A sensible point in the Washington Post!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011

No one yet knows what was said: As best we can tell, the New York Times hasn’t reported the existence of the Mike McQueary e-mails which are so famous on cable.

In the e-mails, McQueary said, among other things, that he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police” concerning Jerry Sandusky’s alleged assault on a boy in 2002.

Are those e-mails newsworthy at all? We’re not sure. But the Washington Post ran a news report this morning which includes a key point. The report appears in the paper’s sports section, sourced to the Associated Press:

ASSOCIATED PRESS (11/17/11): “At this point we have no record of any police report being filed in 2002” by McQueary in connection with the Sandusky case, university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said, adding police searched their records Wednesday.

The football building is on university property, so campus police would have been the most likely to respond for a police call.

Mountz also noted the 23-page grand jury report was the state attorney general's summary of testimony, so it's unclear what McQueary's full testimony was.

That highlighted point is quite basic. No one has a transcript or tape of McQueary’s grand jury testimony. For that reason, no one really knows what McQueary said.

Cable screamers are working from fleeting accounts in the grand jury report concerning McQweary’s conduct and testimony. But that report is not a full record. It doesn’t tell you all the things McQueary did and said.

Cable screamers don’t reed reel gudd. In fairness, they are highly skilled at getting lynch mobs into the streets and posing about the many brave things they would have done in McQueary’s place.

These are very bad people. They have done very bad things in the past. They’ll do the same thing again. It's how the clowns roll on cable.

The record here is very sparse—but the screaming is quite loud. In 1999, Chris Matthews almost a got a journalist killed due to his reprehensible, mob-running conduct. (For one of the most irresponsible moments in cable history, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/20/99.) Last night, he was making ridiculous statements about the current case.

Joan and David were there to smile and tell you all was well.

One point does seem to be clear: One point does seem to be clear about that e-mail. McQweary said he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police.” In the latter part of that statement, he presumably refers to his interview with Gary Schultz, the university official charged with overseeing the campus police. Schultz is one of the two Penn State officials who have been indicted for failing to report McQweary’s allegations.

On cable, all the trash talk has been aimed at McQweary. The indicted officials are rarely mentioned. Reason? They have videotape of McQweary at football games; this makes excellent B-roll. And the fact that McQweary witnessed a crime lets the pundits posture and yell about the various things they would have done in his place.

By all accounts, McQweary did “have discussions with...the official at the university in charge of police.” You won’t hear that on cable TV, where they like to scream and pose but don’t read especially well.

The New York Times and the soul of white folk!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Obama si, Alabama no: Andrew Rosenthal is the editor of the New York Times editorial page.

We would assume he’s a good, decent fellow in his personal dealings. That said, he’s also a legacy hire, and he just isn’t real sharp.

Everyone can observe this fact now that Rosenthal has his own blog. Does Anderson Cooper likes to talk toilet paper? Rosenthal wastes his time of a morning typing up piffle like this:

ROSENTHAL (11/14/11): Split Personalities and Political Spouses

Herman Cain’s wife, Gloria, has been pretty quiet so far, but in an interview conducted Sunday on Fox News (it’ll be broadcast Monday evening), she defended her husband against the sexual harassment accusations that surfaced about two weeks ago. She told Greta Van Susteren that her husband “totally respects women.” She also noted: “I’m thinking he would have to have a split personality to do the things that were said.”

Mrs. Cain’s willingness to stand up for her husband is admirable. But her assurances will convince precisely no one who hadn’t already decided that a vast left wing conspiracy was to blame for Mr. Cain’s troubles. (And, yes, I’m intentionally making a Hillary Clinton allusion.)...

Groan—and snore! There’s more, but we don’t recommend it.

That afternoon, Rosenthal took some time to share the tape of Herman Cain’s non-answer Libya answer. (You couldn’t have seen it anywhere else!) “Do yourself a favor and watch Mr. Cain attempt to talk about Libya,” the editor typed. “I think he might have just out-Perryed Perry.”

Simple story: The New York Times isn’t a bright newspaper, despite its reputation and branding. This thought often pops into our heads when Rosenthal emotes on racial issues, as he did in his latest editorial about the Alabama immigration law.

The Times disapproves of Alabama’s law, which is fine by us. But we thought Rosenthal jumped the shark, even for him, in his lofty, high-minded attempt to let us know where the wild things are.

A certain type of pseudo-liberal loves to maintain the conceit that we’re still living in 1955 when it comes to racial issues. This posture lets the pseudo-liberal strike an heroic pose. Here’s a sample from that editorial, which appeared a few hours before Rosenthal posted his tired musings on Gloria Cain versus Hillary:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (11/14/11): Alabama is far from alone in passing a law whose express aim is misery and panic. States are expanding their power to hasten racial exclusion and family disintegration, to make a particular ethnic group of poor people disappear. The new laws come cloaked in talk of law and order; the bigotry beneath them is never acknowledged.

But if there is any place where bigotry does not go unrecognized, it is Alabama.

For our money, the posturing in this editorial is almost obscene. Rosenthal even works Bull Connor into his screed as she postures, poses and exclaims about all the racism/bigotry.

As always, Rosenthal was very bold when it came to denouncing Alabama. It felt just like the good old days when he and we were young! An ethnic group is being disappeared! Misery and panic are everywhere! In response to these outrages, R- and B-bombs were widely deployed. But it’s always like that on this page.

That said, we were struck by someone else who got disappeared. His name is Barack Obama.

Rosenthal went on and on about the misery and panic created by the Alabama law. That seems a bit overwrought to us—but how about the misery and panic created by the president’s policies? We don’t have a firm view on this topic ourselves; it isn't a topic we follow in detail. But if Alabama is spreading misery and panic, why isn’t Obama? Adam Serwer discussed his record just a few weeks ago, writing for Mother Jones:

SERWER (9/20/11): On September 9, I wrote that the Obama administration, based on statistics from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was nearing its millionth deportation. It seems I was only about three days off. According to Reuters, the administration hit that milestone on September 12. How does that compare with Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush? The answer, if you've been hearing Republicans accuse Obama of "backdoor amnesty" and holding the border hostage, may surprise you. “The Obama administration had deported about 1.06 million as of September 12, against 1.57 million in Bush's two full presidential terms.”

That's right, Obama is on the verge of deporting more undocumented immigrants in a single term than Bush did his full eight years in office.

Despite the administration's stated focus on unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, more than half of those deported had no criminal records, 54 percent to 46 percent. But that number doesn't convey what percentage of removals categorized as criminal include serious or violent offenses as opposed to minor ones.

[...]

Just ten days before Obama passed the million deportation mark, Mitt Romney said that "Three years ago, Candidate Obama promised to address the problems of illegal immigration in America. He failed. The truth is, he didn't even try."

More than a million deportations, and his first term isn't even up yet. I wonder what the numbers would look like if Obama were trying.

If Alabama’s conduct is steeped in bigotry, why isn’t Obama’s?

If you’ve ever read the New York Times, the answer is obvious. As an ardent pseudo-liberal, Rosenthal loves to R-bomb southern whites. Black guys from the Land of Lincoln are going to get a pass.

This is the way the New York Times thinks. Whatever you think of Alabama’s law, the Times luvvs to trash southern whites.

Banning the bombs: Note the massively different tone when the Times criticized Obama’s immigration policies in August (click here). There was no mention of misery, panic. No R- or B-bombs flew.

Does deportation feel better when a black liberal does it? Inquiring minds wnat to know!

A BASIC LACK OF SKILL: Today’s new word—disaggregation!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Part 3—One of the basic skills: Is “stagnation” the same thing as “modest improvement?” We’d be inclined to say it isn’t. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/16/11.

Let’s set that semantic dispute to the side. When Sam Dillon reported the latest NAEP scores, was he reporting good news? Is this passage from his report, you see the basic facts, to the extent that his glorious newspaper deigned to report them:

DILLON (11/2/11): In 1990, 13 percent of fourth graders scored at the proficient level in math; this year, 40 percent were proficient, a gain of 27 percentage points.

Reading performance, in contrast, has seen much smaller improvements. In 1992, 29 percent of fourth-grade students were proficient in reading; this year, 34 percent scored at the proficient level, a gain of five percentage points.

In math, the “proficiency” rate has jumped from 13 percent to 40. In reading, it has gone from 29 percent to 34.

On an absolute basis, those rates remain low—though some experts have argued that the NAEP sets an unnaturally high standard for “proficiency.” According to Dillon’s calculations, the math proficiency rate has jumped 27 percentage points. The reading rate hasn’t improved as much, though it too has risen.

(Quick point: The proficiency rate is only one way to measure the change in scores. The NAEP also reports average scores; in many ways, this is a more useful measure. Dillon reported only the one statistic. His newspaper didn’t devote much space to these “gold standard” test scores.)

The passing rate has risen in reading and math, by thenoted amounts. Is this good news or bad? At this point, an important point should be noted. Those gains in overall passing rates have been accomplished during an era when the student population has changed in dramatic ways. If you don’t consider the changes in demographics, you’re only pretending to examine the change in these seminal test scores.

