Nancy Pelosi, evoking Al Kelly!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013

What would Wittgenstein do: Back in the 1930s, a vaudeville comedian named Al Kelly emerged as a master of double-talk.

We recall seeing Kelly on the Ed Sullivan show in the early 1960s. He would pretend to discuss some serious topic, but he would produce pure incoherence.

We thought of Kelly last Sunday morning as we watched Nancy Pelosi on Meet the Press. The horror began when David Gregory asked her about a statement she once made about the ACA:

GREGORY (11/17/13): The president has been apologetic. He has been accountable for saying something that was not the case. You were speaker of the House. You, in many ways, were seen as an architect and a key ally on this. And this is what you said back in June of 2009 on MSNBC. Watch.

PELOSI (videotape): What we are talking about is affordable, quality, accessible health care for all Americans. It's about choice. If you like what you have and you want to keep it, you have the choice to do that.

GREGORY: Are you accountable for saying something that turned out not to be correct?

Gregory’s question was clear and direct. We don’t want to prejudge the appropriate answer.

We don’t want to prejudge the answer. But here’s what Pelosi said to this, Gregory’s first attempt:

PELOSI (continuing directly): Well, it's not that it's not correct. It's that if you want to keep it— And it's important for the insurance company to say to people, “This is what your plan does; it doesn't prevent you from being discriminated against on the basis of pre-existing conditions; it doesn't—it's lifetime limits, annual limits and the rest of that.”

Did that collection of words make sense? Already, visions of Kelly had started to conquer our mind.

Gregory wasn’t satisfied with Pelosi’s response. Like a host playing straight man for Kelly, he decided to try it again:

GREGORY (continuing directly): There's a bottom line to this, which I think people understand and the president has acknowledged, which is, if there are not— The government is deciding there have to be minimum standards that are minimum requirements in any health care plan. So if you have something and you like it and it doesn't meet what the government says you have to have, you cannot keep it. And that's not what you said here.

PELOSI: If you had your plan before the enactment of the law in 2010, if you had your plan before— There is nothing in the law that says you have to— But you know, again, we can go back and forth in this. What–

At this point, Gregory broke in. This exchange ensued:

GREGORY (continuing directly): But this is an important— because the grandfathering has changed. And the bottom line is, the president acknowledged—it doesn't seem like you're acknowledging—that saying to people back in 2009, “Hey, this is going to be easy. If you like what you have, you can keep it. This is all about choice—”

PELOSI: And you could. You could if you had your plan until the enactment of the law in 2000 (sic) —any pre— Grandfathering is for those before 2000 (sic). But let me say this, and I commend the president. He's gracious, and he's taking responsibility. But that doesn't mean that there was anything in the law that said if you like what you had before 2010, you couldn't keep it. But I think it's really important to make that point. He took responsibility for the big picture, and that's important for him to do because that's what people see. But this is nothing— But you said earlier, if you— if the law says that you must— you can't— the law doesn't say that.

But again, neither here nor there. How do we go forward?

Gregory wasn’t willing to quit without making one last attempt. Here’s what happened:

GREGORY (continuing directly): But the bottom line is, people are getting policies that are canceled, and that was not the representation that was made. And it was also foreseeable. That was part of the debate that this would actually happen.

PELOSI: Well, now, I would agree with you for the policy since 2010, but not for the 2000 before (sic). But the president has also said that the insurance companies—and many of them have been very responsible, and some not so. The insurance company has to say to you, “You're not getting the exemption, pre-existing conditions; you will have lifetime limits; you will have annual limits.” And by the way, you have to tell people that they can go to the exchange, the marketplace, where they may qualify for a subsidy or they may just get a better price.

To watch the tape, click here. We’ve edited the transcript as fairly as we can.

Wittgenstein thought a great deal of “philosophical” discourse was, in effect, a form of doubletalk. In their “surface grammar,” philosophical statements sound like familiar, everyday statements which do in fact make sense.

Watching Pelosi, our thoughts went lower. We thought of Kelly, confusing us rubes on the Ed Sullivan show.

Brother Kelly explains: In this clip from 1956, “NBC chief engineer Pelman” tells Ernie Kovacs how the network will cover the political conventions.

Will NBC use a coaxial cable? Starting around 7:40, “Pelman” explains.

We’re not saying you’ll think this is funny. We’re saying it sounds like Pelosi.

