The gods may or may not be crazy!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023

Are we one people or many? Are the gods trying to force us to decide?

We ask that question because a third shooting in the current series has now occurred.

First, a 16-year-old high school student was shot and severely injured when he knocked on the wrong door in Kansas City. Then, a 20-year-old woman was shot and killed in upstate New York when the car she was riding in turned around in someone's driveway.

Today, the gods have completed the rule of three. Headline included, the breaking news starts like this in the Washington Post:

Cheerleaders leaving practice were shot after getting in wrong car, teen says

Two Texas cheerleaders were shot, and one of them critically injured, early Tuesday after they mistakenly got into the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot, one of the girls said.

The Elgin, Tex., shooting is the third headline-making incident in less than a week in which someone was shot while approaching a person they apparently did not know.

Police responded to reports of gunshots outside an H-E-B supermarket after midnight, authorities said in a news release. They arrested and charged Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, in what they called “an altercation … in the parking lot of HEB” in which “multiple shots were fired into a vehicle.”

One of the victims was identified by her coach as Payton Washington, an 18-year-old high school senior and cheerleader for the Round Rock Independent School District, near Austin. Washington “sustained serious injuries” when she was shot in the back and a leg, police said. 

This time, it's two Texas cheerleaders, one of whom mistakenly started to get into the wrong car.

Have the gods decided to test us with this string of events? The questions we'd have in mind would of course be these:

Are we all in this together? Are these events mainly alike or are they mainly different? 

Also, should different identity groups maintain group ownership over individual shooting events? Or are all these children everyone's children? Does it take a national village, aspirationally of course?

We wonder if the gods are currently asking us to sort out questions like these. We wondered anew when we read a new essay by Imani Perry, an essay which appeared yesterday at The Atlantic.

Just this once, we'll be honest! Perry seems to be the world's most refined and nicest person. In part for that reason, she strikes us as the kind of Princeton professor who has an infallible instinct for generating the kinds of concerns and viewpoints which get Republicans elected.

In her essay, she seems to vote for the silo theory—for the theory that black shooting deaths belong to blacks as a group and not to everyone else. Before too long, she's offering a rumination which is 100 percent sincere, though remarkably hard to parse.

Perry's essay concerns the shooting of Ralph Yarl. As she starts, she seemed to endorse a certain chronological framework, one to which we've recently alluded:

Thank God Ralph Yarl lives. He is an eldest child; he was picking up his siblings in Kansas City, Missouri. It was just an errand. And he got lost. And he went to the wrong house. A door. A shot—he collapsed—and then another. An 84-year-old man put a bullet in his young head. And Ralph Yarl stumbled for help to another home. He saved his own life. Clearly, this is an extraordinary child.

It is 2023. Over the past 10 years (and even longer if we count the time before the mainstream media covered our devastation), millions of people have filled the streets and raised open palms or right fists to protest the premature deaths of Black innocents. ... In 2019, I published a book called Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, speaking to the terror and grace of raising Black children in the United States, and people said to me, “The book is so prescient.” But there is no bad time for a book about Black fear and grace in the face of terror. The examples are seasonal, monthly, sometimes even weekly. By now, the world knows.

Perry seems to say that the mainstream press has been covering the premature deaths of Black innocents for something like ten years. 

We would say eleven! As we've noted, it seems to us that this changer in journalistic behavior dates to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in early 2012. 

It seems to us that mainstream press corps frameworks changed at that time. Perry seems to suggest a similar timeline. 

Based on this essay and on other writings, Perry's heart has been in her throat ever since. There's no reason why her heart shouldn't have been in her throat, which doesn't necessarily mean that her instincts are completely helpful.

Perfectly plainly, Perry's grief and fear come from a good, decent place. But they soon lead to this paragraph, which is quite hard to parse:

I ask, how are the people in this nation so adjusted to Black folks suffering? And then I think: That, too, is naive. The Nashville school shooting just happened. Unquestionably, racism makes our experience as Black Americans more frightening, more dangerous. But they won’t even save their own children. All of our kids are coming of age in a society in crisis. And certain antisocial forces—the ones who make and sell and protect guns, the ones who reject knowledge, the ones who believe that their homes are castles but make terrible rules for other peoples’ bodies, the ones who believe that some of us are ordained to inferiority and vote that way—are trying their darndest to prevent all of our children from growing up and maturing into the kind of people who can make this democracy functional. And people keep putting them in power.

Perry starts by saying that "the people in this nation" are [substantially] "adjusted to Black folks suffering."

Does she mean all the people in this nation? How many people does she mean? 

Also, what nation does Perry live in? Which people does she mean?

Already, we're fumbling about in the underbrush. Soon, though, we come to this:

Thinking about the Nashville shooting, Perry takes things one step further. On the basis of that shooting, she now seems to say that "they"—presumably, "the people in this nation"—"won't even save their own children." 

That's explicitly what she says.

Read in accord with traditional norms, this doesn't make a lot of sense. It does strike us as an excellent way to get GOP hopefuls elected. 

Perry doesn't make any attempt to differentiate among "the people of this nation." Meanwhile, it seems that she herself must live in some unnamed alternate realm.

"All of our kids are coming of age in a society in crisis," the professor says at that point. In our view, truer words were never spoken. When she makes that unfortunate statement, Perry is plainly correct.

But are all of our kids really all of our kids? Or do some of our kids really belong to some of us people, some of whom don't even seem to live in this country?

Aspirationally, we'll return to the aspirational norm in which all of our kids are viewed as all of our kids. In which we worry about all of our kids, even those who belong to the families of the unnamed people who make "terrible rules for other peoples’ bodies," to quote a bit of liberal / progressive jargon from the professor's analysis as she finally starts to signal Where The Wild Things Are.

Do we live in a set of demographic silos, or are we aspirationally all one people? 

It takes a village to raise a child. But how many villages are we? 

THE WAGES OF STORYLINE: As black and white kids marched together...

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023

...a star sold Storyline: This country is full of good, decent kids. (It's also true that some young people have lost their way and are in need of assistance.) 

Yesterday, several hundred of those young people staged a march. These were good and decent kids—black and white kids together.

They were schoolmates of Ralph Yarl, age 16. The New York Times reports:

SMITH AND BOSMAN (4/19/23): On Tuesday morning, hundreds of Staley High School students filled the street outside their school in a display of anger and support for their fellow student, Ralph Yarl, who was shot by a homeowner after he rang a doorbell at the wrong house in Kansas City last week. One sign read, “We Walk for Ralph.” Another demanded, “Justice 4 Ralph Yarl.”

By day’s end, they found some measure of relief, as Andrew D. Lester, the 84-year-old man accused of shooting Ralph, surrendered to the authorities after being charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action.

Full disclosure! We don't think we've ever been happy to hear about someone being arrested and charged with a crime. That said, we were happy to see the students from Staley High as they staged their march.

Judging from the photographs and the videotape, it very much seemed to be a case of black and white kids together! We offer you a bit of background about Staley High.

According to the leading authority on the subject, Staley High "is one of the four high schools in the North Kansas City School District along with North Kansas City High School, Oak Park High School, and Winnetonka High School."

The school has three school colors, not the usual two! That said, the kids at Staley are no slouches.

According to the school's web site, "Staley has been ranked among the best high schools in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Staley is 14th best in the state of Missouri and 2nd in the Kansas City, Missouri area."  

That's the school Ralph Yarl will continue to attend.

According to the leading authority, Staley offers an astounding array of clubs and activity groups. That includes the Gender Sexuality Alliance, the Mythology Club, and the Yoga & Mindfulness Club. 

The school has an Interact Club and a Diversity Council—and as we currently conceive of these things, the school is indeed "diverse:"

Student population, Staley High, 2021-2022:
White kids: 1206
Black kids; 179
Hispanic kids: 193
Asian ancestry: 40
Two or more races: 160

Nationwide, our youth population is more "diverse" than that. But Staley High has a lot of kids of different "races" and ethnicities—and they were marching for their fellow student, many groups together.

We offer a confession. At this site, we still believe in that antique goal—"Black and white together." 

We strongly believe in privileging sameness over difference. We don't think there's any way a large, "diverse" continental nation can seriously expect to function if its various groups, and its routinely inept upper-end elites, adopt a different conceptual course.

With that preconception acknowledged, we return to the recent story of Angel Reese, a 20-year-old All American basketball player at LSU whose recent behavior, we did think, went slightly off the rails. 

Reese went viral a few weeks back, and she has largely stayed there. She went viral in the wake of some unusual behavior on her part, joined to some sadly typical behavior by the likes of former blue tribe superstar Keith Olbermann.

You may recall the tribally unflattering history here. Back in the days of his cable news stardom, Olbermann routinely aimed his misogyny-adjacent behavior at a range of young blonde women.

