Winter squash and blue professors!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2023

Halloween delights: As we noted just last week, it's our favorite passage from Walden:

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath...

The pleasure we take from the winter squash isn't quite that intense. But many neighbors in this neighborhood create displays of winter squash on their doorsteps at this time of year. 

We imbibe delight from the winter squash every time we pass. We stop and look at them every time, these seasonal doorstep squash.

What is, or are, so-called "winter squash?" We weren't sure until we googled the term this week. The leading authority on the topic was willing to inform us:

Winter squash is an annual fruit representing several squash species within the genus Cucurbita. Late-growing, less symmetrical, odd-shaped, rough or warty varieties, small to medium in size, but with long-keeping qualities and hard rinds, are usually called winter squash...

Cultivars of winter squash that are round and orange are called pumpkins. In New Zealand and Australian English, the term "pumpkin" generally refers to the broader category called "winter squash."

According to the leading authority, certain cultivars of winter squash are known to the public as "pumpkins!" 

Such cultivars are orange and round, and are perfectly fine. We're thinking to a larger degree of cultivars like the calabrazas:

Although winter squashes are grown in many regions, they are relatively economically unimportant, with few exceptions. They are grown extensively in tropical America, Japan, Northern Italy, and certain areas of the United States. The calabazas of the West Indies and the forms grown by the people of Mexico and Central America are not uniform, pure varieties but extremely variable in size, shape, and color. 

The winter squash on local doorsteps are indeed extremely variable in size and shape and color. We stop to look at them every time. For one photographic representation, you can just click here.

Also, some local squash look a bit more like this; they basically look like blue pumpkins! We stop to look at them every time. As with Finch's mockingbird, it seems to us that they've agreed to look like that just to give us pleasure.

We've also been struck today by this report from Kevin Drum. It involves a personnel flap which has been underway at Cal Berkeley for at least several years.

Some graduate students got into the act before the start of last Saturday's Cal-USC football game. Drum reports the basics of the case, but we recommend that you read KQED's full report on this endless matter.

The dispute involves a tenured Berkeley professor (Isabella del Valle) who has acknowledged harassing a professor from Cal Davis (Joshua Clover). 

What has this admitted harassment involved? Kevin quotes this part of the KQED report:

In an interview with KQED, del Valle acknowledged some of the behavior described in the investigative reports, including keying Clover’s car, vandalizing the area outside his apartment door, contacting his friends, posting an image of his partner online and leaving messages outside the home of his mother. Those messages included one that said “I raised a psychopath,” according to the university’s investigative reports.

....“I did write outside his door, ‘Here lives a pervert.’ I did that. And again, I’m not proud,” del Valle said. “If I had the opportunity to do things differently, I would do them differently.”

 Drum doesn't quote this additional part of the (lengthy) KQED report:

Del Valle said since the suspension in the fall of 2021, she has not been teaching at UC Berkeley and has been living out of two suitcases because of the uncertainty around her future. She said she could accept an 18-month suspension UC Berkeley offered as a settlement, but has no plans to do so. If she doesn’t accept that outcome, the case could instead be brought before the university’s Privilege and Tenure Committee, and she could lose her tenure and be fired.

“My life is completely destroyed,” del Valle said. “I don’t want UC Berkeley to think that they can do this to a minority woman in order to protect a white, senior professor. It’s not acceptable.”

Clover has stirred his own share of controversy. He was widely criticized for a 2014 tweet saying he was thankful that all living police officers “would one day be dead.” He later advocated killing police officers, and suggested the easiest way would be to shoot them in the back. UC Davis’ chancellor condemned those statements in 2019 but said they were protected free speech.

Professor del Valle seems to think that she's being disciplined because she's a minority woman while Clover is an older white male. Some graduate students seem to believe this, and who knows? They could even be right!

For his part, Professor Clover has advocated shooting police officers in the back. 

At Davis, the chancellor ruled, perhaps correctly, that this was protected free speech. Last weekend, a bunch of graduate students staged a full-blown "sit-in" demonstration on Professor del Valle's behalf.

Some winter squash seem to exist just to give visual pleasure. Again and again, some professors, chancellors and graduate students seem to exist for the principal reason of making the stars at Fox smile.

Is this personnel matter simply a crazy outlier? Or is it possibly, in some way, what our blue tribe is secretly like? 

We think our tribe would be better off if we were able to come to terms with how crazy we can seem to be. Fox News is often (not always) dishonest and nuts. Then too, there are our own tribe's very occasional journeys off the rails! 

Are we blues aware of that fact? Or is this a possible blind spot?

CLINTONS AND OTHERS: The resident made an odd remark!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2023

Back in 2021, his comments were even stranger: Days earlier, his son had been killed in the Lewiston mass shooting event.

As we noted yesterday, he himself was an elected official in nearby Auburn, Maine. For us, his comments to CNN's Poppy Harloe struck us as highly enlightened, in several different ways:

HARLOW (10/27/23): I'm struck by your remarks yesterday that you do not harbor hate or anger for the man who took your son's life. And I wonder how that's possible despite your grief.

AUBURN RESIDENT: Uh, you have to put that part of it—you have to put it out of your mind. You have to let the Lord do whatever needs to be done. And if this person was, at the time, in his right mind, I believe he would have been a loving person just like we are. There's something that went wrong.

And I just can't hate him. I believe in the Lord and I think the Lord will prevail in the end here. And I guess we can make our choices on people but I can't—I can't hate this person. I've been taught different than that—I hope, anyways. And I believe in the Lord and I have to feel that way.

"You can't run around this world hating people," the Auburn resident said. "If you do, these kind of things will happen more and more."

Continuing, he added this:

AUBURN RESIDENT: And I'm sure this man— Whatever happened to his mind, I'm sure he wasn't born to be a killer. And he's got, I'm sure, a father and a mother that would have never believed this would have happened with him. So all I can say is, I'm sorry that it's happened to all of us, and I'm sorry what may happen to him. And God will prevail.

The killer had started his life as "some mother's darling son." But "there's something that went wrong" in his mind, the Auburn resident said: "If this person was, at the time, in his right mind, I believe he would have been a loving person just like we are." 

The Auburn resident said he couldn't hate the person who killed his son. He even said that he "was sorry what may happen to him."

These statements struck us as highly unusual, in several ways which we explained in yesterday's report. We thought of a less than famous song by Hank Williams. We thought of a less than famous statement by Dr. King.

We thought of the way some of the families in Charleston reacted after the mass shooting there back in 2015. But along the way, the Auburn resident also authored an odd remark:

AUBURN RESIDENT: We have—we really have a loving community. We have two cities here—sister cities. They both believe that their city is the best city, and that's the way we are. But we love each other.

We travel back and forth to all businesses. We make plans together. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And as a city councilor, I know a lot of their feelings and they know a lot of mine. The two cities try to make the cities the proudest place to be. 

Diversity, of course, is here and we know that, but we don't go around shooting each other. So you know, I just hope we can move on through this and get it behind us so that we can start healing. And thank God we have you people to keep our loved ones alive for a few more days.

HARLOW: Your son—it is clear that all the good in him came from so much good in you. Thank you for sharing about him with us this morning. And we're here for whatever you need. 

"Diversity is here, and we know that, but we don't go around shooting each other?"  What in the world could the Auburn resident possibly have meant by that?

As the term is commonly understood, "diversity" issues had nothing to do with the mass shootings in Lewiston. The Auburn resident had inserted his comment about "diversity" for no apparent reason.

We thought we knew what he was talking about, but we weren't entirely sure. And when we conducted a bit of research, we learned that the resident had made an even stranger set of comments back in 2021.

