The murderous Goebbels had it right!

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

As quoted by The Beast: We should have posted the quotation yesterday—yesterday, when we saw it.

That said, we took a little time off. We watched Tiger Woods in the Masters. We watched the Senate vote which confirmed the soon-to-be Justice Jackson.

We thought we'd watch a bit of Opening Day, but Opening Day became Opening Night. We also caught up on some sleep. 

Along the way, we read an essay in The Daily Beast about Marine Le Pen. Along the way, Craig Copetas hauled off and quoted Goebbels:

COPETAS (4/7/22): In the bloody riptide of Ukraine, Ernest Hemingway’s description of the genesis of a fascist is no longer shrouded in literary ambiguity. “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find out when the time comes,” the Nobel laureate wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

That time has come. Yet democracy’s conventional-wisdom makers continue to use cautious language to describe Le Pen’s candidacy—and Putin’s Ukrainian genocide. How can anyone other than a propagandist Russian troll look at wheelbarrows of bodies shot in the head and modify such shameful, palpable evidence with “alleged?” There comes a time when phrases like “reasonable to believe” and “yet-to-be-proven” are the greater obscenities.

“The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine,” fascist marketing specialist Joseph Goebbels told his Führer. “Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.”

In all honesty, we don't know where "democracy’s conventional-wisdom makers" have been "using cautious language to describe Putin’s Ukrainian genocide." 

Still, that quotation from Goebbels did grab our attention. It seems to us that, in both its parts, it captures the headlong decline of our Potemkin-reminiscent national discourse.

The American discourse is breaking down into a set of identity wars. The American nation, such as it was, is splitting into two or three, or four or five, or maybe six different worlds. 

At times of undisguised dislocation, we'd have to agree that "the rank and file" may be eager for new Storyline—and the simpler the better. We may be eager to swallow new markers of our emerging new group identities.

That's especially true if we're handed frameworks which are "simple and repetitious." On cable news (but also elsewhere), the children are more than happy, at this time, to make it as simple as humanly possible. And last night, on our own tribe's channels, the repetition was general.

CNN was in rare form yesterday afternoon. Last evening, so was Lawrence.

We turned Tucker Carlson off after maybe two (completely ridiculous) minutes. It seems to be getting dumber and dumber, and The Onrushing Simplification isn't restricted to the tribunes who are cranking it out Over There.

At any rate, this was Opening Day, 1956. On a spur-of-the-moment whim, our sainted mother took us and our sister out to the Fens. It was a windy, cold day at the yard. At the age of 8, it was our first MLB game, though nobody called it that then.

In retrospect, we probably should have stayed home and spent some time hitting the books. But the murderous Goebbels pretty much had it right. As our nation continues to slide toward disaster, the dumbnified messaging he described really is how our discourse works!

L. A. (PUBLIC SCHOOL) CONFIDENTIAL: Black kids recorded enormous gains!

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

The public was never told: Yesterday, we forgave you. 

We forgave you if you hadn't heard about the suddenly heralded improvement, over the course of the past two decades, in the Los Angeles public schools (the LAUSD).

All of a sudden, the L.A. schools have been transformed into "schools that work." We forgave you if you hadn't heard about that. We hadn't heard about any such phenomenon either.

Today, we extend additional forgiveness. We forgive you if you haven't heard about the enormous academic progress black kids nationwide have shown over that same stretch of time.

You haven't heard about that progress for a fairly obvious reason. You haven't heard about that progress because, in the upper reaches of our failing blue tribe, absolutely nobody cares.

Simply put, the high-ranking people we're taught to trust don't care about any of that. More specifically, they don't care about the lives or interests of the nation's black kids, except for such kids who might end up at Yale, and except for performance and branding purposes. 

Simply put, these people don't care. Indeed, they see to be devoted to the task of making that fairly obvious.

Enough about the Rachels and the Lawrences and the rest of this talented cast! For perhaps the ten millionth time, let's review the remarkable progress you've never been told about. 

Below, you see several decades of progress laid out in the form of average scores on the Naep, our one reliable educational testing program. We're starting in 1996, the first year which lets us make direct statistical comparisons to the rising test scores which followed:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, Naep
Black students, National Public Schools
1996: 239.28
2000: 243.27
2003: 251.75
2005: 254.19
2007: 258.90
2009: 260.28
2011: 261.84
2013: 262.73
2015: 259.85
2017: 259.60
2019: 259.21

To the extent that we can credit such data, you're looking at a record of massive academic progress. 

(For all Naep data, start by clicking this. At that point, you're on your own.)

From 1996 through 2013, the average scores of black eighth graders nationwide rose by more than 23 points on the Naep scale. According to the very rough rule of thumb endorsed by Professor Fuller in his new book, that represents a gain of at least two academic years.

Scores dropped back a couple of points after 2013. Before we're done today or tomorrow, we may propose a speculation about that undesirable change.

Maybe then! But from 1996 through the most recent testing in 2019, those average scores, among black kids, rose by twenty points! The public has never heard about that, for a fairly simple set of reasons:

Our elites are unimpressive and dumb. Also, they plainly don't care.

Even now, when we look at those numbers, our heart wants to jump with joy. We think of Willa Cather's narrator in My Antonia, exulting in the vast success, over one generation, of Nebraska's "immigrant girls" in the late 19th century.

From Book II, The Hired Girls, Chapter IX:

I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses.

The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black Hawk girls, and living in a brand-new little house with best chairs that must not be sat upon, and hand-painted china that must not be used. But sometimes a young fellow would look up from his ledger, or out through the grating of his father’s bank, and let his eyes follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with her slow, undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt and striped stockings.

The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background. But anxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle of their sons. The respect for respectability was stronger than any desire in Black Hawk youth.

That passage comes from The Hired Girls, Chapter IX, the greatest act of advocacy of which we are aware.

Cather's narrator always knew he would live to see the ascension of those immigrant girls, whose beauty (and moral greatness) had always stood out against a conventional background. 

By the time Cather's narrator was telling his story, their work ethic had made them the mistresses of the most prosperous farms in the county. We think of that passage whenever we review the rising test scores you were never told about.

In most cases, the conventional players of our upper-end press corps didn't know about those rising test scores. Within the culture of their "educated" but dull-witted class, statistics are known to be boring and hard.

Also, they simply don't care about black kids! To the extent that they'd ever heard about those scores, their conventional backgrounds and desire for respectability didn't equip them to care.

Today, they're busily pretending to care. Today, they drench us in endless performance. 

That said, our black kids haven't yet attained the status described in the case of Cather's immigrant girls. Even as their test scores rose, so did the scores of other groups. Here are thee boring statistics:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, National Public Schools
Naep 1996 versus Naep 2019:
White students:  279.50 / 291.46
Black students: 239.28 / 259.21
Hispanic students: 249.18 / 267.96
Asian-American students: NA / 309.09

Black kids have gained roughly 20 points, but white and Hispanic kids have produced higher test scores too. Hispanic kids have gained almost 19 points. White kids have gained 12.

This means, of course, that the black/white "achievement gap" has narrowed during this era. You'd almost think that would be good news, but you've never heard about that either. Your "journalists" didn't care, and they had a different brand of "narrative product" to sell.

What "narrative product" was being sold during that era, even as black and Hispanic kids were recording so much academic progress? You were being sold a Storyline about certain types of education reform, and that Storyline was being sold via this talking-point:

Absolutely nothing has worked in the public schools.

Even as test scores rose for every demographic group, your lazy, unintelligent upper-end journalists just kept typing that talking-point. You were never told about those gains. As far as any of us rubes knew, no such progress had occurred.

In that way, we were kept from feeling pride in the progress of our various "country girls." We were kept from feeling the joy that the demonstrative Cory Booker has suddenly discovered, though only with respect to the ascension of those within his own class.

We weren't told about the gains recorded by all those other black kids. We weren't allowed to care. Nor were we allowed to wonder what might be helping create that progress. There was exactly zero sign that anyone actually cared.

It's against that backdrop that Professor Fuller has released a strange new book. The strange and grossly incompetent book carries this strange title:

When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles

All of a sudden, the Los Angeles schools are billed as "schools that work!" As we noted yesterday, we're asked to swallow that happy talk in the face of such data as these:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

In that, the most recent Naep testing, black kids in L.A. were performing roughly four academic years behind white kids nationwide! On what planet—in what moral universe—does that circumstance emerge from a bunch of "schools that work?"

Professor Fuller explains none of this in his grossly incompetent book. We've mentioned the lazy incompetence of our tribe's ranking journalists. You can pretty much throw our ranking professors into that same useless stew.

Someone else blew right past this background state of affairs. That would be the Washington Post's Jay Mathews, whose demeanor and commitment we have long admired.