He would bring his smutty pal, Michel Musto, onto his MSNBC program for hilarious closing segments devoted to this unattractive line of behavior. He would then execute a live "throw" to Rachel Maddow, who had to pretend that she wasn't aware of what Olbermann and his smutty pal had just done.

You know the way our tribe's elites are, but we'll go ahead and refresh you:

In real time, we wondered, for years. if we were the only blue tribe member who was offended by Olbermann's constant misogyny-adjacent behavior. Then, the private musings of the JournoList forum went public, as thumbnailed here:

JournoList was a private Google Groups forum for discussing politics and the news media with 400 left-leaning journalists, academics and others. Ezra Klein created the online forum in February 2007 while blogging at The American Prospect and shut it down on June 25, 2010 amid wider public exposure. Journalists later pointed out various off-color statements made by members of the list denigrating conservatives. Others defended such statements as being taken out of context or simply a matter of private candor.

To establish a very important point, none of what follows was Ezra Klein's doing or fault. That said, when JournoList's musings somehow went public, it was revealed that various members had explicitly criticized Olbermann's "misogyny"—but they'd only been willing to do so in private. 

Apparently given Olbermann's prominence, we were able to find none of those people who had been willing to speak up in public. We invite you to recall this passage from Book II, Chapter 9 of My Antonia:

So that was what they were like, I thought, these white-handed, high-collared clerks and bookkeepers! I used to glare at young Lovett from a distance and only wished I had some way of showing my contempt for him.

We don't recommend that you view other people with contempt. But our blue elites—in this case, boys and girls together!—can often be perhaps a bit "high-collared" themselves!

Reese, who is only 20 years old, engaged in some unusual behavior after the recent NCAA championship game, which LSU convincingly won. (You'll note that we said "after.") 

Young people can be like that! That said, Olbermann quickly issued a rather typical insult, and a viral episode followed.

We don't think we've ever seen blue elites move so quickly to adopt a distorted Group Account of the basic facts which underlay Olbermann's insulting remark. But that's the power of Storyline among our own high-collared elites at this challenging point in time.

Angel Reese is twenty years old. Young people like her, of whatever "race," have grown up in a journalistic era defined by the presence of a potent mainstream Storyline—a Storyline which largely took shape in the aftermath of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, age 17, in early 2012.

In our view, a great deal of performative conduct has been involved in the workings of that potent Storyline. We feel sorry for young people, black and white together, who have come of age while being subjected to the adjusted facts which have typified the story-telling of blue elites in service to the demands of that particular Storyline.

Last night, on Our Own Tribe's Cable Channel, one of the cable stars described the death of Trayvon Martin. In a stronger journalistic realm, she would have been fired on the spot for the ridiculous but thoroughly standard way she picked and chose her "facts."

We feel sorry for all young people who have been surrounded with such "journalistic" behavior through the course of their young lives. In our view, absurdly bogus journalistic behavior isn't good for young people or for other living things.

In fairness, we're sure that the cable star in question had only the best intentions. That said, she would have been fired on the spot in a slightly more competent and perhaps more honest world.

Tomorrow, we'll link you to Internet Archive and show you what she said. We're sure that she was well intentioned. Her performance was absurd.

The kids who marched for Ralph Yarl have grown up in an age which has partially been defined by the workings of that potent Storyline. Yesterday, we were happy to see them stating their view, black and white together!

Tomorrow: Preferred Script never dies

Regarding My Antonia: We strongly recommend the beautiful Book II, Chapter 9 of Willa Cather's classic, semi-autobiographical novel.

Book II is called The Hired Girls. To read Chapter 9, click here.

. 

The long and the short of Clarence Thoma$!

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2023

Also, Hannah Dreier is back: Kevin Drum sems to have made a factual error in this recent post. (Such things happen.)

Otherwise, he drew a crucial distinction between 1) the plainly serious financial flimflam in which Clarence Thomas seems to be severely wrong, and 2) an apparently trivial non-complaint about that very same person.

In the realm of Drum's factual error, the Washington Post did indeed publish a news report about the matter in which Thomas seems to be seriously wrong. 

The report appeared online, not in print. But there it was, last Friday afternoon, written by Amy Wang and published beneath this headline:

Senators call for probe of Thomas amid report of real estate deals with GOP donor

Uh-oh! As Wang reported, the GOP donor, Harlan Crow, has been putting cash into Thomas' pocket through a long-standing real estate deal involving Thomas' mother. 

Thomas has (in effect) been accepting the cash, and he hasn't been reporting it.

That looks like a plainly serious matter. As Drum noted, this second matter pretty much doesn't:

DRUM (4/17/23): Today we learned that for many years Thomas has been reporting income from Ginger Ltd., a defunct company. He should have been reporting income from its successor, Ginger Holdings, LLC. This seems like a very trivial story, but the Post ran it at the top of its front page in the print edition.

That seems to be "very trivial," Drum says. We can't say that he's wrong.

In this second matter, Thomas actually has been reporting the rental income in question. As far as we know, no one has said that there's anything wrong with his receipt of that rental income.

Why did the Post (and others) report this matter at all? Because Thomas has been making a minor error regarding the name of the company from which he's been receiving the income!

The name of the company is Ginger Holdings, LLC. Thomas has been reporting the income under the company's previous name, Ginger Ltd.  

(We're going to guess that a well-trained gumshoe could see right through that dodge!)

As Drum says, the Post ran its report about this matter at the top of Friday's front page. Why did the Post bother with this foofaw at all? In the paper's front-page report, Boburg and Brown explained:

BOBURG AND BROWN (4/17/23): The previously unreported misstatement might be dismissed as a paperwork error. But it is among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made on required annual financial disclosure forms over the past several decades, a review of those records shows. Together, they have raised questions about how seriously Thomas views his responsibility to accurately report details about his finances to the public.

This "might be dismissed as a paperwork error," Boburg and Brown acknowledge. All in all, a person could think that the Post was slicing it slightly thin with this front-page report. 

Drum says this second matter seems "very trivial." That isn't true of the much more serious matter involving the unreported cash handovers from Crow.

This second matter, unlike the first, does seem pretty trivial. That said, Stephanie Ruhle devoted the second segment of last night's 11th Hour to this second matter.

To its credit, the Post at least explained the nature of this minor transgression. Not so with Ruhle and her guest, MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman.

Ruhle and Coleman managed to burn an entire segment without attempting to explain the nature of this transgression. They blathered in pleasing, unspecific ways about Thomas. On the screen, a chyron was trumpeting this:

WAPO: JUSTICE THOMAS HAS FOR YEARS CLAIMED INCOME FROM A DEFUNCT REAL ESTATE FIRM

It sounded wonderfully fraudulent, but neither Ruhle nor Coleman ever tried to explain the nature of the transgression. Instead, they offered generic blather about how we the people really need to be able to trust the members of the Supreme Court.

The segment came close to being a journalistic fraud. Inevitably, Ruhle closed by saying this:

RUHLE (4/17/23): Charles Coleman, you always make us smarter. Thank you for being here.

It's Ruhle's trademark bit of branding—the nightly claim that her panels help us viewers "get smarter." According to one of our young analysts, it's her way of letting us know how dumb she thinks we are.

(We can't link you to a transcript. MSNBC has stopped providing transcripts, perhaps for obvious reasons.)

This is the kind of standard piddle with which Ruhle clogged her program last night. Finally, in her program's final segment, she devoted five minutes to the shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl in Kansas City last Thursday night.

It seems to us that MSNBC has decided to change its approach to such shootings. If so, we can't necessarily say it's a bad idea, but the change does seem to be happening.

Meanwhile, Hannah Dreier is back on the front page of today's New York Times. She offers another sprawling report about the exploitation of migrant teens. The dual headlines say this:

As Migrant Children Were Put to Work, U.S. Ignored Warnings
The White House and federal agencies were repeatedly alerted to signs of children at risk. The warnings were ignored or missed.

For the record, that's the Biden White House to which those unflattering headlines refer.

We'll close with a guess and a question:

First, the guess. As with Dreier's initial report about this exploitation, we'll guess that you won't hear much about this on MSNBC. 

The channel walked away from Dreier's initial report, the one about the migrant teens being forced to work dangerous jobs on all-night overnight shifts. Why talk about exploited kids when you could be speculating, for hours on end, about sending Trump to jail?

That was our guess. Here's comes our question:

Would we hear more about this on blue tribe cable had it been the Trump White House which ignored all those warnings?

Would this topic have mattered then? In response to that question, we each can construct a best guess.

THE WAGES OF STORYLINE: One was injured, one was killed!

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2023

The role of Storyline: Did Charles Blow's recent column raise a serious point of concern about next year's election?