Dowd invents way to discuss family feud!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Cali commenter nails it: We’ll let the commenter from California speak.

He comments on Maureen Dowd's new column, in which the pundit manufactures a reason to discuss the utterly insignificant Cheney family feud:

COMMENTER FROM CALIFORNIA (11/20/13): This is the second day in a row that a NYT columnist has devoted precious column space to the drama behind a Senate race that has been all but determined in Enzi's favor.

I'm sympathetic to the sentiments behind the NYT commenters lambasting the Cheneys. Schadenfreude is a dish best served en masse.

But the reality is that many of Cheney's (and W.'s) most notorious policies have been continued during both terms of the Obama administration. In fact, some of these "policies" have actually worsened under Obama.

It seems like an awful lot of partisan commenters here don't want to ask questions about the actual policies. They just want to point the finger at the last administration.

There’s more to the comment, but we’ll stop there.

We recommend the commenter’s observation—this race has apparently been decided. We applaud his joke about schadenfreude being “a dish best served en masse.”

(If it can’t be said en masse, top pundits will rarely say it.)

We invite you to consider his comments about our team’s tribal selectivity. By the way, didn’t Obama share Liz Cheney’s stated view on same-sex marriage as recently as last year?

That said, we’re not “sympathetic to the sentiments behind the NYT commenters lambasting the Cheneys.” Dowd’s column, like Bruni’s before it, is dumb, illogical, empty, nasty. But then, if it weren’t for nasty/empty, would Dowd ever get into print?

Schadenfreude is all the rage concerning the Cheney flap—though only after the pundit pretends, as Dowd does today, that she finds the spectacle “painful.”

Dowd wastes everyone’s time today with pointless crap about the Ford brothers. (The Ford brothers live in Toronto, which isn’t part of this country.) She then invents a paragraph about the Bush brothers.

This is done so she can pretend that she is exploring a theme. The rule of three is observed!

Finally, it’s back to the Cheneys, with whom Dowd opened the column. In what way does this make sense?

DOWD (11/20/13): The Cheney feud is the most stomach-turning, with Liz Cheney grubbing for a Senate seat as a carpetbagger against an incumbent Republican. What on earth makes her qualified to be a senator? And why didn’t she simply run in her real home state of Virginia?

The spectacle of Liz, Dick and Lynne Cheney bullying Mike Enzi, known in Congress as a real gentleman, is topped only by the spectacle of Liz, Dick and Lynne throwing Mary Cheney and her wife, Heather Poe, and their two children under the campaign bus.

Dick Cheney is given a lot of credit for saying during the 2004 campaign that states should define marriage and that “freedom means freedom for everyone.” But he said it—and Mary kept working on the campaign—while his party’s key strategy for keeping the White House was demonizing gays by drumming up state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in 11 states, a way to lure conservatives to the polls.

Dick’s Secret Service code name was once “Backseat.” Liz’s should be “Backstab.”

In what way has Liz Cheney “backstabbed” her sister? In what way did she throw her sister’s family under a bus? Understanding the rules of the pseudo-journalist schadenfreude game, Dowd doesn’t even attempt to explain. This is string-of-insults journalism—and it’s best done en masse.

We don’t share Liz Cheney’s stated views about marriage, but she does have a right to hold them. That said, what is supposed to be wrong with what Liz Cheney did?

Go ahead—read the whole column. Try to find a single place where Dowd even tries to explain.

This is garbage, all the way down. The New York Times has been pimping this swill for the past fifteen years. (That includes the seven columns about Candidate Gore's deeply troubling bald spot.)

At one point, Clark Hoyt actually told Dowd to stop. That was after she gender-trashed Hillary Clinton for all those long, brainless years. (Do you recall the horrific columns about Howard Dean’s admirable wife?)

Clark Hoyt actually told her to stop. But everyone else is off in the Hamptons, and this broken-souled loser rolls on.

We liberals, who love to hate, are reveling in the current nonsense. We love to call the other team names. As that commenter later explains, we actually are that sad.

For extra credit: Did Obama backstab Mary Cheney all through his first term? Why or why not?

Explain. You’ll be the first to try!

At the Times, the board types up the script!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Just as it ever was: Gack!

This morning, the editorial board of the New York Times discusses, or attempts to discuss, the newly-released NAEP scores for 2013.