Due to his role as a public official, his earlier comments had produced a bit of a local uproar. Dual headlines included, here's the way a news report began in a local newspaper:

[Auburn resident] apologizes for racist comments
City leaders say they'll form new diversity committee to tackle racial issues in Auburn.

City Councilor [NAME WITHHELD] apologized Friday for racist comments he expressed this week as he discussed a proposal to name a footbridge for former Mayor John Jenkins.

[THE AUBURN RESIDENT] said in a prepared statement that Jenkins was “a good friend of mine for 40 years” and he “meant no disrespect to him or his family.”

[THE AUBURN RESIDENT], who represents the New Auburn-centered Ward 5 and is running unopposed for a sixth term, said he understands his comments at Tuesday’s council meeting “were insensitive and inappropriate.”

“I humbly and sincerely apologize,” [THE AUBURN RESIDENT] said.

If you read the full report, you'll see that the Auburn resident's comments had in fact been rather odd. A reporter for the local Sun Journal had felt secure is describing the comments as "racist." 

Indeed, in the aftermath of the resident's comments, Mayor Jason Levesque had "announced his support for creating a permanent Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee in Auburn," the Sun Journal reported. The new committee "would include government, education and community leaders 'who will help guide us through the difficult conversations and changes ahead.' "

We were interested in this part of the Auburn resident's background. On the one hand, he seemed to be expressing a set enlightened views in the wake of his son shotting death—views that led Harlow and co-anchor Phil Mattingly to marvel at his moral elevation.

On the other hand, in the middle of his CNN interview, he had inserted an odd remark about "diversity" in the Lewiston area—an odd remark which had nothing to do with the mass shooting event. Also, there was this incident from two years ago, in which he had made a set of odd remarks which were expressly reported as "racist."

For at least the past fifty years, our struggling blue tribe has looked for ways to understand and describe people who may be like this heartbroken Auburn resident. American political groupings have materially changed as we've struggled with this ongoing challenge.

As a general matter, two of our best-known political figures have adopted different approaches to this longstanding analytical challenge. One of those people is former president Bill Clinton. The other person is his wife, former senator Hillary Clinton.

That said, what was the resident talking about as he spoke to Harlow last week? What kind of "diversity" did he have in mind as he made his peculiar comment?

We're fairly sure we know the answer to that—but what lies in the resident's heart? 

Granted, no one's heart will ever be as pure as the hearts which belong to those of us here in our own blue tribe. But should the resident be regarded as a good human being? Or should he be seen as an Other?

Two roads diverged, a long time ago, in an American wood. Generally speaking, the Clintons have tended to split apart and head down divergent paths with respect to the matter at hand.

Which of those paths is wiser? Which is more helpful as a political matter? Those questions strike us as quite important as our badly floundering nation continues to slide toward the sea.

Tomorrow: Diversity in Maine

Where do ugly claims come from?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2023

In part, from doctored edits like this: As you may know, Karine Jean-Pierre is the current White House press secretary.

Last week, she was accused—she was rather widely accused—of antisemitism on various Fox News programs. Below, you see the full exchange which gave rise to the charge:

JEAN-PIERRE (10/23/23): Go ahead, M. J.

M. J. LEE, CNN: Was the President briefed on Samantha Woll, the leader of a synagogue in Detroit who was stabbed to death?

JEAN-PIERRE:  So, obviously, our hearts go out to—to the family—to the families there.  It’s a devastating, devastating news story. 

The President obviously is—is—just like everyone else is paying close attention and saw those reports.  I don’t have anything else to add. 

Obviously, the investigation continues, and we are willing to assist in any way.  I just don’t have anything else beyond that.

LEE: What is his level of concern right now about the potential rise of antisemitism in light of everything that’s going on in Israel?

JEAN-PIERRE:  So, a couple of things. Look, we have not seen any credible threats. I know there’s been always questions about credible threats. And so, just want to make sure that that’s out there. 

But, look, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks. And certainly President Biden understands that many of our Muslim, Arab—Arab—Arab Americans and Palestinian American loved ones and neighbors are worried about the hate being directed at their communities.  And that is something you heard the President speak to in his—in his address just last—last Thursday. 

And so, one of the things that the President has done is directed his team—Homeland Security team—to prioritize prevention and disruption of any emerging threats that could harm the Jewish, the Muslim, Arab Americans or—or any other communities.  And that is something that the President has sought to do and—and since day one.

As you know, the President ran on—on—on, you know, bringing communities—protecting communities, obviously, but bringing people together, the soul—protecting the soul of the nation.  And so that is something that the President takes very, very seriously. 

And we—you know, we’re going to continue to denounce any sort of hate towards any American here.  And so, that’s what we’re going to continue to be steadfast on.  Again, he has—he has advised—directed his Homeland Security team to make sure that they’re on top of this.

That was the full, two-part exchange from which the charge of antisemitism was born. 

During the exchange, Jean-Pierre denounced "any sort of hate towards any American." When she said that President Biden has prioritized the disruption of threats that could harm any community, she named the Jewish community first. 

Has Jean-Pierre trafficked in antisemitism? It's an extremely serious charge, drawn from a strikingly slender bit of pseudo-evidence. Unless you choose to edit Jean-Pierre's statement the way Howard Kurtz chose to do on yesterday's MediaBuzz program:

LEE: What is his level of concern right now about the potential rise of antisemitism in light of everything that’s going on in Israel?

JEAN-PIERRE: Look, we have not seen any credible threats. But look, Muslim and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks. 

As you can see by clicking this link, that's the way Kurtz presented the exchange to his Fox News viewers. Th rest of the exchange was disappeared.

If that had been the full exchange, we wouldn't use it as the basis for such a deeply serious charge. But that was a heavily doctored version of the full exchange. 

Kurtz is much too smart not to know that. In a slightly better world, his ascot would be off the air.

Dropping bombs on people is easy and fun. Increasingly, both major tribes seem to know that.

CLINTONS AND OTHERS: "He would have been a loving person!"

MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2023

Auburn, Maine resident speaks: First, Lewiston replaced the Middle East. Then, Matthew Perry replaced Lewiston.

So it tends to go within the culture of round-the-clock "cable news." In all instances, coverage tends toward the "human interest" perspective—toward CNN's favorite type of question:

How did you feel when you saw your grandmother swept away by the flood?

We Americans don't have an especially bright news culture. Nor do we necessarily understand this fact about ourselves.

Can a very large modern nation survive such cultural dumbness? The answer may not be yes.

That said, we occasionally come across highly enlightened public statements. So it was when CNN's Poppy Harlow interviewed a resident of Auburn, Maine whose son was killed in last week's mass shooting event.

The interview occurred last Friday morning. According to the CNN transcript, this is what we saw at that time. With the exception of one deletion, this is what we heard:

HARLOW (10/27/23): This morning, Maine is in so much pain. So many families waking up without their loved ones, without their friend, without their coworker—all gone because of another mass shooting in America.

Our next guest, NAME WITHHELD, says his son died a hero, and he did. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: My son actually—because he's manager of the bar and everything else—picked up a butcher knife and went after the gunman to try to stop him from killing other people. And that's when he shot my son to death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: His son, Joey Walker, was the manager at Schemengees Bar & Grille where at least eight people were killed. And his father says, "My Joey will be missed by thousands."

[He] joins us now. He's also a city councilor in Auburn, Maine, just miles from where this happened. 

Thank you for being here this morning. And what a hero your son was. When you think about that what does it say about the man that he was to you?

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: I'm very proud of my son. I know that, definitely, he would do this all over again if this was to happen. All my life and all my son's life we have faced many other things that have been crazy at times in life. Meeting people is my son's biggest thing. Knowing people and understanding them is also a big thing to Joe. Loved by many, loved by myself, and he would love back to everybody.