Consider the change in the student population which has been tested in reading. In 1992, the first year Dillon cited, the demographics of fourth-graders who took the NAEP reading test broke down like this:

Student population tested in reading, fourth-grade NAEP, 1992:
White kids: 73 percent
Black kids: 17 percent
Hispanic kids: 7 percent

That’s how the student population broke down as Bill Clinton sought the White House. But this has been a time of significant change in America’s student population. According to the new NAEP report, this was the demographic breakdown in this year’s fourth-grade reading test:

Student population tested in reading, fourth-grade NAEP, 2011:
White kids: 54 percent
Black kids: 15 percent
Hispanic kids: 22 percent

If you’re familiar with numbers, you will note a significant change in the student population. The percentage of Hispanic kids has tripled. The percentage of white kids had dropped by a substantial amount.

Dillon skipped this factor completely in his short report. But if you want to understand what’s happening in our schools, you need to take this significant shift into account.

Here’s why:

Your country still lives in the backwash of a brutal racial history. Meanwhile, global poverty plays a key role in those changing numbers.

Pretty people may prefer to pretend that these factors play no role in the functioning of American schools. But of course, they do play a role; everyone who isn’t an asshole, a shill or a world-class stooge understands that obvious fact. This is why the NAEP “disaggregates” its test scores—reports all outcomes in terms of these basic demographics.

In its brief report about these new scores, the New York Times skipped over this matter. This was part of this very dumb newspaper’s relentless drive to make you and your neighbors as dumb as humanly possible—perhaps even as dumb as they are.

The NAEP “disaggregates” all its results. It shows you how the black kids did, along with the Hispanic kids and the white kids as well. (It also shows you how low-income kids did, as opposed to kids who aren’t low-income.) When it comes to reviewing this nation’s test scores, disaggregation is one of the basic skills!

Here’s why:

Due to this country’s brutal racial history, this country’s delightful, deserving black kids constitute a significantly different population—on average, in educational terms—than this same country’s delightful, deserving white kids. And thanks to the power of global poverty, this nation’s delightful, deserving Hispanic kids also constitute a different population—on average, in educational terms—than the nation’s white kids.

On average, white kids still score substantially higher in reading and math than black kids. They also score substantially higher than Hispanic kids, many of whom come into our schools from low-income, low-literacy backgrounds, perhaps speaking Spanish to boot.

When higher-scoring, more affluent kids are replaced by lower-scoring, poverty-class kids, this produces a significant challenge to the nation’s schools. All these kids are delightful, deserving. But the challenges to the system have changed.

This is why the NAEP “disaggregates” all its data, breaking them down to show the progress achieved by these three different groups. This is why anyone who isn’t an asshole reviews these important scores in “disaggregated” form.

True to its broken soul and its bubble-head brain, the New York Times doesn’t bother.

Poverty is powerful! So is the literacy level of a deserving child’s parents. Everyone knows this, but nobody cares—at least, no one within the mainstream press corps or the “career liberal” world. Within those worlds, the strivers piddle and diddle about, pretending to discuss the schools, pretending they actually care.

But plainly, the strivers don’t care. If they did, they’d get off their asses—and their high horses—and do some real reporting.

Earth to Times: The reported NAEP score gains are fairly remarkable, if we review them in the context of that changing student population. In fealty to corporate interests, our nation keeps pumping up the high-poverty, low-literacy levels within the student population. Despite this significant challenge, the proficiency rates and average scores within our schools continue to rise.

In math, these scores have risen to an amazing degree, a point we will review tomorrow. (We'll review a truly remarkable fact.) In reading, the progress has been slower—but even in reading, test scores have substantially risen in the past twenty years for all three demographic groups.

If you read the New York Times, you aren’t asked to know such things. People! Knowing such things is hard! You also aren’t asked to consider such things when you watch your liberal cable. Instead, the world’s most self-adoring child will clown for you every night. She’ll talk about low-income schools only when black kids get pregnant.

(What a channel! Lawrence will run a promotional spot where he high-mindedly talks about schools. But he will never discuss the schools on his actual program!)

The New York Times is an upper-end preserve. It's run by empty, stupid people. Their cultural goal would seem to be to make you as clueless as they are.

Tomorrow: A truly remarkable fact

The state of your nation’s intellectual functioning!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011

Paul Krugman’s non-contradiction: In a blog post about Newt and Freddie, Paul Krugman explains the facts of life about Freddie Mac.

That said, a sad fact about American life lurks in this short presentation:

KRUGMAN (11/16/11): The thing I think people find hard to wrap their minds around is the following non-contradiction:

1. Freddie Mac was a deeply corrupt institution

2. Freddie and Fannie did not cause the financial crisis

These are not opposing statements. Those of us attacking the Big Lie about the financial crisis are not defending Freddie.

We don’t know if people find it hard to wrap their minds around that particular non-contradiction. That said, it’s obvious that point 1 and point 2 do not contradict each other—“are not opposing statements.”

A second fact is obvious: As a nation, we are simply too unintelligent to process a non-contradiction like that. Simply put, a conundrum like that is far too complex for our mainstream press corps. The problem spirals from there.

At present, you are seeing the nation’s pundit-manned lynch mob running through the streets. Our pundits are very unintelligent. In particular, they have almost no ability to read elementary texts.

That can’t distinguish between the things a text really says and the stray thoughts that have run through their heads. And once they get one of their group stories going, nothing on earth can change it.

“Man [sic] is the rational animal!” From the earliest days of the west, this has been a basic tenet within our culture. But your press corps is almost impossibly stupid. They can’t read and they can’t reason; they can’t distinguish the ghosts from the facts. They chase after fame and recite preferred narratives.

A non-contradiction like the one Krugman cites is truly beyond their ken.

Our pundits have killed their targets before. Trust us—they'll do so again.

Anderson’s lynch mobs ride again!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011

From the annals of plush toilet paper: A week ago Monday, David Carr profiled Anderson Cooper in the New York Times.

In our view, Carr fawned to Cooper too much, though that's required by Hard Pundit Law. But at various junctures, Carr conveyed the depth of this cable anchor’s intellectual degradation:

CARR (11/7/11): In addition to his journalistic interest in global calamity, Mr. Cooper is a professed fanboy of the conjured drama and celebrity of shows like ''Real Housewives.'' Rather than try to blend those high/low interests on his evening news program, Mr. Cooper decided he would host a daytime talk show.

[...]

"I am having fun doing this, learning about how to do it right," he said. "I want to have real conversations with people and tell their stories. I am personally happiest when I do multiple things, and I think people understand that we all have multiple interests."

Maybe so, but after watching a recent episode of "Anderson" in which Mr. Cooper discussed the merits of plush toilet paper versus bargain brands, and engaged in a race to see which roll runs out first, I wondered if I would watch his next dispatch from a hurricane with new eyes. And that assumes he will have the time to put on the parachute and go. With an hour as a prime-time news anchor and an hour spent during the day, oh, say in a "Toddlers and Tiaras" debate with a woman who dressed her 3-year-old daughter as the hooker from "Pretty Woman," who has time to get to the next earthquake?

Here at THE HOWLER, we don’t give a flying falafel about what makes Cooper “personally happiest.” That said, he was never any good on his evening news show—and now he wastes many hours each day exploring “the merits of plush toilet paper.”

In our view, anyone who would do such a thing even once shouldn’t be allowed to anchor an evening news program. But Cooper still hosts that evening “news” show—though he’s even less prepared to conduct his discussions, thanks to the hours he wastes each day on his low-IQ, soul-crushing topics.

This makes this stupid man “personally happiest.” It also leads to disgraceful discussions like the pair he hosted last night.

Let’s skip past Cooper’s first discussion, in which Sunny Hostin again displayed the predictable, un-American fury of the cable TV “former prosecutor.” (To read the transcript, click here. Hostin got mad when Mark Geragos mentioned other famous cases where the cable lynch mobs got things wrong.) Let’s move ahead to his second discussion, in which two pundits saddled up and rode with the mob, displaying the remarkable lack of intelligence which typifies pundit culture.

In this second segment, Cooper invited Christine Brennan and Buzz Bissinger to star in the role of the lynch mob. They would soon be dragging their knuckles and braying out various thoughts that had popped into their heads. But first, the expert on plush toilet paper reviewed some new facts in the case.

Uh-oh! Someone had tried to defend himself! On cable TV, that’s just wrong:

COOPER: So far tonight, you've heard Jerry Sandusky describe what happened in a shower with a 10-year-old as “horseplay.” His lawyer says it's what jocks do. And you saw Mike McQueary, who witnessed it, try to retroactively redefine "Call my father" as “I stepped in and stopped it when talking about what he did.”

Well, tonight, breaking news! The Associated Press is now reporting that he's also claiming—McQueary is also claiming by e-mail that he actually went to police.

[...]

If this new report by the AP is correct, then McQueary has claimed in an e-mail that he actually went to police, that would be a significant change in, up until now, what was in the grand jury report and what many people were led to believe. There was no indication up until this e-mail from McQueary that the AP is reporting that McQueary had gone to the police.

Did Mike McQueary "step in and stop it" and “go to police?” Like Cooper, we have no idea. Of course, total ignorance rarely stops Cooper! He quickly suggested that McQueary is lying, making his snarky remark about the way McQueary is “try[ing] to retroactively redefine” what he said.

Just for the record, McQueary isn’t quoted saying he “went to police” in that AP report. He is quoted saying this: “I did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police.” There is no claim about who went to whom. As usual, Cooper was overstating the facts. It’s the one thing these life-forms do well.

Did McQueary “make sure it stopped?” Did he “have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police?” He has now made these claims in a pair of e-mails. Like Cooper and his various guests, we have no way of knowing what’s true.