We admire Jay's demeanor and his commitment. On occasion, we've been puzzled by his work. 

In writing about the Berkeley professor's book, Mathews blew past all this background information. At this point, we'll note an exchange which occurred in the comments to his column.

One person who read Mathews' column wasn't completely convinced. Recording his name as Walnut Street, he offered this remark:

COMMENT: Glad LA allowed charter schools and glad they are doing so well. Same thing happened in Wash DC.

Love to see some data backing up improvement claims about LAPS in this OpEd.

The reader wanted to see some data. Mathews penned this reply:

MATHEWS: Sadly there isn't room for that in a 800 word column, Walnut, but I figured that anyone who wanted to see all the data could just buy the book. I am sure my Uncle Jeff will get it to you quickly and cheaply. —jay

By "Uncle Jeff," Mathews apparently meant Jeff Bezos, he of Amazon fame. If the commenter "wants to see all the data," he can go ahead and buy the book, Mathews said in his reply.

Sad! In fact, the professor's very expensive, rather short book is extremely short on relevant data. (For his extremely limited data from the Naep, see page 64.) 

Here's a chunk of statistical information which doesn't appear in the professor's book, a book which spills with praise concerning those Los Angeles schools that work:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

We keep suggesting that you ponder those data. Walnut Street won't find those punishing data in the professor's book.

Briefly, let's be fair. The Los Angeles schools did show test score gains during the years in question. 

Apologizing for the fact that information is boring and hard, this is the way the district's scores improved during the era in question. We're starting with 2003 because that's when the Naep began providing average scores from specific cities:

Average scores, Grade 8 math
LAUSD, Naep 2003 versus Naep 2019
White students:  277.06 / 287.02
Black students: 233.99 / 248.14
Hispanic students: 239.71 / 255.14
Asian-American students: 274.64 / 295.37

Black kids in Los Angeles gained 14 points during that period; Hispanic kids gained more than 15 points. Those are actual gains, and we're sure that a lot of people in L.A. worked hard in pursuit of that improvement. 

That sad, those gains are roughly equivalent to the gains which were recorded by Large City Schools nationwide during that same period. And uh-oh:

As we noted on Tuesday, the Los Angeles schools were performing substantially behind other large city systems as of 2003. In spite of the subsequent gains in test scores, they were still performing behind other big city systems by the end of that period.

Los Angeles kids were still performing less well than their counterparts in comparable urban systems! And once again, we'll show you the most punishing data from within those "schools that [allegedly] work:"

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

We've got your schools that work right there! We think of Wilfred Owen, trudging along behind wagons filled with the dying and dead as The Great War ground on:

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Translation: If you could care about the bulk of the nation's low-income kids, you wouldn't be pimping, with such high zest, the old tale about schools that work.

On the one hand, it's true. Mathews can't explain all this in 800 words. 

On the other hand, he could find some other format. And even within 800 words, he could explain the lunacy of saying that Los Angeles is now blessed with public schools that work.

More than anything else, the Cory Bookers of this world could stop their Holy Roller conduct in support of the (perfectly decent) people he describes as "double Harvards." Once in a while, the Bookers could talk about the giant number of kids who are being left behind.

(The kids who don't go to Georgetown Day to get their anti-racism.)

Our nation's giant urban systems are full of good, decent kids. Their academic challenges track back to the brutal events of our brutal racial history. At least according to theory, their academic deficits are locking into place long before they ever enter the halls of our public schools.

Our own tribe's elite press corps doesn't care about those kids. Simply put, they simply never discuss them.

Booker jumps about in his chair, letting us admire the way he's gripped by the Holy Spirit. As he praises the "double Harvards," he quickly notes that he himself went to law school at Yale.

Anthropologists have told us this about that recent behavior:

This is the way our human brains are wired, these disconsolate scholars have said. Elites will talk about their own class, and about no one else.

According to those major experts, no discussion of our nation's urban schools will ever emerge from our feathered elites. Their disinterest will only continue. Those other kids will be left on their own.

This familiar old conduct won't change, experts say. This is the way our self-impressed species and tribe are implacably wired.

We care about the double Harvards. We talk about Will Smith.

L. A. (PUBLIC SCHOOL) CONFIDENTIAL: We checked the district's latest scores!

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2022

Are these really "schools that work?" Had you heard about the improvement in the Los Angeles public schools?

If not, you can be forgiven. We don't think we'd heard about it either. Topics like that don't get discussed within our highly Potemkin American pseudo-discourse. 

Within our various failing tribes, we talk about Will Smith and Chris Rock. We don't discuss the millions of good, decent kids who attend the public schools in our biggest cities.

That said, a new book has appeared, written by a Berkeley professor. On March 28, the book was discussed by Jay Mathews, a Washington Post education reporter. 

Mathews discussed the new book. The book's title is this:

When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles

The title has an unmistakably upbeat feel. In the book, Professor Fuller describes changes in the Los Angeles schools—in the LAUSD—over the course of the past two decades. 

When Mathews quoted Professor Fuller, it turned out that Fuller had said this:

 “The behemoth institution of L.A. Unified, written off as hapless and ineffectual, came alive with a pulse, a beating heart. Reading and math scores for Latino and white students proceeded to climb (more than one grade level) over the subsequent two decades, as gauged by a careful federal assessment of learning in L.A., finally leveling off in 2019. Other barometers of pupil progress climbed as well—enrollment in college-prep courses rose, student discipline incidents fell, and graduation rates steadily increased.”

At the turn of the century, the Los Angeles public schools had been a genuine mess. Over the course of two decades, it sounded like they'd been transformed into "schools that work."

We decided to check the system's Naep scores. This is the first thing we found:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
LAUSD versus National Public Schools
White students:  287.02 / 291.46 
Black students: 248.14 / 259.21
Hispanic students: 255.14 / 267.96 
Asian-American students: 295.37 / 309.09

These are the same test scores on which Fuller depends in his book. To what extent have scores like those emerged from "schools that work?" 

Here's what those data suggest:

Based upon a (very rough) rule of thumb which Fuller endorses in his book, black and Hispanic eighth graders in Los Angeles were performing roughly one year below their counterparts nationwide in this most recent Naep testing.

Offhand, that doesn't seem like enormous success. Then too, we're forced to notice this:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

Applying that Fuller-endorsed rule of thumb, we're looking at an achievement gap in eighth-grade math which computes out to roughly three or four years.

Test scores are always approximations. That said, when we say that scores like those have emerged from "schools that work," are we perhaps delivering a slap in the face to the interests, and to the right to daily happiness, of huge numbers of good decent kids?

We continued to check those most recent Naep data. They're the data from our most reliable testing program, the same data on which Fuller relies. 

We compared Los Angeles to two other big cities. The numbers came up like this:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
LAUSD versus Chicago public schools
White students:  287.02 / 303.22 
Black students: 248.14 / 264.24
Hispanic students: 255.14 / 274.61 
Asian-American students: 295.37 / 318.23

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
LAUSD versus Houston public schools
White students:  287.02 / 315.02 
Black students: 248.14 / 260.97
Hispanic students: 255.14 / 271.34 
Asian-American students: 295.37 / NA

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! To the extent that we can credit those data, black and Hispanic kids in L.A. were scoring well more than a year behind their counterparts in those other big urban systems. 

To the extent that we can credit those data, the Los Angeles public schools don't really look all that great! Meanwhile, even in high-flying Chicago, this punishing reality obtains:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, Chicago: 264.24
Hispanic students, Chicago: 274.61 
White students nationwide: 291.46

Those numbers place Chicago's black eighth-graders more than two years behind white kids nationwide. 

Are we picking and choosing the big urban systems we highlight here? Not exactly, no. 

Naep scores from the LAUSD did come closer, in Grade 8 math, to those which emerged from the New York City Public Schools. But the "schools that work" in Los Angeles still trailed Gotham's public schools. And here's the way they compared to the slightly amorphous category the Naep calls Large City Schools:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
LAUSD versus Large City Schools
White students:  287.02 / 296.21
Black students: 248.14 / 258.36
Hispanic students: 255.14 / 266.43 
Asian-American students: 295.37 / 307.79

We wouldn't send someone to jail over this. But it's very, very hard to see why Fuller wrote the book he did, or why Mathews discussed the book without noting the apparent oddness of Fuller's weirdly upbeat appraisal.

Let us repeat: These are the very test scores on which Fuller relies. 

He refers to these scores very briefly in his book. But it's this very same 2019 Naep on which his upbeat assessments are based, in a book which bears this title:

When Schools Work

"When schools work!" Here's the basic comparison again, for your renewed perusal:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2019 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 248.14
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 255.14 
White students nationwide: 291.46

Our question: In what sense are we looking at scores which have come from "schools that work?"

