enterprise.

As far as we know, Grover Norquist is sincere in his approach to budget matters. But the power of his message has made zillions of dollars for the nation’s conquering swells, who will experience little push-back from Bruni's mush-mouthed columns.

Bruni isn’t going to say that. Under the rules of Norquistism, such bad thoughts aren’t allowed. (Bruni's role: He writes columns about gay issues. This gives us liberals the impression that we have a seat at the NYT table.)

All around you in recent years, you have seen the mass agreement within the mainstream press—Norquistism can’t be challenged. That’s why you saw no discussion of Romney’s proposal to eliminate the estate tax. It’s why you saw no attempt in 2009 to explain why our health costs are so high.

(Where is all that money going? You aren't encouraged to ask.)

It’s why you saw so little discussion of Romney’s ludicrous tax pseudo-proposal. Long ago, major interests agreed that such topics can’t be explored.

Grover won a long time ago. Bruni types in his thrall.

CNN deals the dope on what Rice "maintains!"

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012

The least capable people on earth: Around 5:45 this morning, we heard the formulation on CNN’s Early Start.

Via Nexis, we see that Deborah Feyerick did the reporting. Sadly, remarkably, this is what Feyerick said:
FEYERICK (11/27/12): Ambassador Susan Rice heads to Capitol Hill this morning to mend fences with three Republican senators. She angered John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte with her initial comments made on several TV networks that appeared to play down the role of al Qaeda terrorists in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

That attack killed four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Rice maintains that she made it very clear the intelligence information she had at the time was preliminary. Senators are threatening to block her nomination if President Obama chooses her to be his next Secretary of State.
According to Feyerick, Rice maintains that she said the intelligence was preliminary!

By now, CNN has had well over two months to examine what Rice really said. They don’t have to rely on what Rice "maintains."

Transcripts and tapes are easy to find. They can see what she said.

CNN doesn’t have to rely on what Ambassador Rice maintains. They can see her making repeated disclaimers that day—on Meet the Press, for example:
RICE (9/16/12): Well, let me tell you the best information we have at present. First of all, there is an FBI investigation, which is ongoing, and we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. But putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo—almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.

What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode.

Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation, and the president has been very clear—we'll work with the Libyan authorities to bring those responsible to justice.
Ambassador Rice's entire statement involved 170 words. By our count, Rice told Gregory seven times that her account was preliminary.

Like the western world's greatest bard, let us count the ways:

Right at the start, Rice told Gregory that she was providing “the best information we have at present.”

She then told him the administration was “looking to” an FBI investigation “to give us the definitive word as to what transpired.” She then said she was providing “the best information that we have available to us today.”

In her very next breath, she restated the point, saying that her account was “our current assessment.”

Ambassador Rice tossed in a “we think” midway through her short account. As she closed, she restated her initial point, telling Gregory that her account was “our best judgment now.”

In her next breath, she restated her word of caution. “We'll await the results of the investigation,” she once again advised.

Over and over, again and again, Rice told Gregory that her account was preliminary. Ten weeks later, CNN is only able to say that Rice maintains that she did this!

We’ve asked these questions many times:

Who are these people? Where do they come from? Are they truly flesh of the earth?

Could humans really behave this way? Is it possible that we’re dealing with some alternate life-form?

Over the weekend, Ta-Nehisi Coates advised us to look at Rice’s “original statements.” He then quoted Andrea Mitchell’s cherry-picked account of Rice's statements.

This morning, Feyerick plays this non-human game with Rice’s repeated disclaimers.

Do we know why these life-forms keep doing these things? Are they flesh of the earth?

Final point: Reading Feyerick’s text, one would assume that the Benghazi attack was conducted by “al Qaeda terrorists.”

To this day, have intelligence services stated that conclusion?

As far as we know, they have not. The Washington Post seemed to report a different conclusion just about ten days ago.