But uh-oh! A target of the cable mob has tried to defend himself! Cooper’s pundits were soon expressing their fury, even as their fatuous host kept misstating facts. The plush paper expert faced Brennan first. We’re sorry, but this is just wrong:

COOPER: Christine, there's a report from CBS News citing the Associated Press, quote, "In the e-mail dated November 8 from McQueary's Penn State account and made available to the Associated Press by his friend on Tuesday, the assistant coach writes that he stopped the sexual assault and discussed it with police afterward."

That is clearly a big disconnect from what we've heard before which is in the grand jury report that McQueary didn't go to police. What did you make of this?

Sorry. For those of us who know how to read, the grand jury report doesn’t say that McQueary “didn't go to police.” Nor does McQueary’s e-mail say that he did. Cooper might have known these things if he spent a full day at this job—although we'll admit it's likely. But as Brennan responded, she lived up to Cooper’s low pundit standards:

BRENNAN (continuing directly): Clearly McQueary has been, you know, hit with a load of bricks here. I'm sure he's as shocked as anybody at how this exploded, I'm sure everyone at Penn State because of that cocoon they were living in, the thing that we've been describing, Anderson, in the story.

I'm not siding with him at all. But I think that this is a classic example of this sequestered new reality world of college football. All of a sudden being bombarded by real life, thankfully in this case. And now McQueary, whether he's changing his story, whether he remembered new things, but I'm sure that this is his reaction to the unbelievable firestorm that accurately has occurred here over the last 10 days or so.

Serving a lovely word salad, Brennan began to imagine how the past ten days has felt to McQueary. She also imagined two possibilities concerning his e-mails, neither one flattering. According to Brennan, McQueary may have “changed his story.” Or he may have “remembered new things.”

Christine Brennan has always been stupid. But cable dumbness turns ugly and dangerous when peoples’ lives are so plainly at stake. In fact, Brennan has no earthly idea what McQueary told the grand jury about these matters. She has no idea if he has “changed his story” in any way or “remembered new things” at all.

She does seem to know that the previous work on cable TV has been “accurate.” But then, these drooling sub-humans always say that. They never say that they themselves may have been wrong.

Can we talk? Brennan is making a judgment here: If she didn’t see X in the grand jury report, then X must not have been said. That judgment isn't real bright, if we understand the purpose of such a report. The grand jury isn’t writing a novel—a novel these pundits can stroke themselves to. The grand jury is explaining the reasoning behind its indictments. Such reports tend to leave out shit that isn’t relevant to those legal judgments.

(In its report, the grand jury says this: “The graduate assistant was never contacted by University Police and no other entity conducted an investigation until he testified to the grand jury in December 2010.” Presumably, the grand jury cites the first fact because it was the responsibility of the two men they indicted to make sure that the University Police acted. “No other entity conducted an investigation?” That doesn’t contradict McQueary’s e-mails, which make rather imprecise claims. Are the e-mails true? We don’t know.)

What did McQueary tell the grand jury about the topics now at question? Cooper and his cable droogs don’t have the slightest idea. But Bissinger does know the rules of his tribe. As the conversation turned to him, he managed to top Brennan’s dumbness:

COOPER (continuing directly): There's also this e-mail which obtained by NBC in which McQueary is telling former teammates that contrary to the grand jury report he did intervene, stop Sandusky's alleged rape of a young boy in a locker room shower. What do you make of the, of the inconsistency?

BISSINGER: It's bad. I think it's bad. I mean I am ceaselessly amazed at the stupidity that comes out of Happy Valley and State College, whether it's the judge, whether it's Sandusky, whether it's his lawyer and now McQueary. Because now there's inconsistencies.

And the one thing that made this case different from other sexual abuse minor cases was you had an adult eyewitness. And now he has managed to put himself in an inconsistent situation. We all know what defense attorneys do. They grab a herring and they go with it and they go with it.

And I don't know why the attorney general or someone said, “Mike, it's hard for you. Don't e-mail. Shut up about this.”

Do we have inconsistencies now? Bissinger has no idea. Beyond that, he seemed to assume that the authorities would have wanted to McQueary to “shut up about this.” Is it possible that McQueary asked their permission to float these additional facts in the face of the frenzy being generated by cable goons like Bissinger? Bissinger has no idea. But in the mind of this fiery pundit, a person who is getting death threats isn’t supposed to tell the truth because it creates “inconsistencies”—that is, because it contradicts the pleasing tale the pundit corps wants to tell.

Of course, facts mean nothing within this tribe. Within this tribe, Story is all—and most of the story is simply invented. As they continued discussing McQueary, the goons showed their skill at imagining things that must have been going on in his mind. Here you see the terminal dumbness of this pre-rational tribe:

COOPER: Christine, you were talking about this sort of closed atmosphere of college sports. Explain that a little bit to somebody who hasn't been in a big school like Penn State or with a big program like this. I mean, how powerful are they on a campus?

BRENNAN: Oh, I think more powerful than the police, probably than the governor. Often we're talking about small towns, Anderson, with these football programs that loom so large not only in the area but also in the nation. And the coaches, the fiefdom, the hierarchy here is unlike anything else.

You talk football, we talk about religion, talk about war and the military, and I think there's a lot of similarities there in terms of the structure. And the head coach is king. And especially someone like Joe Paterno, who's just this untouchable god to, like, a grad assistant like McQueary and all of these people...I'm sure that McQueary thought in the original, the grand jury version of McQueary's statements, going to Joe Paterno on a day off, going to his house—I'm sure McQueary thought that was way above and beyond what someone would do, because in this case McQueary is probably thinking Paterno is more important than the police.

[...]

BISSINGER: McQueary was scared to death. Christine makes a great point. In his going to Joe Paterno's house, that is like visiting God. I'm convinced that Paterno knew in 1998 and everyone clammed it up because it's football and they closed ranks. That's what they do. Not just the Penn State, every major college program.

Brennan is “sure” about McQueary’s thoughts. These two know all about what McQueary was thinking—also, everyone else!

This is the way a novel gets written. This is not cable “news.”

By the way: This is exactly the way Nancy Grace knew that Richard Ricci had plainly kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. It turned out Grace was totally wrong. But by that time, Ricci was dead.

Yes, this culture kills people. But so what? When the next cable chase comes around, these low-IQ hooligans always think they know what all the players must have been thinking. They don’t know how to read or reason well, but they're quite good at imagining. They knew all about the Duke lacrosse case; before that, they knew about the McMartin preschool case and the other bungled child sex abuse cases of the 1980s and 1990s. They knew that Kathleen Willey was credible. When the special prosecutor called her a liar, they knew they mustn’t tell.

Do you recall when this gang of goons was sure that Gary Condit had killed Chandra Levy? Remember all the disgraceful shit they dreamed up in that case?

Our pundits are exceptionally dumb and dishonest—and they’re usually happy to show it. For one especially stupid remark, just check Bissinger, discussing Sandusky this time:

BISSINGER: This idea that towel snapping is normal for a guy in his 50s to be towel snapping with a 10-year-old? I mean, Sandusky, get a life!

What he is trying to do—he is trying to woo and coo us and convince us just like he did woo and coo these victims. And I am convinced. I have read a lot of grand jury reports in my life. I won a Pulitzer Prize for investigating the Philadelphia court system. I have never seen a grand jury report like this. And I am sick and tired of defense attorneys saying, “It's allegations.”

Bissinger is sick and tired of defense attorneys defending their clients! And by the way, it’s hard pundit law: Anyone as dumb as this has won a Pulitzer Prize.

Can we talk? No one knows what McQueary actually told the grand jury. Nor does anyone know what he did that night in any detail, or whether he ever spoke to police in some manner or form. But the lynch mobs were having a grand old time getting rocks thrown through his windows and getting death threats called in on his phone. As always, they got angry when he dared to say they had some basic facts wrong.

These are very bad people. Their lofty leader now spends his days examining plush toilet rolls.

A BASIC LACK OF SKILLS: A piece of D-minus reporting!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011

Part 2—The press corps lacks basic skills more: Endlessly, your press corps pretends to discuss the state of the nation’s public schools. Potemkin reporters wring their hands about the basic skills of fourth-graders.

But what about the basic skills of these reporters themselves?

It isn’t pretty when the press corps writes about the schools. Sometimes, know-nothing experts front scripted reports despite their manifest lack of competence. Fareed Zakaria has been fronting such twaddle on CNN in recent weeks (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/15/11).

But does the skill level really improve when we read the work of education reporters? Consider Sam Dillon’s D-minus report in the November 2 New York Times.

One day before, the Department of Education had released the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the widely-hailed “gold standard” of educational testing. On a semi-annual basis, the NAEP tests fourth- and eighth-graders in reading and math. By all accounts, this program produces the most reliable data in all of American testing.

If you want to review the state of the schools, this is one of the places you start. But what would you say about Dillon’s basic skills? In our most famous newspaper, he penned this eye-catching opening paragraph about these important new data:

DILLON (11/2/11): Elementary and middle school students have improved greatly in math, but their reading skills have stagnated over the last two decades, federal officials said on Tuesday.

Ouch! The reading skills of our public school students “have stagnated over the last two decades!” That’s what Dillon said in his opening paragraph, sourcing the claim to federal officials. But how strong are Dillon’s basic skills? Note what happened when he actually quoted one of those federal officials:

DILLON (11/2/11): Elementary and middle school students have improved greatly in math, but their reading skills have stagnated over the last two decades, federal officials said on Tuesday.

The officials, who oversee the largest federal standardized testing program, used the release of scores from nationwide math and reading exams to highlight the contrasting long-term trends.