We're sure that Fuller, the Berkeley professor, is a good decent person. We know that Mathews is. 

But at times like these, we think of Ben Johnson's electrifying, punishing statement in The Last Picture Show:

I've been puttin' up with this trashy behavior my whole life.

No one cares about black kids. We've said it again and again!

Tomorrow: From 2003 to 2019, the data concerning the gains

Ben Johnson's fuller, more accurate statement: Below, you see the accurate text of Ben Johnson's fuller statement:

You boys can get on out of here. I don't want to have no more to do with you. Scaring a poor, unfortunate creature like Billy just so you could have a few laughs!

I've been around that trashy behavior all my life. I'm getting tired of putting up with it.

It rang a loud bell the first time we saw it. It's right there in The Last Picture Show.

Goldberg mentions belief in the furries!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2022

Possibly takes a wrong turn: In yesterday's column in the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg pretty much started where we left off last Thursday.

We humans believe the darnedest things! Headline included, Goldberg started as shown:

GOLDBERG (4/5/22): Why Are Seemingly Functional Adults Falling for the ‘Furries’ Myth?

A Nebraska state senator, Bruce Bostelman, last month warned of an alarming new variety of deviance making its way into the state’s schools. “It’s something called furries,” he said. Schoolchildren, Bostelman claimed, were identifying as cats or dogs. “They meow and they bark.” And educators, indulging them, “are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for the children to use,” said Bostelman.

Perhaps needless to say, none of this was true. Bostelman later apologized for spreading falsehoods, saying, “It was just something I felt that if this really was happening, we needed to address it and address it quickly.”

What interests me is why he thought this was really happening, and not just in decadent enclaves like New York City or San Francisco, but in his own Midwestern backyard.

Apparently, Bostelman really believed that teachers might be setting out litter boxes for kids who identify as cats and dogs. Goldberg wanted to know why a "seemingly functional adult" could have believed such a thing.

She went on to offer specific theories, starting with the influence of social media. We think she was making a type of category error, blowing past a basic fact:

We humans aren't super-rational after all. Simply put, we don't have the greatest analytical powers. 

According to experts, we humans believe the craziest things as a basic matter of course. Simply put, this is simply one of the things we fallible humans do.

For our money, Goldberg went on to make two additional moves in her column. One of her moves was thoroughly sharp. One of her moves perhaps wasn't.

In the move which made perfect sense, Goldberg linked certain current beliefs about sexuality and identity issues all the way back to the preschool panic attacks of the 1980s. You can sample her reasoning here:

GOLDBERG: The deeper question is why apparently functional adults find these outré suburban legends plausible. My theory is this: The current freakout over sex and gender identity in schools is a generational conflict, one driven in large part by older adults’ fear and bafflement at the sexual mores of the young.

The “satanic panic” of the 1980s, a frenzy of accusations of ritual child abuse that resulted in the conviction of dozens of innocent people, was driven in part by deep anxiety over working women and day care. Four decades later, the country is once again in a moral panic about monstrous things being done to children, with teachers and entertainers accused of “grooming” them for abuse. And once again, it’s driven in large part by unease over rapidly changing gender roles and norms.

It's true. We've had waves of crazy belief and behavior in this general realm dating back at least to the crazy (and tragic) preschool cases of the 1980s. 

Goldberg was right to see that link. In our view, she was wrong to suggest, as we think she may have done, that these attacks of moral panic have constantly come from the right.

In the "satanic panic" attacks concerning imagined preschool sexual abuse, a great deal of the lunatic conduct came from individuals and groups from our own side of the aisle. It was social workers and child therapists, along with the standard ambitious prosecutors, who threw innocent people in jail and threw away the keys.

The beliefs and behaviors were deeply insane. They often came from Us and from our allies. 

(One major player was Scott Harshbarger, who ended up as the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts in 1998. See below.)

We liberals are strongly inclined to believe that all such crazy behavior and ideation comes from The Others—from crazies on the right. Plenty of that is going on now, but it may not always be so. 

We expect to explore this general topic next week. For today, we'll leave it at this:

It's natural to picture it that way, but it ain't necessarily so.

She won the Pulitzer Prize: Eventually, Dorothy Rabinowitz won a Pulitzer Prize for her tireless writing about the (imagined) preschool sex abuse scandals of the 1980s.

The conduct was baldly insane, and it went on for years. For her account of the Bay State's insane and tragic Amirault case, click here and then keep clicking. (Amazingly, Violet Amirault ended up dying in prison.)

It's all anthropology now. We told you that years ago.

We humans believe the darnedest things. Especially at times of social dislocation and tribal conflict, this inclination is hard to control.

L. A. (PUBLIC SCHOOL) CONFIDENTIAL: Are L.A.'s schools really "schools that work?"

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2022

Triggered by the claim: What did Professor Fuller say about the Los Angeles schools?

We'd call that an excellent question. Also, there's this:

In his recent column in the Washington Post, what did Jay Mathews say that Professor Fuller has said about those embattled schools?

You're asking excellent questions! As we noted yesterday, the giant Los Angeles school district—the LAUSD—was in a major world of hurt as the current century dawned. 

We even presented a raft of test scores to show how bad things seemed to be. Based upon appearances, the Los Angeles schools were doing about as poorly, at that point in time, as any school district a person could name.

Bruce Fuller has now written a book about subsequent events—about events through the year 2019. Fuller is a professor at Berkeley. The name of his book is this:

When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles

Briefly, you'll have to forgive us. We're severely triggered by any form of the familiar, routinely misleading phrase, "Schools That Work."

We're severely triggered by that phrase due to roughly fifty years of journalistic history. Within the journalistic realm, the use of that phrase has routinely misled people about the achievements of public schools which manifestly didn't seem to be working in a desirable way.

In the early 1970s, the Baltimore Sun was attaching that honorific, on an annual basis, to a handful of public schools with amazingly good test scores. Through our friendship with two people who taught at one of those "inner city" schools, we learned about the outright cheating that had produced those amazing test scores.

(For the record, we're speaking here about outright cheating. We aren't talking about "teaching to the test.")

By the early 1980s, we had been told, by the editor-in-chief of a major standardized testing program, about the way some teachers and schools were achieving high test scores the new-fangled way—with teachers or principals replacing wrong answers with right answers after the testing was done and the kids had gone home for the day. 

That same person voiced a second complaint. A rival testing company was falsifying its "national norms," he telephonically said. This meant that any school district which adopted the rival company's tests would see its systemwide scores improve.

Voila! Just like that, a lower-scoring urban district could boast about "schools that work!"

(In the years which followed, many urban districts did indeed move from the initial testing program to the rival company's program.)

Decades passed before the mainstream press finally caught up with this astonishing "erasure party" practice, in which teacher and principals took out their erasers and changed wrong answers to right. In the meantime, many such schools had achieved acclaim—had been hailed as "schools that work."

Entire school systems had been so hailed. In Atlanta, an award-winning superintendent who had been tangled up in the practice ended up going to jail.

We know of no reason to think that any misconduct of this type lurks beneath any claims made in Fuller's book. We do think that Professor Fuller is telling a somewhat familiar story—a familiar story in which the glass is loudly praised for being ten percent full.

We're asked to believe that wonderful things have happened in the Los Angeles schools. The data make that claim hard to support, but Fuller blows past those data.

Mathews blows past the data too, and we wish he hadn't. Nothing he says is technically false, but he fails to blow the whistle about this latest, highly familiar version of happy talk.

On the brighter side, you'll never hear another word about Fuller's book ever again. No one actually cares about our nation's urban kids, and that is nowhere more true than within our own self-impressed, vastly performative liberal / progressive tribe.

When it comes to our obvious racial greatness, we pretend a very good game. That said, it's performance all the way down, and it has been for a long time. 

Tomorrow, we'll show you how the LAUSD performed on the 2019 Naep—on the very tests Professor Fuller uses in support of his happy talk. 

For today, let's get clear on what Fuller has said about the Los Angeles schools. We'll draw on Mathews' recent essay, which provides an accurate account of what the professor has said.

The Los Angeles schools were in a world of hurt as of the turn of the century. What has happened in those schools since then? Headline included, Mathews starts like this:

MATHEWS (3/28/22): Big urban school districts can improve, but it’s complicated and messy

How are the schools doing in your neighborhood? I can show you test averages, but they have been distorted by the pandemic and are mostly a measure of student family background, not school quality. Looking at how scores change over time and watching classes in action helps, but a meaningful account of what’s going on requires many more words than most readers have time for.

Still, it’s worth doing. The best new example is a project that unleashed several scholars on our nation’s second largest city and culminated with this book: “When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles.” The author is Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley...