So I know he would do such a thing to try to save lives and not let somebody hurt the people that he loved. And this was family. This place brings thousands of people in, in a year and Joe was usually the first face that they see coming through the door and the last one they see going out the door.

It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard for a lot, a lot of people. And, of course, hard for myself and my family, and his wife, grandchildren, his stepchildren. It—they're a loving family.

And for someone to do this to so many families, as well as mine, is just crazy. It leaves you an empty hole that I don't know how it will ever be filled.

HARLOW: We're looking at these wonderful pictures of the two of you together as you're helping everyone remember your son and his big smile. Our heart obviously is with his wife, Tracy, and his whole family as well.

He did so much to help people that needed it the most. He did a lot for veterans. He was about to raise money for veterans.

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Yes. Him and I had talked about it. I connected him with a good friend of mine that's a veteran, and Jerry DeWitt and him were going to meet I believe the next day. Of course, that's not going to happen now. But hopefully, somebody can pick up that ball and run with it. But it's a very short time. November 11 was the date picked to do this and—

HARLOW: Yeah.

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: —I don't know if it's going to happen at this time.

HARLOW: I'm struck by your remarks yesterday that you do not harbor hate or anger for the man who took your son's life. And I wonder how that's possible despite your grief.

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Uh, you have to put that part of it—you have to put it out of your mind. You have to let the Lord do whatever needs to be done. And if this person was, at the time, in his right mind, I believe he would have been a loving person just like we are. There's something that went wrong.

And I just can't hate him. I believe in the Lord and I think the Lord will prevail in the end here. And I guess we can make our choices on people but I can't—I can't hate this person. I've been taught different than that—I hope, anyways. And I believe in the Lord and I have to feel that way.

You can't run around this world hating people. If you do, these kind of things will happen more and more. They may be more individual things that happen. But if you hate and the hate drives you crazy you're going to hurt people. And I've had my ups and downs in my life and I don't want anyone to hurt me and I don't want to hurt anybody.

And I'm sure this man—whatever happened to his mind, I'm sure he wasn't born to be a killer. And he's got, I'm sure, a father and a mother that would have never believed this would have happened with him. So all I can say is, I'm sorry that it's happened to all of us, and I'm sorry what may happen to him. And God will prevail.

HARLOW: It's just—

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Hate will never bring my son back.

HARLOW: No, it won't.

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: It just—

HARLOW: It's just amazing to hear you with so much love in your heart. For people who don't know, you also lost your daughter 25 years ago—

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: I did.

HARLOW: —in a car accident. So to have to lose two children and still be able to have faith, have such faith and such love in your heart is remarkable. What can everyone watching do for you? How can we help you?

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Uh, just pray for everybody. Pray for the people that passed away with my son. Pray to the Lord that this doesn't happen again in our community.

None of us would have ever believed this if we would have asked each other five days ago if this was a possibility. Nobody would have believed it. Nobody would have thought it.

We have—we really have a loving community. We have two cities here—sister cities. They both believe that their city is the best city, and that's the way we are. But we love each other.

We travel back and forth to all businesses. We make plans together. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And as a city councilor, I know a lot of their feelings and they know a lot of mine. The two cities try to make the cities the proudest place to be...

[DELETED REMARK]

So you know, I just hope we can move on through this and get it behind us so that we can start healing. And thank God we have you people to keep our loved ones alive for a few more days.

 HARLOW: [NAME WITHHELD], your son—it is clear that all the good in him came from so much good in you. Thank you for sharing about him with us this morning. And we're here for whatever you need.

AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Thank you very much.

HARLOW: Of course. 

(Turns to co-anchor.)

HARLOW: No love like a parent's love, right?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: I don't—I don't have anything to say.

HARLOW: What a great human.

MATTINGLY: He said all of the things. And I wish I and everyone else could be more—

HARLOW: Like him.

MATTINGLY: —like him.

HARLOW: We'll be back.

There were pauses for emotion on the part of the Auburn resident, but also on Harlow's part. Mattingly felt he had nothing to add to what their guest had said.

To our ear, the Auburn resident was unusual on two counts:

First, he seems to believe that (severe) mental illness is an actual force in the world. He spoke with empathy on that point, recalling for us the words of the not-especially famous song from the American songbook:

He was some mother's darling,
He was some mother's son.
Once he was fair and once he was young.
And some mother rocked him, her darling, to sleep.
But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.

The resident seemed to believe that (severe) mental illness can have its way, even with some mother's darling and son. That perspective rarely intrudes on our routinely unimpressive public discourse, within which you're going to hear few discussions about the possible nature of the (presumably severe) mental illness involved in this latest mass shooting event. 

Beyond that, the resident was preaching love, not hate. We recalled the way some families responded to the June 2015 mass killing in Charleston—a response which occasioned statements of surprise and admiration from all across the globe.

Harlow seemed to know that the Auburn resident was giving voice to an unusual point of view. Having said that, we'll also say this:

Along the way, the resident made a somewhat odd remark about "diversity" in Lewiston and Auburn. Today, we've omitted that slightly peculiar remark. We'll look at it tomorrow.

Two years ago, the resident made an even stranger public remark concerning race. He was accused of racism at that time.

Concerning the Auburn resident, we will now offer this:

To our eye and to our ear, the resident isn't a Harvard professor. He's doesn't seem like a "highly educated" member of our blue tribe's ranking elite.

We don't know his party affiliation. We don't know if he even might have voted for Donald J. Trump!

(In Auburn, Trump narrowly outperformed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Four years later, Biden outperformed Donald J. Trump by a wider margin.)

The Auburn resident didn't seem like a part of our tribe's most admired elite. That said, is it possible that the Auburn resident is a good, decent person? 

We'll examine that question this week. As we do, we'll examine the way we blue tribe members may sometimes insist on creating a nation of Others, in ways which help bring us down.

The Auburn resident voiced an unusual set of views. To their credit, Harlow and Mattingly were each well aware of this fact. 

Because he seemed like an everyday person, he made us think of Dr. King's not especially famous remark:

DR. KING (2/4/68): Everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.

You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Might the Auburn resident be listed as great? Or must he be scored as an Other? 

It's pretty much all anthropology now. But that's the question we'll be exploring in the course of this Halloween week.

This week: The ways the two Clintons view others

We humans say the darndest things!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2023

Mike Johnson on marrying pets: We'll grant you, it was a long time ago. But way back when, the new speaker of the House was concerned with a troubling possibility.

He was afraid that a certain slippery slope might allow us the people to start marrying our pets! CNN reports the story in this new KFile offering:

KACZYNSKI AND GORDON (10/27/23): In the mid-2000s, Johnson’s anti-gay rhetoric was harsh. In September 2004, Johnson wrote in support of a Louisiana amendment banning same-sex marriage saying [same-sex marriage] could lead to people marrying their pets.

“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone,” he wrote. “Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”

There would be no legal basis to deny a person the right to marry his pet!

We know—you think that report can't be accurate! Anticipating objections from Doubting Thomases, CNN provides this link to the opinion column in which Johnson gave voice to this point of concern.

"If everyone does what is right in his own eyes, chaos and sexual anarchy will ensue." As you can see at that link, that's what Johnson wrote in support of his fear that we the people might start to marry our pets.

In fairness, let's be fair. We know of no reason to think that Johnson invented this point of concern. 

During that era, no less a figure than Bill O'Reilly routinely gave voice to this same concern on his highly rated Fox News Channel program. At one point, Media Matters recorded his ruminations:

WALZER (5/12/09): During the May 11 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly returned to his theory that the legalization of gay marriage could lead to the eventual legalization of interspecies marriages, this time stating to Fox News analyst Margaret Hoover, who argued against O'Reilly's theories, "You would let everybody get married who want to get married. You want to marry a turtle, you can." 

