MUHAMMAD ALI AND WHO GETS TO BE US: The elevated and the depressing!

FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2016

Conclusion—"I want to see the loser:" We loved last Friday's memorial service for Muhammad Ali.

We saw some of the most elevated speeches we've seen in a very long time—speeches about the desire to let everyone be us.

We also saw some humorous speeches which advanced similar ideals. One was delivered by Billy Crystal, a comedian who breaks the rules of his guild 1) by routinely being funny and 2) by being appropriate.

Crystal was funny this day, as he typically is. He also described the ideals which were brilliantly articulated by Attalah Shabazz, by Natasha Mundkur and by Lonnie Ali.

Complete with impressions of Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali, Crystal told a story about the way he first met Ali, way back in 1974, when only one of the men was famous. Crystal went on to explain where their friendship led:

CRYSTAL (6/10/16): He came to anything I asked him to do. Most memorable: He was an honorary chairman for a dinner at a very important event where I was being honored by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He did all of this promotion for it. He came to the dinner. He sat with my family the entire evening. He took photographs with everybody; the most famous Muslim man in the world honoring his Jewish friend.

Because he was there, we raised a great deal of money, and I was able to use it to endow the university in Jerusalem with something that I told him about. It was something he loved the theory of, and it thrives to this day. It’s called Peace Through the Performing Arts. It’s a theater group where Israeli, Arab and Palestinian actors, writers and directors all work together in peace, creating original works of art. And that doesn’t happen without him.

We hope that Jerusalem theater group works with young people like the 19-year-old Mundkur, who made such a dramatic speech last Friday. We're grateful that we got to see her inspiring, five-minute presentation. She joined Shabazz and Lonnie Ali in making the most uplifting public statements we've seen in a very long time.

Shabazz, Mundkur and Ali spoke about the desire to see everyone get to be us. The thrill we derived from their speeches has been balanced this week by ESPN's depressing, five-part "Made in America" film, which drenches us in the depressing culture of narrative, tribe and division.

(Yes, we just finished watching the deeply depressing Part 5 of the ESPN production. For some reason, the five installments became available through our free On Demand service before they aired on ESPN.)

ESPN examined aspects of our current American culture, which is deeply invested in tribe and tribal script. In our view, our own liberal tribe is deeply invested in tribal identity and script.

This exclusionary culture doesn't just obtain Over There, among Those People, The Others! Increasingly, we liberals are drenched in that culture too.

Last Friday, some brilliant speakers spoke about the desire to break down tribal separations. That said, one of the simplest lessons from the service came from a second speech which was largely humorous in tone.

This speech was delivered by John Ramsey, a Louisville sports radio host and a friend of Muhammad Ali's.

Billy Crystal is nationally famous; John Ramsey isn't. But he gave a superbly humorous speech, just as Crystal did.

For ourselves, we like our moral lessons extremely simple. Ramsey delivered one such lesson as he told a story about a surprising request.

"You know, Muhammad was blessed with many gifts," Ramsey said, "and he was a wise and faithful steward of those gifts." Having offered that as his framework, he launched a story about a trip to the Sydney Olympics:

RAMSEY (6/10/16): I remember, back in 2000, I made a trip to the Summer Olympics with Muhammad, and one day he decided we were going to go see a boxing match.

And I remember, we're ringside, the American wins, 15,000 people are chanting, "USA! USA!" And I thought, "This is my Olympic moment."

You know, I was filled with patriotic pride?

After the American won, Ramsey was filled with patriotic pride. According to Ramsey, Ali posed with the winning fighter, then made a surprising request:

RAMSEY (continuing directly): The boxer came down from the ring, he took the obligatory picture with Muhammad, the fist-to-chin shot.

Hundreds of photographers from around the world were taking pictures. You know, thousands of people, cheering for Muhammad and this victorious fighter.

And then Muhammad leaned down to me, whispered in my ear, said:

"I want to see the loser."

I said, "Excuse me?"

"I want to see the loser."

Ali had taken the standard photographs with the victorious fighter. Those photographs can still be seen on line.

But Muhammad Ali, "The Greatest," also wanted to see the loser! In the last part of the story which we'll post, Ramsey begins to explain what happened next:

RAMSEY (continuing directly): So I motioned over to an Olympic official and I said, "You know, Muhammad wants to see the loser. Can we go to the losing locker room?"

And we get to the losing locker room and there's not tens of thousands of people, there's not any photographers, there's just a kid in the corner on a stool, he's got a towel around his neck, he's got a bloody mouse under his eye. This has got to be the lowest point of his athletic career...

And the vibe in that room was literally the lowest of low.

As he continued, Ramsey described what happened that day in the loser's locker room. He ended with a humorous story about something Ali said later on in the car.

Here at THE HOWLER, we like the kind of people who want to see the loser. We're going to guess that Natasha Mundkur knows what it is to feel for the loser. From that point, it's a fairly short step to letting more people be us.

If you want to see John Ramsey's speech, just click here; he starts at 2:16:00. He followed the transcendent Mundkur and did a superlative job.

(He too does a top-notch Ali impression.)

For the record, the victorious American fighter with whom Ali posed seems to have been Clarence Vinson. He went on to win the bronze medal in the bantamweight division at the Sydney Olympics.

The fight took place on September 16, 2000. For the AP report, click here.

"The loser" that day was Rachid Bouaita, a French fighter who was eliminated by Vinson in this, the competition's first round.

Last Friday, Ramsey explained what happened when Ali went to see Bouaita in a deserted room. We can't verify his story, but it involves an extremely simple moral lesson.

In our view, such simple lessons are the best. Next week, we'll continue to ask a simple question:

What might our own liberal tribe learn from stories like this?

Tomorrow: Where does "identity" come from?

Deep South watch: The Times revisits the Cleveland schools!

THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2016

Cleveland, Mississippi, that is: On May 18, the New York Times published a news report about the public schools of Cleveland, Mississippi. To read that report, click here.

More specifically, the Times was reporting the order of a federal judge concerning the racial enrollment patterns in the city's middle schools and high schools. (The city has two of each.)

As we noted in real time, we thought the Times report was grossly misleading. And last weekend, sure enough!

Last Saturday, the Times published a second, much more detailed report about the same subject. This new report appeared atop the Times' front page. It was much more informative, and much less misleading, than the first report in May.

Why don't we just come out and say it? Once again, your incomparable Daily Howler had banged out those results!

Let's just talk Tom Turkey! Richard Fausset's front-page report examines the way some southern cities are trying to keep their public school systems from becoming all black.

Readers can judge such strategies as they will. But in the first report in May, Times readers were given little way to know how the Cleveland schools were operating at all.

As we noted in May, that first report came straight outta a framework the New York Times dearly loves. In such reports, it's still 1955 in the Deep South, and the hopeless, benighted yahoos and bigots are still (in this case) trying to run a dual school system.

As you can learn in the new report, the matter isn't nearly that simple. We suspect this new report was a "non-correction correction"—an unstated acknowledgment by the Times that its first report was grossly misleading.

Which it plainly was.

We read the new report with interest. Decent people ought to care about the efforts of school districts like this, even if it means that we don't get to read one of our favorite novels, the one about the crackers who aren't all decent and fine, the way we are Up Here.

(The New York Times loves that novel.)

Liberal readers might even have a rare experience when they read Fausset's front-page report. From his report, we might begin to see that black leaders in some of these Southern communities are crafting and endorsing the policies the Times is inclined to distort.

Beyond that, liberal readers can even imagine, from a passage like the one shown below, that people on the other team may conceivably be right in their judgments every once in a while. In this passage, a Cleveland resident rolls his eyes at the supposed wisdom of a federal judge:

FAUSSET (6/11/16): [W]ould a change in the status quo lead to progress or turmoil? Saul Brown, 50, a black resident, contemplated the possibilities on a warm, quiet weeknight in front of an east-side grocery store.

Mr. Brown graduated from East Side High, and a son is enrolled there now. In general, he said, he was pleased with the system in place now. ''We done worked it out ourselves,'' he said. ''By messing with it, they're going to pull off all kinds of scabs.''

In that passage, a Cleveland resident complains about the intervention of a pointy-headed federal judge. But the resident in question is black! There goes a favorite old novel!

Would that judge's "desegregation order" really improve the Cleveland schools? In our view, it's not at all clear that it would. At any rate, Fausset did an excellent job laying out the basic facts of this difficult case.

Those facts include the funding of the schools in question and the matter of enrollment patterns and policies. According to Fausset's report, none of these facts turn out the way the novel says they should.

In May, the Times report was a tired old novel, a novel Times readers are trained to enjoy. This new report seemed like a real attempt to describe the facts of the case.

It matters what happens in districts like this! In its unacknowledged non-correction correction of an earlier bungled report, we'd have to say that the New York Times has started to get it right.

MUHAMMAD ALI AND WHO GETS TO BE US: Is Lonnie Ali allowed to say that?

THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2016

Part 4—Among liberals, who gets to be us: Is Lonnie Ali allowed to say those things?

At last Friday's memorial service for her late husband, a range of speakers addressed an age-old question: Who gets to be us?

The answer was explicitly stated all through the service: Everyone gets to be us!

For our money, the two most impressive speakers that day were Attalah Shabazz, the eldest child of Malcolm X, and 19-year-old Natasha Mundkur, a college sophomore—and they were extremely impressive.