I was born in the Los Angeles area. I live there now. I have done many stories about schools in that big district, including one so intriguing I decided at age 43 to spend the rest of my life as an education reporter. But I have never seen any book dive as deeply as this one has into how Los Angeles achieved, at least for a while, an elusive goal: significant improvement in student achievement even among disadvantaged children.

We're fans of Mathews, and of his work, at this award-winning site. He's had a long, impressive career as an education writer.

He says he's never seen a book which dives as deeply as this one. He says the book has established this point:

"Los Angeles achieved, at least for a while, an elusive goal: significant improvement in student achievement even among disadvantaged children."

That statement can be defended as technically accurate—but just barely, we'd have to say. 

We'd also rate that statement as grossly misleading, even after Mathews adds this:

MATHEWS (continuing directly): Like all such gains, the results in Los Angeles over the last two decades have to be qualified. The book’s most interesting conclusion is that a combination of more spending, better lessons and new kinds of schools correlated with improved learning for all groups, but average test score differences between ethnicities did not change much. Everybody did better but the gaps remained.

According to Mathews (and Fuller), a specific set of reforms "correlated with improved learning for all [demographic] groups." That said, because the kids in all these demographic groups did better, achievement gaps between those groups largely remained the same.

Everything said there is accurate.  We'll even note that Mathews said that the specific reforms "correlated with" those improvements in learning. He didn't use the word "caused."

Still and all, the reforms in question did in fact "correlate with improved learning for all groups!" That sounds like extremely good news. Later, Mathews offers more detail:

MATHEWS (continuing directly): “When Schools Work” is not a dry tome. It illumines the lives of several remarkable people who made the changes happen. Fuller and his team divide them into three groups: the new pluralists such as congresswoman and mayoral candidate Karen Bass, the civic challengers such as philanthropist Eli Broad and the loyal insiders such as then school board member Yolie Flores.

Fuller summed it up this way: “The behemoth institution of L.A. Unified, written off as hapless and ineffectual, came alive with a pulse, a beating heart. Reading and math scores for Latino and white students proceeded to climb (more than one grade level) over the subsequent two decades, as gauged by a careful federal assessment of learning in L.A., finally leveling off in 2019. Other barometers of pupil progress climbed as well—enrollment in college-prep courses rose, student discipline incidents fell, and graduation rates steadily increased.”

According to Fuller, the hapless, ineffectual Los Angeles schools "came alive with a pulse, a beating heart." That sounds like very good news.

As he continues, Mathews quotes Fuller as he offers his nugget statistical evidence. Over the course of two decades, average reading and math scores climbed by more than one grade level, though a person is forced to note that gains of that level were only achieved by Latino and white students.

"Remarkable people" made those changes happen, Mathews says. We don't mean to criticize them, but that statement adds to the overall portrait.

For the record, we can't point to a single statement in that passage which is technically false. We will say that the overall picture offered there strikes us as grossly misleading.

We've seen this sort of thing again and again over the past fifty years. Again and again, the public is treated to forms of happy talk concerning "schools that work." This allows our highly performative tribe to resume its vast and deep and unending sleep about the performance of the public schools which Those Children attend.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Our highly self-impressed liberal tribe could gain from becoming a bit more clear about who it actually is.

Because no one cares about black kids, you will never see this book, or this topic, explored anywhere else again. It will remain an "L.A. Confidential," concerning a vast array of public schools which allegedly work.

Our view? We think Professor Fuller's book is strikingly incompetent in certain basic ways. On balance, we'd also say that it's quite misleading

We think Mathews should have noted those facts. But so it has always gone.

Tomorrow: Grade 8 math, 2019

Lawrence helps us know what to think and say!

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2022

These legal experts today: Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell began and ended his Last Word program with segments about the impending confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court.

In his final segment, he spoke with two MSNBC legal contributors. The first Q-and-A went like this:

O'DONNELL (4/5/22): Professor Murray, first of all your reaction to what we saw this morning in the Judiciary Committee's meeting...

MURRAY: Well again, I think we saw a reprise of what we saw last week, which is the Republicans manufacturing objections to a jurist that many of them voted to confirm just a year earlier...

These legal experts today! 

Within that Senate committee, were Republicans voicing objections to someone they had voted for only last year?

Actually, no. Last June, Judge Jackson was confirmed to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Of the eleven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, only one—Lindsey Graham—voted to confirm her to that post. 

The other ten all voted no last year, even before they manufactured their new objections in the past few weeks.

At this point, Lawrence threw to his second contributor. Her response was intriguing too. She seemed to say that black women have to be three times as good—not merely twice as good—to get where Judge Jackson has gotten.

Judge Jackson has had a very impressive career. In line with current operations of our Potemkin national discourse, Lawrence and his legal experts were telling us what sorts of things we tribals should think, and what sorts of things we should say.

To watch the fuller exchange: To watch the fuller exchange, you can just click here. No transcript of Lawrence's show is available. The Channel is too smart for that.

L. A. (PUBLIC SCHOOL) CONFIDENTIAL: L.A. was in a world of hurt!

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2022

Absolutely nobody cares: Long ago and far away, the Los Angeles public schools—the Los Angeles Unified School District—was in a world of hurt.

By "long ago," we specifically mean in the year 2003. Consider the average scores the giant school district—the LAUSD—recorded in Grade 8 math that year.

Below, we show you the average scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The Naep, a 50-year-old federal program, is widely considered to be the gold standard for domestic educational testing. 

Below, you see the average scores recorded by different groups of eighth-graders in the Los Angeles public schools back in 2003. We compare those scores to the average scores recorded nationwide:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2003 Naep
LAUSD versus National Public Schools
White students:  277.06 / 286.54 
Black students: 233.99 / 251.75 
Hispanic students: 239.71 / 258.13 
Asian-American students: 274.64 / 289.36

Oof! Through use of a very rough rule of thumb, it's often said that ten points on the Naep scale is equivalent to one academic year. Applying that metric, black and Hispanic eighth graders in Los Angeles were performing almost two years behind their counterparts nationwide. 

(For all Naep data, start here. From that point, you're on your own.)

To the extent that we credit those data, L.A. was thereby in a world of hurt back in 2003. Meanwhile, here's the way the numbers looked if you compared public school kids in Los Angeles to those in New York City:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2003 Naep
LAUSD versus New York City Public Schools
White students:  277.06 / 288.82 
Black students: 233.99 / 253.15 
Hispanic students: 239.71 / 259.88 
Asian-American students: 274.64 / 285.65

Again, L.A.'s black and Hispanic kids seemed to be two years behind their peers in New York City. And the gaps don't look a whole lot better if you compare the LAUSD to Chicago or Houston or Boston or other such systems that year. 

The City of Angels was hurting. More generally, here's the way the numbers look if you compare the LAUSD to the scores the Naep reports for the nation's Large City Schools writ large:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2003 Naep
LAUSD versus Large City Schools
White students:  277.06 / 285.42
Black students: 233.99 /  247.31
Hispanic students: 239.71 /  255.57
Asian-American students: 274.64 /  281.45

The gaps aren't quite as large in those data, but L.A.'s black and Hispanic eighth-graders were still scoring way behind their counterparts in Large City Schools nationwide. 

And of course, if you want to define a larger point of concern, here's the way those groups of kids in L.A. were scoring compared to the nation's white kids back in 2003:

Average scores, Grade 8 math, 2003 Naep
Black students, LAUSD: 233.99 
Hispanic students, LAUSD: 239.71 
White students, nationwide: 286.54

At this point, you can discard that ten-point rule of thumb. Simply put, there is no statistical way to estimate or define the size of those gaps. We're now looking at two different worlds.

In 2003, the Los Angeles schools were full of good, decent kids. The achievement gaps to which we refer are a referendum on the acquired academic skills of those good, decent kids, but also on their right to basic happiness on a daily basis.

It's no fun being the kid in school who is always "way behind." It's no fun being the kid who can't understand the day's math assignment. It hurts to be the kid, or the kids, who can't expect to comprehend the material in basic reading assignments because the standard textbooks are simply too hard.

It's no fun to be that kid—or to be those kids. It's amazing how many kids are good and decent enough to suffer through such daily miseries year after year—though some kids, inevitably, will lose their way in the process.

The Los Angeles schools were in a world of hurt back in 2003. According to a short but expensive new book, the Los Angeles schools have come a long way since those bad old days—but have they done so really?

As we noted last Wednesday, the new book to which we refer was written by Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley professor. In his book, Fuller describes changes in the Los Angeles schools over the course of two decades, starting around the year 2000.

On Monday, March 28, education reporter Jay Mathews discussed Professor Fuller's book in his weekly education essay in the Washington Post. Because no one actually cares about any of this, you'll see Fuller's book about the L.A. public schools discussed exactly nowhere else.

You will never see anyone else discussing Fuller's book! The multimillionaire TV stars we know and love prefer to discuss The Slap or The Racism of The Others. 