"We've made major gains in math over two decades, but, in reading, frankly, we haven't—there've been only modest improvements," said David Driscoll, the chairman of the governing board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Department of Education's standardized testing program.

According to that federal official, our students have made “modest improvements” in reading. To Dillon, this meant that their skills have “stagnated.”

Do those two claims mean the same thing? Granted, Dillon scored a dramatic first paragraph due to his paraphrase of Driscoll. But is modest improvement the same as stagnation?

We would have to say it isn’t—at least, that’s what we’d tell a fifth-grader. But at the nation’s most famous newspaper, it’s close enough for journalistic work! After all, think how dull it would have been to read this opening paragraph:

DILLON REWRITTEN: Elementary and middle school students have improved greatly in math, but their reading skills have shown “modest improvement” over the last two decades, federal officials said on Tuesday.

That’s a very different story. It’s less dramatic, and therefore dull. On the other hand, it’s a more accurate account of what Driscoll said—and it’s a good deal less gloomy.

Dillon went on to do his usual D-minus work as he reported these test scores. He spent little time describing the scores. Instead, he started quoting experts offering their views of the scores. “Mr. Driscoll and other officials and experts put forward several hypotheses to explain the trends,” he wrote as he continued. Soon, he was offering this worthless bit of bafflegab to his under-served readers:

DILLON: "I'm disappointed but not surprised by these results," said Sharon Darling, founder of the National Center for Family Literacy, a group based in Kentucky that works to help parents support their children's educational efforts at home. "Children spend five times as much time outside the classroom as they do in school, and our country has 30 million parents or caregivers who are not good readers themselves, so they pass illiteracy down to their children."

Who the Sam Hill is Sharon Darling? We don’t know either, but Dillon was soon wasting our time with her fuzzy views about the test scores he had barely attempted to describe.

What do those test scores actually show? As Dillon noted, there was little change from the scores recorded in 2009, the last round of NAEP testing. But no one expects dramatic gains to occur over two-year intervals.

That said, Dillon adopted a broader, more significant focus right from his opening paragraph. He discussed the way these scores have changed “over the last two decades.” In truth, some fairly dramatic changes have been recorded over the course of those twenty years. But Dillon made virtually no attempt to report what they are.

In part, this is the fault of Dillon’s editors. His piece ran only 657 words—but within that fairly short report, he covered a wide range of topics. For example, his last three paragraphs covered the way NAEP scores in the state of New York have changed since 1992 and 2009. That burned 161 words off his already-short report.

Forget the most recent two-year period. What do we see if we take a more detailed look at the changes in these scores from 1992 through 2011? If we apply some bone-simple basic skills to our review of these data?

In our view, we see some striking changes—although it’s true that the growth in math still outpaces the growth in reading. But Dillon failed to employ the simplest skills as he reported the sweep of these data.

The nation’s children do lack basic skills. Your “press corps” lacks basic skills more.

Tomorrow: A very basic skill—“disaggregation”

Applying some basic skills: As readers may recall, we chuckled a bit at Dillon’s report on the day it appeared. Basic skills simply don’t get any more basic than this:

DILLON: It has been 20 years since Congressionally mandated changes in the federal testing program took effect, prompting officials this year to examine the long-term results more closely than usual, officials said.

In 1990, 13 percent of fourth graders scored at the proficient level in math; this year, 40 percent were proficient, a gain of 27 percentage points.

Reading performance, in contrast, has seen much smaller improvements. In 1992, 29 percent of fourth-grade students were proficient in reading; this year, 34 percent scored at the proficient level, a gain of five percentage points.

If Dillon hadn’t done the subtraction, would you have known that we gained five points when 29 rose to 34? We don’t think we’ve ever seen a reporter make this sort of thing so simple.

On the other hand, if federal officials are “examining the long-term results more closely than usual,” no sign of that effort made its way into Dillon’s report. His report was D-minus work—and a disservice to his readers.

But then, your press corps routinely pretends to discuss the state of the schools.

The mainstream press corps IS Penn State!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2011

The passion of David Gregory: We thought Mark Geragos delivered a much-needed wet blanket on CNN last night.

Anderson Cooper was killing time until he could talk about his two stolen bikes at the end of his program. (With footage of Peewee Herman! Big fun!) That said, his guests were trying to top each other, and everyone else, in their loathing for the events at Penn State. As always, a former prosecutor was showing that she knew how to convict every man in the house.

Eventually, Geragos spread his wet blanket and tried to get folk to sit down:

GERAGOS (11/14/11): I mean, I like, as much as anybody else, enjoy a good old-fashioned media lynching. And that's exactly what we've had here. I mean, is there anybody that gives a presumption of innocence at this point? No.

I think that you've seen a kind of a piling on of a degree that's almost unprecedented...

And you know, a lot of this is so reminiscent, to me personally, of what happened when Michael Jackson was first—the charges were first brought against him. And do you remember, Anderson, all of the talk about sleeping with young boys and everything else, and people saying that in and of itself, to quote your other guest here, that's exactly what they do when they groom people and everything else.

This is deja vu, as Yogi Berra would say, all over again. And he ended up being acquitted. So before we go and we say this is, you know, it's a done deal, so to speak, and we condemn them and everything else, I think maybe we step back and take a deep breath for a second.

We don’t agree that the piling-on here is almost unprecedented. We remember the evening when Geragos scolded the loathsome Nancy Grace for the way she had convicted the late Richard Ricci for the crime of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/2/03).

It turned out Ricci was uninvolved—but he had already died in prison, in part because of Grace’s loathsome behavior. But then, in the past two decades, the lynch mobs have run again and again all through the American “press corps.” The lynch mobs have run with respect to criminal cases. And they have repeatedly stampeded all through our politics too.

For the record, the fact that Jackson was found not guilty doesn’t mean he was factually innocent. For ourselves, we’d be very surprised if it somehow turned out that Jerry Sandusky is an innocent victim in the current matters.

But we agree with what Geragos said next, and his comment involved many more players than Sandusky: “We still live in America. And it's a little disturbing to me, kind of the assumption of guilt here. Because everything that Penn State has done, both to the president and everybody on down, has presumed guilt in this case.”

We agree with that assessment and with that general sentiment. The lynch mobs have been stampeding again, with every pundit eager to declare more outrage, directed at every named player, than every pundit who came before. And this isn’t just on ESPN, where many pundits have exercised very poor judgment. The foolishness has even invaded our most elite preserves.

Consider the suggestion David Gregory made on Meet the Press as he interviewed poor Michele Bachmann. He asked her about the Penn State matter. Last night, Brian Williams had to take up for his friend:

GREGORY (11/13/11): Just, just one more on this. You say it's a state matter. As you know, the Department of Education is looking into this as well, to see if there's an area where federal law applies. Do you think it's a matter for Congress to get involved in? As you know, Congress can look at anything. They did in terms of steroids. They could look at it in terms of, you know, institutional abuse or a conspiracy of silence.

BACHMANN: Well, I think that that's—the pendulum swings, and when something horrific happens people's automatic reaction is somebody needs to do something. But it doesn't necessarily mean that this issue should be kicked up to Congress. I really do believe this needs to stay exactly in the jurisdiction where the offense occurred. Congress has a lot of other things to pay attention to.

It’s hard to turn Bachmann into the sane one, but Gregory managed to do it. But then again, why should this case be taken to Congress? Why not take it to the World Court? Why not go straight to the Hague?

Later, Gregory emoted on the same issue with David Brooks and E. J. Dionne. It’s always bad when Maureen Dowd gets quoted. But we were especially struck by the lack of self-knowledge here:

GREGORY: I want to talk about Penn State, to shift gears to something so horrible and disgusting as the allegations there. And, you know, when I read Maureen Dowd's column this week, it helped to really sort of bring it home to me. She was very tough and, and really go to what is so disturbing about the grand jury report.

This is what she wrote in part, though, criticizing Penn State. “Like the Roman Catholic Church, Penn State is an arrogant institution hiding behind its mystique. And sports, as my former fellow sports columnist at the Washington Star, David Israel, says, is ‘an insular world that protects its own and operates outside of societal norms as long as victories and cash continue to flow bountifully.’ Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from its football program.”

That is what has been alleged to have happened at Penn State, a conspiracy of silence to protect their own.

An insular world that protects its own and operates outside of societal norms?

A conspiracy of silence to protect their own?

Could there be a better description of the way the “press corps” has routinely behaved over the past twenty years? In these basic group dynamics, our press corps is Penn State.

A point of personal privilege:

Each afternoon for several months, we’ve been living in December 1999, reviewing the episode in which the press corps finally branded Candidate Gore a LIAR. It was in that month that the press corps invented a history-changing claim: Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal! In order to concoct this stupid claim, they misquoted Gore three or four different ways. Beyond that, they adopted that mocking paraphrase straight from the RNC, on a word-for-word basis. Their group misconduct was endless. In the process, they established the notion that Gore was a LIAR, a notion which sent George Bush to the White House, thereby transforming world history.

Guess what happened as this disgrace unfolded? David Gregory kept his multimillion-dollar trap shut! So did all his corporate-owned colleagues, including Brooks and Dionne.

And yes, we do mean “all.”

Ceci Connolly and Katharine Seelye behaved like absolute clowns that month. Everyone agreed not to notice—and we do mean “everyone.” Except for a bunch of high schools kids who complained long and hard in New Hampshire, getting mocked by the mainstream "press corps" for their troubles.