We haven't seen any statistics about the possible point of concern Blow raised in his column. For what will be the fourth time, we'll describe that point of concern below.

First, though, there's Storyline. 

Also, there are two news reports by the New York Times. Also, there was the selection of topics under discussion on today's Morning Joe.

Let's start with those two news reports.

Each report concerns a young person who was shot by a stranger while doing nothing wrong. One young person was shot and badly injured. The other young person was shot and killed.

The one young person—he's 16 years old—had knocked on the door, or had perhaps rung the doorbell, at a house in Kansas City, Missouri. 

It wasn't the house he'd intended to go to. He was shot and badly injured by the 84-year-old homeowner.

The other young person—she was 20—had driven into a driveway in rural Hebron, New York. She had done this for the sole purpose of turning her car around. 

Without even getting out of her car, she was shot, and she was killed, by the 65-year-old homeowner.

Enter Storyline! More to the point, enter the journalistic judgments which may reflect matters of preferred Storyline.

Herewith, an obvious point. Moses descended from Mount Sinai with no tablet which can tell the nation's news orgs how to treat these rather similar shooting events. 

Are these two events essentially the same? Are they essentially different?

Is one of these events more significant than the other? There is no tablet, and no scientific formula, which can tell a major news org how to answer such questions.

That said, the gods may be testing our national news orgs with this nearly simultaneous pair of roughly similar events. Beyond that, the gods may be giving us a chance to review a powerful piece of Storyline which has driven a large part of the national discourse over the past dozen years.

For the record, the Kansas City shooting occurred last Thursday night. The shooting in upstate New York happened on Saturday night. 

We'll assume that this point of chronology explains, or helps explain, the different way these somewhat similar shootings have been treated, to date, by the New York Times. 

How has the New York Times handled these shootings? To date, the answer is this:

In this morning's New York Times, the Kansas City shooting is the subject of a full-length, front-page report. 

The fatal shooting in upstate New York isn't mentioned in that report. Indeed, it isn't mentioned anywhere else in today's print edition. 

That fatal shooting in upstate New York is the subject of this online New York Times report. That online report draws am explicit connection to the Kansas City shooting.

Again, we assume the different way these events have been treated results, at least in part, from matters of chronology. Simply put, news orgs have had more time to assemble information about the shooting in Kansas City.

That said, there are certain questions about these two events each news org will have to decide:

Are these events the same, or different? Is one of these shooting events more significant, or perhaps more newsworthy, than the other event?

Is the fatal shooting more significant because the shooting was fatal? Is the non-fatal shooting more significant because it seems to involve the never-ending, extremely important backwash from our nation's brutal racial history?

There is no perfect answer to any such question. Eventually, the nation's news orgs, and the nation's citizens, will simply have to decide.

That said, we were surprised by the role which Storyline seemed to play on today's Morning Joe. The journalistic judgment of the past dozen years seemed to have been turned on its head.

Starting in early 2012 with the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, shootings like the one in Kansas City have been given substantial prominence within the mainstream press.

Often, you could tell that these shootings were taken to be of very high significance. You could tell that by the way our various news organs misstated, embellished and disappeared basic facts about such events, thereby creating versions of such events which adhered, with more perfection, to preferred Storyline.

This morning, on Morning Joe, a different type of judgment seemed to prevail. During the program's first hour, the shooting in Kansas City wasn't mentioned until 6:33 A.M. 

At thar time, it was very briefly reported and discussed. At that point, the talkers moved on. 

Al Sharpton joined the program at the start of the 7 o'clock hour. As of a commercial break at 7:20, the shooting hadn't been mentioned by Reverend Sharpton, or by anyone else.

To our ear, this seemed to suggest a major change in corporate Storyline. We'll mention one more current event:

A third shooting event has been in the news within the past 24 hours. In Akron, Ohio, it was decided that police officers won't be charged for having shot and killed a young motorist who was fleeing arrest.

Such events have formed powerful Storyline for roughly the past dozen years. Somewhere within the inner sanctum of MSNBC, it seems that someone has decided, as of last evening and as of this morning, that a new approach will be taken to such events.

As of this morning, it isn't clear that the New York Times will adopt some such new approach. But within the realm of Storyline, such decisions routinely occur. 

"Storyline" involves what sorts of things will be said about such events. 

That said, "Storyline" also refers to the amount of emphasis which will be given to such events. To what extent will certain events be discussed, and what sorts of things will be said?

On MSNBC, shooting events aimed at young black people seem to have been downgraded as a matter of Storyline. A similar downgrade seemed to obtain on last evening's 11th Hour, where Stephanie Ruhle discussed the Kansas City shooting for only five minutes, in her program's final segment.

(What other topics were given more prominence? We'll tell you this afternoon.)

At the New York Times, the shooting which took place in Kansas City has become a front-page event. The fatal shooting in upstate New York will most likely never achieve that status. 

That is a function of Storyline, and Storyline is a function of (imperfect) human judgment.

We thought about the recent history of Storyline when we read Blow's column last week. We also thought about Angel Reese, a 20-year-old All-American basketball player who recently went viral.

In his column, Blow seemed to suggest that declining turnout among young black votes could doom Joe Biden next year. 

When we read that speculation, we thought about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. We also thought about Angel Reese, and about the good, decent people all over the country who are roughly her age.

Tomorrow: Storyline versus fact

Maryland surveyed on "Don't Say Gay!"

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2023

Be careful what you're sure of: If only in the political realm, Maryland isn't Florida.

In the political realm, Maryland is reliably blue. For example, this is the way Maryland voted in the 2020 election:

Maryland, presidential vote, 2020 election
Joe Biden (D): 65.4%
Donald J. Trump (R): 32.2%

Two years later, here's the way Maryland voted in elections for its eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives:

Maryland, U.S. House elections, 2022: 
Democratic candidates: 64.7%
Republican candidates: 34.6%

On the basis of that (roughly) 2-ro-1 statewide vote, Democrats won seven of the state's eight House seats. Please don't ask how we did it!

Long story short, Maryland is one of our bluest states. Within that context, we want to show you a somewhat sobering passage from a recent report in the Washington Post.

Nicole Asbury's lengthy report concerned a debate within the Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools, one of the nation's largest school systems. Headline included, the report begins like this:

Some Montgomery parents want to opt out of new books featuring LGBTQ characters

Earlier this school year, Maryland’s largest school district revised its curriculum to include a new reading list of books with young LGBTQ characters in an effort to be more inclusive, but the reading list is getting pushback from some families who argue that Montgomery County Public Schools should allow an opt-out policy so their children won’t have to read the books or participate in lessons about them.

The reading list introduced several new books for students in prekindergarten to eighth grade that feature LGBTQ characters as part of the school system’s English language arts curriculum. The books include “My Rainbow”—a story about a mom who makes a wig for her transgender daughter—and “Love Violet”—a picture book about a shy young girl who mulls over how to give a Valentine to her crush, a girl in her class named Mira.

The stories on the list were recommended by a group of parents, community members, students and staff members, and the books were vetted by a committee of five staff members. Each book was posted online for parents to review...

Asbury continued from there, discussing the nuts and bolts of what is now a familiar type of dispute.  

Along the way, Asbury described Montgomery County as "a liberal D.C. suburb," which it basically is. That said, uh-oh! At one point, she included this possibly surprising passage concerning a recent statewide survey:

ASBURY (4/11/23): A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in October found that a majority of Maryland voters support teachers discussing acceptance of LGBTQ people in middle school and high school grades, but views diverge about elementary school grade levels. By more than 2 to 1 (66 percent to 30 percent), more registered voters said it is inappropriate rather than appropriate for teachers to discuss acceptance of LGBTQ people with students in kindergarten through third grade. For students in grades four and five, 40 percent of voters say the discussions are appropriate, and 56 percent say it is inappropriate.

Yes, it's only one survey. And yes, the question posed to respondents was a bit strangely worded:

QUESTION: "Do you think it is appropriate or inappropriate for Maryland public school teachers to discuss acceptance of LGBTQ people with students in kindergarten through third grade?"

Those observations apply! But by a margin of 66 percent to 30 percent, voters in the blue state of Maryland seemed to align with something resembling the type of restriction found in the state of Florida's original "Don't Say Gay" bill.

That result may seem surprising. We offer a type of political warning:

Be careful what you're sure of.

Within our own blue tribe, Florida's provision along these lines has been attacked, and sometimes perhaps a bit distorted, with gusto, from Day One. Especially at a time when news orgs are increasingly segregated by viewpoint, you may have seen and heard little pushback, even little nuanced pushback, to such characterizations.