The New York Times discusses low-income kids who might end up getting into Yale—those kids and no one else.

You'll see no one discuss this! This will remain an L.A. confidential, concerning L.A.'s public schools. 

You'll never hear a word about this again! But here's the nugget in what Mathews wrote, hard-copy headline included:

Big urban school districts can improve, but it’s complicated and messy

[...]

Fuller summed it up this way: “The behemoth institution of L.A. Unified, written off as hapless and ineffectual, came alive with a pulse, a beating heart. Reading and math scores for Latino and white students proceeded to climb (more than one grade level) over the subsequent two decades, as gauged by a careful federal assessment of learning in L.A., finally leveling off in 2019. Other barometers of pupil progress climbed as well—enrollment in college-prep courses rose, student discipline incidents fell, and graduation rates steadily increased.”

The Los Angeles schools "came alive with a pulse, a beating heart." Over the course of two decades, test scores climbed by more than one grade level for white and Hispanic students—though not, it would seem, for black kids in L.A.

For the record, Fuller is referring to test scores from the Naep, some of which we've already posted. In his book, Fuller adopts a slightly different rule of thumb for discussing changes and gaps in such scores. He equates "a ten-to-twelve point difference" on the Naep scale to "about one grade level in learning."

Mathews cited no test scores in his weekly essay. Professor Fuller presents remarkably little statistical information in his actual book.

Tomorrow, we'll offer Mathews' summary of the book in much greater detail. But readers of the Washington Post may well have come away from his essay with the idea that major improvement has occurred in the LAUSD—in the Los Angeles schools.

Incomparably, we decided to take a look at the record. To all you people in Liberal Land who believe that our self-impressed tribe cares deeply about matters of racial justice, we invite you to tag along this week and to digest these points:

No one gives a flying fig about the lives and interests of black kids, least of all our own tribal stars, and we'd have to say there's little sign that anyone ever will.

Tomorrow: Berkeley professor's claims

New York Magazine has a big day!

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2022

William F. Buckley / Black Lives Matter: New York Magazine seems to be having a big day.

On the one hand, Jonathan Chait writes about Matthew Continetti's slashing new history, The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism. 

Chait is surprised by "how heretical and surprising [Continetti's] book has turned out to be." We're somewhat surprised to learn that Chait is surprised. 

We aren't students of Continetti's work—but we have thought, for the past few decades, that he was just about the straightest-shooting conservative out there. It sounds like he has produced a highly unflattering, hundred-year history of the American right.

Chait describes Continetti's unflattering look at the right. At the same time, Sean Campbell has produced an unflattering look at Black Lives Matter, a major institution of the modern left.

What's up with BLM's money? We can't exactly tell you that, but Campbell's report appears beneath these headlines:

Black Lives Matter Secretly Bought a $6 Million House 
Allies and critics alike have questioned where the organization’s money has gone.

Has BLM been mishandling its money? We can't answer that question, but access to money is very dangerous, and this is Campbell's second report on the topic for New York.

(For the first report, click here.)

We live at a time when we're being encouraged to believe in tribalized angels and demons. Generally speaking, human history may not be as simple as that.

Meanwhile: Meanwhile, who the Sam Hill is Sean Campbell?

For his most recent bio, click here.

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS: We wish Judge Jackson had answered the question!

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2022

The question was quite straightforward: A headline in Sunday's New York Times took us where the rubber meets the road.

The headline appeared in the Book Review section. The headline in question said this:

Can We Empathize With Our Enemies? One Author Wants Us to Try.

In our view, the best way to achieve that empathy would be to drop the concept of "enemies." For the record, this is the book in question:

I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THAT WAY
How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times
By Mónica Guzmán

For better or worse, our contemporary political discourse, to the extent that anything like a discourse exists, is built around a potent "enemies" construct. 

In the past two weeks, we've watched as our own blue tribe reacted to Judge Jackson's confirmation hearings. As we did, we were stuck by the way we built our standard "frightened child" fairy tale about the ways our tribe's enemies had behaved.

In this standard fairy tale construct, a band of angels—Us—confronts a band of demons—Them. We confront them through our recitation of standard group talking points.

Within our tribe, we all knew the talking points with respect to Judge Jackson, who has of course had a highly impressive legal / judicial career. 

We knew that we were supposed to say that she was the most qualified nominee ever. We were supposed to position her nomination as an hidtorical breakthrough.

We were encouraged to say that her confirmation would make the Court "look more like America," a bit of a statistical absurdity. Above all else, we were supposed to say that the behavior of The Others was racist, and that, in their opposition to Jackson's nomination, they were appealing to the QAnon crowd. 

We were supposed to say that their conduct was The Worst Ever, but also The Worst Yet. 

Here at this site, we watched large chunks of the confirmation hearings. Those frameworks didn't strike us as helpful, or as being especially accurate.

As we noted last Friday, we loved what Judge Jackson said about the way the nation's children should be treated in school. She won our allegiance right there, with that brief statement. 

On balance, though, it didn't seem to us, in any obvious way, that she was the greatest nominee ever. In fairness, we can't imagine a reason why she should have to reach such heights. On balance, though, we were a bit disappointed by the flaws in her performance.

Given the way our discourse now works, no one was going to give voice to any such point of view. Within the realm of our own frightened tribe, the conduct of The Others had to be "shocking"—and Jushe Jackson had to be the greatest nominee yet.

Like you, we have no way of knowing where Judge Jackson stands compared to past nominees, almost all of whom were in fact highly accomplished. Today, we'll close our discussion with the part of her performance we were must disappointed by:

We refer to her refusal to answer the senator's question.

We refer to Senator Hawley (R-Mo.), who is very poorly regarded within our liberal tribe. Was he sincere in asking his question—in pushing a certain line of inquiry?

We have no way of knowing such a thing. We do know that Judge Jackson kept refusing to answer his question.

Hawley's question was quite straightforward; it should have been easy to answer. It concerned one in roughly a half dozen cases in which Judge Jackson had given relatively lenient sentences to child pornography offenders.

Among those cases, the one which stood out most involved an 18-year offender named Wesley Hawkins. By the time he was sentenced by Judge Jackson, Hawkins was 19 years old. 

Prosecutors had asked for two years in prison. The probation department had recommended a sentence of 18 months. 

Judge Jackson had sentenced him to three months in prison. Why had she issued that sentence? 

On its face, the question shouldn't be hard to answer. Hawley began his discussion as shown:

HAWLEY (3/22/22): I listed the seven cases in which you had discretion and you did not follow the prosecutor's recommendation or the sentencing guidelines. But let's just talk about one of them because we've talked about some of them as a group.

Let's talk about United States versus Hawkins. I think that's when you probably remember from 2013, the defendant there was Wesley Hawkins. He was 18 years old at the time, he uploaded five video files of child pornography from his computer to YouTube. This is how the police got onto him. He then uploaded another 36 depictions of child porn and other lewd photos of children to his iCloud account.

When the police executed a search on his apartment on the premises, they found 17 videos on his laptop and 16 images of child pornography. All of them very graphic. Some of them involving very young children.

That's the way the discussion began. A long discussion by Hawley ensued, during which Hawley quoted various parts of Judge Jackson's statement at the time of sentencing.

Hawley noted that the prosecutors had asked for a two-year prison sentence, but Jackson had sentenced Hawkins to three months. When the enemy asked his question for the first time, here's what the enemy said:

HAWLEY: I just want to ask you about that because I just have to tell you I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. We're talking about eight-year-olds, and nine-year-olds and 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds. He's got images of these, the government said added up to over 600 images, gobs of video footage of these children, that you say this does not signal a heinous or egregious child pornography offense.

Help me understand that. What word would you use if it's not heinous or egregious? How would you describe it?

"Help me understand that," the enemy politely said. It didn't strike us as a crazy request, but the nominee ducked the question.

If you want to review the way the nominee ducked, you can peruse the transcript. Or you can instead rely on the scripting gifted to you by the corporate stooges who tell our tribe what we should think about any such questions from any of The Others.

We're sorry to tell you that Judge Jackson ducked that fairly straightforward question. As a result, Hawley asked it again:

HAWLEY: ...You also told the defendant, you said this, this seems to be a case where you were fascinated by sexual images involving what were essentially your peers. And then you went on to say, the defendant was merely trying to satisfy his curiosity. 

"Curiosity" is your word. One more thing on this, same idea, you said you were viewing—this as you spoke to the defendant—you were viewing sex acts between children who were not much younger than you. And this whole discussion is about why you're only giving him three months.

Judge, he was 18. These kids are eight. I don't see in what sense they're peers. 