O'Reilly has previously suggested that gay marriage could ultimately allow for a person to marry "a goat," "a duck," and "a dolphin."

Andrew Walzer included a transcript and tape of this discussion. During the segment, Hoover battled back against the argument she described as a "slippery slope."

In fairness, there was always the possible sense that Mr. O was perhaps just jesting when he made these repeated remarks. There is no sign in Johnson's column that he wasn't completely serious in his stated concern about people being allowed to marry their pets.

We offer several thoughts:

Anthropologically: Anthropologically, we humans say the darndest things! There is no limit to the sorts of things which can seem to make sense to us the humans in some particular context.

Logically: Logically, the slippery slope is perhaps the dumbest of all pseudo-logical structures. Once the slippery slope gets started, there can be no legal proscriptions at all.

If we let them set a speed limit of 65 miles per hour, what's to stop them from setting the limit at 1?

That's the way the slippery slope works. The answer to that question is simple:

Human judgment will stop us from doing that! Thanks to basic human discernment, we can outlaw one bit of behavior without outlawing everything else.

We're never forced to hurtle down some slippery slope. At least in theory, we humans can discern harm in one type of behavior which we don't discern in others.

At any rate, we humans say the darndest things! Mike Johnson's old column helps establish that basic point.

We'll close today with a word of warning. This undeniable form of imperfection isn't found just in their tribe!

Full disclosure: Back in the day, we ourselves made six (6) appearances on The O'Reilly Factor. Full disclosure:

Among all major cable news figures, Mr. O was the fairest to Candidate Gore back in October 2000.

Chris Matthews labored for Gore's defeat. So did his colleagues on NBC cable.

You've never heard a word about that—but Mr. O played it straight!

Five out of 14 members are black!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2023

Judge says that isn't enough: Reports about the legalities of congressional redistricting have been quite prevalent lately. 

In general, these reports have involved Republican redistricting efforts in various Southern states. Indeed, two such news reports appear in this morning's New York Times. In each case, we'll provide the dual headlines:

North Carolina Republicans Approve House Map That Flips at Least Three Seats
The gerrymandered congressional map, made possible by a new G.O.P. majority on the state Supreme Court, ensures Republican dominance in a closely divided state.

Georgia’s Voting Maps Are Struck Down
Republicans in the state violated a landmark civil rights law in drawing maps that diluted the power of Black voters, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled.

We'll focus on the Georgia case, and on the unexplained legal strictures which lie at the heart of these matters.

First, a bit of statistical background:

Georgia currently holds fourteen seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nine of the state's representatives are white. The other five are black.

Those fourteen members were elected using the current redistricting map—the redistricting map which has now been "struck down." With that in mind, let's retabulate what we've said:

In the 2022 elections which were conducted under terms of the disputed map, Georgia voters sent five black members to the House of Representatives—five out of fourteen in all.

Five out of fourteen seems like a pretty good chunk of the delegation. But for reasons the Times never tries to explain, it now seems to have been ruled that it isn't good enough.

Headlines excluded, here are the parts of the New York Times news report which explain, or which perhaps pretend to explain, yesterday's legal ruling:

COCHRANE AND ROJAS (10/27/23): Republicans in Georgia violated a landmark civil rights law in drawing voting maps that diluted the power of Black voters, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled on Thursday, ordering that new maps must be drawn in time for the 2024 elections.

 Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia demanded that the state’s legislature move swiftly to draw new maps that provide an equitable level of representation for Black residents, who make up more than a third of the state’s population.

In the ruling, Judge Jones wrote that the court “will not allow another election cycle on redistricting plans” that had been found to be unlawful.

“Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting,” Judge Jones wrote, referring to a troubled history of racism and disregard for voting and civil rights. “However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.” 

[...]

Judge Jones, an Obama administration appointee, had allowed the challenged maps to go into effect in 2022, calling it a “difficult decision” that “the court did not make lightly.” That decision was one of several that found it was too close to that year’s elections to implement new maps.

In those passages, you see a lot of fuzzy language concerning what was wrong with the prevailing map.

For starters, Judge Jones is quoted saying that Georgia "has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone."

You can file that quoted statement under "unhelpfully fuzzy word salad." For their part, Cochrane and Rojas paraphrase Judge Jones in the following way:

In their paraphrased account, the reporters say that Judge Jones found that the existing map doesn't "provide an equitable level of representation for Black residents." Judge Jones is further said to have said that the existing map "dilutes the power of Black voters."

Those representations have the flavor of salad too, not excluding the imprecise claim that black residents "make up more than a third of [Georgia's] population."

There's a lot of word salad in this morning's report. Meanwhile, if it's hard numbers you like, here are the numbers in question:

According to the Census Bureau, Georgia's population was 33.1% black as of July 2022. (Warning! Due to the clumsy way the Census Bureau handles certain issues of race, the actual number may have been somewhat higher, or then again possibly not.)

Also this:

Under the congressional map which Judge Jones has struck down, Georgia voters elected five black reps out of 14 total. According to experts, that works out to 35.7%.

Summarizing, Georgia's congressional delegation is 35.7% black. That percentage may slightly exceed the percentage of black residents in the state. 

That said:

According to Judge Jones, the disputed map does not "provide an equitable level of representation for Black residents." The disputed map "dilutes the power of Black voters," in a way which goes unexplained within the Times report. 

On its face, it's hard to understand the logic at play in this matter. In their report, Cochrane and Rojas make exactly zero attempt to puzzle the matter out.

Along the way, they do report this:

COCHRANE AND ROJAS: In the legal challenges to the maps, critics argued that the size of the Black electorate in the state warranted at least one additional majority-Black district in Congress, as well as additional majority-Black districts in the State House of Representatives.

Critics want a Georgia map with one additional majority-black district. We'll now tell you how that highlighted passage reads to red tribe Others:

Under the Republican map, black candidates won five seats out of fourteen. "Critics" want the number to be six.

For the record, these disputes about redistricting operate under certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Some of those provisions are extremely hard to paraphrase, parse or explain. 

The word salad tends to start within those jumbled legal provisions. You'll almost never find a journalist who chooses to enter that maze.

There's actually less word salad in this Times report than one ordinarily finds in reports on these disputes. But we can assure you of what red tribe Others think about this particular case:

A power grab is being staged, and it's being okayed in the courts. 

In our view, it's often hard to say why such impressions are wrong. In this morning's news report, the Times doesn't even try.

Disputes of this type have been prevalent of late. Whether in the New York Times or on the PBS NewsHour, reporters who went to the finest schools rarely succeed in puzzling the law or the logic out.

Federal judges are handed the task of applying the jumbled provisions of the Voting Rights Act. We don't envy them this task.

Word salad tends to be general over the mainstream reporting. As the later Wittgenstein might have predicted, very few of our finer people seem to notice this fact.

For extra credit only: The Times report gives the percentage of the Georgia population which is black. It doesn't give the percentage of the Georgia congressional delegation which is black.

Does that seem like good journalistic practice? Compare and contrast! Explain!

NATIONAL SURVIVAL: What did David Brooks mean by his claim?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2023

It's hard to "see others," he said: We have dwelt, for the past several days, upon what may seem to be a bit of a throw-away comment.

The comment was offered by David Brooks. It appears deep inside a lengthy essay in Sunday's New York Times. 

