JIM LEHRER’S RERUN: On MSNBC, the confusion was general!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012

Part 2—Poisoned fruit of a potted plant: A striking factual misstatement was made in Wednesday’s debate.

We don’t refer to Mitt Romney’s confusing statement about his proposed tax plan. (“First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about.”)

That statement should have been challenged and clarified (see below). But it isn’t exactly “wrong.” It pretty much ain’t a “misstatement.”

No, the factual misstatement to which we refer was made by Barack Obama! Responding to Romney’s representation, Obama made the remarks which follow.

The highlighted statement is wrong:

OBAMA (10/3/12): Let's talk about taxes, because I think it's instructive.

[...]

Now, Governor Romney's proposal that he has been promoting for 18 months calls for a $5 trillion tax cut, on top of $2 trillion of additional spending for our military. And he is saying that he is going to pay for it by closing loopholes and deductions. The problem is that he's been asked over 100 times how you would close those deductions and loopholes, and he hasn't been able to identify them.

The highlighted part of that statement is wrong. But before long, Obama repeated himself:

LEHRER: Do you challenge what the governor just said about his own plan?

OBAMA: Well, for 18 months he's been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is, "Never mind.”

The point is relatively minor, but instructive. In fact, Romney has not been promoting his current tax plan “for eighteen months.” In fact, he introduced his proposal in late February, during the Republican primary struggle in Arizona.

Here's the basic chronology:

Romney started his campaign with modest tax proposals. But other Republican hopefuls presented massive, ridiculous tax cut plans, thereby pleasing the base.

Finally, Romney followed suit, offering a crazy proposal of his own. Late in February, John Harwood reported the new proposal in the New York Times:

HARWOOD (2/23/12): Mitt Romney, seeking to kick-start his presidential campaign among recalcitrant conservatives, on Wednesday proposed cutting the top income tax for individuals to 28 percent while holding out the prospect of limiting tax deductions.

Mr. Romney's earlier economic plan called only for preserving the current top tax rate of 35 percent, while holding out the promise of lower rates later in an overhaul of the tax code. But facing a major challenge from the upstart Republican rival Rick Santorum, he chose to outline such an overhaul in Arizona before critical primaries here and in Michigan next Tuesday—and before a televised debate Wednesday night in Mesa, Ariz.

[...]

Mr. Romney's top economic adviser, Glenn Hubbard, said the plan would cut all six current tax brackets...by the same proportion of 20 percent...

But echoing the candidate, he added that Mr. Romney was committed to making his plan both “revenue neutral”–meaning it won’t add to the budget deficit—and “distributionally neutral”—meaning that it won’t shift the tax burden from upper-income Americans to middle- and working-class Americans.

Does Obama really think that Romney has been pushing this plan for the past eighteen months? In some ways, this point doesn’t matter a giant amount, although the chronology helps us see why Romney would make such an absurd proposal—a proposal which turned out to be “mathematically impossible.”

Sorry! If Obama didn’t know that chronology, that represents a striking lack of preparation. That said, Obama made a second apparent error in the passages we’ve quoted above—an error which was widely echoed on MSNBC last evening.

In the response to Jim Lehrer we have quoted, Obama seems to claim that Romney abandoned his long-standing tax cut proposal during Wednesday’s debate. In truth, that simply isn’t the case—but a string of pundits didn’t seem to understand this matter last night.

All over The One True Liberal Channel, pundits claimed that Romney had suddenly dumped his previous tax cut proposal. This represented a woeful lack of conceptual smarts—unless these people were simply conning us rubes as part of MSNBC’s ongoing “let’s be like Fox” corporate strategy.

All over MSNBC, pundits advanced this claim—the same claim Obama seemed to advance. Romney has abandoned his plan! For one example of many, here was Rachel Maddow, basically getting it wrong:

MADDOW (10/4/12): We know one way Mr. Romney may be trying to neutralize expected attacks on his economic ideas could be to rob his opponent`s words of any meaning, right?

Now we also know after last night's debate is— The other thing he’s doing is just saying the economic plan he has been stumping for all year long is not his plan at all. Mr. Romney worked both those strategies last night and Mr. Romney, of course, won the debate—he won on style, he won presentation, he won on demeanor.

Soon, Jonathan Alter was allowed to comment for a few moments. He seemed to agree with Maddow’s view.

Or something. We're not quite sure:

MADDOW: The other part of it is Mitt Romney saying that he does not espouse positions that he's been running on all year. The president did try to get him on that, on the $5 trillion tax-cut thing. I’m not sure he effectively pinned him down on that though the Obama campaign was spinning that they did.

ALTER: OK, I think they made a mistake on that issue, the Obama people did, by going with the $5 trillion, because that, you know, policy wonks can debate whether it amounts to $5 trillion or not. What they can’t debate, it’s a 20 percent tax reduction for the wealthiest Americans. That is a plain irrefutable fact and if they used that, it would, first of all, explain more what this is, which is a tax cut for the wealthy, which was one of several points the president wasn’t able to actually convey in a clear way. And would also be, you know, beyond dispute factually.

That’s where it ended. Once again, Maddow claimed that Romney had flipped—that he "said he no longer espouses" his tax cut proposal.

It isn’t clear whether Alter agreed. But Maddow was basically wrong.

Did Romney suddenly disavow his long-running tax cut proposal? Almost surely, no, he did not—though the confusion which has resulted shows why Lehrer should have required Romney to clarify his remarks.

Let’s return to Romney’s fuller statement on Wednesday night. Lehrer should have engineered a clarification of these remarks. But this is what Romney actually said—and no, this isn’t a change in the position he has held for the past seven months:

ROMNEY (10/3/12): I'd like to clear up the record and go through it piece by piece.

First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle-class. But I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They'll do fine whether you're president or I am.

[...]

Finally, with regards to that tax cut, look, I'm not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce the revenues going to the government. My—my number-one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.

But I do want to reduce the burden being paid by middle-income Americans. And I—and to do that, that also means I cannot reduce the burden paid by high-income Americans. So any—any language to the contrary is simply not accurate.

In certain ways, some of those statements don’t seem to make sense. But Romney’s statements in that passage closely track the basic points he has always made about his tax cut proposal, going right back to Harwood’s report. To wit:

Romney has always said that his plan will be revenue neutral. He has always said that the rich will pay the same share of taxes under his proposal.

What did Romney mean when he said, “I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut?” Had Lehrer made him clarify that statement, he probably would have said something like this:

Jim, my tax plan will be revenue neutral. There won’t be $5 trillion lost to the government or anything dimly like that. The president is making it sound like I’m going to cut government revenues by some huge amount to facilitate tax cuts for the rich. But I have repeated tonight what I’ve always said: “There will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit.” And I have repeated something else I’ve always said: “I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.”

Almost surely, that’s what Romney would have said if Lehrer had forced him to clarify. And Lehrer should have made him do so. It could have erased a lot of confusion—the kind of confusion which was seen all over cable last night.

Did Romney abandon his proposal in Wednesday night’s debate? Actually, no—he did not. For weeks, Romney and his surrogates have been walking back the hard proposal about the twenty percent cut in tax rates, with Romney insisting that he won’t do a proposal which lowers the share of taxes paid by the rich.

For people who have been following the discussion, his statements on Wednesday were more of the same. Incredibly, Obama didn’t seem to be one of those people.

Last evening, the pundits on MSNBC seemed clueless about this. Or they were heavily scripted, in ways which kept them in line with Obama's remarks.

On the Last Word, it was clear that Ezra Klein does understand that Romney hasn’t abandoned his proposal. But in deference to his pompous host, you could also see Klein couching his language. He struggled to keep his remarks technically accurate while seeming to agree with Lawrence’s characterization of Romney’s remarks as “his $5 trillion lie.” (To watch the full segment, click this.)

Inevitably, Romney’s remarks have turned out to be confusing, unclear. But it’s just stupid to call his remarks a “lie.” Did we mention that Klein was speaking with Lawrence O’Donnell?

Plainly, Klein understands the shape of the Romney policies. (He specifically said he wasn't surprised by the things Romney said. Incredibly, it looked like Obama was.) But Klein also knows that he must go along with his channel’s pseudo-liberal herd.

That said, two key points emerged from last night’s ball of confusion. This takes us back to Jim Lehrer’s woeful performance on Wednesday:

First point: It’s damaging for progressive interests when TV liberals can’t articulate such basic matters.

In fact, Candidate Romney’s tax cut proposal was completely absurd from the start. In August, the Tax Policy Center said it was “mathematically impossible.”

But Romney didn’t abandon the proposal on Wednesday; he merely continued a process of smoothing and fudging which has been underway for weeks. And he continued to stress some points he has made all along: His ultimate plan will be revenue neutral. It won’t decrease the share of taxes paid by the rich.

When TV liberals can’t follow such matters, it means that progressives have a set of unskilled players advancing their interests on the TV machine thingy—or pretending to do so.

Second point: The confusion displayed all over cable takes us back to that potted plant, moderator Jim Lehrer.

Romney’s central statement on Wednesday was sure to create confusion. A moderator who wasn’t stuck in soil would have intervened, making him explain what he meant when he said, “I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut.”

Lehrer simply stared into air—and last night, the confusion was general. For decades, our policy discourse has functioned this way. Within the American press corps, the skills are few at the top.

The chaos of our public discourse helps us see what life is like under a press corps which is, at its heart, a D-minus elite. Last night, Rachel and Lawrence were basically wrong.

Then again, so was Obama on Wednesday night. Obama was unprepared!

Next: Lehrer in Gethsemane

What Romney has proposed: Here are some of the facts which might have emerged if Lehrer sought clarification:

Fact: If all tax rates were cut by twenty percent, that would reduce government revenues by roughly $5 trillion over the first ten years.

Fact: Romney has always said that the cuts in tax rates should be accompanied by elimination of loopholes, making the overall proposal revenue neutral.

Fact: The Tax Policy Center said, in August, that there aren’t enough tax loopholes to fully offset that cut in tax rates.