I've got a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old and a 16- month-old at home, and I live in fear that they will be exposed to, let alone exploited in this kind of material. I don't understand you saying to him that they're peers and that therefore, you are viewing sex acts between children who are not much younger than you. And that that's somehow a reason to only give him three months. Help me understand this.

"Help me understand this," the enemy once again politely said. This was the start of the nominee's response:

JACKSON (continuing directly): Senator, I don't have the record of that entire case in front of me. What I recall with respect to that case, is that unlike the many other child pornography offenders that I'd seen as a judge, and that I was aware of in my work on the Sentencing Commission, this particular defendant had just graduated from high school. And some of perhaps not all when you were looking at the records, but some of the materials that he was looking at were older teenagers, were older victims.

The nominee said that she didn't have the entire court record before her. At this point, she returned to the approach she took throughout. 

She explained the fact that, as a judge, she'd had discretion in such sentencing matters. As se explained this obvious point, she failed to explain the way in which she had exercised that discretion. This was a fairly obvious dodge, so the enemy struck again:

HAWLEY: I just have to tell you, I can't quite figure this out. You said to him, this is a truly difficult situation. I appreciate that your family's in the audience. I feel so sorry for them. And for you. And for the anguish this has caused all of you. I feel terrible about the collateral consequences of this conviction. And then you go on to say sex offenders are truly shunned in our society.

I'm just trying to figure out, Judge, is he the victim here? Are the victims, the victims? You're saying that you are—you're apologizing to him. You're saying you're sorry for the anguish this has caused him? 

There was a victim impact statement in this case. It didn't get read into the record, but it was there. I've described the videos that we have. You say, earlier in the case, you talk about how heinous these crimes are and you describe them, to your credit.

You describe how heinous it is, to your credit. And yet, here you are giving him three months, and apologizing to him and saying you feel sorry for the anguish it's caused him, and also saying you think that sex offenders are truly shunned in our society? 

So just talk about that. Help me understand. I mean, is he a victim? Is that your view here? Is that what you said this? Is that what you meant by—

JACKSON: Senator I, again, don't have the entire record. I remember, in that particular case, I considered it to be unusual, in part for the reasons that I described. 

I remember in that case, that defense counsel was arguing for probation, in part, because he argued that here we had a very young man just graduated from high school, he presented all of his diplomas and certificates and the things that he had done, and argued, consistent with what I was seeing in the record, that this particular defendant had gotten into this in a way that was I thought inconsistent with some of the other cases that I had seen.

"Help me understand," the enemy said once again. With that, the nominee returned to her "process" presentation. She explained that, as a judge, she was required to exercise discretion in her sentencing, without ever quite explaining why she had exercised her discretion in the way she did.

Was Judge Jackson the greatest nominee ever? As we watched, we were disappointed (and annoyed) by the way she kept responding to these straightforward questions. 

To our ear, her responses to these questions were consistent evasive. Arguably, one reason why the questions kept getting asked was because of the fact that she kept failing to give forthright answers. 

Eventually, the enemy even politely said this:

HAWLEY: But Judge, with all due respect, and I'm—I tell you what, I'll be direct with you. 

I am questioning your discretion, your judgment. That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm not questioning you as a person. I'm not questioning your excellence as a judge, frankly. 

But you said it—you had discretion. And I that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm questioning how you used your discretion in these cases.

"With respect to Mr. Hawkins," the nominee now said "I was doing what judges do, which is look at the statute 18 USC 3553, exercise discretion, as Congress has required us to do take into account all of the various aspects of a particular case and make a determination consistent with my authority, my judgment, and understanding fully be egregious nature of the crime."

To our ear, that was the same old rambling dodge all over again. 

During Hawley's second round of questioning, the nominee was asked about what happened in 2019, when Hawkins was brought before her again.

At that time, she sentenced him to an additional six months of confinement. Why had that happened, the enemy now asked.

When the nominee said she couldn't remember what had occurred att at time, the enemy suggested that he pretty much didn't believe her.

Our stooges have expressed widespread shock that Hawley could have said such a thing. 

Stooges, please! Hawley's reaction was the world's most obvious reaction. In real time, we had the exact same reaction, even bore the enemy spoke.

Fellow citizens, please! Presumably, Judge Jackson underwent a great deal of preparation for her confirmation hearings. For reasons which are perfectly sensible, nominees always do.

Hawley had reported, the week before, that he planned to explore these child pornography cases. It's very, very hard to believe that Jackson hadn't reviewed both parts of the Hawkins case. It's very, very hard to believe that she couldn't remember what had happened, less than three years before, when Hawkins appeared before her again and was sentenced to further confinement.

Why did Juge Jackson sentence Hawkins to three months? The prosecutors had asked for two years. The probation department had recommended 18 months. (We aren't discussing the guidelines.)

Why did Juge Jackson give that substantially lighter sentence? It should have been easy to explain. We'll guess the answer is this:

To her credit, Judge Jackson didn't want to sentence a teenager to a long stint in prison. She also may have felt, based on the evidence before her, that Hawkins wasn't a hard-core pedophile.

She hoped that he could get himself straightened out without recourse to a prison sentence which might have made it less likely, not more, that he could go on to lead a productive life. We'll guess that this explains the three-month sentence he received—and we'll guess that Jackson had been advised that she mustn't come out and say such things as that.

We'll guess that Jackson had bene advised that she mustn't say anything that would make her sound like "a bleeding-heart liberal," like someone excessively "woke." We'll guess that explains why she hemmed and hawed and kept avoiding a straightforward explanation concerning that three-month prison term.

We found it very, very annoying to see her hem and haw and avoid again and again. We found it disappointing.

We thought it made her look evasive. We didn't believe her when she said that she couldn't remember why Hawkins had ended up before her again in 2019.

We think Judge Jackson is better than that. We'll guess she got some bad advice during her preparation—but Judge Jackson is someone who has always tended to play by the rules and defer to the wisdom of elites.

At any rate, we saw nothing "shocking" or ridiculous in the question Hawley kept asking. One reason why it kept getting asked was fairly simple:

Politely asked again and again, the nominee kept refusing to answer.

These things were true except in the realm where our blue tribe's corporate stooges describe what the enemy did and tell us what we should think. With respect to the enemy's shocking conduct, our world is built around that construct now.

Our tribe loves that unhelpful construct, just like the other tribe does. We currently live in Two Different Worlds, and members of each of these warring tribes currently seem to enjoy it. 

Final thought:

We think most people would understand the desire to keep a teen out of prison. We think the views of us the American people have evolved to that point.

Based on what we know, we're somewhat sorry that Hawkins got sentenced to prison at all. We think if Jackson had spoken forthrightly about this case, the public would have understood and might have liked her even more.

Hawley was asking a sensible question Jackson kept failing to answer.

Hawley even may have come to believe that Jackson really is "soft on" this particular crime. We have no way to know what he thinks. Neither do the corporate stooges who performed on CNN, rejecting his claims as "very, very untrue" before he had even advanced them.

We currently live in Two Different World. Each of these worlds is currently crawling with unimpressive stooges.

Full disclosure: Due to MSNBC corporate policy, we can't show you the various things Lawrence excitedly said.

"Empathize with our enemies," one writer has said. Could it be that the enemy has turned out to be Us?

Floundering tribe returns to old normal!

SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2022

Lock them all up, we proclaim: Over the course of the past month, Russia's invasion of Ukraine had knocked us off our game.

We were discussing Ukraine around the clock. The need to lock The Others up was suddenly getting short shrift.

Within the past week, all three "cable news" channels have begun drifting back from round-the-clock Ukraine coverage. For example, Fox News and MSNBC have returned to the practice of re-airing primetime shows in the early morning hours. 

MSNBC no longer throws to Sky News in those early morning hours. Also, our tribunes are drifting back to our earlier focus on getting The Others locked up.

The January 6 committee has returned to the practice of leaking its day-by-day findings. Our blue tribe tribunes have returned to the practice of seeking remedies in the realm of criminal law to our yawning political shortfall.

We want the DOJ to lock Trump up--but also, Eastman and Meadows. We want Justice Thomas to be forced to recuse. We want him to be impeached. 

Can Roberts make Thomas divorce his wife? We long for the day when some future 8-1 vote by the Court comes down instead as an 8-0 shutout, thus displaying how perfectly right we all are.

In all these ways, we revert to the silly idea that we can prosecute our way out of our tribe's profoundly serious political problems. In a related reaction, we've treated the confirmation hearings for Judge Jackson as a referendum on the supposed insincerity and racism of her inquisitors, rather than on the possible political impact of the issues they asked her about.

Needless to say, our endless dissembling continues. We complain about a "Don't Say Gay" law which doesn't say that teachers and students can't say gay. As always, the terminology we've selected makes us feel moral and good.