Shabazz and Mundkur each made it pretty clear that everyone gets to be us. Two days ago, we posted this part of Shabazz's deeply impressive address, in which she quoted Muhammad Ali's own words:

SHABAZZ (6/10/16): A unifying topic was faith—an ecumenical faith, respect for faith, all faiths, even if belonging to one specific religion, or none. The root of such being the gift of faith itself.

So in his own words, he [Ali] wrote:

"We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and yet they all contain truth, truth expressed in different ways and forms and times.

"It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe all people are part of one family.

"For if you love God, you can't love only some of his children."

Speakers, including Lonnie Ali, also stressed the idea that every "race" gets to be us. That said, is Lonnie Ali allowed to say some of the things she said?

Uh-oh! Yesterday, we posted excerpts from Lonnie Ali's address. Among other things, she said her late husband "saw the nobility of all races, as witnessed here today."

That witness was extensive. But Lonnie Ali said some other things too. Is she allowed to say them?

At one point, Lonnie Ali stressed the fact that her husband had come from a two-parent home. She stressed the fact that her husband had been helped, in an existential way, when he was only twelve, by the intervention of a Louisville cop.

("We cannot forget a Louisville police officer, Joe Elsby Martin, who embraced a young 12-year-old boy in distress when his bicycle was stolen. Joe Martin handed young Cassius Clay the keys to a future in boxing he could scarcely have imagined.")

Later, she specifically said that the policeman in question had been a white cop. She even said that her late husband "had teachers who understood his dreams and wanted him to succeed"—and that, after he won his Olympic gold medal, "a group of successful businessmen in Louisville, called the Louisville Sponsoring Group, saw his potential and helped him build a runway to launch his career."

Is Lonnie Ali allowed to say those things? Especially in the contemporary context, some of those statements can be seen as emerging from a "conservative" playbook.

And then, dear God, she even said what is shown below! Is she allowed to say this?

ALI: His passing and its meaning for our time should not be overlooked. As we face uncertainty in a world and divisions at home as to who we are as a people, Muhammad’s life provides useful guidance. Muhammad was not one to give up on the power of understanding, the boundless possibilities of love and the strength of our diversity. He counted among his friends people of all political persuasions, saw truth in all faiths and the nobility of all races as witnessed here today.

"He counted among his friends people of all political persuasions?" Apparently, one such friend was Orrin Hatch, who spoke about Muhammad Ali's participation in Mormon charity projects in Utah.

Was Ali allowed to have such friends? Is his wife allowed to discuss such friendships?

Let's extend the reach of our questions a bit. Is it even a good idea to have friends of all political persuasions? Should it be permitted?

Do people of such "persuasions" actually get to be us? Did the late Muhammad Ali finally go one step too far?

We ask this question at a time when our own liberal tribe seems increasingly drawn to various types of hatreds. By this juncture, we don't just hate those in the other tribe. Increasingly, we seem inclined to find the other within our own tents too. For the latest example, click here.

This has always been part of the human condition. It's also "human, all too human" to spot the hatred in the other tribe, while failing to see its existence over here, among one's own.

Increasingly, we think we liberals need to ask ourselves an ancient question:

Who gets to be us? Who will we instead decide to brand as the other?

Next week, we plan to explore our own tribe's tendency toward otherization. We plan to do so by looking at a puzzling post by a very smart writer—a puzzling, yet rather typical, post which appeared just a few weeks ago.

Lonnie Ali seems to be generous in her assessment of others. She seemed to say her late husband viewed others that way too.

Is she allowed to say what she said? Can we possibly learn from her statements?

Tomorrow: "I want to see the loser"

The world's so-called alleged races: Lonnie Ali also said what's shown below. She seemed to be alluding to our inclination to believe in the existence of "races:"

ALI: You know, all of his life, Muhammad was fascinated by travel. He was childlike in his encounter with new surroundings and new people. He took his world championship fights to the ends of the earth, from the South Pacific to Europe to the Belgian Congo...

The boy from Grand Avenue in Louisville, Ky., grew in wisdom from his journeys. He discovered something new, that the world really wasn’t black and white at all. It was filled with many shades of rich colors, or languages and religions. And as he moved with ease around the world, the rich and powerful were drawn to him. But he was drawn to the poor and the forgotten.

Muhammad fell in love with the masses, and they fell in love with him. In the diversity of men and their faiths, Muhammad saw the presence of God.

Does everybody get to be us? More on this question next week.

Successful teacher watch: Kevin Drum makes a very good point!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2016

We'll see him and raise him one: Kevin Drum makes an excellent point today about the way public school teachers routinely get discussed.

He starts by quoting this passage from a typical piece about teacher quality. The piece was published by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute:

PETHOKOUKIS (6/13/16): Among the many studies cited: a University of Melbourne review of more than 65,000 papers on the effects of various classroom interventions. It concludes that what matters most is teacher expertise: “All of the 20 most powerful ways to improve school-time learning identified by the study depended on what a teacher did in the classroom.”

Another paper found that students taught by teachers in the top 10% for effectiveness learn 1.5 years’ worth of material in an academic year, three times as much as those taught by teachers in the bottom 10%....The big question, then, is to what extent good teaching can be taught. Are high-quality teachers born that way or can they be made?

"Duh," Drum repeatedly says. In what profession isn't it true that the top ten percent of practitioners are more effective than the bottom ten percent?

This distinction in quality is constantly cited with respect to teachers, Drum correctly says. But you never hear this type of complaint about people in other professions.

The denigration of public school teachers is a mandated press corps script. And yes, it's true—several such scripts turn on the alleged difference in performance between the top X percent of teachers and the bottom X percent.

(A few years back, Nicholas Kristof was routinely citing one of these standard semi-complaints.)

Drum is making an excellent point—but the problem here may be worse than he thinks. Here's a potential additional problem with this type of comparison:

When you see teachers evaluated by test scores, researchers are generally working from student performance on statewide achievement tests. But uh-oh! Those are the tests on which we've seen a fair amount of outright cheating over the past forty years.

We're speaking here about outright cheating, not about "teaching to the test." Here's why the possible existence of outright cheating creates a problem:

When researchers work with data from statewide tests, they have no obvious way to know if some of the "most effective" teachers actually cheated to produce their students' high scores.

Presumably, some of these teachers did cheat—but researchers will have no obvious way to know which teachers did so. To the extent that cheating occurs, it will exaggerate the apparent difference between the "most effective" teachers and their slacker counterparts.

We're often struck by the way educational experts and education reporters ignore the existence of cheating on standardized tests. Back on May 3, this was one of the problems with Monica Rich's high-profile report in the New York Times, a report about performance patterns in the nation's many school systems.

Rich focused on the connection between student socioeconomic status and student achievement. We spent several weeks reviewing some of the larger problems with her analyses, which were massively botched.

We never got around to discussing the problem created by the presence of cheating. It seemed to raise its troubling head in these passages about school districts which produced surprisingly high test scores, given their students' relatively low SES:

RICH (5/3/16): The data was not uniformly grim. A few poor districts—like Bremen City, Ga., and Union City, N.J.—posted higher-than-average scores. This suggests that strong schools could help children from poor families succeed.

[...]

In one school district, Union City, N.J., students consistently performed about a third of a grade level above the national average on math and reading tests even though the median family income is just $37,000 and only 18 percent of parents have a bachelor's degree. About 95 percent of the students are Hispanic, and the vast majority qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Silvia Abbato, the district's superintendent, said she could not pinpoint any one action that had led to the better scores. She noted that the district uses federal funds to help pay for teachers to obtain graduate certifications as literacy specialists, and it sponsors biweekly parent nights with advice on homework help for children, nutrition and immigration status.

The district regularly revamps the curriculum and uses quick online tests to gauge where students need more help or teachers need to modify their approaches.

''It's not something you can do overnight,'' Ms. Abbato said. ''We have been taking incremental steps everywhere.''

Let's be clear. We know of no reason to think that test scores in these districts were caused by cheating, whether in whole or in part.

That said, we also can't say that cheating wasn't a factor, whether in these districts or in a few other major outliers. (The much-maligned Steubenville, West Virginia leaps out from Rich's first graphic).

We only note that Rich completely skips this possibility. Within the past few years, the problem of outright cheating on standardized tests finally achieved recognition as a potential and actual major problem—except in the New York Times, where Rich proceeds as if she's never heard a word about it.

It's generally assumed that cheating doesn't occur on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the widely-praised "gold standard" of domestic public school testing. That said, most researchers work with data from statewide testing programs, and outright cheating on these tests has been a problem for decades.

Education reporters and "educational experts" persistently act like they've never heard this—and in some cases, they probably haven't! At the New York Times, education reporting tends to be Potemkin all the way down.

Tomorrow: The Times presents an improved report on the Cleveland, Mississippi public schools

MUHAMMAD ALI AND WHO GETS TO BE US: "Friends of all political persuasions!"

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2016

Part 3—Lonnie Ali on the other: Muhammad Ali's memorial service took place before the recent events in Orlando.

It took place before Candidate Trump's remarks about those events. It took place before our own liberal world's remarks about Candidate Trump.

We thought the service featured an array of remarkable speakers. We've already cited xx Shabazz and 19-year-old Natasha Mundkur. For today, we'll suggest you consider about Lonnie Ali, Muhammad Ali's widow.

Recent events have raised eternal questions. Who gets to be thought of as us? How should we respond to the impulse to regard others as different—as other?

Like Shabazz and Mundkur, Lonnie Ali spoke to that point. She said many things in her speech which became directly relevant just a few days later.