In that lengthy essay, Brooks is describing the way he has chosen to live over the past quite a few years. Most simply put, he decided that he needed to become a better person:

BROOKS (10/22/23): If you had met me 10 years out of college, I think you would have found me a pleasant enough guy, cheerful, but a tad inhibited—somebody who was not easy to connect to. In truth, I was a practiced escape artist. If you revealed some vulnerable intimacy to me, I was good at making meaningful eye contact with your shoes and then excusing myself to keep a vitally important appointment with my dry cleaner.

Life has a way of tenderizing you, though. Becoming a father was an emotional revolution, of course. Later, I absorbed my share of the normal blows that any adult suffers—broken relationships, personal failures, the vulnerability that comes with getting older. The ensuing sense of my own frailty was good for me, introducing me to deeper, repressed parts of myself. I learned that living in a detached way is a withdrawal from life, an estrangement not just from other people but also from yourself.

I’m not an exceptional person, but I am a grower. I do have the ability to look at my shortcomings and then try to prod myself into becoming a more fully developed person.

For "more fully developed," we'll substitute "better." At a certain point in his life, Brooks decided to try to prod himself into being a better person.

That strikes us as an excellent goal. Here's Brooks' initial account of the search he undertook:

BROOKS (continuing directly): I have learned something profound along the way. Being openhearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. The real process of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete actions well: being curious about other people; disagreeing without poisoning relationships; revealing vulnerability at an appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.

In that passage, Brooks begins to describe the traits he sought to cultivate. This is what he says:

He says he wanted to learn to be more curious about other people. He says he wanted to know how to disagree with other people without poisoning his relationship with such persons.

He says he wanted to become a good listener.  He says he wanted to know how to ask for and offer forgiveness. 

He wanted to know how to make everyone feel embraced. He says he wanted to know how to see things "from another’s point of view."

Brooks wanted to know how to see things "from another’s point of view?" In a famous piece of American fiction, Atticus Finch tells his children that they should acquire that skill. 

It strikes us as an admirable goal. That said, it's late in his essay where Brooks makes the comment on which we've focused this week:

BROOKS: I wanted to learn these skills for moral reasons. If I can shine positive attention on others, I can help them to blossom. If I see potential in others, they may come to see potential in themselves. True understanding is one of the most generous gifts any of us can give to another.

Finally, I wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. We evolved to live with small bands of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist. We live in a brutalizing time.

"Finally," Brooks offers the remark on which we've focused this week.

Say what? In that brief passage, Brooks says he wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. On Wednesday night, he fleshed out this idea a bit while being interviewed on the PBS NewsHour:

BROOKS (10/25/23): I'm not an exceptional guy, but I am a grower. I do change. And so I have been on a journey to try to become more emotionally available, more spiritually available, a better friend to people.

And the sad thing is, is as I have become on a journey to becoming a little more human, the country has been on a journey of becoming less human. And so we now live in bitter and divided times. There's just so much social pain. 

And this book is really an attempt to make us all better at seeing another person, making them feel seen, heard and understood, because, if our country is going to come back from the inhumanity, and if our families are going to come back from the breakdown, and if our workplaces are going to thrive, we just have to be really good at this skill of seeing others, making them feel valid, respected, heard and understood.

Our country is "becoming less human," Brooks said. In his essay, he had stated that point a different way:

"We live in a brutalizing time," he had finally said.

We live in a brutalizing time! If our country is going to recover from this, we need to learn how to "see others," Brooks said. 

After inserting a capital "O"—after turning others to Others—we'd be inclined to call that a very important idea.

In Brooks' account, it isn't all that easy to learn how to "see others." It involves the acquisition of a whole set of social skills, including the half dozen we've listed above.

Sacred Thoreau, off in the woods, may perhaps have offered a slightly different form of this view. At the very start of Walden, he described the problems his neighbors had in understanding his own behavior, and he offered a pregnant phrase about the lives of others:

Economy 

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me...

Thoreau also seemed to be wondering about the lives of others. Somewhat unclearly, he penned this thought:

"If [some other person] has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me."

It may be hard to understand the lives of others! It's harder still when we instinctively tribal beings take a whole bunch of others and reinvent them as Others.

We thought we saw a crowning wisdom in the comments Brooks seemed to swallow. In our view, our national survival does seem to be at stake in this present disordered time.

Borrowing from Walden itself, what the Brister's Hill could we possibly mean by that? Next week, we'll address that question, and one more:

If our national survival is at stake, what should we do about that?

Next week: Clintons and others

Who bombed the hospital in Gaza City?

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2023

The Times and the fog of war: In wartime, we have the fog of war. At times, we may also have a certain lack of candor.

Within the past week, various people have said various things about the bomb blast at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. This very morning, on its front page, the New York Times has offered a whole new analysis concerning what actually happened. 

The report is categorized as a "Visual Inspection." Dual headlines included, the analysis starts like this:

A Close Look at Some Key Evidence in the Gaza Hospital Blast
A widely cited missile video does not shed light on what happened, a Times analysis concludes.

The video shows a projectile streaking through the darkened skies over Gaza and exploding in the air. Seconds later, another explosion is seen on the ground.

The footage has become a widely cited piece of evidence as Israeli and American officials have made the case that an errant Palestinian rocket malfunctioned in the sky, fell to the ground and caused a deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

But a detailed visual analysis by The New York Times concludes that the video clip—taken from an Al Jazeera television camera livestreaming on the night of Oct. 17—shows something else. The missile seen in the video is most likely not what caused the explosion at the hospital. It actually detonated in the sky roughly two miles away, The Times found, and is an unrelated aspect of the fighting that unfolded over the Israeli-Gaza border that night.

The Times’s finding does not answer what actually did cause the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast, or who is responsible. The contention by Israeli and American intelligence agencies that a failed Palestinian rocket launch is to blame remains plausible. But the Times analysis does cast doubt on one of the most-publicized pieces of evidence that Israeli officials have used to make their case and complicates the straightforward narrative they have put forth.

The Times report goes on from there. Along the way, the report says this:

U.S. intelligence officials said on Tuesday that agencies had assessed that the video shows a Palestinian rocket launched from Gaza undergoing a “catastrophic motor failure” before part of the rocket crashed into the hospital grounds. A senior intelligence official said the authorities could not rule out that new information would come to light that would change their assessment but said they had high confidence in their conclusions.

Asked about The Times’s findings, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said The Times and American intelligence agencies had different interpretations of the video.

They report, you can decide. Quite often, the truth about important events may not be perfectly clear.

Who created the blast at the hospital? We can't tell you that.

That said, we can tell you something about the way the blast was originally reported on the Fox News Channel. As you can see by clicking here, it was reported in much the same way it was reported everywhere else, or maybe a little bit worse.  

On Fox News, in real time, reporter Mike Tobin seemed to accept what Palestinian authorities were saying about the blast. 

You might think Tobin should have done that. Almost surely, he should have done something else.

Today, the Times says that the cause of the blast still isn't clear. We don't know if the Times is right. That said, consider this:

From that day to this, Fox News performers have battered "the media" for having reported this incident in much the same way their own channel did. To see Howard Kurtz playing this card on last Sunday's MediaBuzz, you can just click here.

In real time, Fox News reported—almost seemed to affirm—what Palestinian authorities had said about the blast. In subsequent days, the channel began trashing "the media" for (allegedly) having done the same thing, generally without presenting any specific examples.

Quite routinely, this is how news and facts are conveyed within our polarized "cable news" system. Can a large modern nation survive such arrangements? We're strongly inclined toward doubt.

NATIONAL SURVIVAL: Sacred Thoreau chose to live alone!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2023

David Brooks focused on others: As we noted in Tuesday's report, the newly inaugurated President Lincoln had a better idea.

"We must not be enemies," he said in March 1861, at the very end of his inaugural address. "We are not enemies, but friends." 