Such people live and die for their establishment scripts. In this account, the board describes the situation in precisely the ways we have long described:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (11/20/13): [A]ccording to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the eight states that managed to get the Common Core standards in place in time for the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress exams this year showed improvement from 2009 scores in either reading or math.

Nationwide, the story is less encouraging. For example, on this year’s assessment, fourth graders and eighth graders, on average, showed only slight gains from two years ago in math and reading scores. Even worse, the results show that less than half of the nation’s students are performing at a proficient level in either math or reading as judged by the federal rating system, indicating that the country is not moving swiftly enough toward its goal of preparing students for work in a global economy. Equally worrisome is the continuing gap between low-income and more-affluent students.

Stress the gaps, disappear the gains. Just as it ever was!

Nothing said in that passage is “false.” That said, let’s consider what gets said as opposed to what gets left out.

“Nationwide,” the story sounds gloomy. That’s because the editors follow a powerful, memorized script. They focus on the achievement gaps and largely ignore the gains.

Let’s take a look at the record:

“On this year’s assessment, fourth graders and eighth graders, on average, showed only slight gains from two years ago in math and reading scores.”

That is basically accurate. But on a nationwide basis, it would be extremely surprising to record large gains in the course of only two years.

Do the editors understand that? If so, they don’t let on.

“Less than half of the nation’s students are performing at a proficient level in either math or reading as judged by the federal rating system, indicating that the country is not moving swiftly enough toward its goal of preparing students for work in a global economy.”

The factual claim in that sentence is accurate—fewer than half are performing at a proficient level as measured by the (subjective) NAEP rating system. But does that mean that progress isn’t sufficiently swift?

The editors don’t describe the overall progress of the past twenty years, progress compiled in slow, steady gains. This overall progress seems rather large, especially in math.

“Equally worrisome is the continuing gap between low-income and more-affluent students.”

The editors don’t want to talk about race, so they focus on income instead. We discussed this type of avoidance last week.

We’ll be less dainty. Everything we say would also apply to the editors’ daintier breakdown.

In fact, the achievement gaps have gotten smaller over the past twenty years. That said, the editors fail to report the basic reason why the gaps continue on the NAEP.

This is the reason:

Even as average scores by black kids have risen, average scores by white kids have been rising too. The gaps “continue” under this system, but they continue at a much higher level, with all groups scoring higher! Somehow, this rather basic point never gets explained.

We’ve been describing this pattern for years. The achievement gaps get reported and stressed; the achievement gains get disappeared.

This is deeply irresponsible conduct. But so what?

The social club still described as a “press corps” doesn’t give a shit about black kids, or about the full range of facts. This social club seems to exist for the sake of its scripts.

This particular script comes from Rhee and Bill Gates. The club can rattle it off in their sleep.

Two weeks back, we spent a full week describing the shape of this morning’s report. Once you understand the scripts, you can be a prophet too!

TRIBE AND RACE: O’Reilly disagrees with Oprah!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Part 3—Or at least, that’s how it seemed: “In some cases,” is disrespect aimed at President Obama “because he’s African-American?”

Presumably, yes! It’s hard to know who would doubt such a claim. But how widespread is that type of disrespect?

That’s where the rub comes in.

It’s hard to measure the amount of disrespect which comes from that source. In the absence of any such knowledge, we liberals do sometimes tend to start making shit up.

We can’t tell you that Winfrey did that. At the start of Saturday’s column, Charles Blow offered part of her recent reply to a question on this topic:

BLOW (11/16/13): Disrespect, Race and Obama

In an interview with the BBC this week, Oprah Winfrey said of President Obama: “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs, in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he’s African-American.”

With that remark, Winfrey touched on an issue that many Americans have wrestled with: To what extent does this president’s race animate those loyal to him and those opposed? Is race a primary motivator or a subordinate, more elusive one, tainting motivations but not driving them?

That highlighted statement is so imprecise that it’s barely a statement at all. (See yesterday’s post.) But that statement has now launched a thousand pseudo-discussions.

Consider the imprecise, subjective reaction offered by Bill O’Reilly.

O’Reilly began Monday night’s program with a “talking points memo” concerning Winfrey’s comments. He started by playing a fuller version of her exchange with the BBC (for text, see below).

“Now let's analyze Oprah's take,” Mr. O said. He started with praise for Winfrey:

O’REILLY (11/18/13): Now let's analyze Oprah's take. I have known her for decades—not well, but we've spoken on occasion. As I have written, I admire Oprah Winfrey. She rose up from very humble circumstances to become perhaps the most powerful woman in the world. And she did that—she did that on pure talent.