This statement came early on. For the text of the speech, click here:

ALI (6/10/16): Muhammad wants us to see the face of his religion, al-Islam, true Islam, as the face of love. It was his religion that caused him to turn away from war and violence. For his religion, he was prepared to sacrifice all that he had and all that he was to protect his soul and follow the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So even in death, Muhammad has something to say.

We hadn't followed the events of Ali's later life. Perhaps for that reason, we were somewhat surprised by some of the other things Lonnie Ali said this day.

We were somewhat surprised by this. We're glad we tuned in to hear it:

ALI: Muhammad fell in love with the masses, and they fell in love with him. In the diversity of men and their faiths, Muhammad saw the presence of God. He was captivated by the work of the Dalai Lama. By Mother Teresa and church workers who gave their lives to protect the poor. When his mother died, he arranged for multiple faiths to be represented at her funeral. And he wanted the same for himself. We are especially grateful for the presence of the diverse faith leaders here today, and I would like to ask them to stand once more and be recognized.>

Up stood the dizzying array of faith leaders who had already spoken that day. When's the last time you saw a faith leader from the Onondaga Nation speaking his native language?

Many speakers, including Shabazz and Mundkur, stressed the embrace of the other this day. Lonnie Ali spoke directly to that point, in words which became more relevant as the weekend proceeded:

ALI: His passing and its meaning for our time should not be overlooked. As we face uncertainty in a world and divisions at home as to who we are as a people, Muhammad’s life provides useful guidance. Muhammad was not one to give up on the power of understanding, the boundless possibilities of love and the strength of our diversity. He counted among his friends people of all political persuasions, saw truth in all faiths and the nobility of all races as witnessed here today.

We'll return to one part of that statement. First, let's talk about so-called race.

We've long been amazed by the intellectual and ethical brilliance which emerged from black America in the face of our brutal racial history. We were amazed again last Friday as we pondered the moral sophistication which emerged from Jim Crow Louisville in the person of Muhammad Ali's wife.

Jim Crow emerged from a disastrous historical error—from the disastrous, erroneous claim that there were several kinds of people in this country, most specifically "black" and "white." We were struck by one part of Lonnie Ali's treatment of that error.

Early on, she described her late husband's childhood. For some people, mileage may differ from ours; those people aren't necessarily "wrong."

Having said that, we liked what she said in this early part of her speech:

ALI: It is only fitting that we gather in a city to which Muhammad always returned after his great triumphs. A city that has grown as Muhammad has grown. Muhammad never stopped loving Louisville, and we know that Louisville loves Muhammad. We cannot forget a Louisville police officer, Joe Elsby Martin, who embraced a young 12-year-old boy in distress when his bicycle was stolen. Joe Martin handed young Cassius Clay the keys to a future in boxing he could scarcely have imagined.

America must never forget that when a cop and an inner-city kid talk to each other, then miracles can happen.

Other things can happen too. That said, we were glad that Lonnie Ali stressed the hopeful this day.

Later, she expanded her treatment of that early experience. As she did, she reinforced an important old picture:

ALI: Even though surrounded by Jim Crow, he was born into a family with two parents that nurtured and encouraged him. He was placed on the path of his dreams by a white cop, and he had teachers who understood his dreams and wanted him to succeed. The Olympic gold medal came, and the world started to take notice.

As a child, her husband had been embraced by a white cop, she specifically said. She made a point of pointing this out, although, in one way, we'd say that her statement is wrong.

Was Joe Martin really white? Or is that part of an ancient error in vision and understanding? It all depends on how "identity" works, on where a person's "identity" comes from. On who gets seen as being different. On who gets to be us.

In the aftermath of Orlando, we're debating the question of who gets to be seen as us. We're discussing the ways some people may be seen or portrayed as the other.

According to Lonnie Ali, her late husband "wasn't one to give up on the strength of our diversity." Her late husband "counted among his friends people of all political persuasions," she said.

We liberals keep attacking Candidate Trump for the way he keeps creating the other. In our view, we're sometimes blunderbuss ourselves in the way we pursue this discussion.

It's certainly true that Candidate Trump can sometimes seem to create the other. For ourselves, we'll continue to ask a related question:

In what ways might we ourselves be engaged in similar conduct?

Tomorrow: "Conditioned response," the Times said

To watch Lonnie Ali's address: To watch Lonnie Ali's address, click here. She starts at 1:48:00.

Truth-in-campaigning watch: The New York Times (almost) gets it right!

TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2016

The New York Times gets it wrong: Donald J. Trump has uncorked some groaners and howlers in the past two days.

This morning, the New York Times took an unusual approach to this rather obvious fact. The Times reported this state of affairs as a fact, in a front-page news report.

In that front-page news report, Martin and Burns described Trump's speech about immigration. But doggone it! Even as they reported Trump's "misstatements and exaggerations," they seemed to maybe possibly make a few of their own:

MARTIN AND BURNS (6/14/16): Mr. Trump carefully read his remarks from a teleprompter and offered more detail than his stump speeches generally contain, but his speech was still rife with the sort of misstatements and exaggerations that have typified his campaign.

He repeatedly stretched the facts, for example, in describing the United States as overrun by dangerous migrants. He claimed the country has an “immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country,” brushing aside the entire customs and immigration enforcement infrastructure. And he asserted that there was a “tremendous flow” of Syrian refugees, when just 2,805 of them were admitted into the country from October to May, fewer than one-third of the 10,000 Syrians President Obama said the United States would accept this fiscal year.

Mr. Trump described the gunman in the Orlando shooting as “an Afghan,” though he was born an American citizen in New York City to parents who had emigrated from Afghanistan to the United States over three decades ago.

Did Candidate Trump really describe the gunman as "an Afghan?" As far as we know, he did not—and the Times provides no link to this alleged statement by Trump.

Meanwhile, were all those "stretches" by Trump fairly regarded as "stretches?" On cable news, Martin and Burns would almost surely encounter a fight about their characterizations.

It seems to us that Martin and Burns skipped some of the more obvious bogus statements from yesterday's speech. At the same time, they possibly took some liberties in their assessment of Trump's alleged misstatements and exaggerations.

That said, establishing the truth is hard. For better or worse, the New York Times' Timothy Egan doesn't seem to understand this extremely basic fact.

We refer to Egan's column from last Saturday's Times. It carried the exciting headline, "Lord of the Lies."

The headline was exciting. But early on, its author made a remarkably foolish suggestion:

EGAN (6/11/16): Trump lies about big things (there is no drought in California) and small things (his hair spray could not affect the ozone layer because it’s sealed within Trump Tower). He lies about himself, and the fake self he invented to talk about himself. He’s been shown to lie more than 70 times in a single event.

Given the scale of Trump’s mendacity and the stakes for the free world, it’s time that we go into the fall debates with a new rule—an instant fact-check on statements made by the candidates onstage. The Presidential Debate Commission should do what any first-grader with Google access can do, and call out lies before the words hit the floor.

Setting up a truth referee is not difficult. And while doing such a thing is unlikely to ensure that the debates would be substantive, it could at least guarantee a reality foundation at a time when fact-free speech is the language of the political class.

"Setting up a truth referee" for the fall debates "wouldn't be difficult?"

In fact, doing so would almost surely be completely impossible! The fact that Egan doesn't know this helps us see the remarkable cluelessness of our journalistic elites.

Let's start with the obvious. There is no way the two campaigns would ever agree on an instant fact-check commission! It's astounding to think that Egan doesn't know this.

In recent cycles, the two campaigns have fought for months about the simple question of who should moderate the fall debates. In this especially disputatious year, there is no way the campaigns would ever agree to "set up a truth referee."

Nor should they try to. Here's why:

First, we already have a pair of "truth referees" at our fall debates. We refer to 1) the moderator and 2) the opposing candidate.

In recent fall debates, each of these parties has occasionally served as a "truth referee." When such disputes arise, our TV pundits and our big newspapers immediately start 1) ignoring these factual disputes or 2) bungling their discussion of same.

That said, it isn't obvious that there's room for some additional instant replay official. What would be wrong with a "truth referee?" Let's start with this:

Most disputes don't take the simplistic form which can be easily settled. If a candidate says, "Boise is the capital of Utah," it can quickly be established that his or her statement is false. But most groaners by major candidates don't adopt this simple form.

Has Timothy Egan ever read an actual "fact check" post? They often go on at considerable length. Establishing the truth is hard. As a general matter, it couldn't be done in a crawl across the TV screen in real time during debates.

Egan's remarkable lack of cluefulness is obvious throughout his piece. For starters, he seems to use the term "lie" interchangeably with the term "misstatement."

Few conflations are dumber. At least in theory, you can settle a dispute about a mere misstatement. You can never settle a dispute about a "lie."

People like Egan prefer the first term 1) because it's exciting and 2) because they're unintelligent. That said, disputes about "lies" rarely move past the question of motive to the ultimate question of fact.

Misstatements aren't necessarily lies! Everybody understands this fact except our upper-end journalists! That said, our major journalists typically know almost nothing. As an example of what we mean, Egan continues like this:

EGAN: Professional truth-seekers have never seen anything like Trump, surely the most compulsive liar to seek high office. To date, the nonpartisan PolitiFact has rated 76 percent of his statements lies—57 percent false or mostly false, and another 19 percent “Pants on Fire” fabrications. Only 2 percent—2 percent!—of his assertions were rated true, and another 6 percent mostly true. Hillary Clinton, who is not exactly known for fealty to the facts, had a 28 percent total lie score, including a mere 1 percent Pants on Fire.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has dinged Trump with 30 of its Four Pinocchio ratings—lying 70 percent of the time. Trump cares so little about the truth that when the Fact Checker reaches out to him for an explanation, he never responds, the paper noted.