Be careful what you're sure of! Rightly or wrongly, voter sentiment may not always align with the tribally pleasing impressions you're given by our blue tribe's cable news tribunes. Indeed, here's a passage from Asbury's original report about that survey of Maryland voters:

ASBURY (10/12/22): ...A separate nationwide poll by the University of Southern California found a similar pattern, with about 6 in 10 Americans saying high school students should learn about topics related to gender identity or sexual orientation, compared with fewer than 3 in 10 saying the same for elementary school students.

Asbury may be inclined to offer the good news first. But concerning the elementary grades, there you see a similar pattern emerging in a nationwide survey, with "fewer than 3 in 10 [respondents] saying" that grade school kids "should learn about topics related to gender identity or sexual orientation."

Stating the obvious, none of this means that that view is "right." Beyond that, other surveys may show something different.

That said, we live in a time when tribal tribunes are eager to tell us the things we want to hear. Such tribunes may not know what we need, but they do seem to know what we want.

One last gloomy point:

We recently watched a certain Florida governor giving a speech in the state of Iowa. We were shocked by how politically mainstream many of his talking points seemed. 

From that, we drew an important conclusion. As in 1980, so too today:

Be careful what you feel sure of! What you feel sure of (on a political basis) won't always turn out to be right!

STARTING TOMORROW: The wages of Storyline!

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2023

Could Biden lose next year? Sarah Weinman is a widely-acclaimed journalist and author. As a general matter, she writes about "true crime."

Weinman is highly accomplished and highly regarded. That said, her column in Sunday's New York Times struck us as a bit odd.

In Weinman's view, it seems that "true crime" writing is becoming less true! Ironic headline included, here's how her column started:

Truth Is Drifting Away From True Crime

During the end credits of the recent film “Boston Strangler,” ...there’s a notation that addresses the fate of a convicted murderer named George Nassar who, the movie states, is “still in prison in Massachusetts.” I’ve long been fascinated with the Strangler case and Mr. Nassar’s connection to it, so this detail caught my attention—since I was pretty sure I recalled an interview from a few years back in which he announced that he had terminal prostate cancer. As it turns out, Mr. Nassar, who told authorities that his cellmate had confessed to being the Strangler, died in 2018 at a prison hospital in Jamaica Plain.

As a writer and editor of true crime, I might be more sensitive to these sorts of factual errors than most people. But they are part of a troubling trend. Errors like the one in “Boston Strangler” threaten the integrity of true crime, which as a genre has grappled with whether the stories it tells about crimes are, in fact, true.

In Weinman's view, factual errors like the one she cites "threaten the integrity of true crime."

Indeed, such errors "are part of a troubling trend" within the true crime genre. In Weinman's view, the true crime genre "has grappled with whether the stories it tells about crimes are, in fact, true"—irony plainly intended.

Weinman is a highly accomplished journalist and author. On the other hand, we're inclined to wonder where she's been over the past thirty years.

As she started her column, Weinman focused on a factual error about a relatively minor character in a recent, "true crime" Hulu film which has been little noted and won't be long remembered. 

True crime is ceasing to be true, she suggests. We'd be inclined to add this point:

True crime, join the club!

Officially, Weinman is "the crime and mystery columnist for [the Times'] Book Review." As such, she works for a newspaper which plays a key role in the American national discourse.

Readers, can we talk? Even within the realm of high-end American journalism, that discourse has been drifting away from the presentation of carefully selected true facts for at least the past thirty years. Instead, the discourse has moved toward the embellished, misleading and bogus tales which emerge from Storyline.

True crime films are becoming less true? Welcome to Neverland!

As Al Pacino might have ranted, this whole American discourse is becoming less true! Having advanced that claim, let's move on to this second point:

Last Thursday, in that same New York Times, Charles Blow raised a possible point of concern about next year's White House election. The column ran beneath this slightly frightening headline:

What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans.

The headline suggested an obvious possibility—it's possible that the Republican Party candidate could win next year's election.

President Biden could lose! Regarding Blow's possible point of concern, we've already posted the relevant passage two times. Because next year's election will be quite important, we'll post the passage again:

BLOW (4/13/23): [James Carville] raised perhaps the most interesting concern, one I wasn’t expecting: “The biggest story in my mind out of 2022 is abysmally low Black turnout.” Specifically, he said, “it’s a problem with younger Black voters.”

In the most recent midterm elections, even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents, Carville considered Black turnout underwhelming. But he isn’t sure what’s causing this problem, or how to fix it.

I talked to Terrance Woodbury, a founding partner at the consultancy HIT Strategies, which researches Black voter sentiment. A January survey found that three-quarters of Black voters don’t believe their lives have improved since Biden became president, despite his administration’s “initiating or completing” a majority of the Black agenda, Woodbury said.

Woodbury underscored what can only be described as a glaring communications failure, particularly when it comes to young people. As he said, “It’s not that we haven’t made progress,” it’s that younger Black voters “don’t know about the progress.”

According to James Carville, a decline in turnout among younger black voters may put next year's election at risk. 

Blow didn't present any statistical evidence in support of Carville's presentation, but he and Terrence Woodbury both seemed to feel that Carville's concern has merit.

Is something undermining the interest of "younger Black voters" in turning out to vote? More specifically, is something undermining the likelihood that "younger Black voters" will turn out to re-elect Biden next year?

Is that a realistic point of concern? We have no obvious way of knowing, but we'll go ahead and say again what we've said before:

When we read that passage in Blow's column, we thought about Angel Reese, an All-American basketball player at LSU. A few weeks ago, Reese went viral, and she has pretty much stayed there. 

We also thought about a prevailing tendency, over perhaps the past dozen years, within blue tribe and mainstream press corps Storyline.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but Storyline tends to rule human cogitation. According to experts, we humans tend to adopt a preferred view of the world. We tend to adjust our facts, and torture logic, to adhere to that preferred view.

Within the mainstream press corps, a certain Storyline began to emerge all the way back in early 1992. 

Our blue tribe slumbered and snored as its tales took hold. It ended up sending Donald J. Trump to the White House some twenty-five years later.

As of 2012, a new and important Storyline had begun to emerge. This Storyline has taken hold within the major organs of the upper-end press corps, but also within the sprawling network of entities which advance contemporary Blue Tribe Thought

That Storyline has been all around us for, let's say, the past dozen years. We thought of that prevailing Storyline as we read Blow's column—and we also thought of Angel Reese, who is twenty years old.

The wages of sin is death, or at least so it says in a very old, famous book. Based upon what Blow has written, we find ourselves posing the following question:

Is it even possible? Could the wages of (blue tribe) Storyline be Joe Biden's defeat?

Tomorrow: We have a great many points to explain. Also, more from Weinman's column?

It sounded like a great idea!

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023

The democratization of media: For better or worse, the so-called "democratization of media" always sounded like a good idea.

It was never entirely clear what the term actually meant. But who could possibly be opposed to an act of "democratization?" 

Also, who could be opposed to the creation of an "information superhighway?" The leading authority on that term offers this thumbnail account:

"The information superhighway" is a late-20th-century phrase that aspirationally referred to the increasingly mainstream availability of digital communication systems (and ultimately, the Internet and its World Wide Web).

There are a number of definitions of this term...[T]hen-Senator Al Gore Jr. introduced it at a 1978 meeting of computer industry folk, in homage to his father, Senator Albert Gore Sr."

The McGraw-Hill Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, published in 2001, defines the term as "a proposed high-speed communications system that was touted by the Clinton/Gore administration to enhance education in America in the 21st century. Its purpose was to help all citizens regardless of their income level. The Internet was originally cited as a model for this superhighway; however, with the explosion of the World Wide Web, the Internet became the information superhighway."

In fact, the Internet has made reams of information available to anyone who wants to seek it out. In doing so, it has revealed two foundational principles of future anthropology.

The first principle goes like this:

Human beings don't run on information. Human beings run on the rocket fuel known as Preferred Storyline.

The second principle is something of an offshoot:

Human beings were never "the rational animal" in any ultimate sense. Preferred Tribal Storyline tends to prevail over the rational capacities of most individuals.

Here in our world, the "democratization of media" has taken shape through the creation of the Internet, but also through the spread of such communication systems as talk radio and cable television. 

These media have made it increasingly easy for individuals to divide into like-minded groups and to propagandize themselves within those Preferred Tribal Groups.

(Once again, these are all basic principles of future anthropology.)

The democratization of media sounds like a good idea! In practice, it can create a wide array of problems. 

In the last few days, to cite one example, we saw the arrest of a 21-year-old man who apparently thought it made some sort of sense to post national security information online, in a way which ended up making that information available all over the world.

Beyond that, the rise of "democratized" communication systems can allow unhelpful, misleading or bogus ideas to spread within specific "communities." That brings us to the troubling suggestion advanced by Charles Blow in Thursday's New York Times.

As we noted on Thursday, the column by Blow to which we refer carried this frightening headline:

What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans.