National survival was at stake—the very survival of the nation, such as that nation was. Already, our friendship was under a great strain, as this short capsule history recalls:

The election of Lincoln provoked the legislature of South Carolina to call a state convention to consider secession. Before the war, South Carolina did more than any other Southern state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws, and even to secede from the United States. The convention unanimously voted to secede on December 20, 1860, and adopted a secession declaration...The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.

Those seven states had already seceded. For good and/or for ill, there followed a long, bloody war.

National survival was in question when Lincoln gave that address. Such questions had been alive for decades at that time, but then again, there was this:

Seven years earlier, in 1854, Henry David Thoreau published one of this nation's most famous books. It was an account of several years he had spent (largely) by himself, in a cabin in the woods. 

Thoreau was well aware of the moral disaster involved in the ongoing, centuries-old practice of human enslavement. Still, he spent several years in the woods, famously explaining why:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

More or less, so it was. It was something resembling an inner exile, even as the nation grappled with a transcendent moral issue which was putting national survival at stake.

Should sacred Thoreau have done that? A furious critic could almost claim that this was the start of the Me Generation, with "a leading transcendentalist" turning his back on affairs of the world with the stated goal of "suck[ing] out all the marrow of life."

Quite often, that sucking of marrow succeeded. Here is our favorite passage from Walden. It's the start of the chapter called Solitude:

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath...

On such evenings, Thoreau imbibed delight through every pore. 

As he did, our national nightmare continued in the South, and he was well aware of that fact. A furious critic could take exception to the way he positioned himself in the chapter called Economy, at the very start of his book:

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself...

Yes, there were Negro Slaves in the south—but that teamster on that New England road was enslaving himself! 

No one reads it at this point, but Walden is a very famous book. As a moral tract, it can be read in various ways.

We'll have to admit that we thought of Walden when we read David Brooks' lengthy essay in Sunday's New York Times. His essay concerned his new book, a book which arrives at a bookstore near you with a somewhat squishy title:

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

At the New York Times, Sunday's lengthy essay appears online beneath this squishy-adjacent title:

The Essential Skills for Being Human

So reads a somewhat fuzzy title. As the lengthy essay starts, it can perhaps convey the feeling of being All About Brooks Himself:

BROOKS (10/22/23): If you ever saw the old movie “Fiddler on the Roof,” you know how warm and emotional Jewish families can be. They are always hugging, singing, dancing, laughing and crying together.

I come from another kind of Jewish family.

The culture of my upbringing could be summed up by the phrase “Think Yiddish, act British.” We were reserved, stiff-upper-lip types. I’m not saying I had a bad childhood; far from it. Home was a stimulating place for me growing up. At Thanksgiving, we talked about the history of Victorian funerary monuments and the evolutionary sources of lactose intolerance (I’m not kidding). There was love in our home. We just didn’t express it.

Whether it was nature or nurture, I grew into a person who was a bit detached. When I was 4, my nursery schoolteacher apparently told my parents, “David doesn’t always play with the other children. A lot of the time he stands off to the side and observes them,” which was good for a career in journalism but not for emotional availability or a joyous life.

So the lengthy essay begins. Even by the time he was four, Brooks wasn't positioned on the road which leads to "a joyous life."

Under current arrangements around the world—under current arrangements here at home—should major American journalists be casting about, looking for ways to live "a joyous life?" 

Presumably, you can teach that flat or you can teach it round. But watching Brooks on last evening's PBS NewsHour, we were struck, once again, by the self-referential nature of his discussion of this new book.

(You can watch that discussion here, or you can read the transcript.)

Much of Brooks' discussion with Geoff Bennett has a certain "All about me, plus my family and my friends" feel. But then again, there was this early, more sweeping reference:

BROOKS (10/25/23): I'm not an exceptional guy, but I am a grower. I do change. And so I have been on a journey to try to become more emotionally available, more spiritually available, a better friend to people.

And the sad thing is, is as I have become on a journey to becoming a little more human, the country has been on a journey of becoming less human. And so we now live in bitter and divided times. There's just so much social pain.

And this book is really an attempt to make us all better at seeing another person, making them feel seen, heard and understood, because, if our country is going to come back from the inhumanity, and if our families are going to come back from the breakdown, and if our workplaces are going to thrive, we just have to be really good at this skill of seeing others, making them feel valid, respected, heard and understood.

Our country has been on a journey of becoming less human. If our country is going to recover from this, "we just have to be really good at this skill of seeing others."

All of a sudden, Brooks seemed to be talking about something which extends beyond himself and his friends. Somehow, Brooks seems to feel that his book isn't just a treatise on how to be a better friend. It's also a treatise on an existential question:

Our country is becoming less human. How can our country come back?

At such moments, Brooks move away from the simple self-reference and speaks to a larger question. And indeed, as we noted yesterday:

In his lengthy essay in the Times, he says that his book concerns the fact that our "national survival" is at stake!

Thoreau ventured into the woods. He lived there, largely alone, for an array of reasons. 

By way of contrast, Brooks has embarked on an attempt to learn how "to be really good at this skill of seeing others." According to Brooks, here's one of the reasons why he wanted to develop such skills:

BROOKS (10/22/24): Finally, I wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. We evolved to live with small bands of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist. We live in a brutalizing time.

Here in this best of all wonderfully diverse worlds, "our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist." Brooks has sought to learn these skills for reasons of national survival!

Our national survival is somehow at stake, Brooks has explicitly said. That was true in Lincoln's time, but also in ours, Brooks says.

Our national survival is somehow at stake! We're inclined to agree with that observation, but what did Brooks mean by that?

Tomorrow: According to Brooks, behaviors we need to drop

Technical struggles persist at the Times!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2023

Today, it's the gender wage gap: Way back on October 19, Kevin Drum offered a post which included some information about the gender wage gap.

Actually, his post reported some information about the gender earning gap. He offered a graphic which showed, among other things, that white women in this country earn 82.9% as much as white men.

More precisely, his graphic reported that the "median weekly earning" of white women is only 82.9% that of white men! That said, Drum also offered these important words of warning:

"This doesn't account for educational levels, experience, or type of job. It's just the raw overall numbers."

According to Drum, that statistic isn't a measure of how much men and women are paid for doing the same (or equal) work. It's just a comparison of how much money white women took home each week as compared to white men.

We would have liked it even better if Kevin had offered even more detail about what is and isn't included in this latest comparison. For example: 

Have the figures been adjusted for number of hours worked by men as compared to women? Often, the answer is no when these sorts of comparisons appear.

We would have liked it even better if Kevin had provided more detail. That said, he offered the sort of clarification which is very rarely offered with comparison of this type.

This morning, the New York Times attempts to deal with this same technical matter. In our view, the Times tried to do that and failed.

Yesterday afternoon, we showed you the way a Times contributor (a UPenn professor!) struggled and flailed with various test score issues. To refresh yourself, just click here.

Today, Kwai and Gross struggle and flail with the most elementary technical elements of the "gender wage gap." They do so in a news report which bears this intriguing headline:

Women in Iceland Go on Strike Against Gender Inequality

Here's the background on that:

To their credit, Iceland's women are going on strike today in pursuit of "full gender equality." 

"Alongside gender wage and pay parity," Kwai and Gross report, "the protest will also highlight the problem of violence against women." 

The problem of violence against women is worldwide and thoroughly real. In our view, Kwai and Gross stumble and fall, in thoroughly typical ways, when they attempt to deal with the "gender wage and pay parity" issue.

What's up with "gender wage and pay parity" in highly progressive Iceland? In this passage, Kwai and Gross, and/or their editors, attempt to lay it out.