There have been many victims of the press corps’ group misconduct over the past twenty years. Because he died after getting thrown into prison, Ricci is a striking example. But that description which Gregory read is a perfect description of the press corps’ conduct during this era. In a wide array of cases, they have covered up for various liars—and most especially, for themselves, after they managed to get themselves conned by these people.

Repeatedly, the press corps has behaved this way, in “a conspiracy of silence to protect their own.”

Last night, poor Brian Williams had to make excuses for his excitable colleague. On Piers Morgan Live, he explained the overwrought conduct displayed on Meet the Press:

WILLIAMS (11/13/11): It's the most disturbing story in so long that we've come across, Piers. I saw it in the eyes of my friend David Gregory who was angry yesterday morning on Meet the Press. He has several children. I'm a father of two. And I recognized what I saw in my friend and colleague David, who is normally a very straight down the middle interviewer, but he couldn't help it.

Poor David! For all the many millions he’s paid, he just couldn’t help it!

We’ll only repeat what we’ve said above. The descriptions cited on Meet the Press represent a perfect description of the press corps’ routine functioning. They have engaged in endless codes of silence to protect their favorites—and to protect their colleagues, themselves. They have covered up for Gennifer Flowers and for Kathleen Willey. They have endlessly covered for Chris Matthews, even when he almost got an innocent journalist killed. They covered for the ludicrous Ceci Connolly. (Jane Mayer explained that her critics were sexists!) They have lied and lied and lied again.

They never tell you the truth.

Despite this record, they’re highly aroused by the group silence of the very bad folk at Penn State. Sorry:

The mainstream press corps is Penn State. You’re just not allowed to know it.

Goofus and Gallant: In this morning’s New York Times, David Brooks talks some sense about the outrage being voiced by our highly self-confident pundits.

“Let’s All Feel Superior,” his headline says. Given what we know about human functioning, Brooks suggests that his colleagues might not have acted in the glorious ways they’re prepared to suppose, had they confronted the ugly events which transpired at Penn State.

Right next to Brooks’ column is Joe Nocera’s. He acts out in precisely the way Brooks quite sensibly challenges.

Concerning chapter 6: Our chapter on Love Canal is taking much longer to finish than we had expected. For the most part, that’s because of the astonishing ways the “press corps” misbehaved. Highlights:

On November 30, 1999, Al Gore told a sensible story to a group of students at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire.

On December 1, Connolly and Seelye misquoted Gore in the Post and the Times, saying he has dograndiosely boasted about himself once again. That afternoon, the AP did a report on the growing flap—and they managed to misquote Gore in a second way.

On this same day, the RNC issued a mocking paraphrase of what Gore had supposedly said. (Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal! At this point, the RNC was working from the original Connolly misquotation.) This paraphrase was completely absurd—but the press corps quickly adopted it on a word-for-word basis.

Needless to say, Chris Matthews adopted the RNC's language first. His colleagues raced to catch up.

By December 2, pundits had begun to place the paraphrase inside quotes, thus creating a third misquotation. There was an important fourth misquotation, but we won't burden you here. (These misquotations all resulted from a 240-word story.)

Through the use of videotape, the Connolly/Seelye misquotation was corrected on the December 1 Hardball. But so what? The Post and the Times refused to issue corrections, absurdly claiming that their misquotation hadn’t changed Gore’s meaning. And good God! Major “journalists” just kept repeating the misquotation for the next several months.

There’s much more, but these are the highlights.

Very little of this has ever been reported. It’s a difficult story to tell, due to the sheer volume of the press corps' misconduct.

As this disgraceful conduct transpired, David Gregory kept his trap shut. As for Brian Williams, he broadcast the first misquotation on December 6, five days after it was corrected on Hardball. He didn’t correct himself on the air until December 20. But you have to understand Brian’s problem! You see, he was kissing the ass of Jack Welch at the time—Welch, the man who would make him even more wealthy. Today, he’s very, very upset by the group silence at Penn State.

These are horrible people. And make no mistake:

These people are Penn State.

A BASIC LACK OF SKILLS: Let’s pretend to discuss public schools!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Part 1—Every pundit a king: Huey Long had a famous vision: “Every man a king!”

A version of this vision obtains inside the modern press corps. When it comes to American public schools, every pundit’s an expert!

The latest savant to embody this theme is CNN’s know-nothing know-it-all, the expert Fareed Zakaria. On each of the past two weekends, the famous channel has aired an hour-long special, “Restoring the American Dream: Fixing Education.” In this program, Zakaria—who doesn’t know squat about public schools—serves the highly standardized stew which comprises the modern “educational special.”

Everyone knows what such an hour must include to satisfy Hard Pundit Law. Zakaria takes you through the standard progression—a progression every American pundit can rattle off in his sleep.

First, he offers standardized words about the way we’re getting our clocks cleaned by other countries. By law, the pundit must then express stupefaction about this peculiar state of affairs. You’ve heard this rap a million times. Here’s how the new expert puts it:

ZAKARIA (11/12/11): Other countries are outsmarting us. On a recent international test, U.S. students ranked only 15th in the world in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math. Overall, the World Economic Forum ranks the quality of our education at 26th.

What's odd is that we've been outspending most developed countries by a long shot. In 2007, we spent over $10,000 per student versus the $7400 average for rich countries.

How can we spend so much money and have so little to show for it?

With apologies to Brother Foxworthy: If you can’t recite those words in your sleep, you may not be an overpaid cable "news" pundit!

Having advanced the requisite puzzle, Zakaria takes us through the stations of the non-expert’s standardized cross. You could perform these familiar stops too. Everyone knows how to do this:

First, he jets off to South Korea and Finland. We’re invited to marvel at those countries’ educational brilliance. We’re invited to puzzle over the way these countries are kicking our keisters in their public schools.

After that, he sits with Bill Gates, “the man who's spending billions of dollars to answer those questions.” Gates offers his familiar brand of mumble-mouthed non-expertise.

Then, it’s time for a standardized talk with Michelle Rhee, one of the biggest frauds in the entire American discourse. Rhee tells us that teachers have to be fired. Zakaraia doesn’t mention the various scams, hoaxes, boondoggles and cons which have followed his guest all around.

At this point, it’s time for a change! As always, Diane Ravitch is called; she too recites her standard crap. Videotape of Gates’ pronouncements are marbled through this segment.

A college sophomore could have scripted this program after two hours of research! But at this point, Zakaria gets creative. He sits his ass down with Sir Ken Robinson, “a professor emeritus at the University of Warrick and the author of several books on creativity.” Before too long, our know-it-all know-nothing non-expert expert is excitedly telling us this:

ZAKARIA: Meet Sal Kahn. He's the accidental creator of Khan Academy. A not-for-profit Web site that's turning heads.

KHAN (videotape): We want to figure out what BDC is.

ZAKARIA: Seven years ago he was working at an investment firm when he began tutoring his little cousin in math. When scheduling time got difficult a friend of Khan's made a suggestion.

KHAN: Yoo said, “Well, why don't you just put your—put your lectures on YouTube?” And I said, “No, YouTube's for dogs on skateboards, it's not for serious mathematics.”

ZAKARIA: Five years later Khan has produced almost 3,000 videos that have been viewed over 80 million times. Bill Gates is a big fan and donated seed money. The videos cover every level of math.

It's great to see Gates is a fan! At any rate, this story adheres to standard requirements. If possible, the inventor of the new educational system should be an “accidental” creator. He should have stumbled into his revolutionary techniques in a humble, unassuming, heartwarming way, just as you might have done it.

At any rate, Zakaria is soon unveiling the new nirvana. “The key to overcoming” our educational problems “is to let students learn at their own pace,” the know-nothing expert is soon announcing. Then this:

“Last fall, Los Altos, California, agreed to use Khan Academy in five classrooms,” Zakaria says as he continues. Soon, our know-it-all pundit has jetted off to this place, where he explores this exciting new world with a humble but creative public school teacher. The hint of an educational miracle is plainly in the air:

ZAKARIA: Kami Thordarson allowed her students to experiment with the program to see what it could offer.

THORDARSON: We saw kids exploring areas that we didn't know they could. I mean, it was—it was surprising to them and to us that the levels that they were reaching and it was fascinating just to watch them be free, to have that freedom to explore on their own.

ZAKARIA: One crucial discovery Thordarson made was that it made a lot of sense for students to watch the videos at home.

THORDARSON: Victory!

ZAKARIA: It is the reverse of the current system where students spend valuable class time simply getting the basic information from the teacher, copying notes.

KHAN: Now they're able to do the problems, which are really the most important part of the learning process, they're able to do the problems with other people around them. With the teacher around them. With their peers around them. They can actually tutor each other.

ZAKARIA: When her students get stuck, Thordarson tells them to write their name on the board. Another student soon comes to the rescue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Add this to it.

ZAKARIA: The classroom buzzes with little tutors who are learning themselves through the act of teaching. And if a particularly gifted student gets bored, she can race ahead and try calculus if she wants.

Wow! Little girls are racing ahead and giving the calculus a try! Sal Khan’s exciting new system is scoring big points in Los Altos!

Zakaria forgets to tell us that Los Altos is one of the nation’s richest communities, a high-end part of Silicon Valley. According to Forbes, our clueless new expert was getting his silk stockings knocked off in America’s 15th most expensive ZIP code, a place where the average home price is more than $3 million.

The late Steve Jobs lived in Los Altos. According to Wikipedia, so do an array of other high-IQ luminaries and CEOs.