Meanwhile, on the other tribe's channel, Tucker Carlson plays tape of a "woke" or progressive or antiracist preschool teacher. 

You can choose the term you prefer. She's telling TikTok this:

PRESCHOOL TEACHER: This has been my first year in preschool with a class of my own. We've been talking about gender and skin color and consent and empathy and our bodies and autonomy. It's been fabulous.

Oof. Assuming that the young woman in question really is a preschool teacher, she's only one preschool teacher. On the other hand, Carlson completed the rule of three during his Thursday evening broadcast, topping his presentation off with several pieces of bait.

Fox provides proofread transcript and tape. Unlike MSNBC, Fox is willing to let you see what its multimillionaire tribune has said:

CARLSON (3/31/22): If you've ever felt you're caught in the middle of somebody else's fundraising campaign, guess what? You are! And as a result of that fundraising campaign, here's what elementary schools look like now:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESCHOOL TEACHER: This has been my first year in preschool with a class of my own. We've been talking about gender and skin color and consent and empathy and our bodies and autonomy. It's been fabulous.

ELEMENTARY TEACHER: I teach my elementary school students about gender identity. Some people are girls, some are boys, some are both, some are neither.

CALIFORNIA TEACHER: I tell this kid, "We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to" and he, like, looks around. He goes," Oh, that one?" 

[As teacher chuckles, the camera moves to the rainbow / gay pride flag on the classroom's wall.]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So every emotionally marginal young woman with a nose ring now teaches at your kid's school. "I teach my elementary school students about gender identity," said one--on TikTok, of course. 

So how is a parent supposed to respond to this? We learned this weekend if someone tells an insulting joke about your wife, you're now allowed to smash them in the face and you get an award for it. 

As the brief presentation concluded, Carlson offered bait about nose rings and about "emotionally marginal young women." He even offered a bit of bait about Tinseltown, Will and Chris.

Carlson dressed his presentation with several helpings of bait. When we blues respond to such presentations, we tend to be ruled by this tribal edict: 

No Bait Left Behind.

We rail about Carlson's misogyny and of course about his racism. In the process, we ignore the political potency of his presentation. We even ignore this basic fact:

If you manage to ignore the bait, Carlson is actually raising a point of concern which actually isn't crazy. Also, he's raising a point of concern which will speak to a boatload of parents.

Earth to blues: None of us humans have perfect judgment. We all have limited judgment.

None of our teachers have perfect judgment. In reality, some of our teachers have extremely limited judgment, or judgment which is just plain bad.

It isn't crazy for parents to be worried about that. Nor is it crazy for parents to wonder about what's being taught at Georgetown Day School, given the fact that Judge Jackson sits on the board of the super-elite private school.

Is it possible that Georgetown Day has somehow gone over the top in its treatment of race? Dearest darlings, use your heads! Of course it's possible, though that certainly doesn't mean that they actually have! 

Dearest darlings, of course it's possible! That's why we were so pleased when Judge Jackson had the decency, and the perfect smarts, to say what she said to Senator Cruz, who isn't sincere enough for morally perfect beings like us:

JACKSON (3/22/22): Senator, I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or as though they are not valued, or as though they are "less than"—that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I don't believe in any of that.

That was a perfect response. The analysts stood and cheered, behaving the way Cummings and his little sister reportedly did, "looking up at our beautiful tree."

("If only our political tribunes knew how to say that," one of these young scholars cried.)

That said, our blue tribe is currently in a world of political hurt. Like frightened children everywhere, we're responding as if we live inside one of a raft of frightening fairy tales.

We present ourselves as the innocent little girl being attacked by the big bad wolf who drops down out of the tree. We're morally pure, and we're perfectly good. The Others are known to be racists.

This is the way we frightened children are choosing to work toward defeat. The woods are lovey, dark and deep, but we aren't especially savvy at all, and children being born today will pay a price for our failures.

Carlson was making a sensible point. As always, he dressed it with plenty of bait.

Our tribe has pledged to leave no bait behind. The babies being born today will play a price for this  tribal stance, which disconsolate major experts all describe as hard-wired.

Concerning the judgment of teachers: Some teachers have terrible judgment. Every sane parent will grasp that fact. Only frightened children like us will pretend that this isn't the case.

By the way, whatever happened to the public school librarian in D.C. who made the kids act out the Holocaust, with a Jewish kid forced to play the role of Hitler?

A cynic would know how to answer that question. Given current rules of the road, that story got quashed, disappeared!

On April 1, the transcripts are gone!

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2022

A very strange corporate channel: We thought we'd use this initial Friday in April to nail down a bit of book-keeping. We refer to MSNBC's most recent (apparent) decision to stop providing transcripts of its primetime "cable news" shows.

For the record, TV news orgs aren't required to transcribe their programs. On a voluntary basis, different channels and different programs adopt different approaches to the practice. Here are a few examples:

The PBS NewsHour transcribes every segment of every show. The transcripts are apparently carefully proofread. For an example, click this.

Meet the Press transcribes every program. For the archive of transcripts, click here.

CNN transcribes all its programs on a rapid-fire basis, but there's no sign that the transcripts are proofread. Errors are common. For the weekly archive, click here.

Fox News provides few transcripts. The few transcripts it does provide have been prepared with care.

Then too, we have MSNBC, one of our strangest and most unprofessional corporate "cable news" channels. To appearances, the liberal channel which loves transparency has again decided to stop transcribing its shows. 

As we type, it's a Friday afternoon—and it's April 1. At MSNBC's tumbleweed-strewn transcript site, the most recent transcripts are those from the primetime shows of Tuesday, March 15.

This channel's transcripts were always a mess, larded with uncorrected errors. But at least the channel was pretending to throw observers that bone.

We say the channel has "again" stopped providing transcripts. That's because this half-assed corporate channel stopped providing transcripts once before, and not all that long ago—last summer, if memory serves.

After several months, the channel resumed the practice of transcribing its primetime shows. (In the process, it also disappeared years of transcripts of its previous programs.) Now, it looks like the transcribing of shows has been stopped again. 

The reason for doing this would seem to be obvious. Presumably, management doesn't want the world discussing the routinely stupid things its hackish TV stars, who pretend to be each other's "friends," say and do on the air. 

MSNBC has always been a weirdly undisciplined, scattershot organization. Perhaps you've noticed this tendency in the people they hire to anchor their shows, and in the things those lucky duckies typically say on the air.

We Americans live inside a clownish journalistic culture. On the brighter side, the jugglers and clowns who you see on the air are extremely well paid. 

As we first noted decades ago, when "talent" is being paid that well, they'll tend to stick to the scripts. That's true at the gruesome Fox News Channel. It's true with our own tribe's favorite shows at our own tribe's favorite "news channel."

They signal to you that they're on your side. You should try not to believe that. 

Lik the rents, the salaries are too damn high—and it looks like the transcripts are gone.

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS: Senator Cruz is not well liked!

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2022

Journalist Kane is nuts: Based on many published reports, Senator Cruz (R-Texas) isn't especially well liked.

That's even true among the people who know the senator best. There are a variety of jokes floating round which run on this general theme:

If Ted Cruz was assaulted in the dark on the Senate floor, there would be at least 99 suspects.

Or as Senator Franken wrote in a book: “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”

That said, Cruz would probably score quite well on an IQ test. He attended Harvard Law School with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson—and during Jackson's confirmation hearings, one of his questions led Judge Jackson to make the statement which assured her of getting our vote.

Overall, we were disappointed by Jackson's performance during the Senate hearings. We'll speak a bit more to that question in the next, and final, installment of this award-winning report.

We were surprised and disappointed by parts of Jackson's performance. But the analysts stood and cheered as one when she offered this response to a question from Cruz about critical race theory and our American schools:

JACKSON (3/22/22): Senator, I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or as though they are not valued, or as though they are "less than"—that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I don't believe in any of that.

"I don't believe in any of that!" The analysts stood and cheered as one. With respect to the treatment of children in schools, she doesn't believe in any of that—in typecasting any child! 

Overall, we were disappointed in, surprised by, Jackson's performance—but in that extemporaneous statement, it seemed to us that her basic decency rather plainly shone through. Inevitably, though, when CNN's resident geniuses got a chance to review Jackson's exchanges with Cruz, one of them quickly said this:

TOOBIN (3/22/22): We had a trip to the surreal during Ted Cruz's questioning when there was extensive discussion of the summer reading list at the Georgetown Day school, the relevance of which was really hard to see. 

But I think, just in general, you see that the judge is knowledgeable, very calm, very thoughtful, and someone who knows a hell of a lot more about the law than any of these Senators do.

Before he became a senator, Cruz argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Does Jackson "know a hell of a lot more about the law" than her law school classmate does? 

We have no real idea, and we don't know if Toobin does. 