Fact: Romney has been walking back his proposal for weeks, suggesting (among other things) that tax rates might not be cut by twenty percent if his basic requirements can’t be met at that level.

Last night, chaos reigned on MSNBC—unless the children were simply pursuing a Fox-like propaganda campaign. If Lehrer wasn’t a potted plant, clarity might have emerged.

Breaking! Romney made accurate statement!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012

Bay State students may be number one: On the Washington Post’s web site, Ruth Marcus is batting Romney around for his various misstatements last night.

Obama didn’t seem to care. Neither did potted plant Lehrer. With Marcus setting a good example, let’s hope more journalists do.

That said, we have breaking news about last night’s debate! Repeatedly, Romney made a basically accurate statement about Massachusetts schools!

He kept saying the schools were number one, bathing in their reflected glow. We can’t tell you what role Romney played. But Bay State kids attained these rankings on last year’s NAEP tests:

Massachusetts students, ranking among the fifty states, 2011 NAEP:
Grade 4 math:
White students: 1
Black students: 2
Hispanic students: 7

Grade 8 math:
White students: 1
Black students: 3
Hispanic students: 16

Grade 4 reading:
White students: 1
Black students: 3
Hispanic students: 7

Grade 8 reading:
White students: 3
Black students: 7
Hispanic students: 39

We haven’t adjusted for low-income status. But Bay State students still rank very high after you do that. Bay State schools scored very high, except among eighth-grade Hispanic students.

P.S. Texas kids score very high too. Don’t tell the high Lady Collins!

As if last night’s debacle wasn’t enough!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012

This too, on the Times front page: As if last night’s debate wasn’t enough, consider the piece which appeared on the front page of today’s New York Times—above the fold, no less!

In our hard-copy Washington Edition, this ridiculous news report appeared in that high-profile spot. It bore this headline:

‘07 Talk by Obama Resurfaces,
Renewing Questions on Race

That’s right! Above the fold, high up on page one, the Times explored that five-year-old speech in which Obama touched on some racial issues.

In the National Edition and the New York Edition, debate coverage crowded page one. As a result, this silly report got bumped to page A23.

But good God! In the Washington Edition, it appeared above the fold! On page A1! That’s the paper’s front page!

Basically, the report is a warm tongue bath to Tucker Carlson. Please understand the uselessness of the breakthrough information this report explores:

By now, as you may have heard, Obama has been president for almost four years. If he had extremely weird ideas about race, we’d probably know that by now.

But so what! In a tongue bath to the pseudo-conservative world, the Times explores a pointless old speech, focusing on the excitement this topic has caused all through the conservative world.

This is a bad report on A23. But when we picked up our paper today, it was high up on page 1.

There’s always something of interest in the Times. Sometimes, the most interesting item achieves that rank because it’s so god-awful bad.

Kristof v. Collins: The public face of don't care!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012

All hail our pseudolib heroine: The op-ed page of today’s New York Times is framed by two columns—columns written by Nicholas Kristof and Gail Collins.

Below, we’ll offer one complaint about one thing Kristof says. But his column discusses an actual, real-world concern—the rising share of American income being gobbled up at the top.

“In 2010, 93 percent of the gain in national income went to the top 1 percent,” Kristof notes at one point. Also this:

“America’s Gini coefficient, the classic measure of inequality, set a modern record last month—the highest since the Great Depression.”

Kristof’s column is a review of a new book by Joseph Stiglitz. Whatever you think of his views or approach, Kristof is asking people to think about an actual part of the world.

And then, on the other side of the page, we get the latest from Collins. It’s hard to be more detached, more uncaring, than this blight on the liberal world.

Collins starts her piece in her standard way, complaining that the election is boring. We’re quoting her piece as it appears in our hard-copy Times, not as it appears on-line:

COLLINS (10/4/12): Give yourselves a little pat on the back, interested citizens. You really have been through a lot. Two more presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate to go. Then we will be moving into the final days, sometimes known as the Actually Having an Election period.

(Did you read John Noble Wilford’s article in The Times about the discovery of the remains of a dinosaur the size of a house cat? A paleontologist told Wilford that it might have looked like a “nimble two-legged porcupine.” I am telling you this because the race for the Republican nomination first began at about the time these creatures became extinct. Michele Bachmann shot the last one when it hopped across her front yard.)

Collins builds an astonishing number of columns around the idea that politics and citizenship are just amazingly boring. Her attention then shifts to Irish setters, armadillos, coyotes, horses or dinosaur/porcupines.

In this, her preview to last night’s debate, Collins could have presented some framework which might have helped her readers understand what they saw and heard. But Collins’ entire career as a columnist is built around the idea that watching a debate, or a speech, is just impossibly dull—an affront to upper-class humans.

At any rate, in Collins’ revised, on-line column, the porcupine stays in! As a columnist, Collins is constantly seeking ways to kill time by talking to the animals.

Earlier this year, Collins published a book about Texas. Her portrait of the Texas public schools is rank with misinformation. The book is so full of misinformation, it constitutes an act of journalistic fraud.

Why is a person like this in print? Why do liberals accept this?

Alas! The Potemkins who pose as our journalists call this the information age! It seems these gods must be joking.

Our one complaint about Kristof: Unlike Collins, Kristof discusses an actual real-world concern. We don’t think his column really advances the discussion of this matter. But he isn’t killing time discussing his boredom and talking about porcupines.

We do have one complaint about Kristof’s column. It’s a sign of the times when Kristof feels he has to say what follows:

KRISTOF (10/4/12): This dismal ground is explored in an important and smart new book, “The Price of Inequality,” by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. It’s a searing read.

“We are paying a high price for our inequality—an economic system that is less stable and less efficient, with less growth,” Stiglitz warns.

The problem is not that the rich are venal or immoral, and I buy into the Chinese mantra of the reform era: “To get rich is glorious.” But today’s level of inequality is unusual by American historical and global standards alike, and, as Stiglitz notes, evidence is mounting that inequality at the levels we’ve reached stifles growth and employment.

That highlighted statement is very odd. Obviously, Kristof is massively smarter than that.

Crackers! Some of the rich certainly are “venal or immoral.” To a large extent, that certainly is “the problem.” This has been true through the annals of time, as every sentient person knows. And just for the record, some of us who aren’t rich today would quickly turn “venal or immoral” if we got rich tomorrow.

This is known as human nature. That statement is very strange.

Many wealthy people are thoroughly decent, of course. But wealth and power have always tended to lead us humans astray.

Today, the wealthy are very powerful in the world where our insider pundits dwell. Smart people end up saying odd things, bowing low to that wealth and its power.

JIM LEHRER’S RERUN: Potted plant!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012

Part 1—You’ve seen last night’s movie before: Let’s start with a word about the candidates, although politicians aren’t our focus here.

Last evening’s debate was a massacre. The massacre was so complete that it was widely acknowledged by MSNBC’s pundits.

Candidate Romney was on the attack; he had a theme and a focus. Candidate Obama had little focus or framework for his evening—virtually none at all.

He started with a jumbled complaint about Romney’s tax proposal. But he seemed surprised by Romney’s (wholly predictable) reaction, then utterly faded away.

(Romney’s reaction was not a change from things he and his surrogates have been saying. Despite that, Obama seemed surprised and flummoxed. Ninety minutes later, so did the pundits on MSNBC.)

The overnight polls describe a massacre—a massacre which did occur.

That said, our focus here is on the press corps. That brings us to the performance of Jim Lehrer, a performance you’ve seen before.

It was in the first twenty minutes of last night’s debate that Romney bollixed Obama over Romney’s own tax proposal. In part, Romney did this by repeating disclaimers he has been making for weeks.

But in part, Romney accomplished this task by making misleading and confusing statements about his own proposal. And as Romney spread the confusion around, Jim Lehrer stared into air.

Lehrer made no attempt to clarify basic points of the discussion. More specifically, he failed to ask Romney to clarify the various things he was saying.

To borrow some language from long ago, Lehrer behaved like a potted plant—and this wasn't the first time! Because, just as a matter of fact, you’ve seen last night’s movie before.

You saw it twelve years ago to the day, when Candidate Gore kept trying to challenge misstatements by Candidate Bush.

Good grief! The first twenty minutes of last night’s debate was a virtual rerun of the first twenty minutes of the first Bush-Gore debate. In that instance, Gore was challenging plain misstatements by Bush about Bush’s prescription drug proposal.

In last night’s case, Obama was challenging misleading, occasionally inaccurate statements by Candidate Romney about Romney’s tax proposal.

In each case, Lehrer simply sat there, much like a potted plant. In each case, he made no attempt to bring factual clarity to a confused and confusing discussion.

Lehrer was unhelpful twelve years ago. His failure to act was even more striking last night.

Last night, Lehrer’s failure to act was quite striking. Reason: The facts of the present case are quite simple—and they’ve been on the table for months.

At issue is the highlighted statement made by Candidate Romney below.

Early in the debate, Obama complained about Romney’s tax cut proposal. In reply, Romney issued a flat denial:

OBAMA (10/3/12): We do have to close our deficit, and one of the things I'm sure we'll be discussing tonight is, how do we deal with our tax code? And how do we make sure that we are reducing spending in a responsible way, but also, how do we have enough revenue to make those investments?

And this is where there's a difference, because Governor Romney's central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut, on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts—that's another trillion dollars—and $2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn't asked for. That's $8 trillion. How we pay for that, reduce the deficit, and make the investments that we need to make, without dumping those costs onto middle-class Americans, I think is one of the central questions of this campaign.

LEHRER: Both of you have spoken about a lot of different things, and we're going to try to get through them in as specific a way as we possibly can.

But, first, Governor Romney, do you have a question that you'd like to ask the president directly about something he just said?

ROMNEY: Well, sure. I'd like to clear up the record and go through it piece by piece.

First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.

Obama said that Romney’s plan “calls for a $5 trillion tax cut.” Romney’s reply was swift, and it carried the evening:

“First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut.”

