Anderson Cooper had never heard!

TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2021

One part of "Too Big to Care:" Last night, Anderson Cooper spent an hour speaking with Barack Obama. They discussed the needs of the many good, decent kids who may grow up in difficult situations and circumstances.

At one point, Obama spoke with some young men from My Brother's Keeper, a mentoring program he started when he was still in the White House. 

The young men in question are fathers now. Here's part of what was said:

OBAMA (6/7/21): Other than changing diapers, how has [being a father] changed your perspective? And how do you think about it? Because, look, meeting the president, you know, that's cool. But it's not life-changing in the same way that being a parent is.

JAMES ADAMS: Before having a daughter, like, I was able to make stupid decisions. But now that I have a daughter, I have to think about her. I have to think about her mother, her sister because now I'm the man of the house.

And everything that I do is pretty much revolved around her. So I want to be that father that's always there. I want to be the one that you come home from school to, that—that brightens up your day. Anything that you need, you can always come to me.

I didn't have that growing up. I didn't have a father. Like, it was, one point in time, I didn't see my father for, like, ten years.

OBAMA: Right.

ADAMS: So I want to be there for her, through everything.

OBAMA: Fantastic. How about you, Lazarus?

LAZARUS DANIELS: Being a father is—is amazing to me. My baby girl got a great big smile, full of energy, full of life, full of joy. 

I was fortunate to have my father and mother together. One thing [mentoring] helped me out with was being able to speak on things. Because I wasn't able to talk to my father, because he was strictly business.

OBAMA: He was old school?

DANIELS: Old school all the way. I didn't understand that. I just wanted to talk to him and let him know, like, I need to talk to you. I've seen so much that my dad didn't even know I saw.

I think I was, like, seven when a—a grown man shot at me. You know what I'm saying? It's so much that you see daily, so much that you see daily, nonstop, that you, as a man, are not supposed to feel. 

When Lazarus Daniels was seven years old, a grown man shot at him. For these young men, as for many young people in many communities, life when they were growing up "ain't been no golden stair." 

For these young men, as for many young people, they may not have gotten all the help they needed at the start of life. 

During the course of the hour, Obama pointed to something we've long marveled at here in Baltimore. He pointed to the moral goodness of so many young people who grew up in ways which were less than perfectly resourced. 

"What you just heard was young black men all across this country," Obama said. "That's who they are. It's not the stereotypes we see on television."

Obama spoke of the circumstances which may hold children back. At one point, Cooper offered a somewhat remarkable statement.

To our ear, what he said was truly striking. He himself didn't seem to know how striking his admission was:

COOPER: But also, how stacked the deck is against so many people in our society, from even before they are born!

OBAMA: Yes.

COOPER: I mean, I heard—I was reading the speech you gave a while back. A figure I had never heard before, that by the age of 3, if you grew up in a low-income family, you've heard 30 million fewer words than a 3-year-old child in a well-off family.

OBAMA: Which means by the time you show up in first grade, you are already significantly behind. Now the good news is it turns out, as you're learning as a parent, kids are amazingly resilient and they can catch up. But it also means that we have to make investments to ensure that they catch up.

Cooper is a major, high-end journalist. Until quite recently, he had never heard of the "30 million fewer words!"

We thought that was a striking admission, but also that it was instructive. Here's why:

The "30 million word gap (by age 3)" thesis has been around since Risley and Hart published their book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, all the way back in 1995.  

The thesis has been offered as an explanation for  large "achievement gaps" which obtain in our public schools.  The thesis has been widely discussed and debated. 

It formed the basis for the Clinton Foundation's "Too Small to Fail" initiative, an initiative which formed part of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. (During that campaign, the initiative was rarely discussed, whether by the national press corps or by the candidate herself.)

"The 30 Million Word Gap" has long been offered as one explanation for our academic achievement gaps. It posits a fixable problem in child rearing—a problem which could be addressed, even solved.

The theory has been challenged; it has also been defended. But the fact that Cooper had never even heard of this—well, it's all part of a journalistic phenomenon referred to by our youthful analysts as "Too Big to Care."

Kids who are born to high-literacy parents tend to have a major leg up in school. Kids who are born to low-literacy parents tend to be substantially "behind," even before they enter school—allegedly, by the time they're just three years old!

As we've often noted, our press corps spends little time on such dullsville topics. Simply put, our news orgs don't seem to care. 

In fairness, they may not realize that they don't care; they may not intend not to care. But over the past several decades, they've cared about earth tones and emails a lot. No matter where you look on the political spectrum, they haven't seemed to care about dullsville topics like this.

Anderson Cooper had never heard of the 30 Million Word Gap! We're not saying that Cooper's alone in that lack of awareness, but as part of the journalistic syndrome in question, he didn't seem to realize how strange it might be to hear a top journalist say that.

For extra credit only: The 30 Million Word Gap thesis isn't exactly a secret. You can Google it up for yourselves. We finally realized, some years back, that it's a total waste of time to try to start such discussions.

Nobody cares about topics like this. They care about earth tones and emails. And also, of course, oral sex!

(Was Obama too skinny to get elected? Back in 2008, one scribe even cared about that!)

NORRIS EMERGES: Where to begin?

TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2021

Langston Hughes started with rivers: In some accounts, the current moment started with the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

In other accounts, the current moment started with the murder of George Floyd, last year.

However you want to tell the story, the current moment can be quite intense.  On Sunday, the Washington Post's Michele Norris was saying, in a long essay, that we need to have "a national conversation on race"—an undefined type of national conversation which could take decades, she said.

Does that proposal make sense? Putting it another way, is our sprawling nation capable of conducting some such "conversation" in some sort of organized way?

There's no final way to answer that question, but we were struck by several aspects of Norris' heartfelt essay. For starters, we were struck by the degree of exasperation—perhaps, of anguish—visible throughout the long essay.

As an example of what we mean, consider the way this good, decent person began her presentation.

Norris began with an account of a personal experience. We can't speak to the accuracy of her account, but we can speak to the general tone of her narration:

NORRIS (6/6/21): Shortly after the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016 on the National Mall, I was speaking to some patrons of a successful nonprofit about the importance of candid racial dialogue in politics and in the places we live, work and worship.

One of the participants had recently toured the museum and had a pointed question. Why, she wondered, were all the exhibits that visitors first encounter dedicated to slavery? Among other things, she was referring to a reconstructed cabin built by former slaves from Maryland and a statue of Thomas Jefferson next to a wall with the names of more than 600 people he owned. “Couldn’t the exhibits begin with more uplift?” the woman asked, arguing that Black achievement was more worthy of the spotlight. She suggested that the museum should instead usher visitors toward more positive stories right from the start, so that if someone were tired or short on time, “slavery could be optional.”

Her question was irksome, but it did not surprise me. I’d heard versions of the “Can’t we skip past slavery” question countless times before. Each time serves as another reminder that America has never had a comprehensive and widely embraced national examination of slavery and its lasting impact. Yes, there are localized efforts. But despite the centrality of slavery in our history, it is not central to the American narrative in our monuments, history books, anthems and folklore.

Norris was speaking to a group of swells. One of the swells asked a question.

Norris found the question irksome. She seems to believe that she knows what the swell meant.

This patron had toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture and she'd had a certain reaction. She wondered if the story in question might be better told if the exhibit opened with uplift rather than with exhibits devoted to slavery.

(Inevitably, the irksome question had come from a woman. Quite possibly, she was a Karen!) 

In her telling, Norris knew what the patron meant. The patron meant that the museum, and the rest of us as a general matter, should just skip the whole slavery question.

Norris had heard it many times before. She knew what the patron meant.

Do you mind if we ask a certain question at this point in time? Is it possible that a certain kind of (borderline noxious) "privilege" is playing out in these remarks?

We refer to a possible sense of "privilege" on the part of Norris, not on the part of the Karen. 

For ourselves, we have no idea what the patron meant, or even if there ever was any such patron. But we can't help thinking that Norris is taking a bit of an all-knowing view with respect to the question she fielded.

How should the  National Museum of African American History and Culture best organize its exhibits? We have no idea, nor is there any objective answer to that question.

That said, that patron's question, on its face, doesn't strike us as . The population in question—this nation's African-American population—has been, among other things, author of one of the greatest moral / religious traditions in the history of the world.

The brilliance of that tradition emerged from centuries of brutal treatment. Way back when, Langston Hughes described the greatness as shown:

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Would something be wrong with encountering something like that when one enters this museum? We can't imagine why. In our view, it might even be a very good—and yes, an "uplifting"—idea!

Or not, of course. There's always more than one way to do things. There's almost always more than one way to understand.

It's dangerous, of course, to structure any conversation around the claim that one population group may be morally or spiritually superior to others. 

Could someone take Hughes' poem that way? Inevitably, somebody would!

It's also true that a person can make a perfectly sensible, good-faith suggestion and be discarded as "irksome." Inevitably, our brutal history has produced such reactions—our brutal history, plus the lack of ultimate wisdom produced by the way our imperfect brains are wired.