She also looks out for the kids. I have been on her program talking about protecting children. In my opinion, she is a good person.

Personally, we approve of that kind of talk. People who get their information from Salon, MSNBC and/or Media Matters may not know that O’Reilly often says things like that.

From there, O’Reilly went on to challenge Winfrey’s imprecise claims, making several unprovable claims in the process.

Please understand—O’Reilly never disagreed with Winfrey’s imprecise statements. In fact, to the extent that Winfrey made any definable statements, O’Reilly seconded them, offering mega-dittos.

Along the way, he praised Obama in certain ways too. But he seconded Winfrey’s statements:

O’REILLY: We all know that some Americans do despise Barack Obama because of his skin color. There will always be bigots. But the number is insignificant. And I submit that Oprah Winfrey and others who play the race card can't back up their statements with any facts.

The lunatic fringe will hate, no matter what. But legitimate criticism of Barack Obama is not race-centric. It is based on policy. The President wants to change America. He wants to impose a big government income redistribution situation. Many Americans like me believe that will weaken the country.

I have nothing personal against President Obama. In fact, he has joined with me to help thousands of wounded veterans. He has been great on that issue. But this nanny state play is causing tremendous economic problems. And that's where my criticism comes down.

It’s true. Legitimate criticism of Obama isn’t “race-centric.” But in this part of his memo, O’Reilly agreed with Winfrey’s basic statement. He agreed that “some” Americans disrespect Obama on the basis of race.

In fact, O’Reilly used stronger language than Winfrey did. He said some Americans despise Obama. He also said we all know this.

(For ourselves, we don’t know that. But that’s neither here nor there.)

How odd! As you can see, O’Reilly seems to agree with everything Winfrey definably said. And yet, in the bulk of his memo, he accused Winfrey of “playing the race card.” He seemed to think that he and Winfrey were basically in disagreement.

The pseudo-discussion began when O’Reilly began to assume what Winfrey must have meant by her imprecise statement. We can’t say he’s wrong in what he assumed. But we can’t say he’s right either.

The fuller passage below is where the disagreement began. Please note:

O’Reilly will go on to criticize Winfrey for making claims she “can’t back up with any facts” (see above). Given her lack of precision, it isn’t clear that Winfrey did that. But in this rebuttal, O’Reilly clearly does:

O’REILLY: Now let's analyze Oprah's take. I have known her for decades, not well, but we've spoken on occasion. As I have written, I admire Oprah Winfrey. She rose up from very humble circumstances to become perhaps the most powerful woman in the world. And she did that—she did that on pure talent.

She also looks out for the kids. I have been on her program talking about protecting children. In my opinion, she is a good person.

But Oprah definitely has a blind spot when it comes to politics. She, along with some others, uses a racial prism when analyzing public policy. There is no question that President Bush was attacked far more viciously than President Obama has been. But Miss Winfrey has not acknowledged that as far as I know. Both men had controversies—Bush the Iraq war, Obama healthcare.

So, is there an anti-WASP sentiment in America, President Bush being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant? I would like to put that question to Oprah Winfrey but she has declined to appear on this program.

Her statement is even more erroneous when you examine recent history. This week we are marking the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. He was hated and vilified by some because he was a Roman Catholic. Again the irrational hatred directed toward Kennedy, far greater than what Barack Obama has experienced.

So what Oprah Winfrey is doing is making an excuse for President Obama using race. And many other committed left-wing people who truly revere the president are doing the same thing.

Is Winfrey “making an excuse for Obama using race?” Maybe! Without question, some people who support Obama do things which resemble that practice.

But O’Reilly makes several highly questionable claims as he rejects what he thinks Winfrey said. To wit:

Was President Bush “attacked far more viciously than President Obama has been?” O’Reilly says there’s “no question” that he was. It’s hard to imagine what “facts” could “back up” that highly subjective judgment.

(In our view, it’s possible that Bush was attacked more viciously. We’d say the attacks on Obama have often been vastly more crazy.)

Second, was “the irrational hatred directed toward Kennedy far greater than what Obama has experienced?” Again, O’Reilly doesn’t seem to realize that this is a highly subjective claim, one which almost surely can't be established by “facts.” And by the way, most important of all:

Suppose O’Reilly’s claim is true. Suppose Kennedy did have to deal with a larger amount of irrational hatred. In what way would that make Winfrey’s claims “erroneous?”