KWAI AND GROSS (10/25/23): Iceland has made big strides toward gender equality. For the 14th consecutive year, the nation had the best overall score on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, published in June. In 2018, Iceland put in place a new law that required companies and government agencies to prove that they were paying men and women equally.

But inequalities have persisted. Parity scores in wages and in representation among senior officials have slipped since 2021 and the numbers are now closer to 2017 levels, according to the World Economic Forum report. The wage gap, which refers to the difference between the median earnings of women relative to the median earnings of men, is 21 percent. ...

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the gender wage gap in Iceland is wider than the gap in Belgium and Italy, but far narrower than in Britain, Germany, the United States and Japan. Europe has the highest gender parity of all regions, the World Economic Forum report found.

That's what readers were offered in this morning's New York Times. Such readers may have believed that they understood what they read.

We'll guess that they pretty much didn't—that they pretty much couldn't understand, thanks to the reliable technical incompetence of the heralded New York Times.

For starters, what are we told in that passage about "the gender wage gap?" We seem to be told that it's a measure of "the difference between the median earnings of women relative to the median earnings of men"—and also that, in Iceland, the difference is 21 percent.

Is that supposed to be the difference in pay received by Iceland's women "for the exact same work"—for working the same number of hours at the same occupations?

Unlike Drum, Kwai and Gross don't specifically say. And uh-oh:

When you click the link to the (incredibly lengthy and complex) report by the World Economic Forum, that report refers to "wages for similar work," whatever that's supposed to mean. But the report also says this:

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: When it comes to wages for similar work, the only countries in which the gender gap is perceived as more than 80% closed are Albania (85.8%) and Burundi (84.1%). Merely a quarter of the 146 economies included in this year’s edition score between 70%-80% on this indicator. These include some of the most advanced economies, such as Iceland (78.4% of gap closed), Singapore (78.3%), United Arab Emirates (77.6%), United States (77.3%), Finland (76.3%), Qatar (74.5%), Saudi Arabia (74.1%), Lithuania (74.1%), Slovenia (73.5%), Bahrain (72.8%), Estonia (71.4%), Barbados (71.2%), Luxembourg (70.4%), New Zealand (70.4%), Switzerland (70.3%), and Latvia (70.1%)...

That passage might seem to support the claim that the "wage gap" in Iceland stands at 21 percent (more specifically, 21.4%). But uh-oh! In that same passage, the "wage gap" in the United States is said to be only one point larger (22.7%)!

That seems to suggest that the "wage gap" in the U.S., however defined, is virtually the same as in Iceland. But then, without explanation or further ado, Kwai and Gross refer to an OECD report which supposedly says that "the gender wage gap in Iceland is...far narrower than in the United States."

That claim seems to be supported if you look at a puzzling graphic supplied within the OECD report to which the reporters link. 

But alas! The OECD's numbers for Iceland and the U.S. do not correlate with the numbers offered in the report by the World Economic Forum. Meanwhile, this is the puzzling way the OECD defines the gender wage gap:

The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between median earnings of men and women relative to median earnings of men. 

"The difference between median earnings of men and women relative to median earnings of men?" We can't necessarily say that we actually know what that actually means. Nor do we have any confidence that Kwai and Gross, and their editors, have any idea what's really involved in the various dueling numbers found in the lengthy, complex reports to which they offer links.

Almost everyone agrees! Men and women should receive equal pay for doing the same work! 

That said, our blue team loves the claim that a very large "gender wage gap" still exists. No matter how often we get corrected concerning inaccurate claims emerging from that preferred Storyline, we keep repeating such claims, and reporters at the New York Times seem no more able to deal with such topics than they're able to deal with the very minor complexities of domestic or international public school test scores.

How large is the gender wage gap in Iceland? We have no idea!

Partly, that's because of the unbelievably convoluted presentations of the OECD and the World Economic Forum. Partly, though, it's because of the fact that we read the New York Times. 

In this morning's report, Kwai and Gross threw some numbers around and let our dreams do the rest. Despite what we may be inclined to think, this is the way the brightest lights at the top of our press corps routinely deal with basic statistical natters of this familiar type.

Many went to the finest schools. All too often, again and again, these people don't seem to be competent. 

This is the actual level of competence of our "highly educated" journalistic elite. This is the best such people can do, despite what we're trained to think.

Meanwhile, how large is our nation's gender wage gap? We would have liked it better if he had gone into more detail, but Kevin Drum taught us to look before we leap when we deal with such questions. 

NATIONAL SURVIVAL: What in the world does David Brooks mean...

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2023

...by his reference to "national survival?" We've lost a chunk of time this morning, with a bit more time loss to come.

For that reason, we'll offer only a very brief post concerning what Brooks has now said.

As we noted yesterday, David Brooks has written a book with the following clunky title:

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

In this past weekend's Sunday Review, the New York Times published a lengthy essay by Brooks. The essay was adapted from his new book. Online, the essay appears beneath this headline:

The Essential Skills for Being Human

On the surface, this project can possibly start to seem a tiny bit touchy-feely! But as we noted yesterday, Brooks eventually offered this passage in his lengthy New York Times essay:

BROOKS (10/22/24): Finally, I wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. We evolved to live with small bands of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist. We live in a brutalizing time.

"We live in a brutalizing time," Brooks wrote. "We evolved to live with small bands of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist."

We live in a brutalizing time! With respect to that assertion, Brooks also offered this:

"Finally, I wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival."

According to Brooks, our national survival turns on our ability to develop a certain set of skills. He refers to the social skills we need to live in our "wonderfully diverse society."

Full disclosure:

As we've noted in the past, "a wonderfully diverse society" can also turn into a Babel. Brooks says our nation's survival is at stake:

What can he mean by that?

Tomorrow: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

This afternoon: New York Times, please! 

Yesterday, those PISA scores. Today, the gender wage gap!

American schools get it wrong again!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023

The Times makes a small deletion: Adam Grant is a good, decent person. According to the New York Times, he's "an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania." 

Also, he's the author of “Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things,” from which his guest essay in today's Times was adapted.

Grant's essay concerned American public schools. It carried a familiar headline:

What Most American Schools Do Wrong

You can't go wrong with a headline like that! Has any essay bearing some such title ever been rejected for publication in newspapers like the New York Times? 

People, we're just asking!

At any rate, Grant has found the latest cure for our public school woes. His essay starts in a familiar fashion:

GRANT (10/24/23): Which country has the best education system? Since 2000, every three years, 15-year-olds in dozens of countries have taken the Program for International Student Assessment [the PISA]—a standardized test of math, reading and science skills. On the inaugural test, which focused on reading, the top country came as a big surprise: tiny Finland. Finnish students claimed victory again in 2003 (when the focus was on math) and 2006 (when it was on science), all while spending about the same time on homework per week as the typical teenager in Shanghai does in a single day.

Just over a decade later, Europe had a new champion. Here, too, it wasn’t one of the usual suspects—not a big, wealthy country like Germany or Britain but the small underdog nation of Estonia. Since that time, experts have been searching for the secrets behind these countries’ educational excellence. They recently found one right here in the United States.

Grant starts in standard fashion, conflating "highest scoring" with "best." This is a very dumb thing to do, but it's done all the time.

Judged by test scores on the PISA, "tiny Finland" started out as the best education system. In the most recent testing, Finland was nosed out by Estonia, a "small underdog nation."

Just for the record, is Finland really tiny and is Estonia small? Just for the record, here are the current populations of the nations we'll be discussing:

Finland: 5.6 million
Estonia: 1.4 million
United States: 333 million

Who's Grant calling tiny? Finland and Estonia are both small, but Estonia is known to be smaller.