But Feyerick is part of a guild which has purchased a John McCain line. In accord with Hard Pundit law, she’s working hard to advance that Official Press Line.

Feyerick is misleading you in the process, and she's making a joke of your world. This was common during the Clinton-Gore years.

The whole liberal world sat and stared.

Like Coates (and Andrea Mitchell) on Rice!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Where does consensus come from: The ongoing assault on Susan Rice has been profoundly instructive.

It has been a long time since the nation’s press corps bought such a bogus tale from the right—although this conduct was very common in the days of the Clintons and Gore.

What happens when the mainstream press corps adopts a bogus attack from the right? Over the weekend, we were quite struck by this post at the Atlantic—a post by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates is not a man of the right. Beyond that, he isn’t silly or dumb or fatuous or numb-nutted or even inane or foolish. For all these reasons, we were struck by the extent to which he advanced the right-wing narrative about Rice, even in a post in which he plainly takes Rice’s side.

Most of all, we were struck by the way Coates gathers the most basic information.

To evaluate Coates’ post, you’ll have to read the whole thing for yourself. But in the passage which follows, he recommends that we “revisit” Rice’s “original statements”—the actual things Rice said on September 16.

At this site, we have done that again and again and again. But good God! This is the way Coates did it:
COATES (11/23/12): In cases like this [I] find it always worthwhile to revisit the original statements. From Susan Rice:
On Sept. 16, Rice said on Meet the Press that the violence sweeping the Islamic world at the time was "a spontaneous reaction to a video, and it's not dissimilar but, perhaps, on a slightly larger scale than what we have seen in the past with 'The Satanic Verses' with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad."

She then elaborated on the specific attack on the US consulate in Libya: "Putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video."

Rice added, "Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation."
This is deceptive. And perhaps you believe that the White House, no matter the opinion of the intelligence community, has the responsibility to say all that it thinks it knows as forthrightly as possible, as soon as possible. But that isn't what Republicans are arguing. They are arguing that the CIA was the honest broker, and the White House intentionally played dumb in order to reap the political benefit of not saying America is under attack by terrorists.
“This is deceptive,” Coates says, after presenting the long excerpt we have italicized. Although his writing is unclear, we take that to refer to Rice’s original statements. (Beyond that, we’ve added one word to the first line we quote. We assume that reflects Coates’ intention.)

Coates goes on to defend Rice in various ways; he ends by wondering about the possible racial motivations behind this ongoing attack. But he seems to say, at this juncture, that Rice’s original statements were, in fact, deceptive.

We wouldn’t be inclined to agree with that judgment. But what is most striking about this post?

Feast your eyes on what Coates does when he instructs us to review Rice’s original statements! In the material we have italicized, he isn’t presenting Rice’s statements from the September 16 transcripts.

Good lord! Instead, he is presenting Andrea Mitchell’s account of what Rice said on those Sunday programs. He gives us Mitchell’s account of what Rice said, from this NBC news report!

Sorry, but we thought that was stunning—and extremely instructive.

It’s amazing that anyone would think that this is the way to “revisit” Rice’s “original statements.” Instead of posting the actual words which were spoken by Rice herself, Coates presents a fellow journalist’s edited version of What Rice Said On Those Programs.

And uh-oh! Mitchel isn’t a person of the right, but her account of What Rice Said strikes us as highly selective—and highly distorted. More precisely, Mitchell cherry-picked Rice’s statements in the manner which quickly became standard as the press corps bent to the GOP’s will in this ongoing matter.

As everyone and his crazy uncle has done, Mitchell quoted the first part of What Rice Said about Benghazi on Meet the Press. She then omitted the second, more relevant part.

She quotes Rice saying that the events in Benghazi were “initially” a spontaneous protest. But she omits what Rice said next.

Much like Gallant refuting his twin, we will quote Rice directly:
RICE (9/16/12): What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode.

Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation, and the president has been very clear—we'll work with the Libyan authorities to bring those responsible to justice.
For whatever reason, Mitchell cherry-picked Rice’s original statements in precisely the way John McCain has done.

She presented the less relevant part of What Rice Said—the part about what “initially” happened. She omitted the more relevant part of What Rice Said—the part where “extremists” armed with “heavy weapons” came to the consulate as the protest was unfolding, producing “a much more violent episode.”

For whatever reason, Mitchell omitted that second part of What Rice Said. She thereby extending the cockeyed version of Rice’s statement which has been aggressively pimped by McCain and his various crackpot friends.

And good God! When Coates told us that we should review Rice’s “original statements,” he didn’t post Rice’s words as she spoke them. He directed us to Mitchell’s cherry-picked version of Rice’s statements, not to the statements themselves.

You live in a very strange country. As we’ve noted, Coates is universally thought to be brighter than the average journalist. It is that fact which makes his post such a remarkable document.

Your lizard brain will tell you we’re wrong—that we’re somehow misconstruing that post. In the end, Coates tied this episode to race, and that made your lizard brain glad.

But in the process, Coates extended a cherry-picked, misleading account of What Rice Said on those Sunday programs. It is the cherry-picked, misleading account which came from Saint McCain himself, and from other strange men of the right.

What happens when the mainstream press adopts Bogus Accounts from the right? We start believing the darnedest things!

We start believing (and saying) that Al Gore said he invented the Internet. We start believing that Susan Rice said the attack was a spontaneous reaction to Cairo.

Neither person said any such thing—until you start reading The Standard Account found all through the “press corps.”

Coates is thought to be much brighter than most people in that sad guild. That’s why his post about Rice was so stunning, although your lizard says different.

Coates didn't present Rice's actual statements. Instead, he gave us Mitchell's account!

Does anyone know how to play this game? Here within our very strange world, the answer
seems stunningly clear.

Tomorrow: The Puppy and the Kool Kidz

Musical accompaniment: Why not enjoy the Waterboys singing their highly relevant song, "Strange Boat?"

"We're sailing in a strange boat," the 'boys observe, "heading for a strange shore."

SKOOL DAZE: Perpetually, stunningly uninformed!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Part 1—Smart Texan describes Texas schools: Mark Strama is a Democratic member of the Texas legislature.

He represents a district in Austin. He’s a member of the public education committee in the Texas House.

Strama is youngish and bright, as a recent appearance on C-Span showed. To watch that appearance, click this.

Why was Strama appearing on C-Span? He hosted a panel on public schools at last month’s Texas Book Festival. As he started his presentation, he described a surprising discovery concerning his state’s public schools.

Who knew? Texas kids are scoring quite high on the famous “gold standard of educational testing!” To his credit, Strama was willing to voice his surprise at this fact:
STRAMA (10/27/12): My name is Mark Strama, I’m a state representative from Austin and a member of the public education committee in the Texas House. And I want to start this discussion just briefly with a little bit of educational context about this state’s challenges.

I got a press release from the Texas education agency a couple of months ago that said that, on the fourth grade science NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Texas African-American students performed fourth best of all African-American students in the country, comparing ours to every other African-American cohort in every other state in the country. Our Hispanic students were the sixth best on the fourth grade science NAEP. Our Anglo students were the eighth best of all the Anglo students in the country.

And I thought, “That’s a pretty impressive record. That’s a little different than what I expected, actually.”
Strama was surprised to learn that Texas kids scored in the top ten on the fourth grade NAEP science test. As a result, he did something smart people may sometimes do.

Good lord! He sought additional data! After that, he formulated a question:
STRAMA (continuing directly): So I went to the NAEP web site and found that, in the aggregate, the Texas student scores on the fourth grade science NAEP ranked 29th in the country. That’s not so great!