It wouldn’t make her claims untrue at all! Winfrey never stated a view about the hatred aimed at Kennedy. In the literal sense, she merely said that Obama is disrespected “in many cases” because he’s African-American.

That imprecise statement is surely true. Plainly, O’Reilly agrees with it. But that statement has nothing to do with Kennedy. It stands or falls on its own.

In this presentation by Mr. O, you see the classic modern pseudo-journalistic pseudo-discussion. This type of pseudo-discussion virtually defines our broken and floundering discourse.

It isn’t clear that Winfrey and O’Reilly disagree on any facts, although in the end they quite possibly would. But somehow, out of literal agreement, a great dispute blew up!

O’Reilly agrees that Obama is disrespected by some on the basis of race. On a purely literal basis, that’s all Winfrey said. But by the time O’Reilly was done, it seemed we had sharp disagreement.

Tribal punditry works that way. Here’s how his memo ended:

O’REILLY: Finally, it is irresponsible of Oprah Winfrey, a woman of influence in this country, to say what she said to the BBC. The record shows that Mr. Obama is simply a president who is being criticized for some of his policies. And as the man himself would say: period.

And that's the Memo.

Now for the Top Story tonight. Reaction! Joining us from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University law professor Charles Ogletree, who is a friend to the president.

So where am I going wrong here, professor?

To O’Reilly’s credit, he brought Ogletree on for a full segment. The discussion was civil throughout, if murky and almost completely worthless.

On balance, we’d fault Ogletree for that more than O’Reilly. Ay any rate, the segment ended like this:

O’REILLY: All right, good debate, professor. We really appreciate you taking time to come on tonight.

OGLETREE: And come to Harvard, come to Harvard, Bill.

O’REILLY: I think they're ashamed of me up there.

OGLETREE: Invitation on its way.

O’REILLY: I'm an embarrassment to them. All right, we'll see you soon.

OGLETREE: No, not at all.

O’REILLY: Thank you. Next on the rundown, Juan and Mary Katharine on reaction to Oprah Winfrey and Zimmerman getting arrested in Florida.

Please come to Boston! At any rate, here’s a dirty little secret: at this point, you get more diversity of viewpoint on O’Reilly’s show than you do on MSNBC programs.

That said, this was a classic pseudo-discussion of the approved modern type. First, Winfrey made highly imprecise claims which, in fairness, did seem to suggest a possible sweeping viewpoint.

In response, O’Reilly seemed to assume that Winfrey was assigning racial motives so broadly that she was even indicting him. He proceeded to argue against this assumed claim, which hadn’t literally been made.

Winfrey’s claims about Obama were highly imprecise. In rebuttal, O’Reilly made claims about Kennedy and Bush which were completely subjective. Beyond that, these claims didn’t address what Winfrey literally said.

So it goes as our broken discourse proceeds along jangled tribal lines. This pseudo-dispute followed Blow’s recent column in the Time.

Blow was highly tribal too. He dragged Rush Limbaugh in.

Tomorrow: Playing the Rush Limbaugh card

The fuller exchange: Here is the fuller exchange involving Winfrey, as played on O’Reilly’s program:

BBC INTERVIEWER: Has it ever crossed your mind that some of the treatment that Obama, and the challenges he's faced, and some of the reporting he's received, is because he is an African-American?

WINFREY: Has it ever crossed my mind? It's crossed my mind probably as many times as it's crossed your mind. Probably it's crossed my mind more times than it's crossed your mind. Just the level of disrespect when the senator yelled out, “You're a liar.” Do you remember that?

Yes. I think that there is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs and that occurs in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he's African-American.

Maybe that happens in “many” cases! Winfrey’s statements were so imprecise that, in fairness, they only have meaning on the level of assumed insinuation.

O’Reilly assumed he heard an insinuation; he proceeded to define and dispute what he thought hew had heard. We aren’t saying he was wrong in what he thought he heard Winfrey saying. It just isn’t clear what Winfrey would have said about the extent of the race-based disrespect if her thoroughly worthless British interviewer had pushed her just a bit harder.