People, you’ve seen that movie before! If you want to see the first version of this classic film, just go to the tape of the first Bush-Gore debate and watch the first twenty minutes! (Just click here. If you want, you can start at minute ten.)

In that earlier drama, a remarkable set of exchanges begins with this. This exchange occurred on October 3—2000, not 2012:

GORE (10/3/00): Jim, under my plan all seniors will get prescription drugs under Medicare...

Here's how it works. You go to your own doctor, and your doctor chooses your prescription, and no HMO or insurance company can take—can take those choices away from you. Then you go to your own pharmacy, you fill the prescription and Medicare pays half the cost. If you're in a very poor family or if you have very high costs, Medicare will pay all the costs—a $25 premium and much better benefits than you could possibly find in the private sector.

Now here's the contrast: 95 percent of all seniors would get no help whatsoever under my opponent's plan for the first four or five years. Now one thing I don't understand, Jim, is, why is it that the wealthiest 1 percent get their tax cuts the first year, but 95 percent of seniors have to wait four to five years before they get a single penny?

LEHRER: Governor?

BUSH: I guess my answer to that is the man's running on “Mediscare,” trying to frighten people in the—in the voting booth. It's just not the way, the way I think, and that's just not my intentions and it's not my plan.

Except that was Bush’s plan. Gore pointed this out again and again while Lehrer played potted plant.

Tomorrow, we’ll recall where that fateful, ten-minute exchange between Bush and Gore ended up. For today, let’s simply ask this:

In each of these instances, what should Lehrer have done?

Our answer to that is simple: Ideally, Lehrer should have stepped in to clarify what Bush and Romney were saying. Last night, he should have asked Romney to explain exactly what he meant when he said that he doesn’t have “a $5 trillion tax cut.”

Why should Lehrer have questioned Romney? Because under rules of these debates, the candidates can’t question each other! In 2000, Gore was not allowed to challenge or question Bush about his misstatements.

The same rule obtained last night. (Although, in fairness, it wasn’t clear that Obama would have known what to say or ask.)

As moderator, Lehrer was allowed to question Candidates Bush and Romney. In each case, he failed to act.

Tomorrow, we’ll offer more detail on these remarkably similar movies. But last night’s opening twenty minutes was a virtual rerun of the opening twenty minutes of the first Bush-Gore debate, an event which was held twelve years before to the night.

Obama seemed much less well-prepared than Gore—but Lehrer was on the scene each time. In each case, he failed to act.

It’s time for this potted plant to go! In our view, he should have been gone a long time ago.

Can someone possibly take away the NewsHour’s watering can?

Tomorrow: Two different campaigns, same movie

If you want to watch that old movie: To watch the earlier version of last night’s film, you only have to watch the first twenty minutes of the 2000 debate. For C-Span’s tape, click here.

You can start at minute ten if you choose. For added fun, see how many “sighs” you hear! (This is the debate at which Gore is said to have uttered those “loud,” “perpetual” sighs.)

Listen for those sighs if you wish! If you do, you'll learn what a “journalistic” scam looks like. But within the opening twenty minutes, you will see the same plot elements you saw in last night’s rerun:

Starting at minute ten, you will see Candidate Bush making flat misstatements about his own proposal.

You will see those misstatements contradicted by Candidate Gore.

You will see Bush repeat his misstatements, this time with indignation—and with a scripted zinger. (Romney used a scripted zinger at the same point last night.) And sure enough:

With Gore not allowed to question Bush, you’ll see Lehrer play potted plant!

First, you’ll see Lehrer tell the candidates that they’re over time. He did the same thing last night.

Finally, you’ll see him move on to the next topic, without making any attempt to clarify what’s being said.

Lehrer seems to enjoy playing potted plant. It’s time for Jim Lehrer to go.

Smells like press spirit!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2012

The Times previews body language: How empty is your political press corps?

The morning’s hard-copy New York Times leaves little to the imagination. We refer to the full-page review of tonight’s debate, a trio of pieces which consume page A16 in this morning’s Washington Edition.

At the bottom of the page, Jackie Calmes presents a sensible, perfectly serious preview of the economic claims which might be made tonight.

But that’s at the bottom of the page. The top two-thirds of A16 is consumed by a pair of reports which give us the soul of the Times.

First, could there be a story-line brewing? In this page’s featured news report, Jeff Zeleny lists “a few things to watch” in tonight’s debate.

Is a story-line possibly brewing? At several points, Zeleny suggests that Obama has to avoid giving voters the sense that he is “smug,” “arrogant” or “dismissive.”

We find no similar suggestions about Romney’s possibly unhelpful traits. Is a narrative possibly taking shape here?

We have no idea. (Careful, Obama! Don't sigh!) But lodged within Zeleny’s worthless report is the most pitiful part of this preview page—a photograph-laden review of the candidates bearing this pitiful headline:

“Squaring Off, With Body Language”

That’s right! With the help of twelve (12) small photographs, the Times offers a preview of what to watch for in the realm of twitches and other small bodily gestures! With this piece, the Times completes a long, slow slide to the lowest part of the pit.

Background: Unless we’re mistaken, it was Chris Matthews who introduced body language to cable, in his regular sessions with jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius in the fall of 1999. It was during one of these fatuous sessions that Matthews warned us against Candidate Gore’s fiendish use of those troubling three-button suits. According to Matthews, Gore was sending sexual signals to female voters, not unlike what sailors do with the buttons on the front of their pants.

Yes, he actually said that. It wasn’t Dimitrius’ fault that Matthews made this remarkable statement. But a brainless new low had been established.

Before long, others would play.

At some point, Bill O’Reilly introduced "body language expert" Tonya Reiman into his regular cast of characters. (Nexis tracks Reiman’s appearances to November 2006.) O’Reilly has never used his body language segments in the overtly partisan way Matthews did. But the dumbness of these regular segments is there for all to see.

Today, the New York Times finally goes there! Calmes’ intelligent, highly relevant piece is relegated to the foot of A16. Up top, festooned with a dozen photos, is the ridiculous piece which appears beneath this explanation:

Squaring Off, With Body Language
Peggy Hackney, an analyst working with the New York University Movement Lab, has examined the body language exhibited by President Obama and Mitt Romney in a number of speeches and debates. Here is a look at some of the signature gestures that they use.

Hackney! You can't make this up!

Hackney seems to be on the lookout for the same sorts of flaws as Zeleny. Reviewing one of Obama’s typical gestures, the unnamed author of this piece seems to warn us about his sarcasm:

NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Obama often makes a downward chopping motion to place emphasis on an action verb. He has used this to convey a task that he or the viewer might undertake, as well as to sarcastically suggest something his opponent might do.

Along with his arrogance, smugness and dismissiveness, we are thus put on alert about Obama’s sarcasm. As in Zeleny’s report, we see no corresponding warnings about Romney’s less pleasing possible traits.

Let’s set aside the sneaking suspicion that a narrative may be forming. In this morning’s hard-copy Times, a fatuous piece about body language was given billing over a smart and serious piece about the campaign’s most important issue. Message:

New York Times readers might want to brush up on the candidates’ economic claims. But in the withering mind of the Times, their body language comes first!

To see this foolishness as it exists on-line, you only have to click here. But in this morning’s hard-copy layout, the steady dumbing of our discourse was present for all to see.

Gwen Ifill attempts to compile a list!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2012

D-minus elite on debates: Pseudo-journalists love to discuss our past White House debates.

Gwen Ifill tried to do so this Sunday. Her effort was marked by two familiar press traits—self-involvement and incoherence.

Ifill presented a piece in the Washington Post: “5 Myths about presidential debates.” For what it’s worth, these are the “myths” she tried to shoot down:

Gwen Ifill’s five myths about debates:
1. Voters use debates to decide.
2. Candidates approve the questions ahead of time.
3. The moderator should pick fights with the candidates.
4. He who zings, wins.
5. Debates are the last best chance for candidates to define themselves.

That struck us as a strange set of myths. Mainly, though, we were struck by Ifill’s rampant illogic—and by the depth of her self-involvement. H

How illogical is Ifill's piece? Here’s the way she starts to shoot down that fifth and final myth:

IFILL (9/30/12): 5. Debates are the last best chance for candidates to define themselves.

No, “Saturday Night Live” is.

Whether it’s Tina Fey as Palin, Amy Poehler as Hillary Rodham Clinton or Jason Sudeikis as Romney or Vice President Biden, a dead-on impersonation that lampoons a candidate’s most cartoonish qualities can leave a nasty mark.

Gerald Ford was a gifted college athlete, but Chevy Chase convinced us that he was a bumbling buffoon. Bill Clinton is probably as skilled a politician as has ever graced the national stage, but Darrell Hammond spawned a generation of grainy-voiced, winking Clinton impersonators by portraying him as a leering man of untamed appetites.

Does that passage make any sense? Ifill starts by saying that a candidate can still define himself on SNL, even after the debates after completed.

That may be true, but she then gives examples of something else. She gives examples of candidates who got defined by SNL. None of her cases are examples of the possibility she is imagining.

At that point, Ifill starts talking about herself, as she frequently does in this piece. At some length, she recalls the way she herself was portrayed on SNL by Queen Latifah, a well-liked, attractive Hollywood star.

In all honesty, this fifth part of Ifill’s piece is mainly about Gwen Ifill’s greatness. To the extent that she pretends to explode a myth, she pens an illogical mess.

Beyond that, Ifill mainly discusses herself as she discusses myths 2 and 3. And by the way:

Do you ever hear people advancing the “myth” that moderators should pick fights with the candidates? (That’s Ifill’s third “myth.”) We rarely hear that “myth” advanced. Let’s be honest: In that part of her piece, Ifill is mainly defending her own performance as a moderator in 2008. Once again, the piece is all about her.

Ifill’s piece displays a great deal of self-involvement. When she does attempt to explode a few “myths,” her work is quite hard to follow. Example:

Is Ifill’s first “myth” really a myth? To us, it’s odd to see a journalist deny the idea that voters use the debates as a way to decide who to vote for. If the debates don’t serve that function, why do we even have them?