Let's start again with the obvious. Neither of those fact-check sites has ever rated any Trump/Clinton statements as "lies." That said, Egan is so unsophisticated that he seems to think that those percentages represent scores for all of those candidates' statements.

Duh. A fact-check site only checks certain statements. You can't assume they're being "fair" in the statements they choose to review for a range of candidates. For that reason, using their overall ratings in the way Egan does is a very shaky procedure. If our fact-check sites were a bit sharper (and they aren't), they wouldn't present such data.

No, Virginia, there will be no "truth referee" this fall. You have to be as dumb as a rock to imagine such a thing happening.

When Candidate Trump starts to spout, it will be up to Candidate Clinton and the moderator to challenge or correct him. It will then be up to our major newspapers and broadcast orgs to continue the discussion.

The history isn't encouraging.

The most striking factual dispute in modern debate history happened in the first Bush-Gore debate. Gore challenged Bush, again and again, about Bush's claims about his own prescription drug plan.

The dispute went on and on and on, at remarkable length. At one point, Gore correctly told the moderator, Jim Lehrer, that you can just go to Bush's web site to see that Bush's statements about his own drug plan were wrong:

LEHRER (10/3/00): One quick thing. Gentlemen, these are your rules. I'm doing my best. We're, we're way over the three and a half [minutes]. I have no problems with it, but we want—do you want to have a quick response, and we'll move on? We're already—we're almost five minutes on this, all right?

GORE: Yeah. I mean, it's just— It's just clear. You can go to the Web site and look. If you make more than $25,000 a year, you don't get a penny of help under the Bush prescription drug proposal for at least four or five years, and then you're pushed into a Medicare—into an HMO or an insurance company plan. And there's no limit on the premiums or the deductibles or any of the conditions...

This was the longest, liveliest factual debate in modern debate history. Trying to stave off Candidate Gore, Candidate Bush dropped both his "fuzzy math" and his "invented the Internet" bombs.

The dispute lasted much longer than Lehrer's reported five minutes. Calmly, Gore noted that you could go to Bush's site to see that his claims were wrong.

Who was right on the facts? Inevitably, Gore was right and Bush was wrong about Bush's prescription drug plan! As a result, Timothy Egan's New York Times took a total pass on this striking dispute.

The Times never reported who was right in their fact checks of this history-changing debate! Reason: The New York Times was a major architect of the twenty-month war against Gore. Also, the Times was full of clueless wonders like Egan.

Today, Egan wants an instant truth referee—an utterly silly suggestion. "Setting up a truth referee is not difficult?"

Dearest darlings, riddle us this: Where do they find these life-forms?

Did Trump call the killer "an Afghan?" As far as we know, he did not. And yes, the killer was actually born right in New York City.

That said, Chris Matthews routinely refers to native-born American citizens as "Irishmen." For better or worse, many people speak that way.

Are Martin and Burns aware of this fact? We'll guess that Egan is!

Might we add a final point about those instant fact-checks? Beneath today's report by Martin and Burns, this correction now appears:

Correction: June 13, 2016
An earlier version of this article misquoted Hillary Clinton during her speech in Cleveland on Monday. She called for vigilance in the fight against homegrown terrorists inspired by the Islamic State and said the response to the Orlando massacre required “clear eyes, steady hands, and unwavering determination and pride in our country and our values.” She did not say the response required “unwary determination.”

Errors like this would be constant with an instant "truth referee." We'd end up discussing the ref, rather than Trump's misstatements.

MUHAMMAD ALI AND WHO GETS TO BE US: College sophomore's brilliant speech!

TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2016

Part 2—As opposed to our adult elites: Let us tell you a story about a 19-year-old college sophomore.

Her name is Natasha Mundkur. She made an emotionally brilliant speech at last Friday's memorial service for Muhammad Ali.

You really have to watch the speech to grasp the power of its text. The emotional delivery of the speech vastly informs its content.

The speech ran just over five minutes; you really ought to watch. After expressing her gratitude for the chance to speak, Mundkur—she's just 19—started off like this:

MUNDKUR (6/10/16): So let me tell you a story about a man. A man who refused to believe that reality was a limitation to achieve the impossible.

A man who once reached out through the pages of a textbook and touched the heart of an eight-year-old girl, whose reflection of herself mirrored those who could not see past the color of her skin. But instead of drawing on that pain from that distorted reality, she found strength, just as this man did when he stood tall in the face of pelting rain and shouted:

"I am the disturbance in the sea of your complacency and I will never stop shaking your waves."

And his voice echoed through hers. Through mine. And she picked up the rocks that were thrown at her, and she threw them back with a voice so powerful that it turned all the pain that she had faced in her life into strength and tenacity. And now that eight-year-old girl stands before you, telling you that Ali's cry still shakes these waves today.

You really have to watch the speech to understand its power. As she finished, Mundkur returned to the rhetorical format with which she had begun:

MUNDKUR: So let me tell you a story about a man. His name is Muhammad Ali. He is the greatest of all time.

He is from Louisville, Kentucky and he lives in each and every one of us. And his story is far from over.

Thank you.

You really have to watch the speech to understand its power. Just click here; Mundkur starts at 2:10:00.

Who is Natasha Mundkur? She's a sophomore at the University of Louisville, in the city where she was born. Her parents are first- or second-generation Indian-Americans.

She's a McConnell Scholar at Louisville and, like her older brother, a Kentucky Governor's Scholar. She was asked to speak at the memorial service by the Muhammad Ali Center, where she has served on the council of students.

In her speech, Mundkur discussed an ancient, extremely difficult question, the question of who gets to be us.

When Mundkur was a child, her family moved from Louisville to a small town in Virginia. In the years which followed 9/11, she discovered the problems which can flow from the so-called "myth of fingerprints," from the perception of difference.

After her speech, she was interviewed by the Calcutta Times. Charu Sudan Kasturi reported the story like this:

KASTURI (6/11/16): [The] impression that Ali left on Natasha was from a time in the early 2000s, when the memories of the September 11, 2001, attacks were still fresh in the minds of most Americans, and the Louisville-born girl had moved with her parents for a while to Virginia.

It was in her rural Virginia neighborhood, Natasha told this newspaper in an interview on Saturday, that she faced the full force of discrimination as a young girl.

"From the grocery shop to my school, I was made to feel different, that my family were outsiders," Natasha recalled over the telephone from her Louisville home. "The fact that we were different wasn't celebrated, it was held against us."

Natasha had by then already read about Ali in her school textbooks and was in particular drawn to the boxer because of their Louisville connection.

She had read more online about the positions Ali took against racism and discrimination.

Then, one day, the dam broke. "In class, as I got up, some students asked me to go back to my own country," Natasha said. "That's when I decided I had had enough."

There's nothing especially new about children treating children badly. In 1944, Eleanor Estes wrote the Newberry Honor-winning book, The Hundred Dresses, the greatest depiction of moral experience we have ever seen.

That book described the cruelty aimed at a young girl whose father was a Polish immigrant. Mundkur's experience moves this story into an era which is much more heavily fraught.

We wouldn't agree with every nuance of Mundkur's speech, but her speech was emotionally brilliant. When you look around at the adult world, you have to shake your head in wonder at the emergence of such brilliant younger people.

Two days after Mundkur gave her speech, the American-born son of two Afghan immigrants behaved in a very different way. Reading this morning's New York Times, we couldn't help noting the ways his story seemed to track that of Mundkur.

Mundkur is brilliant and eager to serve. She hopes to work in the foreign service. You wonder what a nation has ever done to be so relentlessly fortunate.

The other person to whom we refer committed mass murder this week. It sounds like, along the way, he may have been otherized too.

Mundkur seems to feel that righteousness will hold sway. "We are greater than the rocks or the punches that we throw at each other. We have the ability to empower and inspire and to connect and to unify, and that will live on forever."

As we look around at our adult elites—and yes, we include our progressive elites—we aren't entirely sure about that. That memorial service featured an array of brilliant speakers. But then, we look at our adult elites, for example on cable news channels.

More on this problem tomorrow. For today, do yourself a favor. Take the time to watch a startling young person deliver a beautiful speech.

Tomorrow: Assessing the realities of fingerprints

Soft-on-Trump watch: Three problems with the Fact Checker's tape!

MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2016

MSM versus Muhammad: At the Washington Post's Fact Checker site, Michelle Ye Hee Lee has offered a short new report about Candidate Trump's bogus claims concerning Iraq.

A videotape is also provided. Below, you see Lee's full text:

LEE (6/10/16): Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump frequently—and falsely—says he opposed the Iraq War “from the beginning,” ahead of the invasion. He uses this as a contrast to Hillary Clinton, who in 2002 voted in favor of authorization for President George W. Bush to launch an invasion if negotiations failed with Iraq over its alleged illicit weapons programs. (She now calls the vote a mistake.)

But Trump’s claim is blatantly false, and has been debunked thoroughly. We awarded it Four Pinocchios, and compiled a timeline of Trump’s comments in 2002 and 2003 about the Iraq invasion, which showed he was not vocal about his opposition prior to the invasion.

Yet Trump has been repeating it in interviews and speeches since September 2015—to larger and larger audiences who have heard this Four-Pinocchio claim go uncorrected.

We took a snapshot look at just how far-reaching this false claim has been the past nine months. Check out the Fact Checker video, produced by Washington Post Video Editor Jenny Starrs.