That said, we'll guess that Senator Cruz may know a hell of a lot more about contemporary politics than this particular CNN genius does. 

In fairness, we probably shouldn't single Toobin out. Within the scriptings of the near-hysterical tribunes of our failing liberal tribe, his disdain for Cruz's line of questioning has acquired the status of gospel. For example:

In our view, the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus is much sharper than the average mainstream press corps bear. She went to Harvard Law School too. For that matter, so did Toobin!

They all "went to the finest schools"—not that there's anything wrong with it! But even someone as sharp as Marcus offered this in the Post:

MARCUS (3/26/22): Cruz, holding up a copy of Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby”: “Now this is a book that is taught at Georgetown Day School to students in pre-K through second grade, so 4 through 7 years old. Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?”

What does this possibly have to do with Jackson’s suitability to serve on the high court? To ask that question is to miss the larger point: That is no longer what this exercise is about.

What could that possibly have to do with Jackson’s suitability? Harvard Law School graduates, please!

Accurately or otherwise, Cruz discussed a long list of books which appear on the curriculum at the progressive Georgetown Day School. Judge Jackson sits on the board of the school.

She sends at least one of her daughters there. There's no reason why she shouldn't.

As Cruz introduced his topic, he reviewed some of those facts. He also evoked a type of inquiry which had been scored as "shocking" by a different CNN genius that day. The line of questioning had been scored as "shocking" when it came from Senator Graham:

CRUZ (3/22/22): As you may recall, during the confirmation hearings of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, there was a great deal of attention paid to the fact that Justice Barrett served as a board member on the board of trustees of a religious private school. And the press focused very intently on the views of that school.

In your questionnaire to this committee, you disclosed that you are similarly on a board, specifically the board of trustees for the Georgetown Day School. And that you've been board member since 2019 and you're currently still a board member. 

Jackson sits on the board at Georgetown Day; there's no reason why she shouldn't. But there had been interest, way back when, in Barrett's connection to a private school. That interest wasn't ridiculous then and, in theory at least, it wasn't ridiculous now.

Had Barrett possibly held religious views which were so extreme, or which might be so tightly held, that they would make it difficult for her to judge fairly and impartially on the Court? Some progressives had wondered about that. There was no reason why they shouldn't have.

In 1960, Candidate Kennedy had told the nation that he wouldn't let his religion direct his behavior as president. Now, sincerely or otherwise, Cruz was exploring a perfectly reasonable point of concern:

Did Jackson hold so tightly to certain progressive beliefs that she would be unable to rule fairly as a Supreme Court Justice?

Few people ever believe that Cruz is ever behaving sincerely. That doesn't mean that the line of questioning made no earthly sense. The fact that our frightened, flailing tribe can no longer grasp such facts helps explain why we stand in so much peril as future elections approach. 

As a tribe, we're lost inside our own dogmatics. We no longer see the real world.

Was Cruz behaving sincerely this day? According to widespread belief, he rarely if ever does.

That said, persona; loathing for Cruz shouldn't automatically extend to the politically potent topic he was exploring. On our own sprawling campus, Jackson brought the analysts to their feet with the extemporaneous statement that she doesn't believe in any of that:

Praise Jackson! She doesn't believe that history's straightjackets should be dumped on the heads of any of our American children. If only our party's loser candidates, along with our tribe's genius pundits, knew how to talk turkey like that!

In Cruz's framing, what had been sauce for Justice Barrett would now be sauce for Judge Jackson. In our view, each line of questioning made decent theoretical sense—and we thought Jackson git it out of the park when she said she wanted our schools to care for, nurture and respect all the nation's children.

With this, we return to the line of questioning with which Senator Graham had kick-started the questioning this day. For the first ten minutes of his colloquy with Jackson, he had complained about the way Republican nominees were (allegedly) treated in the past.

As we noted on Tuesday, Graham stressed the fact that he wasn't criticizing Jackson as he offered his interpretation of these past interrogations. As we noted on Tuesday, he and Jackson agreed again and again as he rattled his list of real or imagined complaints.

We were watching on Tuesday morning as Graham conducted this discussion. Despite the lunacy of one CNN genius, there was nothing "shocking" about what he did in that first ten minutes. Also, the point of his questions and statements was quite quickly quite clear.

The point of his questions and statements was almost instantly clear—unless you're a certified member of our frightened, incompetent press corps. One such frightened incompetent showed up in the Washington Post on March 26, four days later.

His name is Paul Kane. Kane is a good, decent person, but in a lengthy analysis piece, he somehow came up with this:

KANE (3/26/22): Over the first two days of Jackson’s hearings, [Graham] spent most of his time re-litigating past grievances about how Democrats had treated George W. Bush’s circuit court nominees when he was a first-term senator, citing poor treatment of conservative jurists who were minorities.

Most viewers were perplexed by his initial line of questions—“On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are?”—and whether Jackson could judge Catholics fairly. He admitted later those questions were out of bounds but said he was trying to make a point about how Democrats questioned Barrett’s Catholicism in her 2017 confirmation hearing to a circuit court seat.

“I’m trying to make a point. That I don’t believe there’s an ounce of religious bigotry in her. But if you’re offended by that, you should have really been offended by [what happened to] Amy Coney Barrett,” he said in an interview during a break Tuesday.

Where in the world does our failing press corps come up with people like this? Let's consider some of the things Kane said in that passage, while being fair enough to acknowledge the fact that Kane was hardly alone in making this strange presentation.

Had Graham "cit[ed] poor treatment of conservative jurists who were minorities" during Tuesday's exchange with Jackson? Yes, he had, but he had cited alleged poor treatment of white nominees as well.

Were most viewers "perplexed by his initial line of questions—'On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are?' " 

In our view, Graham's questions weren't perplexing at all. But there's no way Kane could possibly know any such thing about the way "most viewers" had reacted.

That published claim was pure Storyline. It was Storyline all the way down.

Most remarkable was this bizarre statement by Kane:

"[Graham] admitted later those questions were out of bounds but said he was trying to make a point about how Democrats questioned Barrett’s Catholicism in her 2017 confirmation hearing to a circuit court seat."

Did Graham ever "admit" that his questions for Jackson had been "out of bounds?" We find that very hard to believe. 

In fact, he had explained the purpose of his questions in real time, as he asked them. The notion that he only explained his point "later," during an interview with Kane, tells us that something had driven the journalist Kane eight straight out of his initially competent mind.

Graham said he didn’t believe that there’s an ounce of religious bigotry in Jackson? Graham explained that "later?"

As we noted on Tuesday, Graham made that point again and again in the course of his exchange with Judge Jackson. Anyone can confirm that fact by reading the start of the relevant transcript, or by watching the first few minutes of the C-Span videotape.

That leaves us wondering how we can explain the work on Journalist Kane, and of the many other journalists who quoited that "scale of 1-to-10" question by Graham completely out of its perfectly obvious context, decrying it as inappropriate and vile.

As we noted on Tuesday, Graham said, again and again, that he had total confidence in Jackson's ability to be fair. That wasn't the point of his questions at all. He had made that fact perfectly obvious.

Kane somehow crazily managed to miss this as the exchange proceeded. Crazily, he had to interview Graham later to elicit the statement that Graham "doesn’t believe there’s an ounce of religious bigotry in [Judge Jackson]." 

Crazily, Kane was willing to write that ludicrous passage four days after the exchange in question. Things are so bad at the Washington Post that his nonsense got waved into print.

But just as we shouldn't single out Toobin, we shouldn't single out Kane. By the end of the week, it was a standard bit of script as liberal journalists quoted that one question—"On a scale of 1 to 10...""—without making the slightest attempt to explain the basis on which the non-question had been asked.

(We will continue to single our Coates, who made the haughty, ridiculous claim that Graham's questions that day were "shocking," and especially so since he's white.)

Our tribe has been caught in a moral panic over the past dozen years, and our tribe is now tilting insane. We're going to lose, and we'll lose very badly, if we continue this downward spiral in our mental and moral functioning—in our ability to make accurate presentations in public.

As a matter of principle, there was nothing wrong with Cruz's questions about Jackson's views on "critical race theory." It's believed that Cruz is never sincere, but his questions concern a topic our screeching, shrieking, failing tribe needs to get much more clear about.

We thought Jackson gave a perfect answer to Cruz's principal question on that topic. (On balance, we'll say we aren't hugely impressed with her membership on that board.)

In our next and final installment, we're going to tell you why we were disappointed in Judge Jackson's overall effort. At CNN, the various children, tightly scripted and dumb as rocks, swore that no one in the nation's history had ever been so great.

That was childish Storyline—Storyline all the way down. The stars may have gone to the finest schools, but they're behaving like hapless, frightened kids, and we're going to pay a large price.

Next: She wouldn't answer his question!