Earth to Huey Long: A lot of educational systems would likely work well in Los Altos! This doesn’t mean there’s anything “wrong” with Kahn’s accidental educational system. But it didn’t seem to enter our non-expert’s head that what works in Los Altos may have to stay in Los Altos—that it may not be a solution in other ZIP codes which aren’t real far way.

By now, we’re almost done with our hour-long show. We’re pretty sure you know what comes next—a recitation of the latest standardized expert solutions! If you’re asked to compose such an hour, be sure to mention the folk at McKinsey. Try to work Malcolm Gladwell in—and you know where your garbage must end:

ZAKARIA: The global consulting firm McKenzie estimates that if the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better performing nations like Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. This represents a 9 to 16 percent jump in GDP.

So how do we get there?

Some elements of the solution seem obvious. The writer Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at anything. It's really just another way of making Thomas Edison's famous point that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

Now if our kids spend two years less in school than in many other countries, they will find themselves behind in many areas. We don't have to go to the lengths that South Korea has gone to lengthen the school day and the school year, but we can't do the least work and hope for the best results.

Whether you look at South Korea or Finland, getting great teachers is obviously at the heart of good education.

We had great teachers until the mid-1970s. The most talented, hard-working and ambitious women in America could only go into a few professions. And teaching was top among them. The good news is that women can now succeed in any profession. The bad news is the quality of America's teachers has declined.

America needs to improve its ratty-assed teachers! Michelle Rhee was right all along!

Zakaria doesn’t mention an awkard fact—American test scores are much higher today than they were in that golden era when we had those spectacular teachers. Trust us: This Potemkin expert doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know squat or squadoodle. But when it comes to the public schools, everyone knows how to pose as an expert. Every pundit a king!

People should loathe this kind of work—this fraudulent posing about public schools. Two weeks back, the nation’s latest test scores were released. If we want to understand the real state of American schools, we might start by reviewing those data.

But uh-oh! Over at the New York Times, Sam Dillon reported these latest test scores. American children do lack basic skills. But so do big “journalistic” players like Zakaria and Dillon.

American children are nine years old. What are the experts’ excuses?

Tomorrow: Sam Dillon’s basic skills

New York Times culture: The truth about sex and taxes!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Floating the New York Times’ boat: The New York Times is our most famous newspaper. But what does the Times care about?

In an attempt to answer this question, let’s consider the newspaper’s coverage of Herman Cain, a Republican White House contender. More specifically, let’s compare its coverage of Cain’s tax plan with its coverage of the sexual harassment and assault charges made against the candidate.

Let’s start with the harassment/assault charges! From November 1 to the present, the Times has run seven front-page reports on this topic. Here are the dates and the headlines as recorded on Nexis, although most of these front-page reports ran under triple headlines in the hard-copy Times:

Front-page reports about Cain sex charges:
November 10: Cain Lawyer Warns Any Accusers: 'Think Twice', 1217 words
November 9: Cain Again Denies Accusations As Second Woman Goes Public, 1346 words
November 8: Woman Accuses Cain of Groping; He Denies Charge, 1130 words
November 5: Cain Accuser Tells of Pattern, Lawyer Attests, 1020 words
November 3: Cain Says Perry Is Orchestrating Smear Campaign, 1396 words
November 2: Cain Accuser Got a Year's Salary in Severance Pay, 1224 words
November 1: Cain Confronts Claim From '90s of Harassment, 1347 words

Is that too much coverage? Too little? Just right? In part, we'd have to say it's all relative! With that in mind, we offer a contrast: As best we can tell, the Times has run only one front-page report about the Cain tax plan:

Front-page reports about Cain tax plan:
October 13: With Just Three 9s, Cain Refigured Math for Taxes, 976 words

Is that an appropriate balance? We’re reporting, you can decide. For ourselves, we’d be inclined to explain these data as follows: The New York Times luvs a good sex chase—but the paper finds policy matters boring. Indeed, Gail Collins is the paper’s fomer editorial page editor. She tells readers twice each week that such talk is hopelessly dull.

In our view, this fatuous outlook helps explain why the public is so clueless about all sorts of budget matters. It helps explain why it's so easy to disinform voters about various budget topics, from tax rates through Social Security.

How little non-sex reporting does this newspaper do? Just consider two key parts of the Cain tax plan.

As everyone knows, the Cain tax plan is 9-9-9. Or is it? On one of this fatuous newspaper’s blogs, Sarah Wheaton reported the following more than three weeks ago:

WHEATON (10/21/11): Herman Cain, who has said simplicity is one of the greatest virtues of his “9-9-9” tax plan, added an asterisk on Friday.

After acknowledging that his plan to impose taxes of 9 percent on corporations, personal income and purchases would result in a tax increase for lower earners, Mr. Cain proposed modifications to the plan that would mitigate that impact.

The plan would be 9-0-9 for those at or below the poverty level, meaning they would pay no income tax, Mr. Cain said at an appearance in front of Detroit's dilapidated Michigan Central Station.

Interesting! Is the plan 9-9-9? Or is it really 9-0-9? And if the plan is 9-0-9, does that mean Cain would exempt a certain level of income for everyone, as most “flat tax” proposals have done? For example, would every family of four be exempt from paying income tax on some substantial amount of income? If not, wouldn’t his plan give people an incentive to keep their income below the poverty line?

As best we can tell, the New York Times has never discussed any of this in its hard-copy reporting. On Saturday, Charles Blow referred to the 9-0-9 plan in his New York Times op-ed column.

As best we can tell, if you read the hard-copy Times every day, you have no idea what he meant. But so it goes inside the palace which produces our dumbest newspaper.

Second question: Would Cain’s plan eliminate the earned income tax credit? We’ve seen that said in various places, but is it true? If so, this would constitute a serious hardship for the working poor.

Does Cain’s plan eliminate the EITC? As best we can tell from the Nexis archives, this point has never been discussed in the hard-copy New York Times. But then, how many Times readers have any idea what that program is?

The harassment/assault charges against Herman Cain constitute actual news. But the same Herman Cain has also produced that famous tax plan. That said, the Times seems to loves one story much more. But then, as everyone must know, this is a pattern these folk have displayed for lo, these many years.

The Times is typed by the top one percent. It displays a highly fatuous culture, as palace elites often do.

They luvv to talk about sex and clothes. They enjoy citing Mitt Romney’s pet dog. They love to chase sex charges around, no doubt because they're soooo concerned. But policy shit which affects every person?

Darlings! Not so much!

The iconic expression of these values: Darlings! Exemptions? The EITC? This cosmically fatuous paper finds such talk to be boring. In part, this is why our political culture is so blindingly stupid.

The iconic expression of these values was offered long ago, allegedly from the mouth of Dowd. Gay Jervey quoted Joe Klein in a profile in Brill’s:

JERVEY (6/99): "Maureen is very talented," observes Joe Klein of The New Yorker. "But she is ground zero of what the press has come to be about in the nineties...I remember having a discussion with her in which I said, 'Maureen, why don't you go out and report about something significant, go out and see poor people, do something real?' And she said, 'You mean I should write about welfare reform?’”

Those harassment/assault accusations are news. But so is that monstrously boring tax plan. The Times erupted with joy over one, can’t get it up for the other.

HOW TO TALK: It’s easy to talk about Social Security!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Conclusion—It’s so easy: Attention K-mart shoppers! Also liberal “intellectual leaders!”

It’s easy to talk about Social Security—if you just know how! Unfortunately, we liberals have had thirty years and we still can’t do it—because we’re so lazy and dumb.

How easy is it to talk about Social Security? Let’s consider one more part of Lori Montgomery’s front-page screed in the Washington Post. (For part one of our current report, just click here.)

In the course of her lengthy front-page report, Montgomery advanced thirty years of disinformation about this venerable program—thirty years of talking-points we liberals still can’t rebut. At one juncture, she offered the point we highlight below. Incredibly, we liberals still don’t know what to do when people say shit like this:

MONTGOMERY (10/30/11): Social Security can pay full benefits through 2036. Once the trust fund is depleted, the system would rely solely on incoming taxes, and benefits would have to be cut by about 25 percent across the board.

Several factors have disrupted even that timetable. The recent recession caused the program to go cash negative years earlier than expected. The payroll tax holiday is depriving the system of revenue. And 10 years of escalating debt have crippled the government's ability to repay the trust fund.

In that first paragraph, Montgomery offers the standard projection about the system’s future status. This is very basic stuff. But uh-oh! In that second paragraph, she returns to the alarmist language which drove her entire report.

First, she makes an inaccurate/misleading statement, saying the current tax holiday is depriving the system of funds. (She may have gotten that one from Digby.) But then, she makes a truly interesting claim. She says the nation’s rising debt has “crippled the government's ability to repay the trust fund”—its ability to repay the money it has borrowed from Social Security system over the past thirty years.

“Crippled” is an alarming term. That to the side, our liberal “intellectual leaders still don’t know what to say when people confront us with claims of this type (example below). After thirty years of disinformation, we still stand around with our dongs hanging out; we then find someone to call a racist and compliment ourselves on our brilliance. The notion that it won’t be possible to repay the trust fund is left hanging there in the air.

Do you know how to reply to Montgomery’s highlighted claim? If not, it isn’t your fault! It’s the fault of the “intellectual leaders” who have been clowning, showboating, snoring and burbling over the past thirty years (example below).