This is about as strong as it gets in the mainstream press corps. That said, Lee's treatment isn't nearly strong enough. It isn't actually strong.

For starters, Lee fails to record the detailed nature of Trump's false claims. He hasn't just said that he opposed the war. At one point, he falsely said that he could produce 25 news reports to that effect. At other times, he has referred to alleged headlines about his opposition.

These were very specific claims. These specific claims were false.

Second problem: Lee's tape gives us a sense of the many times Trump has made this false assertion. Here's what is completely ignored—the many occasions on which Trump's TV star hosts let these claims pass without comment. The Fact-Checker site almost never breaks the code of silence regarding failed behavior by colleagues in the press.

The third problem with Lee's post isn't Lee's doing or fault. Her post appears on a little-read blog, not on the Washington Post's front page, where Trump's parade of misstatements should have been, and should still be, detailed and explored.

When we watched the Ali memorial service, we were struck by how much brighter and how much more principled the speakers were, as compared to the lazy actors consigned to us by the mainstream press.

Brilliant people rose to speak that day. By way of contrast, our national press corps is peopled by posers, sub-competents, clowns. With extremely few exceptions, all agree to the code of silence concerning this death-dealing fact.

Trump will continue making this bogus claim. On TV, the TV stars will keep averting their gaze. People who read the Post's front page won't know a thing about this.

Humorous update: Humorous update, via Slate:

Donald Trump Says He’s “Revoking” the Washington Post’s Press Credentials

MUHAMMAD ALI AND WHO GETS TO BE US: The shrunken state of our leadership!

MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2016

Part 1—"I want to see the loser:" We're going to take another day to reflect on the many brilliant speeches we saw at last Friday's memorial for Muhammad Ali.

That said, our favorite anecdote from those speeches turned on this statement:

"I want to see the loser."

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Ali said he wanted to see the loser! Last Friday, the speaker, John Ramsey, described what happened next.

For our money, brilliant speeches were delivered last Friday by an array of speakers—speakers who ranged from ages 11 and 19 on up. We were struck, as we often are, by the moral and intellectual brilliance which has emerged from the African-American world as part of our nation's benighted racial history.

Still:

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Ali wanted to see the loser! Because we like our moral lessons simple, we're willing to say that we liked Ramsey's anecdote best.

Again and again, the speeches at last Friday's event often turned on a basic question: Who gets to be us?

Again and again, lifelong friends of Ali reported an intriguing conclusion: Everyone does! Everyone gets to be us!

Example:

Attalah Shabazz was six years old, and physically present, when her father, Malcom X, was shot and killed at a public event in 1965. In her speech last Friday, she described her searching relationship with her father's one-time friend, Ali, a relationship which started some thirteen years later.

According to Shabazz, she and Ali discussed his lapsed friendship with her father; they discussed the pain the break in the friendship had caused Ali. "We cried out loud," she said. "And then, just as loudly, we'd laugh, about the best of stories."

In her remarkable speech, Shabazz described what Ali told her about his discussions with her father. She also discussed who gets to be us:

SHABAZZ (6/10/16): A unifying topic was faith—an ecumenical faith, respect for faith, all faiths, even if belonging to one specific religion, or none. The root of such being the gift of faith itself.

So in his own words, he [Ali] wrote:

"We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and yet they all contain truth, truth expressed in different ways and forms and times.

"It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe all people are part of one family.

"For if you love God, you can't love only some of his children."

His words, and certainly ideals shared by both men. Love is a mighty thing, devotion is a mighty thing, and truth always reigns.

If you didn't see her speech, we'll suggest you might want to watch it. It starts around 1:28:00, extends for eleven minutes.

An astounding array of faith traditions were represented at Friday's event. The speakers didn't all focus on religion. The man who reported the statement we liked best—"I want to see the loser"—is a Louisville sports radio host who spoke as a friend of Ali.

In closing, we'll step outside the spirit of Friday's event to make an invidious comparison:

We were struck by how brilliant so many of Friday's speeches were, especially as compared to the shrunken intellectual leadership to which we're all consigned within our mainstream and liberal press corps. We were also struck by this:

By all accounts, Ali wanted everyone to be us. We were struck by the contrast with the exclusionary spirit our own liberal/progressive tribe so frequently and unhelpfully broadcasts.

Bill Clinton spoke at this event—but so did Senator Orrin Hatch. Ali wanted everyone to be there.

Can we learn from this?

Tomorrow: He wanted to see the loser

Epilogue: Candidate Trump assails Pocahontas!

SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2016

Our various one-track minds: Atop the front page of the Washington Post, three journalists report the latest from Candidate Trump today.

We were struck by the limitations of Trump's one-track mind—and by the limitations of the one-track mind found at the Washington Post:

GOLD, DEMIRJIAN AND DEBONIS (6/11/16): It was a bad time for Sen. Cory Gardner to be caught in an elevator with a reporter. Donald Trump had just referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as “Pocahontas”—again—and the Republican freshman from Colorado was struggling to figure out how to respond.

“I think people need to be treated with respect, and that’s what we’ve demanded from everyone,” he offered.

But was it racist?

Gardner clammed up. He politely referred further questions to his press secretary.

Candidate Trump was at it again. In another way, so was the Post.

We agree with Senator Gardner. It would be a better world if people were more frequently treated with respect.

In our view, it would also be a better world if reporters had a wider range of lenses through which they viewed Trump's conduct.

Candidate Trump had made his latest unusual comment—again. Once again, he had referred to Senator Warren as "Pocahontas." According to the Post report, he had also referred to her as "Goofy Elizabeth," the comic book-level term of derision he has selected for her.

In the course of the Post's report, its team of reporters quoted the views of various people concerning Trump's "Pocahontas" comment and his behavior in general.

Senator John McCain said he tries to avoid "personal insults." Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) said Trump should avoid such "pejorative" language.

Several other Republican senators dismissed the "Pocahontas" remark as a joke. In some ways, we think Republican strategist Stuart Stevens had the most salient reaction:

GOLD, DEMIRJIAN AND DEBONIS: The “Pocahontas” line spurred chatter at former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s ideas summit Friday in Park City, Utah, where some attendees said they were aghast at Trump’s many race-based lines of attack.

Stuart Stevens—the chief strategist on Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, who, like Romney, has vowed not to vote for Trump—said the candidate’s use of “Pocahontas” to attack Warren was both racist and inappropriate.

“If you said this in a sixth-grade class, the teacher would tell you, ‘Don’t say this,’ ” Stevens said.

“This is a sick guy, and Americans are not longing for a president who’s going to go out and use ethnic slurs against people,” he said. “It’s amusing in the same way telling dirty jokes around a frat house can get laughs, but most people grow out of that. It’s childish.”

Personally, we wouldn't say Trump is "sick," but we think Stevens was in the right ballpark. We would say that Candidate Trump frequently seems disordered, perhaps diagnosable.

Candidate Trump seems to have no normal concept of the role of accuracy in one's public statements. He rarely seems to have any idea what he's talking about.

He constantly self-contradicts, often within mere minutes. And yes, we'd say that his behavior is frequently "childish," as Stevens said.

In the relentlessness of his inaccurate statements, Candidate Trump is in a class by himself in the modern political era. That said, the press corps has been very slow to establish this as a troubling fact about Trump.

Treatment of his constant misstatements is consigned to little-read fact-check blogs. In hard copy, on page one, reporters seem inclined to limit themselves to one question only:

Are his statements "racist?"

Is it "racist" when Candidate Trump derides Warren as "Pocahontas?" In our view, the candidate's conduct in this latest pitiful episode doesn't rise to that level.

The sheer inanity of Trump's behavior strikes us as its defining characteristic, along with the relentless inaccuracy of his public statements.

That said, we see a problem. Modern journalists have themselves been inane, and relentlessly inaccurate, for perhaps three decades now. Perhaps for that reason, modern journalists seem to have a hard time recognizing or discussing those traits in Candidate Trump.

Modern journalists have been inventing facts to fit preferred narratives for decades. Perhaps for that reason, modern journalists have been very slow to challenge this part of Trump's game.

Modern journalists seem to know only one question: "Was that last statement racist?" They seem to know just that one play, have only that tool in their tool shed.

In our view, this limitation isn't impressive, intellectually or morally. It tends to pose as moral concern. It strikes us as a moral pose and as a form of shirking.

Was Candidate Trump's latest statement racist? For ourselves, we don't think this latest inane behavior rises to that level.

In our view, Trump is disordered, apparently dishonest, relentlessly inane. So too, we'd submit, is the national "press," with its one-track mind.

The fact-check we still haven't seen: Did Donald J. Trump really send investigators to Hawaii in 2011 to check the facts of President Obama's birth?

Did those gumshoes, if they really exist, really uncover various facts which were highly disturbing?

In 2011 and 2012, Donald J. Trump made these claims again and again from very high platforms. In the process, he helped turn our public discourse into an even larger trash heap.

Were any of those statements true? Or was Donald J. Trump simply lying? To this day, we haven't seen a major news org investigate this behavior by Trump. It's a major part of his recent history, but the press doesn't seem to care.

Let's take a guess about the pass which is being extended to Trump. Perhaps this behavior was so much like the press corps' own behavior in recent years that news orgs haven't been able to see it for what it is.

Childish name-calling they can spot. Gigantic, rolling ugly inventions largely escape their ken!

Trumpism didn't start with Trump. It started inside the press. For decades, it's been the norm.