Is it be a bad idea if those who enter that museum are confronted, right off the bat, with the imagery of enslavement? Maybe! Within the past year, some observers have complained that the news media should stop playing the tape of George Floyd's death, saying the constant broadcast of such imagery is disrespectful to Floyd and harmful to black Americans.

It isn't obvious that that suggestion is wrong. Nor is it obvious that the patron who raised her hand that day was making a lousy suggestion.

At any rate, that's the way the museum in question had chosen to start its exhibit. Also, that's the way Norris, a good decent person, chose to start her long essay.

As she continued, Norris seemed to draw many conclusions from what she heard in that irksome question. This is where the recollection took her, at the start of a very long essay:

NORRIS (continuing directly from above): There is a simple reason: The United States does not yet have the stomach to look over its shoulder and stare directly at the evil on which this great country stands. That is why slavery is not well taught in our schools. That is why the battle flag of the army that tried to divide and conquer our country is still manufactured, sold and displayed with defiant pride. That is why any mention of slavery is rendered as the shameful act of a smattering of Southern plantation owners and not a sprawling economic and social framework with tentacles that stamped almost every aspect of American life.

We can read about, watch and praise documentaries and Hollywood projects about the Civil War, or read countless volumes on the abolitionist or civil rights movements. But these are all at a remove from the central horror of enslavement itself. From the kidnappings in Africa to the horrors of the Middle Passage, the beatings and the instruments of bondage, the separation of families, the culture of rape, the abuse of children, the diabolical rationalizations and crimes against humanity—no, we haven’t had that conversation. We have not had that unflinching assessment, and we are long overdue.

From one admittedly irksome question, we were invited to take a long trip.

Instantly, we were told what "the United States" lacks the stomach to do. We were also told that we should revisit the horrors of the past, and that seems to include all the horrors:

We're long overdue to hear about "the kidnappings in Africa, the horrors of the Middle Passage, the beatings and the instruments of bondage, the separation of families, the culture of rape, the abuse of children, the diabolical rationalizations and crimes against humanity," Norris now said.

We're long overdue to hear about that, and we should spend decades doing it.

Does this suggestion make ultimate sense? Should that patron he asked to hear more about the horrors, the culture of rape, the crimes against humanity?

That strikes us as a very human suggestion. But in the end, does the suggestion make ultimate sense?

If we're going to have a long conversation, what should that conversation be like? Also, where has this version of Norris emerged from? Why did Hughes perhaps adopt one tone, with Norris now offering another?

Tomorrow: Revisiting horrors

How should we teach our history to kids?

MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2021

Editors spoon out the pabulum: How should our nation's public schools teach our brutal racial history? What should children be taught at different ages, in different grades, in different demographic settings?

Persistent posturing to the side, it isn't real easy to say. Today, the editors of the Washington Post offered readers some pleasing pabulum concerning this new high-profile topic.

In principle—which is to say, on the surface—the editorial may have seemed to make perfect sense. Here's part of what was said:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (6/7/21): “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know. We should know the good, the bad, the everything,” President Biden said at this week’s 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, the annihilation of a prosperous Black neighborhood by a White mob that was long overlooked in the history books. Oklahoma is one of the states that has enacted legislation that aims to limit what students learn about racism, and its role in shaping American laws and institutions—making Mr. Biden’s rebuke of those who want to whitewash history all the more powerful.

Supporters of the statewide bans [on teaching "critical race theory"] claim that public schools are indoctrinating students with “Marxist” or leftist groupthink; use of the New York Times’ prizewinning but controversial 1619 Project has become a frequent target. Clearly, schools shouldn’t teach ideology, and educators should be mindful of parental concerns. But credence shouldn’t be given to the cynical notion that teachers can’t be trusted. “I give the students the facts and let them draw their own conclusions. That’s what learning is,” said a Dallas middle school teacher, articulating a core principle of pedagogy that should be animating the debate about how history is taught.

The editors establish some basic points in that passage We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know, they say. Also, we shouldn't "whitewash history."

Also, public schools shouldn’t teach ideology. And educators should be mindful of parental concerns.

Fair-minded people will tend to agree with those platitudes. That doesn't tell us what second-graders should be told about our brutal racial history, or even fourth- or fifth-graders.

What should children be taught, at what age? How much of "the bad" should they be told, and at what age? Unless you're living in a dream world, those are important and difficult questions.

Also this:

The editors offer one more reassurance. "Credence shouldn’t be given to the cynical notion that teachers can’t be trusted," they say. 

At that point, they quote a Dallas middle school teacher. She offers reassurances about her motives and her classroom practices.

The teacher was quoted in this thoughtful analysis piece in Saturday's Washington Post. Based upon a bit of googling, the young teacher in question is quite plainly thoughtful, well-intentioned, smart.

That doesn't mean that she'll have perfect judgment about these difficult questions. Other teachers may not have great judgment about such matters at all.

Our racial history is very hard. Public school children are young.

Different parents will have different ideas about what kinds of curriculum will make sense in this deeply fraught area. Today's editorial comes from a region near La-La Land. It almost seems to come from an all-too-familiar place—from a place where the principle value is the desire to say that The Others are wrong.

More on this topic to follow. Tribal certainties to the side, there's nothing easy about knowing how to teach our history to kids.

For extra credit only: We recommend this colloquy between Conor Friedersdorf and Anastasia Higginbotham. Their conversation appears at The Atlantic, beneath these headlines:

‘Nobody Wants White Kids to Feel Bad About Their Race’
The children’s-book author Anastasia Higginbotham and I disagree about how to teach young Americans about police killings and racism.

Some interesting suggestions get made. We'll discuss those suggestions this week.

Starting tomorrow: NORRIS EMERGES!

MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2021

Justice denied, dream(s) deferred: Michele Norris has been a prominent mainstream  media figure for the past several decades.

Today, she's an opinion columnist for the Washington Post, but she worked for several prominent news organizations before she came to the Post. The leading authority on her career offers this capsule account:

Michele L. Norris (born September 7, 1961) is an American journalist who currently works as an opinion columnist with The Washington Post.

From 2002 until 2011, she was co-host of the National Public Radio (NPR) evening news program All Things Considered. Norris was the first African-American female host for National Public Radio.

[...]

From 1993 to 2002, Norris was a news correspondent for ABC News, winning an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award for coverage of the September 11 attacks.

Norris joined the National Public Radio (NPR) evening news program All Things Considered on December 9, 2002, becoming the first African-American female host for NPR.  In 2015, Fortune described Norris as "one of [NPR's] biggest stars."

[...]

Norris announced on October 24, 2011, that she would temporarily step down from her All Things Considered hosting duties and refrain from involvement in any NPR political coverage during the 2012 election year due to her husband's appointment to the Barack Obama 2012 presidential re-election campaign. On January 3, 2013, NPR announced that Norris had stepped down as a regular host of All Things Considered and would instead serve as an occasional host and special correspondent.

The profile continues from there.

Norris has had an extremely high-profile career. More specifically, she has had a high-profile mainstream career, working for several of the nation's most respected upper-end news orgs.

One more point. Throughout her career, Norris has been a good, decent person. Most significantly, she remains a good, decent person today.

Yesterday, Norris published a lengthy opinion essay in the Washington Post. In her essay, she made a somewhat dramatic proposal:

We're not entirely sure that her proposal makes sense.

On its face, her proposal may seem to make perfect sense, at least within the conceptual frameworks active here in Our Town. In yesterday's lengthy essay, Norris said that we should have a "national conversation about race." 

That's a very familiar type of proposal here in the streets of Our Town. Briefly, let's note this relevant point:

Even as Norris advanced this proposal, that very type of conversation seemed to be underway in the Washington Post. Yesterday's edition was heavily clogged with such discussions—or possibly, in some instances, with such pseudo-discussions.

That included a lengthy front-page report about an ongoing movement to change the racist names of quite a few species of birds.  Before the week is done, we'll list the many news reports and opinion columns on related topics which appeared in yesterday's Post.

Whether it's real or whether it's faux, some such national conversation does seem to be underway at this point in time. That said, Norris imagines a long conversation. Indeed, it may last for decades, she says:

NORRIS (6/6/21): When Barack Obama was first elected president in 2008, there was an expectation that he would lead some kind of national conversation about race. We don’t place the same expectations on White leaders for some reason, but we should. President Biden was in Tulsa to mark the 100-year anniversary of one of the most vicious acts of racial violence in U.S. history...and he spoke directly about white supremacy in a way few presidents have...

That is a start. Biden should keep his foot on that pedal and launch an official inquiry about uncomfortable historical truths, and do it in a way that ensures that it will extend over years, if not decades. Because it is time for the United States to convene its own version of a truth and reconciliation commission and fully examine the horrors of slavery and their continued aftermath...

...[T]he collective American narrative needs a strong dose of truth. We need clear eyes and a firm spine, and then we need to chart a new path forward. That kind of step would also launch re-examinations of the treatment of America’s Indigenous peoples, the eugenics movement and the internment camps of the 1940s for U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent.  

And yet we are in a moment when hard truths are not just inconvenient, they are challenged and dismissed with great fanfare...