That said, it’s easy to talk about Montgomery’s statement. Here goes:

Without any question, our rising level of debt does make it harder to repay the large amounts of money the government owes. But that's true with respect to all the money the federal government has borrowed over the decades, not just the money borrowed from the Social Security system. (And no, the ability to repay the money certainly hasn’t been “crippled.”) When folk like Montgomery play this card, they separate out one strain of borrowing—the borrowing from Social Security—and treat it as somehow different from all the other strains of government borrowing. Have you ever seen Montgomery, or anyone else, publish a sentence like this?

MONTGOMERY REIMAGINED: Ten years of escalating debt have crippled the government's ability to repay the money it has borrowed from those big banks in China.

Have you ever seen anyone suggest that we won’t be able to repay the Chinese because our ability has been “crippled?” Of course you haven’t! Folk like Montgomery play this card with regard to Social Security only. And this card has been played in a million ways over the past thirty years. Indeed, another version of this tired old scam was offered in an earlier part of Montgomery’s report:

MONTGOMERY (10/30/11): Social Security is hardly the biggest drain on the budget. But unless Congress acts, its finances will continue to deteriorate as the rising tide of baby boomers begins claiming benefits...The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing.

To repay that money to Social Security, the government will have to “raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more” money. In recent years, this has become a standard talking-point; it is designed to make you think that we simply can’t repay all that dough. But Montgomery’s formulation obtains with respect to all the money the government will have to repay in the future. When the government repays those big Chinese banks (as it constantly does), it has to raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more money then too! Inevitably, it simply borrows more money—and that’s what the government will do when it repays the money it borrowed from Social Security. But this alarming formulation is only trotted out in one circumstance—with respect to Social Security. And omigod! After thirty years of this well-scripted crap, we liberals still don’t know how to respond to such talking-points. This was proven a few months ago when Matt Yglesias weirdly folded this right-wing talking-point into his own capsule explanation of the way Social Security works—with Steve Benen rushing to praise him for making the whole thing so wonderfully clear! To read our post, click here.

(Your lizard brain will tell you we’re wrong about the lads. You shouldn't listen to lizards.)

Even after thirty years of this crap, Yglesias didn’t know how to talk about Social Security! He produced a confusing and bungle account, with Benen praising him for his wonderful clarity! But last week, he received the modern world’s greatest reward—he was hired by Slate! To see Paul Krugman congratulate the brilliant lad, steel your nerves, then click here.

Thirty years in, our brilliant intellectual leader simply didn’t know squat from squadoodle when it came time to talk about Social Security. (Squadoosh was missing in action too.) We ought to be embarrassed by this. Being pseudo-liberals, we aren’t.

How should liberals talk about Social Security? There are two basic points we liberals should make—and we should say anything else:

First, we should say what Montgomery said in that first quoted except. Let’s present this point again. This is Montgomery’s language:

The first things liberals should say when they talk about Social Security: Thanks to the trust fund, Social Security can pay full benefits through 2036. Once the trust fund is depleted, promised benefits will have to be cut by about 25 percent, absent some new source of revenue.

It’s possible to make a few additional points about the size of those promised benefits. Resist the temptation to do so! That would take us liberals far beyond our current “grade level.”

There’s one other thing a liberal show say if he talks about Social Security. We’ll borrow this language from Kevin Drum’s recent post. Again, these are Kevin’s Drum’s words:

The second things liberals should say when they talk about Social Security: Social Security only needs minor tweaks...If we gradually raise the payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 7.2 percent and gradually raise the earnings cap from $100,000 to $250,000 between 2030 and 2050, Social Security will be solvent forever.

Yes, the program will need more revenue—but the needed adjustment is fairly minor. It’s fairly easy to tweak the system so that future promised benefits can in fact be fully met.

It’s possible to make a few points about the way those tweaks would compare to the size of projected future incomes. (Baker and Weisbrot discussed this matter in their 1999 book.) But there again, that takes us far beyond our very restricted “grade level.”

It’s easy to talk about Social Security! Liberals should just keep making two points:

a) The system does face a revenue shortfall.
b) It’s easy to find the additional revenue.

Our liberal “intellectual leaders” should keep making those two basic points—and they should say nothing else. If they try to recall a third point, they will likely forget what it is. Beyond that, we liberals should stay away from the more abstruse “explanations” which have come from some parts of our world. Paul Krugman is a massive intellectual hero. But he has never devised a clear explanation for the way this whole shebang works. (Neither did Candidate Gore in Campaign 2000.)

Oh by the way: If you try to stick to these points, conservatives will start reciting time-honored points about the Social Security trust fund. This is where the disinformation machine has worked its magic for the past thirty years, secure in the knowledge that we liberals are too dumb, too feckless and too self-impressed to devote any serious effort to the project of learning how to talk. (By way of contrast, the plutocrats do devote a lot of time and effort to their relentless search for effective disinformation.) They’ll say it’s just an accounting fiction! They’ll say the money isn’t there—that we’ve already spent it! At some point, they'll even say that the government will have to raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more money to repay the money it has borrowed! And this is where our liberal "intellectual leaders" will break down and lose.

As Yglesias and Benen made wondrously clear, we still don’t know how to talk about the trust fund after thirty long years of this garbage!

We’re lazy and feckless; we’re dumb, uninformed. On the bright side, we spill with self-regard. And there’s one thing we do know: If we just posture hard enough, we will get rewarded one day with a spanking new job at Slate.

People! How great is Slate? Why, it’s owned by the Washington Post!

The fruits of our lack of labor: To see the fruits of our lack of labor, be sure to read the part of Drum’s post in which he records the way some Berkeley students assess this program’s future.

Drum’s words: “The conservative campaign to convince everyone that Social Security is doomed has been wildly successful, even among extremely bright kids who are actively interested in policy issues.”

Alas! That campaign has been successful because your “leaders” have failed.

The case of the over-sampled satirist!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011

Collins and Petri aren’t swift: The premise never changes.

Gail Collins writes about politics—but she finds politics boring! This must be the ten millionth time she has started a column this way:

COLLINS (11/12/11): Guess What It’s Time For!

It’s the weekend. The air is brisk, the leaves are tumbling, so it’s time for—yes!—another Republican debate!

Who knew there were going to be more of these things than football games?

Who knew? How about anyone alive on the planet in recent decades? In the 1988 primary season, for example, the Democratic candidates engaged in dozens of debates. (Michael Dukakis once put the count at 48.) This year’s series of debates is nothing surprising or new.

To Collins, though, it’s borr-ring! She builds column after column around the idea that there are too many debates; too many candidates; too many primaries; too many speeches and issues.

Sometimes, sports writers say there are too many bowl games. But they rarely say they’re bored by football itself. Lady Collins is bored by her subject. Why won’t this high lady do the right thing and stop writing columns about it?

(Mitt Romney’s dog barks in paragraph 6. Does anyone doubt the possibility that Collins is mentally ill?)

More amazing is Alexandra Petri’s column in today’s Post. To see it as it appears in the wild, click here, then click once again.

As people bereft of ideas often do, Petri works from Swift today, though her reference to the over-sampled satirist is edited out of her hard-copy column. (To read her not-too-swift blog post, click this.) All we’re left with is the garbage which follows.

To Petri, straight outta Harvard, the problem isn’t the one percent. The problem is grandma, who doesn’t enjoy eating cat food:

PETRI (11/12/11): Our society has a long-standing predilection for the old. You have to be at least 35 years old to run for president. Forty-six out of 100 senators were born in 1947 or earlier. And our national finances are a textbook example of the sort of system you would throw together under the assumption that you were going to die soon and would not have to worry where the money would be coming from.

But the trouble is that they won’t. That would be too easy. Instead, they are going to linger on well into the triple digits, at excruciating expense, if modern medicine has anything to say about it. And we’ll be stuck footing the bill!

Look, I have no personal ill will against the old. Except Helen Mirren, because she is better preserved than I am.

But they are easier to catch than those who are merely rich and, according to the census, it all shakes out to about the same thing. They have been so busy making sure that their lives will be better than the lives of their parents that they have forgotten to make sure that our lives will be better than theirs. And the longer they linger, the more we’ll notice.

So let’s move out of the streets and into the retirement villages, off Wall Street and into the gated communities.

Eat the elderly! Except Warren Buffett. He knows where they hid the money.

Sure, they’re old. They’re wrinkly and taste sort of gamy, with a hint of talcum powder.

But the alternative is to continue to allow them to devour us. And it’s getting cold outside.

To this fatuous child, the problem isn’t the one percent. It’s those wrinkly, gamy old people!

How does the palace elite manage to find these people? More intriguingly, why do they always hire women to write this strain of crap?

In our view, it’s kind of amazing that an editor published this column. We’ll be curious to see if the ombudsman gets dragged into the stew. Petri simply isn’t real swift—but she fits right into a fatuous niche which might be called, “Spawn of Dowd.”

Where the heck do they find these people? And couldn’t they please send them back?

Do the editors read their own newspaper?

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011

The New York Times [HEART] Tennessee: Do the editors of the New York Times read the New York Times?

If not, we can’t say we blame them. But we were surprised by the featured editorial in today’s paper. Here’s why:

On Monday, Michael Winerip ridiculed Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system in his ON EDUCATION column. His column appeared in the New York Times. That's where it appears every week!

(For our own report on Winerip’s column, go ahead—just click here.)