WE'RE ALL MANCHURIAN NOW: Megyn Kelly gets it right!

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016

Part 5—Pundit corps strikes a pose: Are we all Manchurian now?

Current evidence says that we are! Consider the basic outline of John Frankenheimer's classic 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate.

During the Korean War, Raymond Shaw and the rest of his troops are taken to Manchuria, where they're skillfully brainwashed. Two years later, Shaw returns to the United States as an apparent hero. In truth, he's now an unwitting "mechanism" designed to commit a political murder.

Raymond's fellow soldiers have been brainwashed too. Whenever they're questioned, they find themselves hypnotically repeating a standard line:

"Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."

They know their statement isn't true. But they keep reciting.

In the past thirty years, robotic recitation of script has come to dominate American journalism. In Frankenheimer's famous film, Raymond Shaw's brainwashed admirers beat the Mikas and the Joes to this unfortunate culture.

This famous film turns on a literal act of brainwashing. At the same time, Frankenheimer portrays a wider set of hypnotic behaviors all through American life.

Romances start in semi-hypnotic, zombified ways. A zombified press corps barely takes note of the crazy, contradictory claims by Senator Iselin, Raymond's anti-Communist stepfather.

Robotically, Frank Sinatra reads a bewildering array of books which are sent to him by "a guy" who's three thousand miles away. Inevitably, the action leads to a costume party where all the players appear as someone they aren't.

From there, it's on to the final scene, where Raymond is dressed as a priest.

Today, a costume party is staged each day on Morning Joe, where robotic players have been repeating a set of lines all week. If you can't see this costuming for what it is, you can't see the basic outline of our current world.

Mika and Joe have been playing carefully costumed roles on Morning Joe this week. Hypnotically, their various guests have been reciting a standard line:

"Donald J. Trump is the most racist, bigoted, horrible person I've ever known in my life."

Left unexplained is the way Mika and Joe pimped this same ridiculous man for the bulk of the past year. Most disgracefully, his birtherism went unchallenged during this ridiculous time, along with a range of bizarre proposals and plans.

Is it true? Is Donald J. Trump the most racist person they've ever known in their lives? We don't know how to answer that question, but he's certainly the most disordered, diagnosable person who ever reached his current station as the presumptive nominee of one of our two major parties.

That said, our pundits largely ignored this mental disorder during the course of the past year. Most strikingly, Trump's birtherism has gone wholly unexplored by the "national press."

The current Manchurian episode has turned on Trump's alleged racism. Therein lies a long, hypnotic tale:

We've long told you that this is the only play our liberal tribe currently knows. In the past week, a remarkable pattern has emerged, in which both major tribes have agreed to recite the new hypnotic line concerning Donald J. Trump.

"Donald J. Trump is the most racist, bigoted, horrible person I've ever known in my life."

Remarkably, major players from both major tribes have been repeating this line. We haven't seen this type of tribal convergence since 1999 and 2000, when major pundits from both major tribes agreed to recite what follows over the course of two years:

"Candidate Gore is the world's biggest liar, just like his boss, Bill Clinton."

Also: Candidate Gore doesn't know who he is. Candidate Gore hired a woman to teach him to be a man. Candidate Gore will do and say anything. Candidate Gore will lick the bathroom floor to get to the White House.

(That last line was Chris Matthews only.)

For twenty months, major players from both major tribes repeated an array of such lines. This week, a similar convergence has occurred, the first such tribal convergence in the past sixteen years.

If both tribes agree to recite certain lines, doesn't that suggest that the claim involved may be accurate? Actually no, it doesn't. Consider a supplementary set of lines which everyone has been reciting. Hypnotically, Charles Krauthammer recites a variant in today's Washington Post:

KRAUTHAMMER (6/10/16): [Trump's] outrageous provocations have been brilliantly sequenced so that the shock of the new extinguishes the memory of the last. Though perhaps not his most recent—his gratuitous attack on a “Mexican” federal judge (born and bred in Indiana) for inherent bias because of his ethnicity. Textbook racism, averred Speaker Paul Ryan. Even Trump acolyte and possible running mate Newt Gingrich called it inexcusable.

To what sub-recitation do we refer? We refer to this absurd notion, implied by hypnotized pundits all week:

No federal judge born in Indiana could possibly be biased against Trump!

Such a claim would make no sense, of course. But disordered versions of this suggestion have been bruited all week.

(Quick aside: Do you know how many times Chris Matthews has referred to individuals born in the United States as "Irish" or even as "Irishmen?" Because we researched the question, we do! For better or worse—as a general matter, we'd say for worse—many people speak that way, and Trump is an extremely careless, blunderbuss speaker. Hypnotized zombies with scripts to recite rarely consider such points.)

This brings us the week's central question. Is it possible that Judge Curiel actually has made "biased" rulingsagainst Candidate Trump in his handling of the "Trump University" case?

The answer to that is obvious—of course it's possible! That's obvious except in Manchuria, where an array of hypnotized pundits have simply recited this point:

"Gonzalo Curiel is the most wonderful, unbiased federal judge I've ever known in my life."

Instantly, let's be clear: We know of no reason to think that Judge Curiel has exhibited a bias against Trump. Indeed, it seems this claim is false.

On Monday night, we actually saw a major broadcaster address Trump's specific claims on this score. That major broadcaster was Megyn Kelly. As we'll show you below, she left Trump's claims in the dust.

Kelly did her job that night, in the traditional manner! But in the rush to recitation, almost no one else has bothered with this tiresome step.

Dearest darlings, could a federal judge be biased against Trump? Could a federal judge of Mexican ancestry be biased against Trump?

Could a federal judge of Mexican ancestry from Indiana be biased against Trump? Is it possible that such a thing could occur?

Dearest darlings! Of course these things are possible! As is true of everyone else, federal judges can betray all sorts of predispositions and biases. Such possibilities are discussed all the time—as, for example, this week.

This week, we've seen angry discussions of a judge's alleged bias or predisposition in the Stanford sexual assault case. We've seen a focus on the judge in the ongoing Freddie Gray trials, with a focus on the fact that the judge is black, not white.

This very morning, we learn that a judge in Philadelphia won't be allowed to hear an appeal in a death penalty case due to a possible or perceived conflict of interest. As Candidate Trump threatens to revive every past claim about Bill Clinton, we recall claims about the alleged political and personal biases of Judge Susan Webber Wright, who handled the Paula Jones case.

Can judges display some sort of bias in their actual rulings? Of course they can! This is even true if the judge was born in Indiana rather than somewhere else.

People can hold and display all kinds of biases; this is true of judges, as of everyone else. This raises an obvious question:

When a judge is accused of displaying a bias, how do we settle such a claim? In the Manchuria where we now live, we settle it in the modern way. Everyone starts to recite:

"Judge Curiel is the kindest, bravest, least biased, most wonderful human being from Indiana I've ever known in my life."

That's the way the bulk of our pundits have settled this matter this week. In a non-hypnotic realm, we would settle this question a more rational way. Megyn Kelly took that route on her cable news program.

Good lord! Even before she spoke to the Trump spokesperson who was her guest, Kelly addressed some of the specific claims Trump has made about Judge Curiel's rulings.

She didn't recite a mantra about Judge Curiel's obvious greatness. Instead, she assessed Trump's specific claims on the actual merits.

In her first segment Monday night, Kelly introduced Katrina Pierson, the highly skilled national spokesperson for the Trump campaign. A few hours earlier, we had seen Pierson run an unprepared Wolf Blitzer ragged on CNN.

Blitzer didn't know Schick from Shinola. Here's what happened when Pierson tried to make the same claims following Kelly's overview:

KELLY (6/6/16): Katrina, let me start with you on, you know, what—

I'm offering my take there as a lawyer. You know, I've been doing legal analysis for the channel. I mean, Trump can argue—he can argue the merits. He's going to get his day in court on the merits. I have no idea if he's going to win or lose this lawsuit.

But your take on the— You know, he can't create a conflict of interest about a judge just by complaining about him.

PIERSON: Well, Megyn, the history of the case is extremely important too because you're right, this has been going on for a couple of years, but this was not the original judge on the case. When this judge got to the case, he appointed the law firm that you mentioned, as well as another one who does support Barack Obama.

KELLY: Let me just stop you right there...

"Let me just stop you right there?" Earlier, Pierson had run roughshod over the unprepared Blitzer with these same presentations.

Blitzer was thoroughly unprepared; Kelly interrupted. She was able to address Trump's specific claims about Curiel on the actual merits:

KELLY (fuller response): Let me just stop you right there, okay? Because I want to make sure that the record is clear.

What happened in this case, there was a judge. She retired. As she retired, her cases got reassigned. Judge Curiel took the case. He did not assign a law firm. The law firm that paid Hillary and Bill speaking fees was already on the case, Katrina. They were already on the case.

PIERSON: And the other law firm. Do you have that one?

KELLY: Already on the case. Yes. Three women. It was the first, law firm of three women that started the case, and then they brought in a big dog law firm, went to became a class action, and both of them were on the case before Judge Curiel was.

PIERSON: And this judge is a friend of that lawyer that used to work together in the U.S. Attorney's Office.

KELLY: They both worked together in the U.S. Attorney's Office. How does that make him biased?

"I want to make sure that the record is clear?" Are journalists allowed to say that?

Hours earlier, we had seen the hapless Blitzer get rolled by these same claims. To unprepared cable hosts of his type, it's enough to issue cries accusing Trump of racism, while pointing out that Judge Curiel was born in Indiana.