In Norris' vision, we wouldn't simply examine the horrors of slavery and their continued aftermath. We'd also conduct a national conversation about the historical treatment of Native Americans, and about the internment, during World War II, of citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent.

Also, about the eugenics movement of the early 1900s! We need to have a national conversation about that! 

The conversation Norris envisions would be quite extensive. Given the various topics involved, this national conversation could last for decades, she says. The conversation should invest our collective narrative with "a strong dose of truth."

Here in Our Town, this suggestion may seem to make perfect sense. That said, questions arise:

As a giant continental nation, are we capable of having such a discussion? Indeed, are we capable of doing that ever here in Our Town?

Is our upper-end, mainstream press corps capable of holding such a discussion? How about our legions of assistant, associate and adjunct professors? Are we up to this challenge even here in Our Town, where the people are all above average?

For ourselves, we're a bit of a sceptic on that point. In various ways, Norris' essay helps reinforce our doubts.

Norris has always been a good, decent person, and she's had a big career. But can a giant nation like ours really conduct some such "conversation?" And how helpful are Norris' contributions likely to be at this fraught point in time?

Norris has had a very strong, very high-end career. She has always been very presentable.

She hasn't rocked a whole lot of boats, nor was there such a requirement. That said, within the past year, it has seemed to us that Norris, like many upper-end journalists, has been emerging with a new tone and a new point of view.

She now seeks a "national conversation" which could last for decades. All week long, we'll be asking a question:

What can happen to the strength of our journalism in the aftermath of justice denied, in the wake of a dream deferred? What can happen to our most basic understandings, even here in the streets of Our Town?

Tomorrow: A bit of snark right at the start

“ACADEMIA...PROBLEM?” Academics respond to the running-dog Brooks!

SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 2021

Might we have a problem?: Perhaps inadvertently, David Brooks had revealed the cold heart of the modern-day Other.

Typical peak David Brooks! He had dared to suggest that "the thing we call wokeness" can sometimes involve imperfect judgment on the part of those who reside in Our Town, even including our scholars!.

We sometimes speak a type of silly jargonized language, Brooks had seemed to suggest. Also, we sometimes come up with crazy ideas! 

As an example of those alleged ideas, he cited something called "ethnomathematics," an example he'd plainly dreamed up. We quoted these allegations by Brooks in greater detail in yesterday's report.

Last Sunday, Sarah Viren floated a question in the New York Times. "Academia, do we have a problem?" Viren weirdly asked.

In his earlier column, Brooks had suggested that the answer might be yes. He'd even suggested that Our Town's most erudite  thought leaders might occasionally display imperfect vision and judgment.

Brooks' claims appeared in his May 14 column. Luckily, a pair of academics replied in letters to the Times.

Each of these two professors is a good, decent person. We thought we'd show you what these stalwarts said.

Academia, do we have imperfect judgment? Is it possible that angry parents will sometimes have a valid point when they complain about the way Our Town's loftiest values migrate into public school instruction?

Is it possible that, on the rare occasion, Our Town's behavior could be imperfect? That parents could have a decent point when they complain about "tidbits??

We know, we know—it's absurd on its face! Here's what two professors wrote:

The use of jargonized language:

In his column, Brooks complained at several points about the tendency, here in Our Town, to invent and employ a specialized "woke" language. A sociology professor replied to this ugly, ridiculous claim.

Everything she said was correct. Here is her letter, in full:

To the Editor:

David Brooks is troubled by some words he regards as “woke.” On the contrary, these are useful analytical concepts.

“Heteronormativity” draws our attention to our cultural assumption that everyone is heterosexual. “Cisgender” refers to people who experience their biological sex and gender identity as compatible. “Intersectionality” means that race, class and gender are interconnected phenomena.

These concepts are not that complex, not that radical and not evidence of discourse performance.

We're not sure what "discourse performance" is. That almost supports' Brooks' non-existent point!

At least in principle, though, everything the professor said is true:

In principle, the word “heteronormativity” actually can "draw our attention to our cultural assumption that everyone is heterosexual." Similarly, the other two words the professor discussed can imaginably draw our attention to significant states of affairs.

We were satisfied that the professor had put Brooks in his place. But several young analysts spoke up, saying something like this:

The professor seems to have missed the point of what Brooks was saying. 

In theory, academia's highly jargonized tribal language can be part of illuminating discussions. But that's only true in theory. 

In practice, such jargonized lingo will often serve to cloud discussion and debate. To the masses of the great unwashed, it will almost sound like a foreign language. Such jargonized lingo will often serve to drive such rubes away!

According to these headstrong youngsters, the professor's letter helped prove Brooks' point! The professor is a good, decent person who has had an outstanding career. But she seemed completely oblivious to the critique which Brooks had lodged—a critique in which Brooks alleged that our jargonized language tends to stifle outreach.

What this professor said was true. But according to these youngsters, she seemed to be working deep inside a bubble. It almost seemed like this professor had throughly missed the point!

Fringe absurdities like "ethnomathematics:"

Brooks also claimed that "the thing we call woke" can produce crazy ideas.  On its face, the claim is plainly false, but here's the "example" he gave:

BROOKS (5/14/21): [The ideology] produces fringe absurdities like “ethnomathematics,” which proponents say seeks to challenge the ways that, as one guide for teachers puts it, “math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist and racist views” by dismissing old standards like focusing on “getting the ‘right’ answer.”

On its face, Brooks' general claim was nuts. Thankfully, a letter writer dispatched this particular bit of nonsense. 

The writer is an associate dean and a history professor at a certain college. Here is his letter, in full:

To the Editor.

In his anti-wokeness column, David Brooks cited “absurdities” like a guide to inclusive teaching for math instructors and mockingly quoted its critique of standards like “getting the ‘right’ answer.”

Fortunately, the editorial included a link to the guide in question. The full quote questions the emphasis on correct answers over “understanding concepts and reasoning,” which would be a valid point for any kind of teaching. Cherry-picking this quote and presenting it out of context is a disservice to the educators who prepared this guide to help overcome longstanding inequities in math education.

As a university administrator who works in faculty development, I would say that this is one of the most effective texts I’ve seen on anti-racist pedagogy, and I encourage all readers to examine it themselves.

It was much as we had suspected.  Brooks had cherry-picked his quote! 

According to the letter- writer, the full quotation raises a question "which would be a valid point for any kind of teaching." We were satisfied that the running-dog Brooks had been foiled again.

That said, full disclosure! Several analysts proceeded to take the letter writer's advice! They clicked the link to the teaching guide in question, intending to judge for themselves.

When they did that, they found a guide which bore this two-part title:

A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction / Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction

There's nothing wrong with that! Presumably, no one wants to promulgate racism in any part of our public school instruction.

So far, the analysts said,  so good! But as the analysts scrolled ahead, they also came upon this:

Deconstructing Racism in  Mathematics Instruction

White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie  these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to  the world of mathematics. The table below identifies the ways in which white supremacy shows up in math classrooms

DISMANTLING WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE IN MATH CLASSROOMS

We see white supremacy culture show up in the mathematics classroom even as we carry out our professional  responsibilities outlined in the California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP). Using CSTP as a  framework, we see white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom can show up when: 

There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning.

How does white supremacy show up in math classrooms? It was the very first example this teaching guide offered:

We see white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom when there is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning.

That's what the teaching guide says. It even puts the word "right" inside scare quotes, as if to say how silly it is to think there could be a "right" answer to a mathematical question or problem—when engineering a bridge, let's say.

Briefly, let's be clear. There's always a balance, in math instruction, between 1) getting the right answer to some problem, and 2) understanding mathematical concepts and reasoning.

Presumably, no teacher should overemphasize  either part of this dyad. But on what planet is getting the right answer a part of "white supremacy culture," while understanding the basic concepts is more of a black kids thing?

On what planet can any sane person say this division prevails? According to our analysts, angry parents may sometimes see "tidbits" like this and correctly feel that their public schools may perhaps have a problem. Angry parents could sometimes be right!

If you were a parent and you were told (something like) getting the right answer is part of white supremacy culture, might you suspect that your public schools were having some sort of a problem? Might you even feel that academia might have a problem—academia, the gated grove from which such "fringe absurdities" tend to emerge?

Our youthful analysts said that Brooks had been right. So, perhaps, are some angry parents, these impressionable youths also said.

Our analysts are hotheaded kids. Credentialed experts tell us that the larger problem is this:

Our brains were wired, long ago, to produce tribal true belief.  Sadly, what was once a survival skill is now a societal problem.

We're even wired that way in Our Town, despondent experts have said. Our professors can even be wired that way. And some angry parents are right!

We're very, very dumb in Our Town, but also extremely self-assured. If you think our own brains aren't wired that way, we have a suggestion to make:

Go ahead! Just read the Post or the Times, any morning of any week!

Questions for extra-credit discussion: Should the Times have checked to see what that teaching guide said?

After the Times conducted that check, should it have published that letter?

(For what it's worth, that teaching guide gets even sillier, as it proceeds, concerning the racism lurking in the search for "right" answers in math. Academia and the like, do we sometimes have a problem? Could parents sometimes be right?)

Parliamentarian strikes again...

FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2021

...and Rachel takes a pass: Early in April, cable viewers in Our Town were given the latest good news.

On this extremely rare occasion, we weren't told that Mueller or Vance or some other such person was about to lock Trump or Rudy or some other such person up. That's the kind of extremely good news our stars more routinely dispense.

On this occasion, the extremely good news involved an alleged important ruling. The alleged ruling had  been handed down by the Senate parliamentarian, whoever that allegedly is. 

As usual, the news we were handed was very good—the kind of news which keeps cable viewers coming back for more. Cable stars exulted about the alleged ruling—but at this site, we offered this:. 

DAILY HOWLER (4/8/21): At the start of this week, the Senate parliamentarian, by all accounts, made a very significant ruling. 

The ruling concerns the legislative procedure commonly known as "reconciliation." How important is this ruling believed to be?

The ruling is believed to be very important! But can anyone in the upper-end press corps explain what the ruling was?

Can anyone explain what the parliamentarian said? The answer seems to be no. 

Behaving like a couple of clowns, Rachel and Lawrence spilled from their channel's Volkswagen bus, then pretended to explain the ruling. The pair gave a pair of clownish performances on Monday, April 5. Two nights later, Rachel offered an even more ridiculous endless attempt to explain the ruling

In theory, the parliamentarian had ruled that—oh, why even bother? We mention this matter today because the parliamentarian is now said to have issued another ruling. 

This new ruling seems to undercut whatever she may have ruled back then, assuming that she actually ruled anything back then at all.

What has the parliamentarian newly ruled? At New York magazine, Eric Levitz addresses that question under this gloomy headline:

Parliamentarian Erects New Obstacle to Biden’s Agenda

Oof! Meanwhile, over at Slate, Jim Newell's headline renders its statement in the form of a question:

Did the Senate Parliamentarian Just Foil Chuck Schumer’s Plan to Beat the Filibuster?

To the extent that Schumer ever had any such (viable) plan, the answer may be yes! 

For the record, Newell's report makes a striking claim. He says that Slate has "obtained a copy" of the parliamentarian's ruling.

Back in April, there was no sign that anyone had ever seen any such critter. That didn't keep Rachel and Lawrence from the ridiculous clowning in which: 1) they excitedly contradicted each other, without seeming to notice this fact, concerning what the ruling held; and 2) Rachel kept contradicting herself as she offered her filibuster-length explanations.

Back in April, we tried to call attention to the damn-fool nonsense involved in Rachel's attempts to explain the ruling. (Also, just click here.)

Back in April, there was a flurry of excitement about the parliamentarian's unseen ruling. Then, the topic disappeared. Until the last few days, this alleged original ruling had pretty much never been mentioned again. Our cable stars devised other ways to assure us that Our Town would win.

Now it turns out that, on May 28, the parliamentarian issued a new ruling—and the new ruling doesn't seem to convey good news. 

Possibly for that reason, Rachel hasn't mentioned the new ruling this week. Based on a search of her transcripts, it's been crickets—though possibly not Brood X cicadas—pretty much all the way down.

On balance, cable news is a ratings-driven, silly-bill corporate con game. Here's our own best guess as to what what will happen this summer:

Trump will be reinstated to the White House, quite possibly in August. Following that, Mueller will be restored to his gumshoe post, and our favorite stars will tell us that Mueller is about to send Trump to jail. 

UFOs may be involved. On cable, the news will almost surely be good. Imprisonment of those we loathe will be right around the corner again.

The real news—the fact that our system has already collapsed, with a silent secession already achieved—will be studiously avoided. Anthropologists could explain this rolling demise, but such experts won't be consulted.

Our Town's cable news is a sad, silly mess. According to several leading experts, our youthful analysts know what you need, but our cable stars know what you want!

“ACADEMIA...PROBLEM?” Are some academics maybe too "woke?"

FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2021

Brooks emits lunatic slanders: Way back when, David Brooks wrote a column in which he said that same academics may possibly be just a trifle too "Woke."

"Woke" was the ugly, insensitive term the insensitive columnist used. In an early part of his column, he pretended he thinks that "the thing we call wokeness" is actually great at its core:

BROOKS (5/14/21): The thing we call wokeness contains many elements. At its core is an honest and good-faith effort to grapple with the legacies of racism. In 2021, this element of wokeness has produced more understanding, inclusion and racial progress than we’ve seen in over 50 years. This part of wokeness is great.

The thing we call wokeness is great at its core? No one believes that the columnist meant that! As he proceeded, Brooks revealed what he actually feels and believes:

BROOKS (continuing directly): But wokeness gets weirder when it’s entangled in the perversities of our meritocracy, when it involves demonstrating one’s enlightenment by using language—“problematize,” “heteronormativity,” “cisgender,” “intersectionality”—inculcated in elite schools or with difficult texts.

In an essay titled “The Language of Privilege,” in Tablet, Nicholas Clairmont argues that the difficulty of the language is the point—to exclude those with less educational capital.

People who engage in this discourse have been enculturated by our best and most expensive schools. If you look at the places where the splashy woke controversies have taken place, they have often been posh prep schools, like Harvard-Westlake or Dalton, or pricey colleges, like Bryn Mawr or Princeton.

The meritocracy at this level is very competitive. Performing the discourse by canceling and shaming becomes a way of establishing your status and power as an enlightened person. It becomes a way of showing—despite your secret self-doubts—that you really belong. It also becomes a way of showing the world that you are anti-elite, even though you work, study and live in circles that are extremely elite.

In that passage, the insensitive columnist with the hard heart revealed what he really believes.

Brooks continued on from there, spreading his various poisons. At this point, we'll proceed to reveal what we ourselves truly believe.

We tend to agree with one part of Brooks' criticism of the soaring moral commitments he disparages as "wokeness." We tend to agree with his overall claim, though not with a point of emphasis.

We tend to agree! Almost surely, academia's absurdly jargonized lingo will perhaps and possibly tend to drive "Joe and Jane Sixpack" away. These "others" will find the new, improved jargonized language strange. They may tend to feel excluded.

We're less inclined to agree with the point of emphasis Brooks attributes to Clairmont. According to experts with whom we consult, such specialized language principally serves to identify the elect—but only in the tribal or ideological sense.

The constant churning of specialized language serves as a way to identify those who belong to the ideological group. According to the experts with whom we consult, this churning principally serves as a marker of tribal allegiance and obedience, not of high "educational capital."

People employing the jargonized lingo don't all come from Bryn Mawr or Princeton. But they do let us know they belong to the tribe when they emit their new language.

Whatever! Quite plainly, Brooks had revealed his ugly worldview with this ugly attack on academia. Before he was done, it got worse.

Before he was done, Brooks even went so far as to  claim that he supports the part of "wokeness" which "focuses on concrete benefits for the disadvantaged—reparations, more diverse hiring, more equitable housing and economic policies."

It was easy to see how phony that was. It was easy to see that Brooks' attack on the movement was all.

Let it be said that, early on, Brooks also slandered "critical race theory" (CRT), an academic framework of long standing which has been in the news of late. 

CRT has been in the news, but what the heck is it? In many ways, that doesn't really matter, but the question is perfectly sound. 

What the heck is critical race theory? Also, what sorts of complaints have been lodged against CRT?

In last Sunday's Washington Post, Marisa Iati offered an amazingly clear-spoken overview of such current questions. To peruse her report, just click here.

Iati is seven years of out of college (Notre Dame, class of 2014). Her overview was so well-written—was so fair and was so balanced—that it almost seemed to have emerged from some alternate world.

Having said that, let us also say this:

It doesn't exactly matter what critical race theory is. It doesn't matter what the theory is on its best days, in its best manifestations.

What matters are the applications of CRT—or perhaps, the manifestations of "wokeness"—emerging from the hallowed halls where critical theory may reign. We rubes will encounter those applications and manifestations, not the pure theory itself.

Critical theory makes perfect sense in its most pristine forms. Often though, its applications may not. 

Angry parents, seizing on "tidbits," may respond to those applications. They may think they're responding to "critical race theory" itself when, at least in the idealized sense of the term, it may be that they aren't.

Once again, whatever! Those angry parents will seize on certain "tidbits." Just to be perfectly honest, those tidbits—those manifestations—may not always make perfect sense. 

Here in Our Town, in response, righteousness may tend to boil. Knowing how perfect Our Town's motives are, we may be inclined to seize on The Dumbness of Others.

Here in Our Town, we can see how stupid those angry parents are, how pure Our Town's motives are. This ancient reaction was on full display in the news report from the Washington Post we discussed in yesterday's report.

Here in Our Town, we can see how perfect our thought leaders are—even those who may be engaged in acts of "ethnic fraud!" We can see how stupid The Others are, and we're sometimes inclined to go into print to tell each other about it.

In our experience, Our Town has been noting The Dumbness of Others since at least the mid-1960s. The Others have been dumb for a very long time. We've sometimes been eager to say so.

Today, we send our Harvard kids out to talk about their "tidbits." These journalists are two years out of college, but they've memorized all the plays. Their editors don't seem to exist.