The frightening headline suggested an (obvious) possibility—the possibility that President Biden could conceivably fail in a re-election bid next year. (Though he could, of course, also succeed.)

How could Biden possibly fail? At one point, Blow offered this presentation:

BLOW (4/13/23): [James Carville] raised perhaps the most interesting concern, one I wasn’t expecting: “The biggest story in my mind out of 2022 is abysmally low Black turnout.” Specifically, he said, “it’s a problem with younger Black voters.”

In the most recent midterm elections, even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents, Carville considered Black turnout underwhelming. But he isn’t sure what’s causing this problem, or how to fix it.

I talked to Terrance Woodbury, a founding partner at the consultancy HIT Strategies, which researches Black voter sentiment. A January survey found that three-quarters of Black voters don’t believe their lives have improved since Biden became president, despite his administration’s “initiating or completing” a majority of the Black agenda, Woodbury said.

Woodbury underscored what can only be described as a glaring communications failure, particularly when it comes to young people. As he said, “It’s not that we haven’t made progress,” it’s that younger Black voters “don’t know about the progress.”

In the 2022 midterm elections, Carville considered black turnout to be underwhelming, "even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents."

According to Blow, Carville specifically identified this as "a problem with younger Black voters.”

It would be natural, within current blue tribe circles, to denounce Carville for advancing any such notion. That said, Blow seems to endorse this as a serious point of concern, as does Terrance Woodbury. 

We'd like to see the actual data about this underwhelming turnout. But as we read that passage by Blow, we thought of a 20-year-old athlete named Angel Reese—a young athlete whose reactions and points of view went viral in recent weeks within the worldwide community.

In our experience, this country is full of young black people who are extremely well-intentioned and extremely impressive. It's also true that the blue tribe community has adopted a certain stance in the past dozen years, which has surely had a large effect among young black men and women.

Warning! According to future anthropologists, it tends to be very hard for members of a Human Tribal Group to see the ways their own preferred group has engaged in propagandization. That said, is it possible that the Preferred Storylines of our Blue Tribe Community could lead to President Biden's defeat?

Experts say that blue tribe members won't be strongly inclined to believe such a thing. Possibly starting with "C.V."—possibly starting with Keith Olbermann—we'll examine the question next week.

Without presenting any statistics, Blow advanced a troubling point of concern. Assuming there's merit to Blow's concern, what could lie behind it?

William Brewster does it again!

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2023

One of our favorite pet peeves: All kidding aside, it has seemed to us that President Biden is sometimes perhaps a tiny bit nutty about the people he calls "the Bidens."

For better or worse—we'll go with for worse—we Americans have established certain political families as our "royal families."

For better or worse, the Kennedys are often regarded that way. In a slightly strange departure from his sense that he comes from regular people / the salt of the earth, the president sometimes seems to regard "the Bidens" in something like the same way.

At any rate, President Biden has been in Ireland, an ancestral home. In yesterday's New York Times, a certain pet peeve was triggered by this news report:

SHEAR AND RODGERS (4/12/23): In Louth, Mr. Biden was joined on a tour of a castle by Rob Kearney, a retired professional rugby player who is his fifth cousin once removed. Both are related to John Finnegan and Mary Kearney, who were Mr. Biden’s great-great-great-grandparents.

In County Mayo on Friday, the president will tour the Family History Research Unit at the North Mayo Heritage and Genealogical Center, which has assembled a genealogical database with more than 1.2 million records to track the ancestry of people from the county.

For Mr. Biden, that history includes Edward Blewitt and Mary Mulderg (who was also known as Mary Reddington), his great-great-great-grandparents. 

Goofus thought the New York Times must have made a mistake. If Finnegan and Kearney were the president's great-great-great-grandparents, then how could Blewitt and Mulderg claim the same distinction?

Gallant quickly answered. "The typical person has quite a few sets of great-great-great-grandparents," the youngster politely replied.

Gallant's aim was true! Baring the occurrence of a phenomenon known as "pedigree collapse," a person will have one set of parents, two sets of grandparents, four sets of great grandparents, and so on all the way back.

By the time we reach the level of great-great-great grandparents ("third great grandparents") a person will have sixteen different sets of such ancestors. The Times report mentioned two of Biden's sets, with fourteen sets left to go!

As we've mentioned in the past, this becomes a pet peeve for us when we watch Finding Your Roots, the fascinating PBS program produced by Professor Gates. It seems to us that Professor Gates plays it a bit fast and loose at moments like this, from a recent show:

GATES: In December 1607, county officials got wind of the secret [religious] services that were taking place at your ancestor's home. They came after him and the others who practiced at his home.

TAMERA MOWRY: Oh my gosh.

GATES: Your 13th-great grandfather was a wanted man.

MOWRY: In the name of religion?

GATES: In the name of religion.

MOWRY: Ah. Okay.

GATES: William and his fellow separatists would go to great lengths to worship as they chose. After English authorities discovered their church, they were arrested and briefly imprisoned. Upon release, they fled to Holland. But they didn't remain there for long.

We next found William, along with his wife Mary and two of their sons, on the passenger list of a ship bound for the New World. Any idea what you're looking at?

MOWRY: No.

GATES: You just read a list of passengers who sailed on the Mayflower.

MOWRY: You, I'm, I'm done.

(Gates laughing) 

GATES: You're descended from the original English people who came on the Mayflower, direct.

Your 13th great-grandfather, William Brewster, and his family—William's wife, Mary, is your 13th great-grandmother—they were there on the Mayflower. They were Pilgrims.

For the record, this wasn't the first time, this season alone, that Gates has traced someone's ancestry back to William Brewster. Two programs earlier, he was able to tell Angela Davis that Brewster was her tenth great-grandfather, as you can see in the transcript found at this link.

Please understand! We're not saying that Professor Gates' statements were inaccurate. It's just that everyone has a boatload on ancestors if we're able to trace things back that far.

Barring "pedigree collapse," how many sets of 13th great-grandparents do we the humans have?  By our calculation, the number would be 16,384—that's 16,384 separate sets of 13th great-grandparents!

If a genealogy can be traced back that far, a person has a lot of ancestors to choose from.  Indeed, if you aren't descended from William Brewster, that may be the actual news!

We actually had a friend in high school, all the way out in California, whose mother was descended from the Brewsters. Way back in the summer of '70, we motored from Cambridge down to Brewster, Mass. to drink in the atmospherics emanating from an old Cape Cod town with that particular name.

We sometimes think that Professor Gates glosses the way these numbers work as a way of creating interest. Which statement sounds more dramatic?

William Brewster is your 13th great-grandfather. How does that make you feel?

OR:

William Brewster is one of your 16,384 great grandfathers!

You can probably see what we mean. Not that there's anything wrong with it!

The professor's show is fascinating. That said, we don't think remarkable people like the Bidens would ever hide the shillelagh this way!

NOW TOO MUCH FOR US? We say guns, they say mental illness!

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2023

Justin Jones, bring us together! After Monday, it's been a very good week, mass shooting wise.

Admittedly, Monday was bad. 

On that occasion, a 25-year-old man walked into a bank in Louisville and fatally shot five people. One week earlier, a mass shooting inside a Nashville school had taken the lives of six people—three adults, three 9-year-old children.

Why do people conduct these mass shootings? According to CNN,  the Louisville shooter's family "plans to have his brain tested for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE." 

It would be interesting to see what some such procedure might show.

That said, this type of mass shooting incident has become a familiar part of the American scene. It has become a cultural norm, one of many destructive norms we the people don't seem to be able to find our way back out of.

With respect to the culture of mass shootings, a familiar pattern obtains. Our blue tribe prescribes a certain approach to this deeply destructive state of affairs—an approach which involves the regulation of guns.

Personally, we agree with such proposals. That said, office holders of the red tribe talk about the role that mental illness plays in these mass shooting events. 

Our tribe tends to dismiss such statements as acts of bad faith, as they often may be. That said, mental health issues are an obvious part of this syndrome too, but rarely the twain shall meet in our segregated tribal discussions.

It's easy for those of us who are blue to see the apparent bad faith of the red tribe's office holders. At the end of a very discouraging week, we're going to leave you with a few events which capture much of the way our own blue tribe tends to behave.

We'll start last night, as Al Franken spoke with Alex Wagner about the phenomenon which has often been called "the big sort." 

At one point, Wagner posed this question: "Does it feel to you like we are eventually sorting ourselves into deeper blue and deeper red states?"

It was a decent question. Increasingly, members of the red and blue tribes don't even live in the same localities, let alone hold the same views. Responding to Wagner, Franken said this:

"Yeah, we're doing nothing to bring people together, we're just always dividing people, and we are getting more separate, living more in our different areas that are red or bkue, and this has been happening for quite awhile, hasn't it?"