Here’s the start of Ifill’s explanation. We find this whole thing hard to follow:

IFILL: 1. Voters use debates to decide.

For many voters, televised presidential debates serve to focus the mind. Seeing the men who would be president—yes, always men, so far—face off helps viewers finally choose a side.

But debates are only part of the American voter’s political diet. Like 30-second ads or stump speeches, they do as much to confirm impressions as to alter them. Think back to some memorable debate moments. Did George H.W. Bush glancing at his watch really persuade people to vote for Bill Clinton, or did it confirm the worst suspicions of those already leaning away from him? Did Lloyd Bentsen dismissing Dan Quayle as “no Jack Kennedy” lose the election for Michael Dukakis, or did it speak to an existing worry that Bush lacked the judgment to pick a No. 2 who could assume the presidency?

As Ifill starts to shoot down that myth, she quickly confirms that it isn’t a myth! Some voters do use debates to decide! But apparently, since everyone doesn’t make his decision based solely on the debates, Ifill regards that first claim as a myth!

That makes very weak sense. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, look what happens in that passage when Ifill discusses Bush’s glance at his watch and Bentsen’s famous putdown of Quayle:

Has anyone ever suggested that Bentsen’s putdown “lost the election for Michael Dukakis?” We’re baffled by that part of Ifill’s presentation. But we’re also confused by what she writes about Bush’s famous glance at his watch. She seems to imagine two possible cases—one case in which a voter made his decision based wholly on the glance at the watch, another case in which the glance simply confirmed a voter’s leanings.

In each instance, the voter Ifill imagines was in fact “using the debate to decide.” It’s hard to see how any of this shoots down Ifill’s “myth.”

Later on, this is simply inane:

IFILL: 4. He who zings, wins.

This one is almost too easy to debunk. Lloyd Bentsen. Lloyd Bentsen. Lloyd Bentsen.

For ourselves, we’ve never heard anyone advance the thesis that “he who zings” wins these debates. But Ifill shoots down this alleged “myth” by noting that Bentsen’s famous zinger, aimed at Quayle, came as part of a losing campaign.

Did anybody ever claim that every election will be won by the ticket which zings the most? Even if the zinger is delivered by the vice-presidential candidate?

Ifill’s piece is a jumbled, illogical mess—except for the parts which are all about her. And yet, this work was done at the very top of our national “press corps.”

The NewsHour is billed as our smartest news show. This piece is a jumbled mess.

Can we talk? Despite their massive fame, your highest-ranking journalists just aren’t very sharp. In truth, your press corps is a D-minus elite. It’s a point we’ve been noting for years.

DISAGGREGATION NATION: A very old regional tale!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2012

Epilogue—Two last perspectives: If you want to compare the performance of the public schools of two different states, you have to “disaggregate” test scores.

If you don’t, you will end up thinking foolish things. For example, you will think that Maine has the best public schools in the nation. You will think that because the public schools of Maine have almost nothing but white kids.

You will even think that in a year when white kids in Texas are outscoring their Maine counterparts in Maine by large margins (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/27/12.) But then, you will end up believing many strange things if you don’t “disaggregate” test scores.

In her new book, As Texas Goes, Gail Collins doesn’t disaggregate scores, even though she explicitly swears by the practice. For that reason, she ends up insulting and mocking the Texas schools, even though the Texas schools are among our highest-performing.

How distorted is the portrait offered in Collins’ book? Today, we’ll quickly offer two more perspectives:

Score gains in Texas: For the last time, we’ll present the central passage where Collins portrays the performance of the current-day Texas schools. From this passage, a reader would think that Texas schools are low-performing and that they are failing to show further progress:

COLLINS (page 91): You may be wondering how things are going, education-wise, in the state that deeded its reform plan to the nation. Paul Sadler, the Democrat who led the effort in the Texas house, complains that the state is “testing our kids to death.” (Under the state’s newest regimen, students take seventeen high-stakes tests between third and eighth grade, and up to a dozen more while they’re in high school.) A survey by the Texas State Teachers Association showed that 43 percent of its members were seriously thinking of looking for another line of work.

Sadler still believes that the leaps made in the 1990s are holding up. “I think most of our schools do a pretty good job,” he said. Other observers are, at a minimum, disillusioned. “The eighth grade reading scores were exactly the same in 2009 as 1998,” said Diane Ravitch, referring to the scores Texas received in the national NAEP test results. (I know we were trying to avoid them, but sometimes it's unavoidable.) “The whole country is now embarked on remedies that didn’t do anything for Texas.”

David Grissmer, the author of that glowing RAND study, says that since 2000, when the study came out, Texas students’ scores on national tests have begun to “flag.” Perhaps coincidentally, that was exactly the time when Bush stopped being governor and turned the state over to Perry, whose interest in K-12 education was minimal. When the state’s budget developed a monster hole in 2011, Perry refused to raise taxes—or even dip into state savings—to avoid enormous cuts in school aid. As the impact began to hit districts, schools began cutting back on programs that had been in place since the Perot commission, seeking waivers on class size and preschool requirements. Former first lady Barbara Bush wrote an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle protesting the lack of financial support for public schools. “We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rate,” she wrote. “An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma. We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average SAT scores.”

It all sounded sort of familiar.

Earlier, Collins had quoted the late Molly Ivins describing the state of the Texas schools in the year 2000. According to Ivins, the Texas schools had “rocketed from abysmal to only slightly below average in a mere thirty years.”

A reader of Collins’ book would probably think that Texas schools were “below average” as of the year 2000—and that progress had frozen there. She would see data from Barbara Bush suggesting that the Texas schools ranked anywhere from 46th to 49th worst in the nation.

This reader would have no idea that Texas students rank near the top of the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federal testing program Collins (and everyone else) has praised for producing our most reliable data.

Are Texas schools showing progress on the NAEP? Given that statement by Ravitch and that phantom one-word “quotation” from Grissmer, that reader would have no idea that Texas students showed large score gains in math on the NAEP from 2000 through 2011.

Gaze on Texas kids' lack of progress! There were no NAEP math tests in 1998, the year from which the Ravitch comparison started:

Texas students, score gains from 2000 to 2011, NAEP
Grade 4 math:
White students, 11.86 points
Black students, 11.95 points
Hispanic students, 12.18 points

Grade 8 math:
White students, 17.11 points
Black students, 27.01 points
Hispanic students, 21.18 points

By a very rough rule of thumb, ten points on the NAEP scale is said to equal one academic year. Judged by that very rough measure, those are phenomenal score gains.

A reader of Collins’ book would have no idea that such score gains exist—or that all three groups of Texas students scored second or third in the nation on eighth-grade math in 2011. And by the way: Unless she’s completely uninformed, that statement by Ravitch should be regarded as flatly deceptive—as an act of intellectual fraud.

How did Ravitch come up with that vastly misleading claim—a claim which can be defended as technically accurate? First, she cherry-picked eighth-grade reading, the area in which score gains have been smallest all over the nation. Then, she failed to disaggregate scores, thus disguising the score gains which have occurred in Texas, even in eighth-grade reading.

(One further point: By failing to disaggreghate, Ravitch hid the large increase in minority and low-income kids in the Texas student population. This change in the state's student population helps explain the lack of score gains in its overall average score.)

Presumably, Collins had no idea how misleading Ravitch’s statement actually was. There is no sign that she ever examined any NAEP scores herself. And she had her educational research done by an architecture student!

This is the way our most famous “journalists” operate within our failed culture.

Texas versus New York: Collins typed her grossly misleading book in her lavish Manhattan penthouse, far from the “underclass” crowd. As she typed, she constructed an old and destructive, low-IQ novel, in which swells from the north mock southern rubes—the kinds of people who beat each other with frozen armadillos.

(In fairness, Collins weekends in Connecticut.)

What was the actual state of play as Collins constructed her novel? In her book and on her book tour, Collins frequently insulted the teachers and students of Texas. But here’s how the kids in her brilliant northern state compared to the kids in Texas on last year’s NAEP math tests.

We’re talking about the state of New York, not just New York City:

Students in Texas and New York: Rankings among the fifty states, 2011 NAEP
Grade 4 math:
White kids: Texas 6, New York 39
Black kids: Texas 4, New York 29
Hispanic kids: Texas 11, New York 39

Grade 8 math:
White kids: Texas 3, New York 30
Black kids: Texas 2, New York 18
Hispanic kids: Texas 2, New York 39

In eighth-grade math, Hispanic students in Texas ranked second among the fifty states. By way of contrast, Hispanic kids in the state of New York ranked 39th. And yes, these differences in national ranking correspond to large differences in average scores:

In eighth-grade math, Hispanic kids in Texas outscored their Empire State counterparts by more than twenty points! A similar 20-point gap exists between the average scores of the two states’ white students. (To construct your own data, click here, then click on “State Comparisons.”) That said, the gap between the two Hispanic populations is especially striking, since Collins has made many insulting remarks about the way Texas is allegedly failing to educate its Hispanic children.

Alas! As Collins wrote and uttered those insulting words, her home state was getting its keister kicked by Hispanic students in Texas! This was happening on the NAEP, the educational testing program Collins (correctly) recommends.

Can we talk? It would be hard to bungle a book more thoroughly than Collins has done. And yet, this book was written by one of our best-known national “journalists”—by the former editor of the New York Times editorial page!

When Collins appears on the Maddow show, she gets her ass kissed every time. (Every time Maddow does this, an angel loses his wings.) Routinely, “liberal” readers applaud her for the clowning she performs.

We’ve told you for more than fourteen years: American “journalistic” culture lies in an absolute shambles. This astonishing book by this badly failed person stands as a tribute to this much-denied fact. And yet, Collins’ book extends themes which can be seen all through our broken intellectual culture wherever public schools are discussed.

It's just as we have always told you: Everybody swears by the NAEP—but no one reports the NAEP’s data! (Except for the achievement gaps, which are used to make teachers look bad.)