Meanwhile, is it possible? Is it possible that top academics here in Our Town may sometimes lack perfect insight? The ugly column published by Brooks gave us a chance to assess that silly idea.

While showering praise on the core of wokeness—while voicing support for reparations!—Brooks had dared to suggest that the jargonized lingo of Our Town may come from a "privileged" place.

He'd even suggested that Our Town's academics may do the darnedest things. Insensitive headline included, he had started his column like this:

BROOKS (5/14/21): This Is How Wokeness Ends

My friend Rod Dreher recently had a blog post for The American Conservative called “Why Are Conservatives in Despair?” He explained that conservatives are in despair because a hostile ideology — wokeness or social justice or critical race theory—is sweeping across America the way Bolshevism swept across the Russian Empire before the October Revolution in 1917.

This ideology is creating a “soft totalitarianism” across wide swaths of American society, he writes. In the view of not just Dreher but also many others, it divides the world into good and evil based on crude racial categories. It has no faith in persuasion, or open discourse, but it shames and cancels anybody who challenges the official catechism. It produces fringe absurdities like “ethnomathematics,” which proponents say seeks to challenge the ways that, as one guide for teachers puts it, “math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist and racist views” by dismissing old standards like focusing on “getting the ‘right’ answer.”

I’m less alarmed by all of this because I have more confidence than Dreher and many other conservatives in the American establishment’s ability to co-opt and water down every radical progressive ideology...

Truly, that was ugly stuff. It seemed to say that we in Our Town may sometimes be inclined to "divide the world into good and evil based on crude racial categories."  Brooks said he wasn't hugely alarmed by this tendency because the movement in question will eventually be co-opted by the nation's establishment.

Forget that complexified claim! Along the way, Brooks even suggested that academics in Our Town can sometimes produce "fringe absurdities." 

As an example, he dreamed up a crazy idea. He suggested that someone has offered a crazy type of "ethnomathematics."

"Academia, do we have a problem?" Sarah Viren, herself an academic, posed that question last weekend in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Earlier, Brooks had crazily seemed to say that the answer can sometimes be yes. Luckily, two academics responded to this silly, ridiculous claim.

At times like these, reactionaries like Brooks are willing to do and say anything. Angry parents will seize on "tidbits," but people like Brooks will be worse.

Tomorrow: Two academics responded to Brooks. Each is a good, decent person...

We offer one possible semi-correction!

THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2021

Is Donald J. Trump some version of "mentally ill?:" We generally put the term in quotes to signal the fact that it's a technical term.

Having said that, we'll  add this: 

In this new post, Kevin Drum says that Donald J. Trump seems to be "clinically delusional." We think the actual term would be something like some version of "mentally ill."

Kevin is responding to reports that Trump actually does believe that he'll be reinstated this summer. Kevin's responding to credible reports that Trump really does believe that.

We said, all along, that it looked to us like Trump did believe his various crazy claims. It would take a clinician to explain how something that strange could be possible. 

Instead, we get the successors to Chris Matthews—the entertainers, jugglers and clowns the cable nets put on the air. Around here, the analysts always say that they know what we need but the cable clowns know what we want.

Kevin has come to believe that Trump is "obviously delusional." It has looked that way to us for some time, but isn't the technical term for that "some version of mentally ill?"

Dr. Bandy X. Lee has been booted from Yale. All along, through all the lunacy, the cable stars—Lawrence O'Donnell excepted—agreed that we must never, ever hear from such medical specialists.

The suits didn't want them to raise such concerns. All across the cable landscape, the stars did what they were told.

The New York Times reviews the book!

THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2021

Do you understand what gets said?: This very morning, our patience received its reward! 

The New York Times finally reviewed the new book about Kurt Gödel—Stephen Budiansky's Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel.

Jennifer Szalai begins her review as shown. Do you understand what Szalai says? Hard-copy headline included:

SZALAI (6/3/21): Proof of a Brilliant, and Disturbed, Mind

In 1947, having left Nazi-occupied Vienna for the quaint idyll of Princeton, N.J., seven years before, the mathematician Kurt Gödel was studying for his citizenship exam and became preoccupied with the mechanisms of American government. A worried friend recalled Gödel talking about “some inner contradictions” in the Constitution that would make it legally possible “for somebody to become a dictator and set up a fascist regime.” Gödel started to bring this up at his actual examination, telling the judge that the United States could become a dictatorship—“I can prove it!”—before his friends (one of whom was Albert Einstein) managed to shut him up so that the naturalization process could go on as planned.

It’s the kind of unruly eruption that Stephen Budiansky showcases to potent and entertaining effect in “Journey to the Edge of Reason,” his account of Gödel’s life and work. Gödel’s “incompleteness theorem,” which he presented in 1930, when he was 24, upended his profession’s assumption that mathematics should be able to prove a mathematical statement that is true. Gödel’s proof landed on a mathematical statement that was true but unprovable.

Szalai begins with a familiar anecdote about Gödel’s trip to the citizenship office. Later in her review, she cites Einstein's statement describing Gödel as the greatest logician since Aristotle.

In the second paragraph of her review, Szalai gives the highlighted capsule account of what Gödel proved, discovered, demonstrated, showed or did. At age 24, his incompleteness theorem "upended his profession’s assumption that mathematics should be able to prove a mathematical statement that is true."

If a mathematical statement is true, mathematics should be able to prove it? At first glance, that doesn't seem like too much to ask. 

On the other hand, it isn't completely obvious why upending that assumption would qualify someone as the greatest logician in 2500 years, or even as a logician at all. What exactly did Gödel show? And why would it make any difference?

We'd score Szalai's review as nearly a rave. That said, will the general reader for whom Budiansky's book is intended end up understanding what Gödel allegedly did?

Szalai doesn't guarantee that outcome as her review proceeds Meanwhile, as you may recall, Budiansky offers this capsule account of Gödel 's theorem in this, his book's opening paragraph:

MARCH 1970. The psychiatrist moved his pen swiftly across the yellow sheets of lined notebook paper, recording facts, strange and mundane, about his new patient. Einstein had called him "the greatest logician since Aristotle," and even in Princeton, the town with more Nobel Prize winners than traffic lights, his otherworldly genius had stood out. The work he had done forty years earlier, at age twenty-four, had brought fame and recognition from around the world—"the most significant mathematical truth of the century," a staggeringly brilliant and paradoxical proof that no formal mathematical system will ever capture every mathematical truth within its bounds.

According to that initial capsule account, Gödel's theorem proved "that no formal mathematical system will ever capture every mathematical truth within its bounds."

Budiansky goes into much more detail as the book proceeds. But does he ever explain Gödel's allegedly brilliant and paradoxical theorem in a way the general reader will actually understand?

It's depressing to stand here "on the beach" watching Our Town slide away. On the brighter side, we expect to address that question about Budiansky's book next week. 

It's hard to discuss the Post and the Times as they stand at present. As Elliott says when E.T. seems to have died, Look what they've done to you!

(For our money, it's one of the great movie quotes.)

For us, it's been Gödel in the afternoon of late. As the waters rise around Our Town, we're treating ourselves to nice things! 

Also this: The Wall Street Journal reviewed Budiansky's book on May 15. Color photograph recommended!

“ACADEMIA...PROBLEM?” Brooks (lightly) criticized academia!

THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2021

Some academics responded: We humans! 

According to major anthropologists, once we get an idea in our heads, that idea will migrate into everything we say, think and do. This theory may explain this news report in today's Washington Post.

The report concerns a certain decision by the state of Arizona. The state has decided to "refurbish a gas chamber that hasn’t been used in more than 20 years," the news report says, and use it in executions ("to kill inmates on death row").  

In theory, that could be part of a major change in public policy concerning capital punishment. But that isn't the focus of today's news report. Hard-copy headline included, today's report starts like this:

KORNFIELD (6/3/21): Arizona prepares to carry out executions with gas Nazis used at Auschwitz

Arizona is taking steps to use hydrogen cyanide, the deadly gas used during the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps, to kill inmates on death row.

Corrections officials have refurbished a gas chamber that hasn’t been used in more than 20 years and have procured ingredients for the lethal gas, also known as Zyklon B, according to partially redacted documents obtained by the Guardian. Invoices show that the state purchased a brick of potassium cyanide, sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid, and a report details the considerable efforts taken to deem the gas chamber at a prison in Florence, Ariz., “operationally ready.”

Critics of the gas method say that in addition to hydrogen cyanide’s infamous use in the mass killings of Jewish people by the Nazis, it has produced some of the most botched, disturbing executions in the United States.

That's the way the news report starts. We were struck by the news report's focus.

The focus isn't on the fact that Arizona is planning to conduct executions.

The focus isn't on the fact that the state is planning to use its gas chamber in conducting these executions, perhaps as opposed to some other method of execution. 

The focus isn't even on the fact that the method the state is planning to use "has produced some of the most botched, disturbing executions in the United States." That isn't the news report's focus.

Quite literally, the possibility of botched executions is treated as an "addition[al]" problem in today's news report. The major problem is the fact that the state will be using the same type of gas the Nazis used at Auschwitz.