AS their discussion continued, the pair agreed that they weren't "trying to draw a false equivalence" between the behaviors of the red and blue worlds. That said, under a visual which said "Red States Gone Wild," here's how the segment ended:

FRANKEN (4/13/23): There's just an escalation in how far gone the Republican Party is. I mean, when they call January 6th a "legitimate political discourse," I mean—it's close to parody, but it's not, because it's not funny.

Speaking of behavior which comes close to parody, have "they" called January 6 a "legitimate political discourse?"

That's a referece to a single statement made by a single Republican official about a year ago. In our view, that was never an accurate account of what that one person had said—but so what?

Under current rules of the road, it became a standard jibe in our standard blue tribe jibe book. After seeming to lament the way we don't bring people together, Franken turned to that bit of script and said that "they" have said that.

Franken and Wagner agreed that current Republican policies and impulses are crazier than those of our own party. A person could quite sensibly advance that view.

That said, does it help when our tribunes insist on promoting the lazy tales which keep us blues feeling good? For another example from this week, consider what Lawrence said.

Lawrence O'Donnell contains multitudes. He's very experienced in several realms, and he knows a lot. We've often complimented him as one of the only mainstream journalists who was willing to speak with medical specialists, in a perfectly reasonable way, about the mental health, or lack of same, of one Donald J. Trump.

That said, Lawrence also has a history of failures of anger management which have created a string of entertaining though unhelpful episodes. He sometimes adopts his Dorchester accent during such episodes. 

Beyond that, he may still be subject to the unhelpful anger of We Northern Irish against the rebels Down South.

On Tuesday night, Lawrence played tape of a public statement by Rep. Justin Jones, who had just been reinstated to the Tennessee House.  For ourselves, we hope that Rep. Jones turns out to be a wise and effective political leader. 

In our view, Lawrence let his anger flash at that point. Different people will hold different views about the utility of a statement like this:

O'DONNELL (4/11/23): The white Republicans in power in the Tennessee state House, which was built by slaves, have shown how little has changed in that building in the 55 years since Avon Williams, Jr. became the first black person elected to the Tennessee Senate in the 20th century.

The white Republicans are holding power in a House which was built by slaves!

Each person can judge the utility and wisdom of such formulations, offered by people like Lawrence. We've seen a lot of such statements in the wake of recent Tennessee events.

For ourselves, this sort of thing has made us think back to a column by the very angry Jimmy Breslin in 1999—an angry column about what an obvious old school white Tennessee racist Candidate Gore so plainly was.

The anger of Us Northern Irish isn't always enormously smart. That said, We Northern Irish have been doing this since the time of Civil War. Each individual is allowed to decide if they think this is helpful or smart.

We'll leave you with two statements, the first by Brother Franken, who wrote some great jokes for Gore:

Yeah, we're doing nothing to bring people together, we're just always dividing people.

That's one statement, from last night, yanked out of a larger context. The second statement comes from Professor Cottom. 

In our view, she pretty much got it right:

I keep my eyes on the South for a lot of reasons. This is my home. It is the region of this nation’s original sin. Nothing about the future of this country can be resolved unless it is first resolved here: not the climate crisis or the border or life expectancy or anything else of national importance, unless you solve it in the South and with the people of the South.

We think Cottom got it right. We think Cottom knows what we need, though Lawrence and the rest of the cable news Rolling Stones may know what we want.

Has our nation achieved a state of affairs which is "now too much for us?" Can we possibly find a way "back out of all this?"

It may seem, at this point, that the party favored by our blue tribe can't possibly lose next year. The large majority of the public disagrees with the GOP with respect to abortion. A very large percentage of voters favor tougher laws with respect to access to guns.

It almost seems like there's no way our self-impressed tribe could possibly lose. To that, we'll only offer this:

Just sit back and watch us try!

For quite a few years, it has seemed to us that there's no easy or obvious way out of our devolving political mess. In our view, turning things over to Lawrence's anger may not be the way to proceed.

We say guns, they say mental illness. Justin Jones, develop your skills and bring us together! Bring us together, please!

"What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances?"

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2023

A fascinating column by Blow: Charles Blow offers a fascinating column in today's New York Times.

He's wondering about what could happen next year. The headline on the column says this:

What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans.

In recent weeks, Blow has spoken with "several political advisers who’ve run campaigns for Democratic presidents to get their assessments of Biden’s advantages and challenges."

Just to be clear, we're talking about people who have run successful campaigns for Democratic presidential candidates. Blow is wondering how President Biden's chances look at this point in time.

First, an observation. For ourselves, we're scared stiff about Biden's chances next year. 

We're frightened about the possibility of an event involving his physical health. We're also scared about the possibility of an event which might seem to involve his mental health/cognition.

Politely, concerns like these are euphemistically described as concerns about "age." After praising Biden's policy record, Blow turns to this matter first:

BLOW (4/13/23): Most of these political pros agreed that Biden’s age will be a significant issue to overcome—one reason they’d prefer a rematch with Donald Trump rather than a contest against a younger, first-time Republican presidential candidate who’d be able to draw a more stark generational contrast. It’s unclear how the age issue will play out, but as Kraft put it, the Republicans “are going to do this ‘Sleepy Joe’ thing to the fare-thee-well.”

We're very, very concerned about possible problems here. As he continues, Blow continues discussing Trump:

BLOW (continuing directly): The other reason Trump is the preferred opponent is that, as Francis observed, “he is damaged goods, and he’s going to be more damaged.” The consensus was that Trump’s legal problems will help him in the primaries but weaken him in the general. The consideration is simple: Among those who voted against Trump-created chaos in 2020, who would vote for Trump in 2024 after he’s sown even more chaos?

We'll go ahead and say it again. We remain very concerned about President Biden's age.

We can imagine a world in which Biden becomes very beatable. A bit later, Blow raises a surprising point of concern:

BLOW: [James Carville] raised perhaps the most interesting concern, one I wasn’t expecting: “The biggest story in my mind out of 2022 is abysmally low Black turnout.” Specifically, he said, “it’s a problem with younger Black voters.”

In the most recent midterm elections, even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents, Carville considered Black turnout underwhelming. But he isn’t sure what’s causing this problem, or how to fix it.

I talked to Terrance Woodbury, a founding partner at the consultancy HIT Strategies, which researches Black voter sentiment. A January survey found that three-quarters of Black voters don’t believe their lives have improved since Biden became president, despite his administration’s “initiating or completing” a majority of the Black agenda, Woodbury said.

Woodbury underscored what can only be described as a glaring communications failure, particularly when it comes to young people. As he said, “It’s not that we haven’t made progress,” it’s that younger Black voters “don’t know about the progress.”

We don't think we've ever read about low turnout among black voters, and especially among younger black voters, in 2022. Blow doesn't offer any statistics, but he and Woodbury seem to agree that a problem does exist.

Woodbury says that younger black voters don't know about all the progress Biden has achieved with respect to "a majority of the Black agenda." We aren't hugely surprised to hear that. We also had no idea that Biden had accomplished some such thing, nor do we have any idea what Woodbury is talking about.

We're very scared about Biden's age. We're also concerned about this. It seems to us that the political and journalistic elites of our blue tribe are floating along on a dream concerning one lone matter:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

Other than that, what has been goin' on?

We don't have the slightest idea what Biden has done for young black people. Beyond that, we think such people have been exposed to a deeply disillusioning brand of upper-end national journalism over the past dozen years.

We seem to see the fruits of that disillusionment everywhere we look. Our loftier tribunes chase Trump around while engaging in a fraudulent-seeming performance of racial concern. 

As they do, they don't seem to have any idea of how their overall project might look, or of the degree of alienation their posturing might imaginably bring on.

Are young black voters peeling away from upper-end Democratic politics and upper-end blue tribe journalism? We don't know the answer to that, but it seems to us that it ought to be much more fully discussed.

We love the chance to praise Blow's work; we hope he returns to this topic. We expect to get specific with at least one example of the alienation to which we refer within, let's say, the next week.

We're very scared about next year. On occasion, we think we can maybe and possibly see a bad moon coming on.

NOW TOO MUCH FOR US? We liked the cut of Rep. Jones' jib!

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2023

Governor Lee's proposal: As we watched last evening's Last Word, we liked the cut of his jib.

Stumbling over his description of the proposal, Lawrence asked Rep. Justin Jones (D-Tennessee) what he thought about it. At one point in his reply, Rep. Jones said this:

JONES (4/12/23): I really hope, and I believe, that the governor wants to be a good-faith partner.

There was a good deal more than that to Jones' presentation. But when we saw the young legislator say that, we liked the cut of his jib.

Three cheers for Rep. Jones! In that moment, he said he believes that the governor "wants to be a good-faith partner." 