How ridiculous is Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system? Very ridiculous, Winerip said. You may recall this part of the stew:

WINERIP (11/7/11): Because there are no student test scores with which to evaluate over half of Tennessee’s teachers—kindergarten to third-grade teachers; art, music and vocational teachers—the state has created a bewildering set of assessment rules. Math specialists can be evaluated by their school’s English scores, music teachers by the school’s writing scores.

Uh-oh! Under the Tennessee system, test scores are part of every teacher’s evaluation. But Tennessee, like other states, doesn’t have statewide tests for a wide array of subjects. There are no statewide tests in music. There are no statewide tests for anything taught in first and second grades.

How can teachers of these subjects and grades be evaluated by test scores? According to Winerip, this is the ingenious solution Tennessee devised:

WINERIP: To solve that, the state is requiring teachers without test results to be evaluated based on the scores of teachers at their school with test results. So Emily Mitchell, a first-grade teacher at David Youree Elementary, will be evaluated using the school’s fifth-grade writing scores.

“How stupid is that?” said Michelle Pheneger, who teaches ACT math prep at Blackman High and is also being evaluated in part based on writing scores. “My job can be at risk, and I’m not even being evaluated by my own work.”

For 15 percent of their testing evaluation, teachers without scores are permitted to choose which subject test they want to be judged on. Few pick something related to their expertise; instead, they try to anticipate the subject that their school is likely to score well on in the state exams next spring.

“How stupid is that?” Very stupid. There was much more in Winerip's piece. But you get the general idea.

On Monday, Winerip devoted his column to this ungodly mess. But today, the New York Times’ featured editorial showers praise on Tennessee—for its transplendent teacher evaluation system! After praising the state's approach, the editors complain that some “political forces” are trying to delay full implementation:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (11/12/11): Tennessee’s Push to Transform Schools

Tennessee has a long way to go in improving its schools, but it has made significant headway in turning itself into a laboratory for education reform. It was one of the first states to test a rigorous teacher evaluation system, which was put in place this school year. Yet even before the results are in, political forces are now talking about delaying the use of these evaluations. State lawmakers and education officials must resist any backsliding.

[...]

The Tennessee Education Association has criticized aspects of the system, citing what it describes as poorly trained evaluators and a confusing scoring rubric, and wants it postponed until it is essentially perfect. Some lawmakers are suggesting that evaluations performed this year not be used in personnel decisions. Such a delay would destroy momentum and could weaken reform.

Do the editors read their own newspaper? Their editorial is rather lengthy, but they never mention the detailed column which appeared in their paper on Monday. Nor do they address the problems Winerip discussed in such detail. This is the closest the editors come to discussing the “no test scores” problem:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: At the legislative hearing, superintendents and other school leaders praised the new system, saying that it had forced principals to spend more time in classrooms and required them to offer more help to novice teachers.

The president of the teachers’ union, however, pointed out that some evaluators failed to give teachers the feedback they need to improve. And she raised concerns about the fairness of the state’s decision to use schoolwide achievement measures to evaluate the more than 50 percent of teachers who work in grades or subject areas where standardized tests are not given. Better measures are under development but are not available.

As with any new reform, adjustments will be necessary. For example, principals should have the option of evaluating high-performing teachers less frequently than novices or low performers. And state officials must continue to review the question of how much standardized test data should count in teacher evaluations. Tennessee will need to address these issues fairly if the system is to win wide support among teachers and school administrators. But, even with shortcomings, the new approach to teacher evaluation is a vast improvement over the one it replaced.

According to Winerip, those teachers “who work in grades or subject areas where standardized tests are not given” are being evaluated by other types of test scores—by test scores which have nothing to do with their own teaching performance! What do the editors think about that? They only mention this problem in passing, in that fleeting reference to the use of "schoolwide achievement measures." For the record, that fuzzy formulation downplays the lunacy of the practices Winerip described.

People who read the Winerip column will be puzzled by today’s editorial. Meanwhile, the first two paragraphs in that last excerpt recall an earlier editorial. Some things never change:

In 2005, some teachers were saying that the state of New York’s annual statewide tests were getting easier year-to-year. They said this helped explain the significant rise in New York City’s passing rates. But so what? Under the leadership of Gail Collins, the editorial board rolled its eyes at the claims of these useless proles. Instead, they continued to heap big praise on their city’s billionaire mayor. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/6/05.

Earlier this year, it turned out that those teachers were right. Acknowledging that its statewide tests had in fact been getting easier, the state of New York threw out all test scores for the years in question. In response, the New York Times pretended that this wasn’t a major scandal which called for full examination. But then, that’s the way these booster newspapers always respond to such acts.

Back in 2005, Collins rolled her eyes at the proles. This same condescension is present today. “At the legislative hearing, superintendents and other school leaders praised the new system,” the editors helpfully tell us. In the face of this judgment by their betters, how dare Tennessee’s ratty-assed teachers union stand to complain?

This is how these palace dwellers think. Could someone possibly do the right thing and occupy the New York Times? Meanwhile, do the editors read their own newspaper? In this morning’s editorial, we find no sign that anyone read Winerip’s column this week.

Can’t tell the players without a scorecard: Tennessee’s new education commissioner is Kevin Huffman. He’s the former husband of Michelle Rhee. Rhee is part of the Gotham elite surrounding the billionaire mayor.

By definition, if this group sneezes, it’s known as “reform.” This may help explain this morning’s editorial.

The Washington press corps’ Paternos!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

The lives of the saints may not end well: What explains the disaster at Penn State? We can’t tell you.

But the sanctification of Joe Paterno has been mentioned a lot this week. Paterno was sanctified long ago, all through the nation’s sports press.

Presumably, much of that was deserved. But when a person is cast as a saint, things can end up going wrong, in several obvious ways.

Sanctification rarely ends well. Saints may start to believe their press clippings. And saints may take advantage.

The Penn State disaster has made us think of the political press corps' recent history. Here's why:

Over the past twenty years, the press corps has written a series of novels, inventing demons and saints in the process. The demonization of the Clintons, then Gore, led us to a major disaster—the war in Iraq. But the sanctifications have worked poorly too. Saints tend to take advantage.

Let’s consider four saints of the modern era: Bradley, Dole, McCain and Powell. We’ll guess they're all decent people; we were struck by how bright and sane Powell seemed on CNN just last night. But did these people take advantage of their sanctified status?

Saint Bill Bradley: We rarely use the L-word here. But by December 1999, Saint Bradley was basically lying through his teeth about Candidate Gore. In part, we refer to his claim that Gore was the person who introduced America to Willie Horton.

The claim had been a staple of RNC agitprop since Gore was picked to run for vice president in 1992. The claim was bogus on its face—and Bradley had specifically rejected the claim, in some detail, in his 1996 best-seller, "Time Present, Time Past." But so what? Led by hacks like Matthews and Fineman, the press corps anointed Bradley “the anti-Clinton” all through 1999. They swore, in their typically stupid ways, about his moral grandeur.

By the fall of 1999, the saint was taking advantage. And by the way: Once Bradley began to spread that crap about Gore, the hacks stood in line to repeat it. In the fall of 1999, virtually every reporter and pundit repeated the claim. Most of them knew it was false.

(You could tell they knew by the way they arranged their claims to keep things “technically accurate.”)

Saint Bob Dole: As a comedian, we once did an event for Dole, we think in the fall of 2000. It was a book party for Mary Vincent, a friend of the Doles. She had written a book about Leader, the Doles’ beloved pet dog. (To purchase the book, just click here.)

Instant reaction: It was easy to see why so many people like Bob Dole so much. But uh-oh! By 1996, the “press corps” had cast him in one of their dim-witted novels, a novel in which he stood opposed to the unprincipled Clinton. They never quite sanctified Dole the person, though they did sanctify his military record.

At any rate, this was the standard novel for Campaign 96: Clinton lacks character, Dole’s out of touch. And once the “press” has committed itself to a novel, all events will be forced to fit the mold.

As early as New Hampshire, Candidate Dole was being hailed for his old-time high character, the kind Slick Willie lacked. Result? Dole began lying through his teeth about the Forbes “flat tax” plan. For weeks, Dole ran a series of TV ads which flatly mischaracterized Forbes’ proposal. The ads turned the New Hampshire race around. They may have saved Dole’s campaign.

In all honesty, Dole was lying his keister off—but the script had already been written! The insider press corps fumbled about, pretending to explain the fuss about those TV ads. They never quite managed to tell the public what their “high character” hopeful was doing.

Saint John McCain: No one was sanctified more in this era than the saintly McCain. We’ll let each person decide on his own how well that turned out.

Saint Colin Powell: Powell had been sanctified by 1995, when the insider press corps begged him to run for president versus Clinton. This novel ends at the United Nations, with the sanctified fellow selling the world a bill of goods about Iraq’s weapons.

The press corps was never willing to explore the way that ridiculous presentation actually came into being. After all, every major Washington “journalist" had sworn how convincing it was! Bob Woodward’s book strongly suggested that Powell knew his presentation was perhaps a pile of crap. But once a man has been sanctified, the “press corps” simply won’t go there.

Kathleen Willey was sanctified in 1998, when she looked both upper-class and sane as she accused vile Clinton. That story ended badly too, with Willey being trashed as a liar by the special prosecutor. To keep you from being disappointed, the “press corps” didn’t tell you.

This brings us back to Saint Paterno, so designated a long time ago. The evidence continues to mount, but this is a matter of common sense:

It isn’t healthy for human beings to be sanctified in this manner.

One more saint: Jim Lehrer has long been semi-sanctified due to his high-minded PBS program. In our view, that particular sanctification has turned out poorly too.