Let's be clear. We're not suggesting that anything in this news report is inaccurate. Instead, we're asking a basic question:

We're asking if the focus of this report makes sense, except as an an illustration of the thesis advanced by those anthropologists.

In our view, the focus of that news report is remarkably strange. Unkindly, we'll offer this account:

The news rep[ort seems to suggest that it would be pretty much OK if the state found a way to conduct executions—including executions which might be horribly botched—just so long as that method was less anti-Semitic.

If the state could find some other kind of gas which would produce botched executions, that would be more  OK. The major problem, this news report seems to suggest, is the fact that Nazis once used this gas—not to the effect this gas will have on executions in Arizona.

Just this once, we'll speak frankly. That focus strikes us as borderline crazy, but also as highly instructive.

We state that view from our perch as full-blown opponents of capital punishment. Also, though, we advance this thought:

The focus of that news report supports the claim those major experts are making. Once again, here is their claim:

The anthropologists' claim:
Once we humans get an idea in our heads, that idea will dominate everything we say, think and do.

Is that really the way we humans behave, especially at times of major tribal division? In private consultations with some of the world's most renowned top leading experts,  we've recently been exposed to extensions of that theory. 

According to these major scholars, we humans won't just insert our tribe's foundational idea into every known context. We'll actively perform our foundational idea. We'll enact our performative virtue.

Are such scholarly theories correct? We'll let you decide. 

That said, we'll offer a further point. Increasingly, this theory might seem to explain a great deal of the work we now meet, on a daily basis, in the Washington Post.

We refer to the newspaper's opinion columns, especially those which don't appear on the op-ed page—but we also refer to its news reports. 

We refer to opinion columns disguised as news reports. Consider an example of this rapidly spreading journalistic form from this morning's Post.

The "news report" to which we refer was written by Hannah Natanson. Sitting atop page B1, it's the featured "news report" in today's Metro section.

The news report deals with an increasingly common type of dispute. Hard-copy headline included, the "news report" starts like this:

NATANSON (6/3/21): Racial equity sparks lawsuit

Top school officials in Loudoun County are again defending the district’s racial equity work, following complaints from some parents that Loudoun is indoctrinating students with “critical race theory”—allegations that have now spurred a lawsuit.

The controversy dates back to last summer, when angry mothers and fathers began seizing on tidbits—such as the nearly half-million dollars Loudoun spent on an equity consultant, or later, a minutes-long video recording of a classroomin which a teacher discusses critical race theory—to argue that the system is teaching White students to feel ashamed of being White, because their race means they have historically been part of an oppressive system.

Critical race theory is a decades-old academic framework that explores how policies and the law fuel systemic racism. The theory in part declares that racism is the product of systems, not individuals, and therefore interwoven into daily life and history in America.

But some critics have used the term to refer more broadly to efforts to address systemic racism.

That would be heavy-handed work at the start of a standard opinion column. At the start of a news report, it's the latest example of the way the intellectual standards of Our Town are disappearing from view.

From its headline on down, the opening of this "news report" is pure propaganda. 

The headline and the opening sentence assume that the policies at issue in Loudon County can best be described as "racial equity work." Meanwhile, the complaining parents are instantly mocked, as we're told that they "began seizing on tidbits" to fuel their complaints about the school system's work.   

(Tidbits! Are there any editors left at the Washington Post?)

That is horrible news reporting. It's also propaganda of the most dimwitted kind.  

But more and more, with each passing day, this is the way many journalists roll at the slipsliding Washington Post. Quite routinely, the opinion columnists are tragically awful. Sometimes, the news reporters are worse. 

Natanson's report does call attention to an ongoing point of dispute. Increasingly, "angry mothers and fathers" have, in fact, been lodging complaints about educational programs which, they say, are advancing "critical race theory."

It's also true that critical race theory (CRT) "is a decades-old academic framework." Almost surely, many critics are using the term rather "broadly" as they complain about the "tidbits" on which they've chosen to focus.

Semantics to the side, Natanson quickly settles the merits of any such questions for us. In her fourth paragraph, she asserts that, when these critics complain about CRT in the public schools, they're really complaining about "efforts to address systemic racism" on the part of the systems in question.

Critical race theory did, indeed, emerge from academia—from the very parts of academia which seem to teem with "prominent academics" who are, in fact, "ethnic frauds," according to Sarah Viren's lengthy report in Sunday's New York Times.

Most professors aren't ethnic frauds. Those who are may be producing sound academic work.

Or their work may not be good. But all such work has helped Our Town shape its current dominant frameworks and values.

A few weeks back, David Brooks wrote a column in which he lightly complained about certain aspects of that branch of academia. Right in his opening paragraph, he mentioned critical race theory.

Brooks offered a few light criticisms. A few academics wrote letters of reply to the New York Times.

Should we trust the judgment of the academics who till the soil in these highly important regions? Tomorrow, we'll show you what Brooks said, and how the scholars responded.

"Academia, do we have a problem?" The question emerged in last Sunday's New York Times. Viren, the writer who voiced the question, is herself an academic.

"Academia, do we have a problem?" We'd be well advised in Our Town to consider that possibility. 

No one is perfect, leading experts all say. Not even top stars in Our Town!

Tomorrow: The academics' tales

Joy Behar, thoroughly unprepared!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 2021

Chris Matthews, permitted to walk: Chris Matthews is making the rounds promoting a new book.

Yesterday, he turned up on The View. What we saw there was a case of complete lack of preparation.

Matthews' jihad against Hillary Clinton dates at least to the first week of December 1999. It extended, in full-blown form, right through the 2008 campaign.

Yesterday, more than twenty years later, Joy Behar decided to challenge Matthews about it. Over at The Daily Beast, Justin Baragona provides the videotape. 

Here's the pitiful way it went down:

Matthews had just been asked, by Sunny Hostin, about his awkward departure from MSNBC in early March of last year. 

Now Behar had a question for Chris. Her question went like this:

BEHAR (6/1/21): I want to talk about another part of what happened to you. You made a lot of sexist comments about Hillary Clinton. And you called her ‘she-devil,’ ‘witchy,’ ‘Nurse Ratched,’ among other things. I mean look—

At this point, Matthews interrupted. 

"No, I didn't," he absurdly said. "Actually, I didn't. Look it up—just look it up."

Matthews' absurd denial left Behar completely flummoxed. “You never did that? So my research is wrong?” the unprepared TV star asked.

Moments later, Behar completely collapsed, saying this:

“It was reported that you said those things. So that’s my bad—I think.”

"Well, probably online somewhere," Matthews now absurdly said. He was suggesting that Behar must have seen those inaccurate claims on some crazy web site.

Flummoxed, Behar collapsed. Simply put, what we saw there was a typical case of total non-preparation.

Matthews has been off the air for well over a year. The two of us once lunched at The Palm. On another occasion, he weirdly told us how "pink-sheeting" works at that famous hotel right across the street from the Improv. 

He's been off the air for over a year. His years of rather peculiar behavior don't matter any more at this point. That said, no one worked harder, or more crazily, to defeat Candidate Gore.

At this site, we wrote about Matthews' sliming of Hillary Clinton for years, starting with his crazy interview with Gail Sheehy, a Clinton biographer, in December 1999.

On that occasion, Matthews' trashing of Hillary Clinton centered around comparisons to the power-mad Eva Peron. His ranting went on and on and on. Then he ranted some more.

Sheehy was suitably taken aback by the force of Matthews' loathing. At the time, Matthews was supporting Rudy Giuliani in the New York Senate race, where he was opposed by Clinton.

Matthews' attacks on Hillary Clinton were full-blown crazy that night. That said, the attacks continued for years, and they often involved the kinds of gender-skewed comparisons Behar correctly cited. 

Matthews finally encountered a bit of pushback for this conduct in early 2008. But the record of his endless name-calling is in fact perfectly clear.

Behar didn't know this; simply put, she was unprepared. Matthews made an absurd denial, and Behar let him walk.

This is the way the stars of Our Town have always played the game. Here in Our Town, we aren't very sharp and we aren't very good. Many Others can see this about us.

Many of The Others are currently out of their minds. That said, the behavior of Our Town's elite has been persistently fraudulent for a great many years. 

On the brighter side, they get paid millions of dollars for conning the world in such ways. They get to own homes on Nantucket.

We've sleepwalked through these imitations of life for three or four decades now. According to disconsolate experts, the end is drawing near.

Over at The Daily Beast, Justin Baragona provides videotape of Behar's failed attempt at an interview, plus a bit of background information. Our archives are full of reports on this topic, but we aren't going to waste our time preparing links to such material.

Behar was overpaid and unprepared. Those have been the ways of Our Town's fully hapless elites for a very long time now.  More of this haplessness can be seen in the Post and the Times every morning.

Our brains aren't wired for tasks like these, major top experts all say.

“ACADEMIA...PROBLEM?” Front-page report in today's New York Times...

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 2021

...portrays our American Babel: Truly, the public discourse here in Our Town gets dumber with each passing day.

Can a society become this dumb and sensibly expect to survive? 

Leading experts—anthropologists—tell us the answer is no. It just doesn't work that way.