He was referring to Governor Bill Lee of the ruby-red state of Tennessee.

Lee was elected governor in 2018. He was re-elected last year. 

Meanwhile, as we've asked before, who lost Tennessee? The numbers in those two elections look like this:

Tennessee gubernatorial election, 2018
Bill Lee (R): 1,336,106 (59.6%)
Karl Dean (D): 864,863 (38.6%)

Tennessee gubernatorial election, 2022
Bill Lee (R): 1,129,390 (64.9%)
Jason Martin (D): 572,818 (32.9%)

For the record, 2018 was a down year for Tennessee Republicans. 

It was President Donald J. Trump's midterm election. As elsewhere, this seemed to swell overall turnout—and it knocked Republican victory margins down in several major races in the Volunteer State.

By last year, the victory margin was back up to 32 points in the governor's race. Tennessee is a bright red state.

As we noted last week, Tennessee was still electing lots of Democrats as of the 1990s. Today, the Volunteer State is ruby red. Who lost Tennessee?

We'll set that important question aside for some other day. Today, Bill Lee is governor of a bright red state—and we liked the cut of Rep. Jones' jib when he seemed to come to terms with that unmistakable fact.

For the record, Governor Lee is a pol our blue tribe might not be inclined to admire. 

Lee has signed a bunch of bills which blue tribe members would surely oppose. At this site, we admired Rep. Jones when he found it within his power to say that he hopes, and truly believes, that Governor Lee is sincere about this:

COCHRANE (4/13/23): As protesters continue to pressure the legislature to move to tighten access to guns in the state, Republican lawmakers have largely focused on legislation that would pour millions of dollars into security at both public and private schools. But on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, announced he would sign an executive order tightening background checks for buying guns in the state and speeding up the process of reviewing criminal histories and mental health information from the courts.

Mr. Lee also called on the legislature to draft and pass what he described as “an order of protection law” that would ensure that people found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others would not have access to guns. He repeatedly declined to refer to the measure as a red flag law, a term some conservatives have resisted both on the state and the national level, instead describing it as “a law that I think is appropriate for our state today.”

He has been open about the personal impact of the attack at the Covenant School: His wife, Maria, was close friends with Cindy Peak, one of the staff members killed, and the two women were set to have dinner the night of the shooting.

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, a Republican, has also expressed support for a red flag law after the Covenant School shooting...

So reports Emily Cochrane in this morning's New York Times. As he spoke with Lawrence last night, Rep. Jones said these proposals aren't enough. But he was also willing to say that he truly believes that Gov. Lee is sincere.

Rep. Jones is only 27. The people who feed us our tribal tapioca are crafting instant mythologies about Rep. Jones, mythologies designed to please us.

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray" that Rep. Jones will emerge as a political leader who possesses the type of wisdom which helps our flailing and floundering nation emerge from our deeply dysfunctional current state—the type of wisdom which might help us move "back out of all this now too much for us."

Needless to say, there are no such guarantees. But we liked the cut of the legislator's jib when he said what he said last night.

Like every other Democrat in his state, Rep. Jones faces a daunting reality at the present time. He holds office in a bright red state—and then too, we all face the reality given voice by Professor Cottom in yesterday's New York Times:

COTTOM (4/12/23): I keep my eyes on the South for a lot of reasons. This is my home. It is the region of this nation’s original sin. Nothing about the future of this country can be resolved unless it is first resolved here: not the climate crisis or the border or life expectancy or anything else of national importance, unless you solve it in the South and with the people of the South.

Professor Cottom basically got it right. Given the way our creaking political system works, nothing is going to be resolved unless it's at least partly resolved in the South, unless it can be solved, at least in part, with the people of that region.

Professor Cottom got it right. Over the past few nights, we're inclined to think that Lawrence possibly hasn't.

Tomorrow: Mr. Gorbachev, build up that wall! (No Divisive Remark Left Behind)

NOW TOO MUCH FOR US? Not until this afternoon!

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2023

In the meantime, this: Can our struggling nation—the slightly misnamed United States—possibly find a way "back out of all this now too much for us?"

You're asking an excellent question! That said, we're losing a chunk of time this morning. We won't be posting until this afternoon, probably on this topic.

In the meantime, this:

If Tennessee’s Legislature Looks Broken, It’s Not Alone
State legislatures around the country—plagued by partisan division, uncompetitive races and gerrymandering—reflect the current pressures on democracy.

It's a front-page report in today's New York Times about our broken state legislatures. 

Can we find a way "back out of all this?" If so, how do we do it? How do we get on that path?

Dominion lawsuit gets curiouser and curiouser!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2023

Judge Davis rules: In this morning's New York Times, Jeremy Peters reports the latest rulings by Judge Eric Davis in the high-profile defamation lawsuit being brought against Fox News.

Some of the rulings seems a bit curious, but so does the reporting by Peters. Headline included, the report starts off like this:

Judge Limits Fox’s Options for Defense in Dominion Trial

A judge ruled on Tuesday that Fox News could not argue that it broadcast false information about Dominion Voting Systems on the basis that the allegations were newsworthy, limiting a key line of defense for the network as it faces the beginning of a potentially costly defamation trial next week.

The judge, Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court, also ruled that Dominion could not refer to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol except in very narrow circumstances, saying he did not want jurors to be prejudiced by events that weren’t relevant to the central question in the case: Did Fox air wild claims about Dominion’s purported involvement in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald J. Trump knowing that they were lies?

Already, we're somewhat puzzled—in part, by Peters' reporting. This is why we say that:

In that second paragraph, Peters seems to say that this is "the central question" in Dominion's lawsuit:

Did Fox air wild claims about Dominion’s purported involvement in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald J. Trump knowing that they were lies?

There we go again, right off the rails, with our favorite word, "lies!"

By general reckoning, an inaccurate statement is only a "lie" if the person making the statement knows that the statement is false. That said:

In several of the incidents under review, the "wild claims" in question were voiced by Sidney Powell, an apparent crackpot. 

Are we sure that Powell knew or believed that her crazy claims were false? We know of no obvious reason to assume that she did. But if she believed that her statements were true, then her statements weren't "lies."

We have no idea why Peters (or his editor) framed his presentation that way. His presentation would have made cleaner, clearer sense if he had simply said this:

Did Fox air wild claims about Dominion’s purported involvement in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald J. Trump knowing that they were false?

Presumably, if Fox knew that Powell's claims were false, they shouldn't have put her on the air to make the claims. Given the norms of conventional English, a lot of confusion enters the picture when we fall back on the use of our favorite word—"lies."

We offer that as a critique of Peters or his editor.  Moving right along, we'll admit to being somewhat puzzled by the judge's ruling Peters describes right at the start of his report:

A judge ruled on Tuesday that Fox News could not argue that it broadcast false information about Dominion Voting Systems on the basis that the allegations were newsworthy.

At least as it's described in that passage, that ruling sounds a bit shaky. 

Does that ruling mean that a news channel can never broadcast a false allegation on the basis that it's newsworthy? Essentially, that would mean that a news channel could never broadcast a speech by Donald J. Trump at all, since that will surely entail the broadcast of statements or claims which are false.

(The same problem arises with other pols. Among major pols, Trump is merely the one who is most likely to make false statements.)

Think about what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election! Surely, it was "newsworthy" to report the fact that Trump was claiming, often crazily, that the election had been stolen in various crazy ways.

If news orgs aren't allowed to report the fact that a sitting president is making such claims, that means that we can't have a public discourse at all. Surely, news orgs should be held to a different standard, a standard something like this:

Ideally, news orgs should be expected to offer fact-checks of apparent false statements made by major pols. In every case, news orgs shouldn't have their own personnel making claims they know to be false. Also, news orgs shouldn't put apparent crackpots like Powell on the air to make "wild claims" which are known to be false.

Peters discusses that ruling again a bit later in his report. At least as described in Peters' report, the judge's rulings seem to be getting perhaps a wee bit curiouser and curiouser. 

It seems fairly obvious that major parties at Fox News misbehaved in serious ways in this matter. Could confusion within a jury about a welter of rulings possibly give Fox News a way to make an escape?

Your key semantic takeaway: A whole lot of false statements are lies. A whole lot of false statements are not!

NOW TOO MUCH FOR US? Genius professor reads two grafs!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2023

She also gets something right: Is there any hope for us the people? For us, the current American branch of "the rational animal?" 

We can't necessarily say that there actually is! 

Below, we plan to recommend something Professor Cottom says in her new opinion column for the New York Times. First though, consider this:

COTTOM (4/11/23): ...By the end of the day on Thursday, the Tennessee House had expelled Pearson and Jones. (Nashville’s Metropolitan Council voted unanimously on Monday to reappoint Jones to House District 52.)