People born in Indiana can act on biases too! People born in Indiana can act on biases which derive from their feelings about their ethnic heritage.

That said, has Judge Curiel displayed any such bias in his various rulings? Kelly didn't start dropping R-bombs; she discussed his actual rulings. She knew what she was talking about; she shot down one claim after another.

Kelly was playing a famous old game. It's known as "journalism."

In the course of this past week, very few "journalists" have tried to do what Kelly did this night. In her essay for Slate, Dahlia Lithwick never mentioned the legal rulings around which Trump has based his claim of unfair treatment.

Lithwick simply dropped her bombs. This made us feel very good.

Are we all Manchurian now? In accord with modern pundit culture, pundits have been reciting their lines, in which Trump is a racist and Judge Curiel is the most unbiased person they have ever known in their life.

This is lazy, corrupt behavior by a costumed gang of hypnotized frauds. Liberals who settle for this kind of work are basically hypnotized too.

But rabbi, isn't it a wonderful thing when pundits denounce racism?

Actually no, it isn't. How helpful was it when Joe McCarthy—he's darkly satirized in The Manchurian Candidate—denounced Soviet Communism in the way he did?

McCarthy was denouncing a terrible system. He did lots of harm when he did.

Let us share some news: Your pundit corps doesn't care about basic issues of racial amelioration. They make this fact abundantly clear every day of the year.

In this instance, they've been taken to Manchuria, where they've learned a few new lines to recite. Such recitations tend to lead to nothing in the end.

Conceivably, this could still end up helping Trump more than it actually hurts him. Here's CNN's David Gergen, last night:

GERGEN (6/9/16): You know, we haven't—we haven't seen many polls yet, but it's interesting. One poll came out today, after Trump having terrible weeks and Hillary having great weeks: Pennsylvania, 44 apiece. So it's way too early to start calling this, but I can tell you what's been unfolding in the last two, three weeks, I think is critically important to the way this ultimately turns out.

The country is full of dissatisfied voters who know our pundits are fakes. Even if we liberals can't see how phony they are in this current ploy, many others actually can. For that reason, it's hard to know how this play will turn out.

A costume party occurs near the end of The Manchurian Candidate. All the leading characters are there, in an array of costumes.

When Mika and Joe denounce Trump's racism, they're staging a similar party. What they say sounds good to you, but what they're saying is totally fake, and they have ignored, and will ignore, a million other events.

Candidate Trump is the most disordered, diagnosable human being we've ever seen at this political level. Your pundit corps has ignored this fact for years—and they'll continue to do so.

Kelly played the traditional game on her cable news program. It's rarely played by the costumed clowns who serve us from the deepest Manchuria, where we all currently live.

They're costumed as moral exemplars this week. Their ardent, heartfelt moral cries are just their latest pose.

Kevin Drum was also surprised: Kevin Drum was also surprised! To his surprise, someone examined Trump's specific claims about Judge Curiel's rulings.

This is the way you settle a claim. Our pundits prefer to sing their songs and feign vast moral greatness.

Maddow Show cable-to-prison watch: Maddow jumps the McAuliffe shark!

THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2016

Clowns him for doing his job: Did Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe ever receive an illegal campaign contribution?

Did he ever do an inappropriate favor for a donor? Did he ever do an appropriate favor, a favor that an overzealous prosecutor might take to be inappropriate?

We don't have the slightest idea, and everything is always possible! Except, of course, for that last possibility on the Maddow Show, where there are no overzealous prosecutors.

On the Maddow Show, it's always instantly assumed that the accused are guilty. They don't even have to be accused! An anonymous report of a murky probe will suffice!

So it was that, on May 23, Maddow began to snark about McAuliffe's presumed guilt. We've described that first program in recent posts. On May 25, things got worse.

On the morning of May 25, the New York Times reported on the murky reports of a possible probe of McAuliffe. As we noted in this earlier post, the report by Confessore and Saul contained a lot of red flags for anyone who might be suspicious about the possible motives behind such flimsy anonymous claims about an old Clinton hand.

Maddow isn't that kind of person. That night, she decided to clown about McAuliffe again.

No, he hadn't been accused—but the murky rumor of a probe was good enough. Maddow cranked up the Snark Machine and played a favorite old tune.

You can watch her appalling performance here. Warning! You'll be looking at oodles of Snide and at a large dose of Snark.

Maddow enjoyed her favorite play, one she had previously aimed, at least twice, at Governor Robert Bentley. Here's the background:

McAuliffe had conducted some gubernatorial business at a parole office that day. To Maddow, this inevitably meant that Governor McAuliffe looked guilty of a crime. On two earlier programs, similar conduct had meant the same thing about Governor Bentley.

Yes, she really performed this dimwitted play. Warning! Death by dumbness and snark!

MADDOW (5/25/16): This is one of those rules that you should not have to spell out as a rule. This is one of those rules that if you get to the point where you`re in high elected office and you're like the governor of a state or something, you'd think we could assume that you would know this rule. You wouldn't need to be instructed on this being a rule for you as a politician.

But apparently we have to say this one out loud. Apparently this is a rule that a lot of politicians don't know.

Here's the rule:

If you are under federal investigation, if the FBI is investigating you, don't then immediately go do a photo op at a prison.

High level elected officials, particularly governors, they do sometimes have to go do photo ops at prisons, or a parole offices or probation offices. It's part of what they have to do as governor, right?

But if you have one of those photo-ops on the books, if you have a scheduled trip to a prison or a probation office or a parole office, you've got that on your calendar, and then in the interim the FBI starts investigating you and the public knows you're under federal investigation, don't go ahead with the prison photo op. Call in sick. Because if you go ahead with the prison photo op, then photographers will take pictures of you literally behind bars, because you invited them to go with you to see you at a prison, right?

Just in case the people of Alabama couldn't paint a metal picture of their governor in jail, here you go. In case any other governors out there needs a refresher on this rule, there's Governor Robert Bentley of Alabama at a prison commissary, reminding us why this rule is so important.

But apparently that news did not travel all the way from Alabama, where their governor is under federal investigation, to Virginia where their governor is under federal investigation. Because yesterday, in the great state of Virginia, Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe, a politician who's also know being investigated by the FBI, he decided to conduct official state business yesterday at the local probation and parole office.

Why he chose to go ahead with the event at the parole office while he is under very public federal investigation, it's anybody's guess. It did lead to this excellent A.P. photo caption today: "Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe speaks to reporters. McAuliffe questioned about a federal probe of donations to his campaign says he is confident he followed the law."

He's confident he followed the law. If not, the parole officers he just met seemed very, very nice.

We'll be right back.

To watch that pitiful segment, click here. Prepare to wail and gnash your teeth. Prepare to wonder what we the people ever did to deserve this dimwitted corporate entertainment in the guise of "news."

Maddow had a wonderful time this night, snarkily suggesting that McAuliffe may soon be on parole. She plays this hang-em-high game again and again, has done so for years.

Apparently, it's a ratings hit. For that reason, she doesn't get fired.

In Maddow's next segment that night, she clowned around again about Governor Bentley. On at least two earlier programs, she had performed full segments mocking Bentley for having visited an Alabama prison on official business when he knew he was under some sort of investigation.

On May 25, she clowned around about Bentley again. Before she did, she decided to clown around about the soon-to-be-on-parole McAuliffe.

Maddow is so journalistically dumb that she virtually squeaks. It's bad enough when she snarkily pre-convicts Republican governors. Given the corporate team for which she plays, when she does the same to an old Clinton hand, she's being especially daft.

For some reason, Rachel Maddow—AKA The Nun—is very quick to assume guilt in all possible circumstances. She likes to get people thrown in jail. Where possible, she tries to involve the children.

To Maddow, an accusation is the same as guilt—and a murky rumor of a probe is the same as an accusation. On this occasion, Maddow snarked and clowned about McAuliffe, then snarked and clowned about Bentley again in her subsequent segment.

Go ahead—we dare you! Watch the tape in which Maddow snarks about McAuliffe. It's hard to imagine a dumber person having her own nightly program on the entertainment medium known as "cable news."

Have you always thought that Hannity's dumb? Go ahead! Watch that segment!

WE'RE ALL MANCHURIAN NOW: The Lithwick vapors!

THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2016

Part 4—We're with anti-Communist: A dishonest anti-Communist witch hunt lies at the heart of the 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate.

Poor, friendless Raymond Shaw has been brainwashed by Communist forces somewhere in Manchuria. When he returns to the U.S., his mother is directing his hapless stepfather, Senator Iselin, as he conducts a crazily dishonest, McCarthyite anti-Communist crusade.

How inane is Senator Iselin's crusade? He keeps using a different number as he describes the number of Communists inside the federal government. On the whole, the press is too dumb to notice this problem.

In the scene shown below, Senator Iselin asks his wife to help him settle on the number of Communists he should he has discovered. Where will the pair get their final number? From a ketchup bottle!

Stage directions included:

MRS. ISELIN (vicious): Stop talking like an expert all of a sudden and get out there and say what you're supposed to say!

SENATOR ISELIN: C'mon, babe, I—

MRS. ISELIN (suddenly sweet as sugar): I'm sorry, hon. Would it really make it easier for you if we settled on just one number?

SENATOR ISELIN: Yeah. Just one real simple number that'd be easy for me to remember.

The senator unscrews a bottle of ketchup and starts glopping it on his steak. Mrs. Iselin looks at the bottle. It's Heinz Tomato Ketchup—you know, the brand with fifty-seven varieties.