At present, it's amazingly dumb in the Other Towns, but it's also quite dumb Over Here. These trends are creating an American Babel—and Babel is hard to survive.

A front-page report in today's New York Times portrays our American Babel. It concerns a debate about what should be taught in the public schools. Hard-copy headline included, the front-page report starts like this:

GABRIEL AND GOLDSTEIN (6/2/21): Debate Over Scope of Racism Embroils Schools

In Loudoun County, Va., a group of parents led by a former Trump appointee are pushing to recall school board members after the school district called for mandatory teacher training in “systemic oppression and implicit bias.”

In Washington, 39 Republican senators called history education that focuses on systemic racism a form of “activist indoctrination.”

And across the country, Republican-led legislatures have passed bills recently to ban or limit schools from teaching that racism is infused in American institutions. After Oklahoma’s G.O.P. governor signed his state’s version in early May, he was ousted from the centennial commission for the 1921 Race Massacre in Tulsa, which President Biden visited on Tuesday to memorialize one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.

From school boards to the halls of Congress, Republicans are mounting an energetic campaign aiming to dictate how historical and modern racism in America are taught, meeting pushback from Democrats and educators in a politically thorny clash that has deep ramifications for how children learn about their country.

As far as we know, nothing there is false. One might imagine this complaint:

That nugget emphasizes Republican and conservative conduct while downplaying "pushback from Democrats." One might also lodge this objection: 

What the writers describe as "a politically thorny clash" is really a deeply threatening American Babel. At this site, we're told by experts that there may be no way back from this ongoing thorny clash.

How should children—show should 8- or 10-year-old schoolkids—"learn about their country?" Especially when we're discussing a highly fraught topic like "race," there's no perfect way to answer that thorny question.

There's also little sign that "thought leaders" in our warring tribes understand that blindingly obvious fact. We'd have to say that's especially true Over Here.

At any rate, as the Times reporters continue, they continue to describe our spreading American Babel. 

GABRIEL AND GOLDSTEIN (continuing directly): Republicans have focused their attacks on the influence of “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that has found its way into K-12 public education. The concept argues that historical patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other modern institutions, and that the legacies of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow still create an uneven playing field for Black people and other people of color.

Many conservatives portray critical race theory and invocations of systemic racism as a gauntlet thrown down to accuse white Americans of being individually racist. Republicans accuse the left of trying to indoctrinate children with the belief that the United States is inherently wicked.

Democrats are conflicted. Some worry that arguing America is racist to the root—a view embraced by elements of the party’s progressive wing—contradicts the opinion of a majority of voters and is handing Republicans an issue to use as a political cudgel. But large parts of the party’s base, including many voters of color, support more discussion in schools about racism’s reach, and believe that such conversations are an educational imperative that should stand apart from partisan politics.

“History is already undertaught—we’ve been undereducated, and these laws are going to get us even less educated,” said Prudence L. Carter, the dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Attempts to suppress what is still a nascent movement to teach young Americans more explicitly about racist public policy, like redlining or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, amount to “a gaslighting of history,” she said, adding, “It’s a form of denialism.”

Are Republicans advocating "a gaslighting of history?" Of one thing we can be sure—it's a thrilling claim.

That said, how about it! What should children be taught about such public policies as the Chinee Exclusion Act of 1882? What should children be taught about that, and at what age should they be taught it? 

As accusations fly back and forth, no one seems to say.

By the way, is it accurate to say the following? Is it accurate to say that elements of the Democratic Party's progressive wing argue that "America is racist to the core?"

That's a very exciting claim; to what extent is it accurate? It's hard to answer a question like that, but this the highlighted claim in this passage  is pretty much flatly wrong:

GABRIEL AND GOLDSTEIN: Some of the discussion about education has been fueled by the 1619 Project, developed by The New York Times Magazine, which argues that “the country’s very origin” traces to when the first ship carrying enslaved people touched Virginia’s shore that year. “Out of slavery—and the anti-black racism it required—grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional,” the magazine’s editor wrote.

Educators have embraced curriculums created along with the project, responding to a changing nation in which a majority of public-school students are now nonwhite, but the teaching force remains nearly 80 percent white.

Republican pushback has been intense. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the G.O.P. leader, said recently that he disagreed that 1619 was important in U.S. history. He and other Republican senators are pushing the Biden administration to drop efforts by the Education Department to prioritize history courses that emphasize “systemic marginalization” of peoples.

Is that accurate? Did McConnell recently say "that 1619 wasn't important in U.S. history?"

The Times reporters include a link which takes us to this earlier report. In that report, we can't find McConnell quoted saying any such thing.

The American Babel of which we speak is a Babel concerning issues of so-called "race." It's a Babel concerning what children will be told about that sprawling, painful topic, but also at what age.

It's hard for us in Our Town to see it, but Our Town's thought leaders often show comically awful judgment about such deeply felt matters. And not only that! A lot of these amazing thought leaders—the wonderfully brilliant people we so thoroughly trust in Our Town—are committing acts of "ethnic fraud" themselves, if we're able to believe the remarkable claims and suggestions which appeared in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

"Academia, do we have a problem?" the author often asks.

Is there a 1619 Project curriculum, as the Times reporters say?

Yes there is, and in certain ways, it's a lazy, careless, indolent, howling, ridiculous D-minus disgrace. We'll try to get to that later.

Meanwhile, there's the ongoing dispute about the role (if any) to be played by Aztec gods in California's new public school ethnic studies curriculum. 

In a detailed analysis by Snopes, we're told that there's no role for the Aztec gods at all, or at least no role for them "per se." On the other hand, do we really think it makes sense to have kids in public schools engaging in "community chants" such as these?

Tezkatlipoka, Tezkatlipoka,
Tezkatlipoka, Tezkatlipoka,
smoking mirror, self-reflection
We must vigorously search within ourselves be reflective, introspective by silencing distractions and extensive comprehensive obstacles in our lives, (in our lives),
in order to be warriors of love, of love,
for our gente representin’ justice, (justice)
local to global global to local eco-logical, & social, (social), justice (justice).

[…]

Huitzilopochtli, huitzilopochtli, 
Huitzilopochtli, huitzilopochtli, 
hummingbird to the left, yollotl,
corazon, heart, ganas, the will to action as we grow in
consciousness must be willing to be proactive,
not just thinkin’ and talkin’ but makin’ things happen,
with agency, resiliency, & a revolutionary spirit
that’s positive, progressive, creative, native,
Passion everlasting work hard in action,
tap in to the spark of our universal heart,
pulsating creation huitzilopochtli cause like sunlight, the light inside of us, in will to action’s what brings …

In its detailed analysis, Snopes is at pains to note this: "The 'community chants' as outlined in the curriculum contain no mention of gods, per se, or of human sacrifice."  

Sometimes, though, you just have to laugh, even as our American Babel has our nation sliding toward the sea.

What does the new California curriculum say? We can't exactly tell you! Snopes provides a link to the new curriculum. That link yields this result: 

"Page not found."

We tried to find the curriculum over the weekend; we found that was no easy task. Meanwhile, we're spending long, lazy afternoons on a different difficult topic:

What did "the greatest logician since Aristotle" actually prove, discover, demonstrate, find, reveal or say when he was just 24? It isn't easy to learn that either! Even at the allegedly highest levels, sometimes you just have to laugh!

(More on that to come. Anthropologists support our belief that the topic is entertaining, but also highly instructive.)

Things are falling apart in our land. It isn't clear that the center is going to hold. 

In obvious ways, a silent secession has already occurred. Anthropologists sat that human projects have always ended this way before proceeding to war..

Our Town's thought leaders in ethnic studies are full of passionate intensity. Some are also "ethnic frauds." 

That doesn't necessarily mean that their work is bad. But sometimes, you just have to laugh.

Tomorrow: Emba v. Rufo RE gods?

Concerning the things we the people don't know!

TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2021

Tim Miller / Birmingham Sunday: In an earlier life, Tim Miller was communications director for Jeb Bush.

In recent years, he became a never-Trump Republican. He's a regular guest on Deadline White House, and also on The Eleventh Hour, where we saw him last night.

He appeared with Caroline Randall Williams, a fairly standard liberal voice. At one point, Miller discussed some of the things we the people don't know.

In the passage below, he starts by discussing what the Republican rank and file knows and doesn't know about the January 6 Capitol riot. After that, he made a surprising statement about something he himself hadn't known.

He said his admission was embarrassing. We're going to call it instructive:

MILLER (5/31/21): You know, half of those Republican voters right now don't know what happened on 1/6. So they've convinced themselves that something completely separate has happened. And this is where education and raising awareness about this matters, to Caroline's point.

I'm about to admit something embarrassing. I think Caroline will look over at me and like, "Oh, my goodness, how could you not know about this?" But I think it's an important anecdote. 

David French, who's a conservative, wrote in The Dispatch today about "When Our Forefathers Fail." And he said in that article, in the lead, he said, I'm embarrassed to admit I learned about Tulsa in my forties.

I learned about the Tulsa massacre relatively recently. And it was just at lunch, a few months ago, I learned about the Birmingham church bombing by four members of the KKK.