This swift political action is the kind that the 71 percent of Americans who want stricter gun laws can only dream of happening.

We were concerned and surprised. Have we actually backslid to the point where only 71 percent of us Americans now "want stricter gun laws?"

That's what the professor said—and she won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" just last year! 

For reasons which are blindingly obvious, that number struck us as surprisjngly low. For that reason, we decided to check. 

We clicked the link to Cottom's source. When we did, we found an AP report from last August which opened with this headline, but also with this claim:

AP-NORC poll: Most in US say they want stricter gun laws

Most U.S. adults want to see gun laws made stricter and think gun violence is increasing nationwide, according to a new poll that finds broad public support for a variety of gun restrictions, including many that are supported by majorities of Republicans and gun owners.

The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.

Sure enough! According to the AP report, the new AP-NORC survey had found that "71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter!" 

The professor read all the way to that second paragraph, then passed that finding along.

We decided to read a bit further. That percentage seemed surprisingly low. We wanted to see the fuller data set.

We scrolled to the end of the AP report. When we got there, sure enough! 

Under this heading—Majorities back tighter gun policies—the AP report said that 85% of respondents had said that they support "a federal law requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers, including private sales and gun shows."

Also, 83% of respondents had said they support "a federal law that bans those convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun." You can see those numbers right there, in that AP report.

That raises an obvious question. Where in the world—where on earth—did the AP reporter get that 71% percent figure? 

Having perused the entire report, we have no idea. That said, consider the plight currently faced by us the American people:

We're a nation whose major news org routinely deal with basic statistics in the way we've just described. Also, we're a nation in which recipients of our "genius grants" read the first two paragraphs of news reports, then apparently read no further.

We're a people whose major blue tribe newspaper waves claims like Cottom's into print, without wondering about the figure she was citing. The professor didn't think that her figure seemed low, and neither did her wonderfully erudite editor!

Surely, everyone knows that support for universal background checks had previously been over 90 percent, and not too long ago. On our part, that knowledge led to our skepticism concerning the figure Cottom cited.

No such question arose in the mind of the editor or editors who placed this column in print at our tribe's smartest newspaper.  This is the way our "genius professors," and our highest-end news orgs, function at this point in time. 

With that in mind:

How could anyone think that "rational animals" who function this way have any real hope of making it through our current travail, in which we're ostensibly trying to find a way "back out of all this now too much for us?"

According to the survey in question, 85 and 83 percent of us Americans favored those tougher gun laws! The AP rounded that off to 71 percent, and a genius professor passed that unexplained number along in the pages of the New York Times!

So it goes as we in our infallible tribe continue to flounder and flail. That said, the professor made an important observation before her column was done.

Professor Cottom, age 45 or 46, grew up in North Carolina. As you can see in her new column, she has quite a few views about the South. 

She's also a good, decent person.

It seems to us that some of her stated views are something less than totally helpful. Still and all, at one point, the professor offers this:

COTTOM: I keep my eyes on the South for a lot of reasons. This is my home. It is the region of this nation’s original sin. Nothing about the future of this country can be resolved unless it is first resolved here: not the climate crisis or the border or life expectancy or anything else of national importance, unless you solve it in the South and with the people of the South.

Just for the record, all regions in our nation are "the region of this nation's original sin." Among others, so said President Lincoln himself, right there in his second inaugural.

In our view, Cottom was working from a bit of unhelpful script at that point. But what she said next is important.

Given the way our creaky political system works, Cottom's larger assessment is almost surely correct. The various disasters we're currently facing—for now, let's focus on the growing, disastrous culture of crazy, suicidal mass shootings—are unlikely to be resolved "unless [we Yankees] solve it in the South and with the people of the South."

For many of us within our blue tribe, that is a daunting notion. As everyone knows, we're much, much smarter, and much more moral, than Those People are. And yet, this genius professor is trying to tell us that we have to deal with such lesser folk.

Frost began his poem, Directive, with the language we've been quoting—with the language about some person or persons who seem to be caught in a state of affairs "now too much for us."

Way back when, Randall Jarrell described Directive as "hard to understand, but easy to love." Your mileage about Directive may differ, but it seems to us that the poem includes a lot of language which might help direct us in our wanderings at this extremely perilous point in time.

We live at a time when our genius professors don't read past the second paragraph and our brightest news orgs don't notice. Also, when the clowns who spill from the clowncar each night can't stop pleasuring us by reusing the imagery which emerged from Mr. Lincoln's war, but also from the brutal history which preceded it.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our vastly self-impressed blue tribe is basically "all too human," pretty much all the way down. 

We lack that knowledge about ourselves. That doesn't make it untrue.

Are our tribunes taking us, to use Frost's language, toward "a house that is no more a house / Upon a farm that is no more a farm / And in a town that is no more a town"—but also into a public discourse which has ceased to be any such thing?

Under the guidance of Lawrence and them, have we possibly found our way to a discourse which is no more a discourse? To a discourse in which we read two grafs, then start calling the tired old names?

Professor Cottom is a good, decent person. Does anyone think that's enough?

Tomorrow: Gun control, mental health / Distinguishing characteristics

Black kids in math on the latest NAEP!

TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2023

Storyline battles statistics: In a new, intriguing Kevin Drum mentions a conversation, then offers a set of statistics about public school test scores in the various states.

According to Drum, the conversation went like this. There's something we might be able to learn from right here:

DRUM (4/10/23): Last night the conversation at dinner somehow turned to the subject of education and the South. No conclusions were reached except for a vague agreement that Southern states didn't spend a lot on education and had generally poor outcomes.

But is that true? Naturally I decided to check...

It's possible that Kevin is being diplomatic. Within our blue tribe, we tend to assume the worst about public schools in those Southern states. Within our blue tribe comment threads, we're sometimes less than fully polite.

In this instance, the dinner companions formed a vague agreement that Southern states "had generally poor outcomes" in public education—but uh-oh! When Kevin checked the latest NAEP scores, this is what he found:

DRUM (continuing directly): My metric is 8th grade reading scores on the NAEP because (a) 12th grade scores are old, sparse, and cover only a few states, and (b) reading scores are a better reflection of general education than math scores.

[...]

The perhaps surprising result of all this is that, relative to other states, six Southern states are above average when it comes to Black scores. Only three are above average when it comes to white scores. I'm not quite sure what to conclude from this.

In any case, when you look at the results for all students it turns out that Southern states are unexceptional. As a group, they're slightly below average (256 vs. 259, a gap of about one-third of a grade level), but nothing more than that. Among Black children, they're slightly above average (241 vs. 240).

In all honesty, that last paragraph is a bit strange. It compares apples to fruit baskets in a way we won't stop to explain.

In his fuller post, Drum mentions "the usual statistical caveats." Also, he supplies the average reading scores for black eighth-graders and white eighth-graders in the nation's various states. 

Drum's main takeaway is this:

"The perhaps surprising result of all this is that, relative to other states, six Southern states are above average when it comes to Black scores." 

Also this:

Concerning the region as a whole, Southern black kids scored "slightly above average (241 vs. 240)." For the record, that statistical difference is so small that it barely matters.

One caveat of our own would be this—this was the first NAEP test administration after the public school dislocations brought on by Covid. Just as a guess, we'll guess that a few years will have to pass before we can return to statistical comparisons in which we can have significant confidence.

That said, we blue tribe members might want to check our stereotypes concerning certain regional issues. We love, love, love to assume the worst about the yahoos down South. In this instance, Drum's numbers might almost seem to diverge from the standard preferred tribal narrative.

We decided to take a quick look at Grade 8 math scores. Here are some of the numbers we found:

Average scores, Black kids only 
Grade 8 math, 2022 NAEP
Defense Department schools: 272.2
Texas: 259.9
Massachusetts: 259.6 
Georgia: 256.3
Florida: 254.9
North Carolina: 254.5 

United States: 252.1 

New Jerey: 250.9
New York: 250.6
Connecticut: 248.9
California: 248.0
Wisconsin: 237.2

(We included Wisconsin just to be cruel. Permit your gaze to linger on the number from those Defense Department schools.)

Those are average scores for just one year. As noted, it was an unusual year.

That said, black kids in six Southern states exceeded the national average for black kids in Grade 8 math. As you can see, some of our finest blue tribe states were lagging a bit behind.

Could statistical tricks be lurking therein? Everything is possible! Also, various socioeconomic factors haven't been factored into those average scores.

That said, you'll never see such questions discussed, assessed, resolved. Performative virtue to the side, no one actually cares about any of this, and no one ever will.

It's Storyline pretty much all the way down! We humans love our tribal tales. That includes us the occasionally self-impressed people here in our own blue tribe.

For all NAEP data, start here.