All next week, we will be asking how this type of intellectual misconduct can happen. We’ll be asking how the press corps can tolerate this type of work. We’ll be asking why the liberal world tolerates this conduct.

Why do public figures in Texas accept this sort of thing? How about our “educational experts?” (In fairness, they are perhaps the most Potemkin of all our Potemkin elites.)

Unless you like pleasing regional novels, Collins’ book represents an act of intellectual fraud. How can it be that such work is accepted? (In many respects, this horrible book represents the long-standing norm.)

We’ll be asking those questions next week. Before we do, you can count on one thing:

The liberal world won’t comment or care. We quit on black kids a long time ago. Everyone knows and accepts this.

All next week: Why is this acceptable? Why is Collins praised?

Reading rankings for Texas and New York: Above, we showed you how students from Texas and New York ranked on last year’s NAEP math tests. We’re talking about the state of New York, not just New York City.

Here’s how they ranked in reading. Texas kids actually got outscored on one of these six measures:

Students in Texas and New York: Rankings among the fifty states, 2011 NAEP
Grade 4 reading:
White kids: Texas 10, New York 12
Black kids: Texas 7, New York 13
Hispanic kids: Texas 14, New York 19

Grade 8 reading:
White kids: New York 6, Texas 13
Black kids: Texas 10, New York 12
Hispanic kids: Texas 23, New York 33

New York students rank higher in reading than in math. We have no idea why that is—and there’s no sign that anyone cares.

David Gregory inquired on the basis of race!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2012

Will Maddow take him on: Last evening, David Gregory moderated the second debate between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren.

He devoted the first eighteen minutes to the dispute, or pseudo-dispute, about Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry.

Later, on the Maddow show, Barney Frank said this about that: “I was frankly disappointed in David Gregory’s choice of topics. To spend many minutes on this non-issue of Cherokee ancestry and about a minute and a half on Afghanistan is about as bad a set of priorities as I have seen.”

Did Gregory make a bad choice of topics? We suppose it depends on the degree of interest this dispute is generating in Massachusetts.

For ourselves, we would offer a criticism of the way he explored the topic: He never asked Warren to explain the nature or degree of her Native American ancestry.

If memory serves, Warren said she does consider herself Native American. The Boston Herald quotes her this way: “I consider myself as having a Native American background...that's what I am.”

That's fine with us! But on what basis does Warren so consider herself? What's the basis of her claim to this ancestry? Gregory never tried to nail that down. Why spend eighteen minutes on this topic without asking about that? (We don’t have a transcript of last night’s event.)

Back on the Maddow show, Rachel Maddow was repeating the opaque formulation she has employed in the past few weeks. She didn’t join Frank in criticizing Gregory. Instead, she complained about Brown’s continuing conduct, using a vague turn of phrase:

MADDOW (10/1/12): Today was the second debate between Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. There are two surprising things you`ll remember in the first debate. First was the vehemence with which Scott Brown attacked Elizabeth Warren on the basis of race in the first debate, saying he could tell by looking at the Oklahoma-born law professor that she wasn’t really Native American.

That was followed up by two Scott Brown TV ads attacking Elizabeth Warren on the basis of race. It was also followed by a bunch of Scott Brown staffers at a political event mocking Native Americans with fake war whoops and tomahawk chops.

Tonight, Scott Brown addressed the same controversy and kept arguing that race is relevant and a decision the voters have to make in the Massachusetts Senate race. He still did not apologize for staffers making fun of Native Americans even though the principal chief of the Cherokee tribe asked him to. And he failed to explain how he knows Elizabeth Warren is not Native American—you know, other than just by looking at her.

In that first debate, Brown made a clumsy or foolish statement when he implied that you can tell someone’s ancestry simply by visual inspection. Subsequently, his staff behaved very foolishly.

Last night, Maddow said that Brown still hasn’t apologized for his staff's conduct, although the Boston Globe reported that his spokesperson released this statement: "Senator Brown has spoken to his entire staff including the individuals involved in this unacceptable behavior and issued them their one and only warning that this type of conduct will not be tolerated.”

That said, Brown’s a pol and we critique journalists. We were struck last night to see Maddow clinging to last week’s formulation: Brown has been “attacking Warren on the basis of race.”

Actually, Brown has been saying that Warren sought professional advancement by saying she is Native American when she actually isn’t. Since that is the actual accusation, it would have made sense for Gregory to try to determine the nature and extent of Warren’s Native American ancestry, if he was going to spend all that time on the topic.

Meanwhile, Maddow seems extremely reluctant to voice the actual accusation. Instead, she offers pleasing weasel words about being “attacked on the basis of race.”

Elizabeth Warren is “being attacked on the basis of race!” That sounds like a very bad thing—but George Wallace was “attacked on the basis of race” by liberals for many years. In short, there’s nothing wrong with “being attacked on the basis of race,” depending on the nature of the conduct and the complaint.

Maddow seems unwilling to state the nature of Brown’s complaint.

For ourselves, we have no idea what the facts of this matter may be. This strikes us as a tangential matter—but then, we said the same thing about Mitt Romney’s behavior in high school.

That said, if someone makes a bogus claim of minority status to gain career advancement, that’s a ratty thing to do. We have no idea if Warren did that, but there’s nothing obviously wrong with “attacking” someone “on the basis of” that kind of conduct.

This brings us back to last week’s discussion between Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry. Maddow kept saying, very vaguely, that Brown was “campaign[ing] against Elizabeth Warren on the basis of her race.” In turn, Harris-Perry offered one of her trademark outings, featuring extremely long-winded, pseudo-insightful, windy race bafflegab.

Eventually, we got this exchange:

MADDOW (9/24/12): You know, the way that Scott Brown is using—the way that he’s problematizing race in this case, right, the way that he is using it, is to make this argument that Elizabeth Warren might have used her Native American heritage to get ahead through affirmative action. What do you think that he’s getting at there and how connected that is to other claims about essentially stoking resentment on this issue?

HARRIS-PERRY: You know, it’s quirky, because you know, to the extent that that should be the claim, it ought to be sort of people of color would feel irritation about it, the idea that someone who is socially constructed by most people who look at her as white. And this idea that, well wait a minute, to the extent that affirmative action is in part about redressing historic wrongs based on discrimination, it should be black communities, Latinos, and indigenous peoples who would say, wait a minute, we don’t want someone who appears to have the visual image of whiteness to take advantage of things that were meant to redress historic wrongs.

So, it’s a weird kind of claim because it's like she’s so white, you should be mad that she claims that she’s brown?

Just as an aside, does Warren actually “claim that she’s brown?” To watch this whole segment, click here.

In this one instance, Maddow at least semi-explained what Brown is claiming—why he’s “problematizing race in this case.” (Is Chris Hayes writing for Maddow?) In the process, Maddow pretended that she barely understands Brown’s very puzzling charge—and Harris-Perry offered an astonishing statement about who should be upset by the conduct Brown is alleging.

Black people can complain about this! White folk, not so much!

The professor didn’t know, or chose not to say, that various Native Americans already have complained, rightly or wrongly, about Warren’s claims. (Parker and Barbaro had the story at the convention! Just click here.) But good grief! Warren may be perfectly innocent of any bad faith or bad conduct. But if someone did claim Native American heritage in bad faith as a way to get ahead, does Harris-Perry really mean what she said? That black people could criticize such an act, but white people couldn’t?

We’re so old that we can remember when the low-IQ Stalinist-leaners did lots of harm to progressive interests. People like that went away for a time. We'll guess they’re prepared to come back.

Maddow’s astonishment and David Gregory: This is part of what Maddow said last Monday:

MADDOW (9/24/12): As weird as it is to see a Senate candidate having to do a political ad explaining what their ethnic background is, how much weirder is it that that’s because all of the attacks on her in this campaign are about her race? I don’t understand why this isn`t a national scandal.

Scott Brown’s campaign against Elizabeth Warren is on the basis of her race. I find it to be astonishing that it’s not more upsetting to more people.

Last week, Maddow said she was astonished, that this should be a national scandal. Tonight, will she complain that David Gregory was attacking or challenging Warren on the basis of race?

Will she voice her astonishment tonight? Maddow’s a savvy, self-dealing player. Our advice:

Don’t be holding your breath.

Debate watch: Cooper blames the voters!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2012

The role of the press disappears: The press corps loves to peddle its piffle about past White House debates.

Last Friday, Anderson Cooper rattled the official approved standard silly-bill list of the mainstream press corps’ official tales. As we noted yesterday, this has largely become the standard list.

Once again, here is that list. We include a few quotes from Cooper:

The mainstream press corps’ Standard Tales from Past Presidential Debates:
1960: Richard Nixon “sweat[s] profusely under the hot studio lights.”
1976: Gerald Ford makes a ridiculous statement about Soviet domination of Poland.
1980: Ronald Reagan wins the election by saying to Carter, in jocular fashion, “There you go again.”
1984: Reagan cinches re-election by telling a joke about Mondale’s age.
1988: Michael Dukakis fails to punch Bernie Shaw right in the nose.
1992: President Bush “deliberately looks at his watch,” blowing his chance for re-election.
2000: Al Gore “sighs over and over again. And Bush, the underdog, surprises by winning the debate and of course, the election.”

The press corps loves reciting these tales. As they do, they improve these favorite tales in three important ways:

They embellish the facts: As the years drift by, these silly offenses become more grave as the press corps embellishes facts.

One example: Gore’s sighs are getting louder and more frequent with each passing year. By last week, the Daily Beast’s Miranda Green was referring to “Gore’s perpetual sighing during the first debate” (our emphasis). Cooper had him sighing “over and over again.” At the Associated Press, Connie Cass invited her readers, as they look back, to “think of Al Gore sighing loudly and often.”

Once again, we invite you to watch the tape of that crucial debate at the C-Span site. Go ahead, take the C-Span challenge! See how many perpetual sighs you can actually hear!