I'm a fairly educated person. This was something that was completely new to me. We cannot raise awareness—we cannot get white America comfortable with the history of black America, the pain, and the reality of how we got here if people don't know what happened.

Tim Miller is perfectly bright. Also, he decided to take a hike when Donald J. Trump came along.

That said, Miller was born in in the early 1980s. He went to high school in Colorado. He wasn't alive when the bombing in question occurred. It's even imaginable that his parents were too young to know about that bombing in real time.

He said he'd never heard about that incident until fairly recently. We were quite surprised to hear that, but we found his statement instructive.

We come at that incident from a different point of view. We were just starting our junior year in high school, in the San Francisco Bay Area, when the bombing occurred. 

We grew up on Birmingham Sunday, Joan Baez's song about the iconic incident. Our public school teachers encouraged us to be aware of what was happening in the South.

(The song was written by Richard Farina, Baez's brother-in-law.)

It's surprising to think that Miller wasn't aware of this iconic incident. But no one knows about anything about anything until such time as he learns it. 

In the current environment, elaborate systems of tribal propaganda control the things that various people are encouraged to hear and to know. Depending on which cable channels we watch, we're also spared the need to learn about various things which may be embarrassing to those who live in Our Town.

Miller hadn't heard about Birmingham Sunday until some recent time. Especially over here in Our Town, our upper-end news orgs are currently pushing Tulsa very hard.

They're doing do to show the world how truly and deeply they care. Also, to make up for all the years when they said nothing about such matters. To take the place of all the things they still don't talk about now.

Our Town is highly performative. As he continued, Miller offered some fairly standard views on the need for education:

MILLER (continuing directly): And there's a big debate happening right now about how to discuss our history in schools. And I think that this is absolutely critical and it's a critical fight that in our schools, that young Americans are taught about the great things about America, the sacrifices—we're here on Memorial Day—that people have put forth for this country, but also our sins. 

And until people are fully aware of that, then, hopefully, we can move to this next step. 

We need to teach the children well. In our view, that may sound good, but it just isn't that simple. 

What should young Americans be taught about Tulsa and Birmingham in our public schools? Also, at what age should they be taught it?

At what age, and by whom? Those are not simple questions. Depending on who's doing the teaching, various kids are going to hear all kinds of crazy things, and there's no known way to avoid that.

Miller continued as shown. Brian then went to a break

MILLER (continuing directly) You know, you`re always going to have this portion of people that want to believe what they want to believe. You`re always going to have people that are bigoted. But to get a critical mass, as Caroline said, aware and comfortable, we need to educate folks about it. And so I think what Biden's doing tomorrow is a good step in that regard.

WILLIAMS: I can't thank our guests enough. Tough topic and an honest conversation. Caroline Randall Williams, Tim Miller, I greatly appreciate you spending part of your holiday Monday evening with us.

(It's always been a great discussion, if you let Brian tell it.)

"You know, you`re always going to have this portion of people that want to believe what they want to believe," Miller said—and that is plainly true, especially at times like these. 

That's true Over There, but it's also true Over Here in Our Town. Here in Our Town, we have a very hard time understanding this fact about ourselves and about our brilliant thought leaders--about our cheerful cable news stars, about our highly principled academics.

The news gets sifted for us in Our Town too. We'll be offering examples all week.

According to an array of experts, this is helping to drive the demise of our failing nation. According to these credentialed scholars, it isn't just Them Over There, clueless though They may be.

Coming tomorrow: Recent examples of TownThink

“ACADEMIA...PROBLEM?” Should we trust the judgment of our professors?

TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2021

Our Town, we have a problem: Can Sarah Viren's wider claim possibly be accurate?

Professor Viren's wider claim appeared as part of her lengthy essay in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. According to Viren, there's been a whole lot of fakin'  going on within American higher education, and this has been true for some time.

Viren was referring to one particular kind of faking—the kind of faking she refers to as "ethnic fraud." She described the extent of this type of faking in this remarkable passage:

VIREN (5/30/21): It’s a problem that has been known at least since 1992, when, in an early use of the term “ethnic fraud” in a newspaper, The Detroit News published an investigation into what were then known as box-checkers: students who [inaccurately] identify as Native American on their college applications...It was accompanied by a shorter piece about similar lies by Native-identified faculty. Of the 1,500 university educators listed as Native American at the time, said Bill Cross, who helped found the American Indian/Alaska Native Professors Association, “we’re looking realistically at one-third of those being Indians.”  

Could that possibly have been true? As of 1992, were something like a thousand university educators falsely identifying as Native American in order to boost their careers?

For ourselves, we can't assess the extent of any such behavior. In her lengthy report, Viren focused on the case of Professor Andrea Smith, a "prominent academic" in the world of ethnic studies.

Smith is widely believed to have falsely identified as Native American (specifically, as Cherokee) in the course of her long career. Despite this fact, her career continues, as Viren reports in detail.

Has Professor Smith made bogus claims about her ancestry / identity? Viren goes into substantial detail on that question. For a more concise account of this matter, we'll recommend this report in The Daily Beast from back in 2015.

Along the way in Sunday's report, Viren cites a half dozen other specific cases in which professors seem to have been involved in varying types of "identity fraud." At one point, Viren—herself a professor, at Arizona State—described the nature of her interest in this general topic:

VIREN: When I began researching this article, I wanted to understand why stories like these seem to dominate one industry—my industry. As a white academic, I watched, aghast, as other white academics were outed for pretending to be scholars of color, both in real life and online. It seemed absurd to me at the time but also horrifying — in part because the outings coincided with a moment of national reckoning on questions of race and representation, and a number of universities, including mine, had recently committed to hiring more scholars of color. I kept wondering, as the former academic Ruby Zelzer posted on Twitter in September, “Academia, do we have a problem?”

“Academia, do we have a problem?” Viren says she found herself asking that perfectly sensible question.

Viren wondered why her industry—the industry called academia—seemed to be beset with so much fraud of this type. She also found herself saying this, as we noted yesterday:

VIREN: All of this was a little bewildering to watch from the sidelines. Academia is an industry, like journalism, that defines itself in large part by its ethical standards; we’re supposed to educate people and produce knowledge. So what does it mean that we’re also a haven for fakes? 

Like journalism, academia is supposed to be defined by its high ethical standards—and by its ability to produce actual knowledge. "So what does it mean," Viren asks, when we learn that academia also turns out to be "a haven for fakes?"

With apologies—at this point, we're largely repeating material we posted yesterday. For today, we want to do a better job defining the problem facing Our Town—the problem as we see it:

Does academia have a problem in the area of "ethnic fraud?" Based on Viren's reporting, it would seem that the answer is yes.

Presumably, it's also true that the vast majority of professors are not engaged, directly or indirectly, in some sort of "ethnic fraud." Presumably, that's true in the realm of ethnic studies, and it's true in all other fields.

That said, modern academia would have various types of "problems" even if no one was engaged in ethnic fraud at all. When it comes to the ongoing breakdown of our rapidly failing society, that may be especially true in the general realm of ethnic studies, and in related fields.

In the general realm of values, Our Town relies heavily on the modern professoriate. This is especially true in matters involving gender and race.

It's strange to hear that "ethnic fraud" is as widespread as Viren says it is. But the political problem afflicting Our Town is only tangentially connected to this narrower, though deeply embarrassing, state of affairs.

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings! Also, every time an academic makes a silly claim about gender or race, it gets reported to viewers of the Fox News Channel. 

This heightens the political and cultural divide due to which our failing nation is sliding toward the sea. It subjects Our Town to ridicule. It drives other people away.

Might we speak frankly just this once? Our Town is full of silly claims and silly ideas which come to us from vaunted professors, possibly including the apparently fraudulent Professor Smith. 

If none of those people were "ethnic frauds"—and surely, the large majority aren't—the damage caused by their silly ideas would be no less daunting.

Starting this afternoon, we're going to drop the question of "ethnic fraud" and focus on the question of silly ideas. Those silly ideas are everywhere in Our Town's current journalism, and those silly ideas have largely made their way into journalism from the halls of academia.

Good intentions may lie behind silly ideas, but the ideas remain silly. Nor do silly ideas start making sense if their authors are not involved in acts of "ethnic fraud."

Viren said that academia, like journalism, is supposed to have high ethics. She said that journalism, like academia, is supposed to produce actual knowledge—is supposed to be smart.

Here in Our Town, we're badly burdened by a whipsaw between these two worlds. We'll offer examples all this week, starting this afternoon.

Judging from Viren's detailed account, some of Our Town's prominent professors haven't always been super honest. But a larger problem prevails:

A larger number of our professors may not have super good judgment.  And the silly judgments of academia leak out into Our Town's high-end, upper-class press corps.

In our view, the proliferation of silly ideas in our high-end press seems to be getting worse every day. (The Washington Post and the New York Times were both astounding this morning.) Meanwhile, according to experts, the die has already been been cast:

According to experts, it's too late—it's much too late—to expect this process to stop. Our nation has already split apart. 

According to experts, there's no obvious way to glue its various pieces back together again. All that's left is the anthropology, these disconsolate experts have said.

This afternoon: It has ever been thus...