Now, how is it possible that when you disaggregate those three student cohorts and evaluate them against the rest of the country, each of the three cohorts is in the top ten in the country—and we all know that those three cohorts comprise over 95 percent of the student population. How is it possible that collectively they’re 29th?
Frankly, Strama was puzzled. In Texas, black kids had scored fourth best among the fifty states on the fourth-grade NAEP science test. The state’s white kids had scored eighth best. Hispanic kids scored sixth.

But overall, Texas kids had only scored 29th best on the test! As he continued his presentation, Strama explained this apparent paradox. We think the highlighted words were most instructive of all:
STRAMA (continuing directly): The answer, it turns out, and it wasn’t easy to figure this out, the answer is that African-American and Hispanic students in Texas and in the country significantly underperform Anglo students. And in Texas, African-American and Anglo (sic) students make up a significant larger share of the entire student population. So when your lower-performing categories of students are a larger percentage of your total student population, you can have all three student groups in the top ten in the country and still be 29th in the country when you combine them.

It begs the question, are our public schools doing a good job or are they mediocre?
Strama went on to give an intelligent, nuanced answer to the question he posed. But we were very much struck by that highlighted passage.

Rather plainly, Strama is bright; he even graduated from Brown! And sure enough! Confronted with puzzling information, he did what American journalists never do:

Incredibly, Strama went to the NAEP web site and gathered additional information! Then, he tried to solve the puzzle his efforts had created!

In that final passage, Strama explained how Texas fourth-graders could score 29th best on the test in question if each of the state’s major student groups were scoring in the top ten. But we were struck by that highlighted phrase:

Even for a smart person like Strama, this basic matter had been quite opaque. “It wasn’t easy to figure this out,” Strama quite credibly said.

Why was it hard for a person like Strama to solve such a basic problem? In large part, because of his nation’s “press corps.” But first, let’s return to the basic things Strama said.

Many parts of his presentation were striking, amazing even. We’ll offer three examples:

Strama is plainly bright, and he serves the public education committee in the Texas House. But, until a few months ago, he didn’t know that Texas kids score that high on the NAEP!

When Strama learned that different groups of Texas kids score that high, he still didn’t know how it could be that their overall score was so low.

“It wasn’t easy to figure this out,” Strama said. Translation: Even after he noted this paradox, he apparently had a hard time finding an explanation.

Again, we want to stress a key fact—Strama is plainly quite bright. In a rational world, it would be amazing to learn that he knew so little about such a basic matter.

But you don’t live in a rational world. You live in a world where a major journalist, the high Lady Collins, wrote a book this very year which completely misrepresented this aspect of the Texas schools. She then paraded around the country, extending the misinformation.

Question: Have you seen a single review or article which noted this groaning behavior by Collins? Obvious answer: Of course you haven’t! This ridiculous lady is a high-ranking noble. Such things simply aren’t done!

Bottom line: We live in a world where major journalists never do what Strama did. They never go to the NAEP web site to gather the most basic facts.

Strama is plainly bright, but our upper-end press corps is full of baboons. Example: One of the authors on Strama’s panel was the egregious young Michael Brick, who wrote this op-ed in last Friday’s New York Times.

Brick’s op-ed extended the pleasing practice of misleading the public about the Texas schools. You might call it “creeping Gail Collinsism,” although other names could be used.

Alas! We live in a world in which we’re told that we have an active, practicing press corps. But in fact, our press corps isn’t like that. It isn’t like that at all.

Over the next week or so, we will discuss the state of upper-end journalism concerning the public schools. Your press corps would die and go to hell before it would offer real reporting about those schools—about the children and teachers within them.

Why do our “journalists” behave in such ways? We’ll puzzle that out as we go.

Tomorrow: An aptly named former Times journalist

Visit our incomparable archives: How horrible was Collins' work? For one of our several discussions, click here.

Collins is a very high-ranking journalist. We take this to prove our basic point: Your nation has no press corps. In most matters, your nation is flying blind, with no public discourse at all.