They embellish the effects of these pointless events: The children love to overstate the effects of these largely pointless events. In a recent kill-joy move, Gallup reported that it can find “few instances in which the debates may have had a substantive impact on election outcomes. The two exceptions are 1960 and 2000, both very close elections in which even small changes could have determined who won.”

Even in the case of those elections, we think Gallup’s methodology is weak in several ways. But good lord! According to Gallup, George Bush didn’t blow the 1992 election by disrespectfully checking his watch! For years, the children have been happily implying that he did!

Most important, they blame the voters: This third move is very important.

In all these instances, the children must pretend that the public turned these pointless events into big major pieces of history. They have to hide the role they played in creating these silly distractions.

Last Friday, Cooper performed this vital task. Here’s the way he explained the horrible blunder by Dukakis:

COOPER (9/28/12): In the next election, Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis is asked this controversial question in his debate with vice president George W. Bush.

BERNARD SHAW: Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?
MICHAEL DUKAKIS: No, I don't, Bernard. I think you know that I have opposed the death penalty during all of my life.

COOPER: The public sees his answer as cold and dispassionate and that very night, his poll numbers dropped.

It was "the public" which formed the judgment! It wasn’t the biddies of the press corps, who stampeded out of their fetid press room and turned this into a point of high concern!

Cooper made the same deft move with respect to Bush’s “deliberate” glance at his watch:

COOPER: Body language plays a part in the presidential debate. In 1992, George H. W. Bush deliberately looks at his watch and he pays for it when the audience and voters see it as disrespectful.

Is it true? Did “the audience and voters” really “see it as disrespectful” when George Bush glanced at his watch? We’d love to see the evidence for that bit of mind-reading by Cooper.

Cooper was rattling nicely along, blaming all this manifest bullshit on the reactions of voters. But even he seemed to draw the line at the most consequential ginned-up debate blunder of them all:

COOPER (continuing directly): Body language makes a difference in the debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush as well. Gore sighs over and over again. And Bush, the underdog, surprises by winning the debate and of course, the election.

In fact, Bush didn’t win that first debate; Cooper was embellishing (changing) the facts. But even Cooper wouldn’t say that it was the voters, as opposed to the press, who made a big deal of those sighs.

In our view, Gallup tends to understate the effects of that first Bush-Gore debate. Gore’s standing in the polls dropped like a rock as the press corps pounded away at his sighs and lies. (The press corps' claims that Gore lied at that debate are now being disappeared.) This changed the whole arc of the subsequent campaign.

But manifestly, it was the press corps who made a big deal of those deeply troubling sighs. Even Cooper wasn’t willing to blame that one on the voters!

Before the week is done, we will offer a quick review of what went down in the case of those sighs. But make no mistake—those sighs were ginned up by the press corps.

Guild members like Cooper will never say that. They live to embellish and mislead. Regarding the work of their own horrid breed, they never descend to the truth.

Darlings! It just isn't done!

Tomorrow: Gwen Ifill's attempt at a list

DISAGGREGATION NATION: As found in Collins’ appendix!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2012

Epilogue—More deception and bile: For whatever reason, Texas schools and Texas students score well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—if you disaggregate test scores, as everyone knows you should.

Texas schools have scored quite well on the NAEP for the past fifteen years. In math, they score near the top of the nation—after “disaggregation,” that is.

To show you what we mean, here are math scores from Texas and Massachusetts in last year’s NAEP. Massachusetts is commonly regarded as our highest-scoring state—our own little answer to Finland.

Compared to their peers in the other states, Massachusetts students do rank high in math. But omigod! So do students in Texas:

Texas and Massachusetts, 2011 NAEP
Grade 4 math, rank among the fifty states:
White kids: Massachusetts 1, Texas 6
Black kids: Massachusetts 2, Texas 4
Hispanic kids: Massachusetts 7, Texas 11

Grade 8 math, rank among the fifty states:
White kids: Massachusetts 1, Texas 3
Black kids: Texas 2, Massachusetts 3
Hispanic kids: Texas 2, Massachusetts 16

These states are both high-scorers in math. But so what? While Massachusetts gets praised as our bright shining star, Texas gets trashed by the likes of Gail Collins, in the insulting ways we included in yesterday’s post.

Why does Massachusetts attract so much praise? In part, because the state deserves it! Even after disaggregation, Bay State students score extremely well, as you can see in those data. (For reading scores, see below.)

And why does Texas get trashed by Collins? In part, because of what happens to some states’ test scores if you don’t disaggregate. To wit:

Texas has lots of black and Hispanic kids; Massachusetts doesn’t. For that reason, this is how the two states compare in eighth-grade math if you go by overall scores—if you don’t disaggregate:

Texas and Massachusetts, 2011 NAEP
Grade 8 math, rank among the fifty states:
All students: Massachusetts 1, Texas 10

Because its schools serve so many minority kids, Texas’ overall ranking slides all the way down to tenth in the nation, even though each of its main population groups ranked second or third on this test.

Yes, you read that correctly! White kids in Texas ranked third in the nation. Black and Hispanic kids each ranked second. But overall, Texas ended up ranked at tenth, because it has such a large proportion of minority kids!

Tenth place out of fifty is still a strong ranking, of course. Reading Collins’ misleading book, you would never dream that Texas kids ranked that high.

But tenth in the nation is much lower than the rank achieved by each of the state’s major student groups. Conclusion? You need to remember how this works when people like Collins fail to disaggregate test scores (and other types of data).

To some extent, Massachusetts gets praised because it has lots of white kids! Texas ends up getting handed the bile you see in Collins’ appendix.

Leave it to Collins! In the appendix to her slender book, she reprints a propagandistic report from the Texas Legislative Group, a group of Texas Democrats. She reprints their report in full—but not before offering this introduction:

COLLINS (page 231): Appendix

Texas on the Brink
A Report from the Texas Legislative Study on the State of our State

“Texas on the Brink” is a measure of how the state stands up to the rest of the country, published at the beginning of every two-year session by the Legislative Study Group in the Texas House of Representatives.

When this 2011 version was produced, Representative Garnet Coleman was chair of the group. [Names of more members follow.]

Just spending money isn’t a sign of progress. If your state came in at the bottom on student achievement, you probably wouldn’t be comforted by the news that it had paid the most per capita on its students. And Texas does have a low cost of living. So the fact that it ranks forty-fourth in per pupil expenditures might not mean anything at all—if the high school graduate rate didn’t clock in at forty-third.

[...]

Gail Collins

There she went again, conveying the impression that Texas “comes in at the bottom on student achievement!” More specifically, does Texas really rank 43rd in “high school graduate [sic] rate?” It’s certainly possible, but we’re not sure—and Collins doesn’t seem to know either. Earlier in this embarrassing book, she approvingly quoted Barbara Bush saying the state ranked 36th! (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/28/12.)

Without seeming to notice the contradiction, Collins bumped the state down seven more places in her appendix.

(Note: Graduation rates are famously difficult to compute. Under present circumstances, Texas will inevitably have a high overall drop-out rate, given its demographic mix. That said, Collins apparently failed to notice the change in the ranking she assigned.)

After this renewal of snark, Collins reprints “Texas on the Brink” as her formal appendix. When it deals with the Texas schools, the report is a barely coherent, largely cherry-picked mess.

It’s the kind of report an actual journalist would be expected to challenge! Collins simply reprints it in full, padding her slender tome.

What is wrong with the way this report presents the Texas schools? At several places, the report presents data straight from the NAEP. But it cherry-picks the data it uses, and it often presents those data in ways which are barely coherent.

To wit:

Starting on page 239 of Collins’ book, you will see a page of data which make it sound like Texas students have low “proficiency rates” on the NAEP—rates which fall below national norms. At no point does the report disaggregate the data. Had this been done, those proficiency rates would of course have exceeded national norms.

All the selections in this passage are designed to convey the impression that Texas schools are low-performers. Often the writing is barely coherent. This bullet-point is pure statistical porn:

TEXAS LEGISLATIVE STUDY: 79 percent of 4th graders in families with low incomes were at a basic performance level on math in comparison to 95 percent of whites.

Presumably, that is meant to show that white kids in Texas are doing better than kids from low-income families. But that would be true in every state, including states which had nothing but white kids!

Meanwhile, a large percentage of white kids in Texas come from those very same low-income families! This is incoherent, incompetent work. It exists for one reason—to convey an unflattering impression about the performance of Texas schools among low-income and minority children.

In fact, Texas scores high among low-income and minority kids as compared to the other states. But a reader is never told any such thing at any point in Collins’ book, or in the highly propagandistic “Texas on the Brink.”

At a second point, “Texas on the Brink.” presents data from the NAEP concerning achievement gaps. This starts on page 240 in Collins’ book.

The presentation is grossly misleading.

The report simply presents the gaps observed on the 2009 NAEP. For fourth and eighth grade reading and math, the report shows how much higher white students in Texas scored as compared to black and Hispanic students.

Those achievement gaps do exist. In eighth-grade math, to cite one example, the gap between white and Hispanic students in Texas was 24 points on the NAEP scale.

It would be a better world if those gaps didn’t exist. It’s important to remind citizens that these gaps exist (although they’ve been getting smaller). But this report presents the gaps without noting a very key point—in Texas, that achievement gap is occurring at a very high level as compared to most other states.

Example:

Alabama has a smaller achievement gap in eighth grade math. But Alabama's white and Hispanic kids are both scoring roughly twenty points below their peers in Texas! Meanwhile, Massachusetts has a larger gap than Texas—the second largest gap in the nation. But its gap is occurring at a very high level, with both its white and its Hispanic kids scoring above the national average.

It’s important to document those gaps. But achievement gaps aren’t the only measure of a state’s performance—unless you’re doing the kind of work found all through this horrible book.

When it comes to the public schools, “Texas on the Brink” cherry-picks its data furiously. As such, it fit the unholy template of this horrible, unholy book.

People who read Gail Collins’ book are grossly misled about Texas schools. That means that they’re also grossly misled about the beautiful children and hard-working teachers found within those schools.