CUT TO: On the Senate floor, Senator Iselin makes a speech.

SENATOR ISELIN: There are exactly fifty-seven card-carrying members of the Communist party in the Department of Defense at this time!

The Senate BUZZES at this. People are yelling, running around, etc. Raymond sits quietly with the other members of the press taking notes.

We thought of that hunt, and of its dishonesty, as we watched the pundits perform on today's Morning Joe. Truthfully, the Iselins had nothing on Joe and Mika.

On Morning Joe, they aren't hunting down Communists at this particular time. Surprisingly, they're hunting down racists this week, starting with Candidate Trump.

The dishonesty comes to mind if you understand the way this program's hosts were pimping this same gruesome, disordered candidate all through the past year. Now, the multimillionaire cable stars have decided to execute a flip. They're erasing their own recent history through their new vibrant crusade.

Suddenly, surprisingly, we're all with Anti-racist! Unfortunately, we're also all with Stupid now, and with fake and dishonest.

The apparent dishonesty of the Morning Joe team has become its defining trait. That said, group hunts are almost always stupid. In a truly Manchurian way, that has been the case this past week as our new witch hunt proceeds.

Are we all Manchurian now? Are we all in the zombified, hypnotic, post-rational realm portrayed in The Manchurian Candidate?

It seems to us that we very much are. Consider what happened when Dahlia Lithwick denounced Trump's latest behavior while ignoring his actual claims.

For the record, Dahlia Lithwick doesn't typically work on the level of Mika and Joe. She holds a law degree from Stanford. She has covered legal issues for major publications for years.

Still and all, when witch hunts begin, we're suddenly all with Stupid. All power of discrimination is gone, along with normal journalistic practice.

So it was when Lithwick reviewed Trump's latest behavior for Slate.

Trump's latest claims involve a federal district judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the "Trump University" case. Like everyone else, Lithwick is horrified by Trump's behavior. She is deeply upset, on the level of history's greatest hunts.

Good judgment and sound practice tend to disappear at such times. Below, you see the way Lithwick began her piece for Slate. Although she's only written one sentence, several infamous motifs have already appeared:

LITHWICK (6/6/16): Let’s start by agreeing on this: No truly sane person can defend Donald Trump’s vile, racist slander against Gonzalo Curiel.

Let's start by agreeing with me! Despite the unintentional humor, several infamous motifs have already appeared:

By law, the accusation must be ramped up when the mob starts running. In Lithwick's handling, Candidate Trump isn't simply racist. He is vilely racist—later, overtly so.

(For other examples of ramping up, see yesterday's Part 3.)

A second motif appears in Lithwick's opening sentence. When the mob runs through the streets, everyone has to pre-agree on the verdict. You won't be judged sane if you don't! Right in her opening sentence, Lithwick asserts this deadly historical point.

This is an extremely dangerous way to start any discussion. Before she has said a thing about Trump's actual behavior or claims, Lithwick has announced that no sane person can disagree with the standard group viewpoint.

Verdict first! This ancient, prehistoric impulse will always appear at such times. Mika and Joe have been playing this game as they erase their own recent history, but they are among our biggest fakes.

Historically, the real problem starts when people like Lithwick get swept up in such crazes.

Everyone has to agree about the witch! If you can't spot him, that means you're insane! Lithwick has voiced the eternal cry from which craziness flows. As she continues, she excitedly skips right past the most basic part of the case:

LITHWICK (fuller text): Let’s start by agreeing on this: No truly sane person can defend Donald Trump’s vile, racist slander against Gonzalo Curiel. The Southern California federal district judge is currently presiding over two class-action lawsuits filed by former students against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s Trump University. The “University” and Trump are on the hook for allegedly using predatory marketing practices to sell worthless real estate classes. Last week, Curiel ordered documents containing damaging statements from former Trump University employees released to the public. The documents were damning. Grifters gonna’ grift.

Trump responded in a fashion that conforms perfectly to his usual methods. First he accused Judge Curiel of being “a hater.” Then he claimed that Curiel, “happens to be, we believe, Mexican,” which not only carried racist overtones but was also wrong—Curiel was born in Indiana to parents of Mexican descent. Trump then warned “judges in this court system … ought to look into Judge Curiel,” implying that he was guilty of some kind of systematic misconduct. Then on Thursday, Trump issued the coup de grace, arguing that Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation because he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Trump insisted that the racial background of this American-born judge was relevant because “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”

Faced with the chance to walk back the statement this weekend, Trump walked it gleefully forward. The former reality TV star told John Dickerson on Face the Nation it was “absolutely possible”—based on religion alone—that a Muslim judge would also be unable to treat Trump the litigant fairly.

He may not have acknowledged it as such but Trump has gone beyond racist dog whistles into overt racism here. The use of a judge’s ethnicity or race alone has been rejected for decades as a basis for demanding formal judicial recusal.

There are so many problems with that text that the gods of rational process all cry out in pain. Examples:

Did Candidate Trump really start by calling Curiel a hater? Has Candidate Trump actually criticized Curiel on the basis of "ethnicity or race alone?"

Is it not "possible" that a Muslim jurist could display a bias of some sort in some case, including in a case involving Trump? Why wouldn't that be possible? Is a person not truly sane if such questions come to his mind?

Later, Lithwick makes other embellished assertions. Is Trump really "declaring that no judge from any ethnic or racial background Trump has insulted can ever hear any case involving him?" For ourselves, we'd have to say that he hasn't done that. It's hard to get even dumber than Trump, but as the new hunt created excitement, it seems that Lithwick went there.

Everyone must pre-agree! If you don't pre-agree, you're not truly sane! Excited people carrying ropes have always started with these scared tenets. That said, do you notice what Lithwick hasn't done in the part of her essay we've posted?

That's right! Lithwick hasn't made any attempt to evaluate the claims with which Trump really did start!

Candidate Trump has claimed that Curiel made a series of bad legal rulings—bad legal rulings which went against Trump. On the basis of these rulings, Trump asserts that Judge Curiel seems to have a bias.

That's what Candidate Trump has said. By normal standards, an obvious question arises:

Is it true? Did Judge Curiel really make a series of bad legal rulings? Lithwick, Slate's legal reporter, never states a view on this at any point in her essay! Indeed, she never even mentions the fact that Trump has made this claim. She's too busy saying that she has spotted a racist witch, and that you aren't sane unless you pre-agree with her judgment.

Do you mind if we state an obvious point? If Judge Curiel really did make a series of bad rulings, it wouldn't be crazy to speculate about a possible motive.

This sort of thing occurs all the time. This very week, it's being done in a case involving sexual assault at Stanford. (More examples tomorrow.)

People speculate about possible bias in legal rulings all the time! In the normal course of events, it's the job of a legal reporter to start at the beginning—to evaluate the contested legal rulings on the merits.

That would be the normal course. But Lithwick was in a mob.

Are we all Manchurian now? On Morning Joe, the fakery is obvious, noxious—and it's being engaged in by all. Meanwhile, over at Slate, the legal reporter has chosen to run with Stupid.

In recent decades, the boys and girls of our mainstream press have often played it this way. In this case, they've finally done the impossible.

In this case, the press corps' performance has been even dumber than Trump's! Tomorrow, we'll visit one legal reporter who did the traditional work.

Tomorrow: Astonishing journalistic conduct! Megyn Kelly evaluates Trump's actual legal claims

Imitation news watch: We think the AP was silly this week!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016

Absolutely zero news value: We're going to disagree with Kevin Drum. We're even going to disagree with Gene Lyons on this point.

We think the AP was silly this week. We refer to its fevered election eve report, in which it announced that Candidate Clinton had gone over the top in the delegate count.

What an utterly pointless "news report!" Everyone had known for weeks that the primaries of June 7 were going to put Candidate Clinton way, way over the top, if you were willing to include the so-called super-delegates.

In the face of that certain knowledge, what did the AP decide to do? In this morning's New York Times, Michael Grynbaum offers a sad explanation:

GRYNBAUM (6/8/16): Officials at The A.P. offered a simpler explanation: There was news, and they reported it.

“We’re not calculating about when something happens,” Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.’s executive editor, said. “News is news. You put it out when you have it.”

The A.P. employs a crew of reporters to track delegates, distributing its tally to dozens of news organizations. On Monday, its chief delegate reporter, Stephen Ohlemacher, said that after days of nonstop calls to superdelegates, he had received enough commitments to support Mrs. Clinton for her to clinch the nomination.

To us, that report seems quite revealing.

Everyone knew that Tuesday's results would put Clinton way over the top. So what did the AP do?

Of course! They wasted several days having reporters make "nonstop calls to superdelegates."

Given what everyone already knew, there was absolutely zero point to this utterly silly behavior. Why didn't they have their reporters pursue something useful instead?

This is the ultimate horserace story. It involves the ultimate waste of journalists' time, chasing down an election result which everyone knew was coming.

What happened because the AP decided to waste its time this way? In theory, the world was deprived of the knowledge its reporters might otherwise have created. Much worse, and needless to say, Sanders supporters were given yet another way to think the election was rigged.

Drum and Lyons have both said that the AP should have reported the news when they got it. In theory, that's true, of course—though it's also true that news orgs exercise judgment all the time about the release of reports. (Generally speaking, polling stops right before an election to avoid giving the impression that news and polling orgs are trying to influence outcomes.)

In this case, the so-called "news" the AP released wasn't really news at all. The news they released had zero news value! More and more, this is precisely the way our silly, faux "news business" works.