With respect to Estonia's "underdog" status, it's almost surely easier to run public schools in small, single-culture nations like Finland and Estonia. As a general matter, it's more challenging in giant nations with a wide array of demographics groups, including several who have been treated very poorly down through the annals of time.

At any rate, the stage has now been set! A tiny nation, then later a small underdog nation, have shown the way on the PISA. As he continues, Grant reveals one of the alleged "secrets behind these countries’ educational excellence:"

GRANT (continuing directly): In North Carolina, economists examined data on several million elementary school students. They discovered a common pattern across about 7,000 classrooms that achieved significant gains in math and reading performance.

Those students didn’t have better teachers. They just happened to have the same teacher at least twice in different grades. A separate team of economists replicated the study with nearly a million elementary and middle schoolers in Indiana—and found the same results.

Intriguing! According to Grant, kids "achieve significant gains in math and reading performance" if they have the same teacher at least twice in different grades—in grades 4 and 5, let's say. According to Grant, some such practice is one of the secrets to that small nation's success.

For what it's worth, it's perfectly plausible that some such practice might produce good results. We once taught a group of Baltimore City kids in grade 5 and then in grade 6, and there's no doubt about it—that additional degree of familiarity can get the ball rolling very quickly in that second year.

On the other hand, people love this type of public school story so much that thumbs sometimes land on the scales. We looked at the first study to which Grant referred, and we found its authors instantly saying this:

Abstract

We provide new empirical evidence that increased student-teacher familiarity improves academic achievement in elementary school. Drawing on rich statewide administrative data, we observe small but significant test score gains for students assigned to the same teacher for a second time in a higher grade...

Once again, there's that little word "small!" As it turns out, it almost looks like Grant, and/or his editors at the Times, chose to make a small deletion!

The authors specifically said that the score gains they observed were "small." With the acquiescence of the Times, it looks like Grant chose to leave that large bit of buzzkill out.

This is very familiar practice. Anthropologically, this seems to be who we are.

We provide one additional point. We decided to look at the most recent PISA results—the results from 2018. The National Center for Education Statistics offers this overview:

PISA 2018 Reading Literacy Results 

Reading literacy was the major domain in PISA 2018, as it was in 2000 and 2009. For 2018, the PISA reading literacy framework was updated to reflect the evolution and growing influence of technology. Reading involves not only the printed page but also digital formats. Increasingly, it requires readers to distinguish between fact and opinion, synthesize and interpret texts from multiple sources, and deal with conflicting information across source materials.

[...]

The U.S. average score (505) was higher than the OECD average score (487).

Compared to the 35 other OECD members, the U.S. average in reading literacy was lower than the average in 4 education systems, higher than in 21, and not measurably different than in 10.

It's true that our hopeless American kids were outscored by the kids from a certain "small underdog nation"—a wholly admirable though tiny nation which is about the size of an unlicked postage stamp.

On the other hand, our hapless kids performed on the same level as the kids of other large, demographically complex nations such as the U.K., Germany, and France. 

In fact, they outperformed the kids from such recognizable nations as Japan, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Germany and France. They scored one point below New Zealand, one point above the U.K.

Tiny Finland and small Estonia did outperform our U.S. kids on the PISA reading test. That said, only two other OECD nations outscored our nation's loser kids in a way which was judged statistically significant.

Given the challenges our public schools confront, we're often amazed by how well our dullards do on these international tests. We're often puzzled to see that other nations don't outperform our kids. 

That said, the Times will always be ready to pick and choose gloomy themes and results. It's a journalistic tradition.

Final point:

As has long been noted, and as you can see at the link we've provided, American kids show up better in reading and science on the PISA, significantly less well in math. There are ongoing disputes about why that is, but no one actually cares about such things, plainly including the New York Times. 

Back to the practice of trashing the schools. When researchers said they found small gains, the Times made a small deletion!

NATIONAL SURVIVAL: David Brooks advances a point...

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023

...once made by President Lincoln: President Lincoln said it first. His statement came at the very end of his first inaugural address:

LINCOLN (3/4/61): I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

"We must not be enemies," Lincoln said. It's also said that he once said this, though we'll guess that he probably didn't:

When an old woman rebuked him for his conciliatory attitude toward the South, which she felt should be “destroyed” after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln replied, “Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" In 1963, Dr. King attributed this statement to Lincoln, describing it as an example of Lincoln's "redemptive love."

We must not be enemies, Lincoln once said—and it's clear that he did say that. There followed an especially deadly war—a war which carries various names right to the present day.

Lincoln was killed at the end of that war. John Wilkes Booth had passed on the notion that we were secretly friends.

All these years later, David Brooks has written a book which seems to draw on somewhat similar themes. A lengthy essay in Sunday's New York Times was adapted from Brooks' new book—a book which carries this somewhat clunky title:

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

Lincoln's statement about being friends was explicitly political. He was warning against a process of otherization between those in the North and those in the South.

On its face, Brooks' lengthy essay in Sunday's Times seemed to lack any such overtly political context. For the most part, his essay offers observations like these:

BROOKS (10/22/23): I have learned something profound along the way. Being openhearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. The real process of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete actions well: being curious about other people; disagreeing without poisoning relationships; revealing vulnerability at an appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.

People want to connect. Above almost any other need, human beings long to have another person look into their faces with love and acceptance. The issue is that we lack practical knowledge about how to give one another the attention we crave. Some days it seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance on how to perform the most important activities of life.

I see the results in the social clumsiness I encounter too frequently. I’ll be leaving a party or some gathering and I’ll realize: That whole time, nobody asked me a single question. I estimate that only 30 percent of the people in the world are good question askers. The rest are nice people, but they just don’t ask. I think it’s because they haven’t been taught to and so don’t display basic curiosity about others. 

In passages like these, Brooks seems to be talking about the best ways to be "a full, kind and wise human being" in everyday social life—for example, when attending "a party or some gathering."

How can we be fuller, kinder, wiser human beings? In that passage, Brooks offers several basic ideas:

We should learn to be curious about other people. We should learn how to disagree with other people without poisoning our relationships.

We should learn to be good listeners, knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness. We should know how to see things from another’s point of view.

We should know how to see things from another’s point of view? Atticus Finch gave that same advice, in a book which was once read by middle school students. 

In that famous book, Finch's famous advice was offered within an overtly "political" context. Later in Brooks' lengthy column, his meditation goes in a "political" direction too:

BROOKS: Finally, I wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. We evolved to live with small bands of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist. We live in a brutalizing time.

I’ve noticed along the way that some people are much better at seeing people than others are. In any collection of humans, there are diminishers and there are illuminators. Diminishers are so into themselves, they make others feel insignificant. They stereotype and label. If they learn one thing about you, they proceed to make a series of assumptions about who you must be.

Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know how to ask the right questions at the right times—so that they can see things, at least a bit, from another’s point of view. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, respected, lit up.

In that passage, learning to be a better person has somehow become a matter of "national survival." We need to stop "diminishing" others, Brooks says. We need to learn how to "see things, at least a bit, from another’s point of view." 

"We live in a brutalizing time," Brooks says in that passage. At one time, our ancestors lived among people just "like [them]selves"—but today, our world isn't like that. According to Brooks, "our social skills are inadequate" for the "wonderfully diverse" society in which we live.

As we read this part of Brooks' essay, we thought of what Hillary Clinton recently said. Also, we thought about a different approach taken by her husband.

Full disclosure! Nothing we wrote this week will require you to abandon or change the way you see various others.

That said, Brooks wanted to learn the skills in question "for reasons of national survival." In that passage, it seems to us that he's touching upon a highly significant point.

Coming tomorrow: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."