Those children and teachers seem to be doing something right, especially in math, as compared to their national peers. A decent person might want to try to figure out what that might be.

Collins isn’t that person. She isn’t even decent enough to tell you that Texas schools are high achievers, after you disaggregate test scores. In fairness, we’ll guess that she didn’t know that. If she knew, she wasn’t telling.

Manifestly, Gail Collins doesn’t seem to care about Texas kids. Collins only seems to loves the thrust of her dumb, ugly novel.

Tomorrow: Ruminations on a very old novel

Massachusetts and Texas in reading: As shown above, Texas schools score especially well in math. On the 2011 NAEP, its three major student groups scored near the top of the nation, as did students in widely-heralded Massachusetts.

After you disaggregate test scores, Texas kids run neck-and-neck with their Bay State peers! Texas doesn’t do quite as well in reading, although its students still rank high among the fifty states:

Texas and Massachusetts, 2011 NAEP
Grade 4 reading, rank among the fifty states:
White kids: Massachusetts 1, Texas 10
Black kids: Massachusetts 3, Texas 7
Hispanic kids: Massachusetts 7, Texas 14

Grade 8 reading, rank among the fifty states:
White kids: Massachusetts 3, Texas 13
Black kids: Massachusetts 7, Texas 10
Hispanic kids: Texas 23, Massachusetts 39

As compared to their peers, Texas students score high in reading, very high in math. No reader would ever dream such a thing from reading Collins’ book.

More greatest tales of past White House debates!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2012

Dick Nixon won on the radio: On Saturday, we may have overstated a bit concerning the press corps’ Standard Tales from Past Presidential Debates.

We said there were maybe a dozen such tales. The best number may be smaller.

Last Friday night, Anderson Cooper rattled a list of the Standard Tales the children haul out at this time of the year. These are the seven he treated:

The mainstream press corps’ Standard Tales from Past Presidential Debates
1960: Richard Nixon “sweat[s] profusely under the hot studio lights.”
1976: Gerald Ford makes a ridiculous statement about Soviet domination of Poland.
1980: Ronald Reagan wins the election by saying to Carter, in jocular fashion, “There you go again.”
1984: Reagan cinches re-election by telling a joke about Mondale’s age.
1988: Michael Dukakis fails to punch Bernie Shaw right in the nose.
1992: President Bush “deliberately looks at his watch,” blowing his chance for re-election.
2000: Al Gore “sighs over and over again. And Bush, the underdog, surprises by winning the debate and of course, the election.”

As matters stand, those have become the Magnificent Seven—the mainstream press corps’ Standard Tales from Past Presidential Debates. To complete the official list, you must include “You’re no Jack Kennedy” and “Who am I? Why am I here?” from vice-presidential debates.

Looking at those standard tales, you get a dispiriting look at the way our official “journalism” works. To judge from this official list, there has never been a winning claim about some serious matter during a White House debate!

With the exception of Gerald Ford’s gaffe, all the iconic events involve “body language,” quips and jokes, or matters of physical appearance and perceived temperament. This provides an unfortunate map to the soul of the modern “press corps.”

These are the moments your “journalists” recall when they think back on our White House debates! Put another way, those are the moments they and their colleagues chose to stress in the aftermath of these debates.

Exaggerating wildly, they love to say that Gore “perpetually sighed” in that first debate with Bush. They don’t say what he was sighing about. And they cling to their childish tales, no matter if they’ve been debunked.

The basic facts will get rearranged to give their silly novels more punch. Example:

Cooper’s claim to the side, Candidate Bush didn’t “win the debate” at which Candidate Gore so memorably sighed. But here’s a more famous example:

On September 7, two AP reporters filed a preview of this year’s election. In their section on presidential debates, Donna Cassata and Connie Cass began with a hoary old tale:

CASSTA AND CASS (9/7/12): With debates, it's important to watch as well as listen. Despite hours of study and practice to get their best lines down pat, it's sometimes actions, not words that prove memorable. Remember 1960, when people listening on the radio were certain Richard Nixon had won a debate, while those watching TV awarded it squarely to John F. Kennedy.

Nixon won on the radio! He only lost among TV viewers because of his lousy makeup! This hoary old tale was debunked long ago, but many reporters still recite it. The AP was still advancing this groaner at the start of last month.

Once the chimps have a story they like, that hoary old tale never dies. In the case of their Standard Tales from Past White House Debates, this means that the journalists must execute two key assignments:

They must erase the role they themselves played in creating this Famous Debate Event. And they must avoid the basic facts that undermine their preferred tale.

Tomorrow, we’ll see Cooper pretend that public reaction made these famous events so important. In all cases, these silly old groaners must be blamed on reactions of the voters.

According to edicts of Hard Pundit Law, these famous events became so important because of the way the public reacted. As always:

If you hear the press corps tell it, the press corps itself wasn’t there!

Dick Nixon looked great on the radio: Did Nixon win that debate on the radio? There's no real evidence that this occurred.

For a brief treatment of the debunking, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/26/08.

DISAGGREGATION NATION: Collins in Illinois!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2012

Part 4—A grossly misleading book tour: Friend, do you want to use test scores to compare the performance of two different school districts? Do you want to compare the performance of the schools in two different states?

If you want to make that kind of comparison, you have to “disaggregate” those scores! You have to make a good faith effort to compare similar student populations from one district or state to the next.

Some districts are full of high-income kids; other districts struggle with the challenges of poverty and/or with the backwash of our racial history. It makes no sense to compare test scores unless you try to compare results among roughly comparable groups of kids.

Persistently, Gail Collins fails to perform this basic task in her new, unfortunate book, As Texas Goes.

In her book, Collins devotes a great deal of attention to the Texas schools. But there is no sign that she knows a key fact about those schools:

Texas schools are consistent high-achievers—if we disaggregate test scores!

Minority kids in Texas schools persistently outperform their peers around the nation. Especially in math, they tend do so by wide margins. (White kids in Texas routinely outscore their peers in other states too.) But there is no sign that Collins knows these things, even though she devotes three chapters in her book to the Texas schools.

Despite praising the wonders of disaggregation, Collins persistently fails to engage in the practice! As a result, she creates a gross misimpression about the performance of Texas schools.

And uh-oh! She continued to spread this misimpression as she conducted her book tour.

Good lord! On June 10, Collins appeared at the Chicago Tribune book festival, where she was interviewed by columnist Mary Schmich. At one point, Collins warned her Chicago audience about the terrible job Texas is doing with its Hispanic kids.

Collins’ comments created a gross misimpression about the performance of kids in the Texas schools. In these comments, Collins is addressing the Illinois residents who came to see her speak.

To watch the full session, click here:

COLLINS (6/10/12): Texas is more sane when it comes to Hispanic integration than many parts at least of the border part of this country. But what it’s not done is to integrate—two things, what it’s not done:

It has not integrated its Hispanic residents into its political and business power structure in the way you would expect by now. And two, it’s not doing the job of educating young Hispanic children that it needs to do if they’re going to become critical skilled workers for the next generation.

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

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

In the future, ten percent of the work force of America is going to be Texas born, bred and educated. And unless they do a better job than they’re doing now, that’s when we all go south.

Using some unfortunate language, Collins warned that “we all go south” unless Texas starts educating its Hispanic kids more successfully. She seemed to suggest that Illinois residents were getting ripped off by Texas under current arrangements.

According to Collins, Illinois residents have been paying good money to make their universities top-tier. But those Texans! They’ve been stealing the state’s university grads—and Texas hasn’t been “doing the job of educating young Hispanic children that it needs to do if they’re going to become critical skilled workers for the next generation.”

Collins told this pleasing tale to a northern liberal audience. We’ll guess that she had never examined the test scores from last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federal program she herself has described as the best testing program we have. (Everyone else says that too, for perfectly obvious reasons.)

How well are Hispanic students in Texas performing as compared to their peers in Illinois? Here are some data from last year’s NAEP (fuller data below). We also include the state of New York, for a reason we’ll lay out below:

Hispanic students, eighth-grade math, 2011 NAEP
Texas: Second in the nation (of 46 eligible states)
Illinois: Twentieth in the nation
New York: Thirty-ninth in the nation

Texas: 283.21 average score
Illinois: 271.67
New York: 262.80
(National average for Hispanics: 269.45)

By a very rough rule of thumb, ten points on the NAEP scale is often said to equal one academic year. By that very rough measure, Hispanic eighth-graders in Texas scored more than a year ahead of their Illinois counterparts on this “gold standard” test.

By that very rough rule of thumb, they scored two years ahead of New York!

(Question: Which of those states’ “young Hispanic children” seem to have the best shot at “becoming critical skilled workers for the next generation?” We’ll let you decide.)

Just a guess: As she warned her fans in Illinois about the brown peril to the south, Collins had never laid eyes on those comparative test scores. We’ll guess that she had no idea that Hispanic children in Texas schools score near the top of the nation when compared to their peers—that they typically score well ahead of their peers in Illinois and New York.

Can we talk? On this, the gold standard of educational testing, Texas schools are high-achievers—and they’ve been so for at least the last fifteen years! But we’ll guess that Collins didn’t know that when she wrote her unfortunate book. There is no sign that she has ever dirtied her mitts “disaggregating” those test scores.

We mentioned New York because Collins did, near the end of her book.

In the closing pages of As Texas Goes, Collins repeats a bunch of her favorite statistics—statistics which give a misleading picture of the performance of Texas students and schools.

None of her data have been disaggregated! After misleading her readers again, she offers what follows. This is her book’s closing paragraph:

COLLINS (page 192): The modern battle for the soul of Texas began with Ross Perot and his [education] commission, and it was fought over the question of whether all the state’s children would be seriously, rigorously, and perhaps even expensively, educated, or whether those privileges would be reserved for a wealthier, mostly Anglo minority while the masses of Texas young people just learned to be literate enough for manual labor and the low-end side of the service economy. Right now, Texas seems to need a leader who’s ready to draw the line and dare the people to step over. Victory or death.

Texas needs a leader, Collins says—but so does the New York Times. It’s an embarrassment to see a high-ranking journalist publish material like this—material which is, at its heart, pure journalistic porn.

In that closing paragraph, Collins talks a pleasing game about the way those mossbacks in Texas are keeping “the masses of Texas young people just...literate enough for manual labor and the low-end side of the service economy.” As she typed those insulting words about all those Texas kids, we’ll guess she had no idea that those non-Anglo Texas kids tend to outscore their peers in the various (northern) states.

People like Collins have done this for centuries. (They have always had their counterparts in the south.) A few pages later, she offers this grossly misleading tract as she ends her book’s Epilogue:

COLLINS (page 195): So here we are. Texas can use its great advantages—the space, the cheap housing, the exploding population—to create a model of possibilities for the twenty-first century. It can prepare its young people so well that in a generation they’ll be taking off to fill jobs all around the country, the way places like New York and Illinois are sending their college graduates to Texas now. Or it can just demonstrate how easy it is to create a two-tiered economy in which the failing underclass looks resentfully at the happy sliver on the top.

The rest of the country can’t do all that much to dictate where Texas goes, what with states’ rights, states’ rights, states’ rights. But if Texas goes south, it’s taking us along.

If only! If only Texas could “take Collins along”—and dump her off south of the border!

From that condescending passage, would anyone dream that those “young people” in Texas routinely outscore their counterparts in the two northern states Collins praises? That they blow those states away in math, largely outscore them in reading? That the “underclass” in New York State’s public schools are vastly outscored by those Texas kids?

Collins talks a good game in that passage. There’s no sign she has any idea what she’s talking about.

Collins sneers at Texas schools and students throughout. In this, her Epilogue’s closing passage, she once again paints those northern states as victims of Texas’ unreconstructed ways. Poor New York and Illinois! They’re sending their college grads to Texas! While Texas allows a barely literate underclass to form!

As one quickly sees from exploring NAEP data, that Texas “underclass” scores way ahead of its counterparts in Illinois and New York! There is no sign in Collins’ book that she actually knows this.

To state the obvious, every one of the fifty states needs to do a better job educating its low-income kids and its kids who are black or Hispanic. (On the NAEP, scores have been rising for all three groups over the past twenty years.) But what a ridiculous thing it is—to see a slacker like Collins lecture hard-working teachers in Texas about their state’s “underclass!”

Tomorrow, we’ll review one more place in her book where Collins seems to go out of her way to mislead readers about the performance of Texas schools. But how sad! That a well-known, high-profile “journalist” is too lazy, too uncaring, too locked into scripts to bother performing even the most basic journalistic tasks.

Texas needs a leader, Collins says. But then again, so does the Times. What kind of newspaper tolerates journalistic malfeasance like this?

Tomorrow: The contents of Collins’ appendix!

Further comparative data: The NAEP makes it amazingly easy to compare student performance in the fifty states. But as we’ve told you many times, the modern “journalist” avoids information as Dracula shrinks from the light.

It can’t be done! You can’t make information so accessible that these slackers will ever consult it! They work from their scripts, nothing more.

To make state-by-state comparisons of your own, just click here. Then click on “State Comparisons.” (For access to more detailed comparisons, make your second click on “Main NAEP.” After that, you’re on your own.)

But uh-oh! After you disaggregate the data, you will see that Texas students outscored their peers in Illinois and New York in almost every department last year.

Here are the national rankings for the three states in both grades tested, in both reading and math. Especially in math, Texas students tend to score right at the top of the nation.

We’d love to know why that is happening. Collins shows no sign of knowing that these data exist:

Students in Texas, Illinois and New York: Rankings among the fifty states, 2011 NAEP
Grade 4 reading:
White kids: Texas 10, New York 12, Illinois 14
Black kids: Texas 7, New York 13, Illinois 36
Hispanic kids: Texas 14, New York 19, Illinois 31

Grade 4 math:
White kids: Texas 6, Illinois 23, New York 39
Black kids: Texas 4, New York 29, Illinois 33
Hispanic kids: Texas 11, Illinois 36, New York 39

Grade 8 reading:
White kids: New York 6, Illinois 11, Texas 13
Black kids: Texas 10, New York 12, Illinois 17
Hispanic kids: Illinois 14, Texas 23, New York 33

Grade 8 math:
White kids: Texas 3, Illinois 21, New York 30
Black kids: Texas 2, New York 18, Illinois 27
Hispanic kids: Texas 2, Illinois 20, New York 39

Eighth-grade reading was a wash. Otherwise, it was all Texas—and just look at eighth-grade math!

But from reading Collins’ awful book, would anyone even dream that any such rankings exist? Why is work like this OK with the New York Times? Second question:

Why is horrible work of this type OK with the liberal world? What keeps Collins in business?

The mainstream press corps’ Standard Tales from Past Presidential Debates!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2012

Anderson Cooper recites: Wednesday evening, the Obama-Romney debates begin.

For that reason, our pseudo-journalists are busy reciting their guild’s Standard Tales from Past Presidential Debates.

Last evening, Anderson Cooper read almost all the standard scripts. Along the way, he offered these nicely-twinned groaners

COOPER (9/28/12): Body language plays a part in the presidential debates. In 1992, George H. W. Bush deliberately looks at his watch and he pays for it when the audience and voters see it as disrespectful.

Body language makes a difference in the debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush as well. Gore sighs over and over again. And Bush, the underdog, surprises by winning the debate and, of course, the election.

Body language! At any rate:

As recited by Cooper, one of these scripted tales is foolish. The other tale is false.

Let’s start with false. According to Cooper, Candidate Gore sighed over and over again at his first debate with Candidate Bush. Apparently as a result, “Bush, the underdog, surprise[d] by winning the debate.”

Increasingly, that last claim is part of the script, but it’s just basically false. After that first Bush-Gore debate, five major news orgs conducted “overnight polls,” surveying people who watched the debate.

Gore was the winner in all five surveys. He won by an average margin of ten points.

Cooper works for CNN. Gore won CNN’s overnight poll, 56 percent to 42—unless you listen to Cooper today, in which case Gore of course lost.

By the way: Did Gore “sigh over and over again” at that debate? On balance, we’d have to say no. If you want to test this question yourself, you can watch that full 90-minute debate at C-Span.

We watched that tape about six months ago. You can hear a few sighs or intakes of breath—but in all honesty, we’d say that they’re few and far between. If you watch the full 90 minutes, you can decide for yourself.

Did George Bush win that first debate? Only after the press corps began playing videotaped loops of Gore’s troubling sighs (with the volume cranked, of course). And only after the press corps invented several new “lies” by Gore.

Today, the press corps tends to focus on the alleged sighs, not on the invented lies—but they largely invented both these themes. And just for the record: Before the propaganda took hold, Gore won all five overnight surveys of people who watched the debate.

The second part of that passage from Cooper is just foolish—monstrously so.

No guild member can review past debates without recalling the terrible time when Candidate Bush stole a look at his watch. This tale is profoundly foolish.

Can we talk? People look at their watches all the time. That’s pretty much why they buy them.

Beyond that, performers, or competitors in timed events, will often want to know how far along the event has gone. There’s nothing odd about a debater checking his watch—unless the “press corps” has a story it very much wants to tell.

In that campaign, the “press corps” wanted to say these words: “President Bush is out of touch.” Twenty years later, Bush’s disrespectful conduct is part of Official Guild Lore.

Today, candidates routinely remove their watches before they start their debates! They do so lest this gang of chimps tell a tale about their body language, a tale in which they too are ruined because of a glance at a watch.

There are perhaps a dozen Standard Tales about Past Presidential Debates. Each day as Wednesday night approaches, we’ll show you another press corps member reciting some silly/false tale.

Disagreeing (on balance) with Kevin Drum's drift!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2012

GOP polling denial: Since returning from that federal bunker this Tuesday night, we have had our time grabbed away by a bit of a banking calamity.

For that reason, we haven’t been posting at normal volume. And we haven’t followed up on Wednesday’s post about Rachel Maddow and Elizabeth Warren.

See THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/26/12. But first, let’s consider Kevin Drum’s post about GOP polling denial.

As Obama seems to gain in the polls, a conservative blogger named Dean Chambers has started saying the network polls are fixed. Drum says that idea is nuts—and he says a bit more:

DRUM (9/28/12): Chambers doesn't even pretend that his approach has any rigor. He adopted it, he told BuzzFeed, after seeing a poll that "just didn't look right." After a closer look, he decided that none of the others looked right either. And what does he think accounts for this widespread blundering among the nation's pollsters? Not simple incompetence, Chambers says. It's all quite deliberate. "Any poll that says NBC, CBS, or ABC is going to be skewed and invested in trying to get this President re-elected," he explained.

This is, to put it bluntly, nuts. And it suggests a fundamental difference between left and right, one that Chris Mooney wrote about earlier this year in The Republican Brain. Neither side has a monopoly on sloppy number crunching or wishful thinking, but liberals, faced with a reality they didn't like, ended up accepting reality and deciding to learn more about it. That's the Nate Silver approach. Conservatives, faced with a reality they didn't like, invented a conspiracy theory to explain it and then produced an alternate reality more to their liking. It's a crude and transparently glib reality, but that's apparently what the true believers want.

We agree that Silver is a different cat from Chambers. Having said that, we think there’s an air of liberal triumphalism here that ought to be handled with care.

We read Mooney’s book about six months back—and we were surprised by what we found. We were struck by the amount of “motivated reasoning” which seemed to drive his insistence that the other tribe is driven by “motivated reasoning.”

We thought it was a very weak book—a sloppy French kiss to us liberals, to our liberal vanity.

Silver’s a different cat from Chambers. But as the liberal world continues to grow, we liberals have shown a taste for the sorts of blinkered analyses which have been driving the pseudo-right since Rush took over the world.

For our money, Maddow’s reports about Warren this week were striking examples of that unfortunate liberal drift.

The true belief isn’t all “over there.” We still plan to review those reports when we get the time.