By the way: Joe Wilson, who yelled “You lie,” isn’t a senator. Everybody makes mistakes, of course. That said, how carefully has Winfrey considered her beliefs on this most crucial of topics? Especially on such a central topic, widely-respected people—and Winfrey is clearly that—should consider their statements with care.

We assume Winfrey’s a good person too. On balance, most people are.

Ripples: Concerning that very rough rule of thumb!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2013

Where that rough rule of thumb comes from: Yesterday, we received an e-mail concerning the origin of that very rough rule of thumb—the rough rule of thumb which says that ten points on the NAEP scale is roughly equal to one academic year.

At one point, our mailer linked to this academic paper. On page 5, the authors describe a 10-11 point rule of thumb, and give a sense of its origin:

LUBIENSKI AND LUBIENSKI (2006): NAEP mathematics results are reported on a 0-500 scale, with the 2003 mean being 235 at grade 4 and 278 at grade 8. The NAEP mathematics scale was originally designed to allow cross-grade comparisons, indicating that the 43-point difference between grade 4 and grade 8 would mean that a gap of 10 or 11 points represents roughly one grade level. NAEP no longer maintains that the scale is consistent across grades. However the scales have not changed markedly, and therefore the idea that “10-11 points is approximately 1 grade level” is still often used as a helpful, albeit rough, guide for interpreting score differences.

That has always been our general understanding of where this rough rule comes from. It seems to us that there was once a pristine 40-point difference between NAEP cut-off scores for “proficiency” at the Grade 4 and Grade 8 levels. That was always our understanding of where the rule came from.

Still, our mailer wanted more. He started like this:

EMAILER: This email in-part pertains to your often quoted rule of thumb regarding interpreting score gains on the NAEP: that 10 points gives a very rough approximation of one academic year. I've been looking around for other instances of this rule of thumb being used and have not been able to find very many. I'm not presenting this as a criticism, rather I'm looking for some means of defending the use of this rule of thumb should I ever be asked about it while discussing student score gains on the NAEP...

Where can he find this rule of thumb being used? Offhand, we can’t give specific citations, and it isn’t easy to search for. But education reporters and education “experts” will often apply this ten-point rule when they discuss achievement gaps on the NAEP. They won’t specifically declare that they are applying a ten-point rule. They will simply (for example) report a 20-point achievement gap, then say it corresponds to roughly two years of schooling.

You can see a similar performance in Amanda Ripley’s new book, this time with respect to the PISA. At several points in the book, Ripley converts score differences on the PISA into a rough number of academic years. In this example, she compares an 84-point gap in the PISA scale to two academic years:

RIPLEY (page 158): African-American students did poorly on PISA, heartbreakingly so. On average, they scored eighty-four points below white students in reading in 2009. It was as if the white kids had been going to school two extra years. The gap between white and African-American students showed itself in dozens of other ways too, from graduation rates to SAT scores. Generally speaking, up to half the gap could be explained by economics; black students were more likely to come from lower-income families with less-educated parents.

In her text, Ripley doesn’t state her basis for that conversion, in which 84 points is compared to two school years. In an endnote, she says this: “In general, thirty-nine score points in PISA is considered the equivalent of one year of formal schooling.” She doesn’t state her source for that rule of thumb.

In a similar way, we have often seen the ten-point rule applied in practice—always when discussing the gaps, never when discussing the large score gains which have been achieved on the NAEP.

Alert newspapers would have done the following long ago. First, they would have reported the score gains which have been achieved by different groups on the NAEP. This is virtually never done. Except in aggregate form, the score gains are essentially never reported.

Second, they would have interviewed NAEP officials, looking for ways to interpret the score gains. At the Grade 4 level, black kids gained 37 points in math between 1992 and 2013. How much academic gain might we associate with a score gain of that size?

Newspapers should have pursued that question long ago. In truth, there’s no sign that they ever will. Our big newspapers won’t even report these large score gains, let alone try to interpret them.

We live inside a badly broken intellectual culture. Our reporters know how to do one thing. They know how to memorize and repeat the scripts preferred by elites.

How much better are black kids doing? What might explain their apparent progress? The New York Times doesn’t care. Neither do the millionaires who entertain you night after night on The One True Channel.

They enjoy the antics of Rob Ford. Black kids can go straight to Hell—or to Toronto, whichever comes first. These are the actual values of our millionaire pseudo-press.

We know—they seem like lovely people. We’re simply telling you what they do—whose lives they stoop to discuss.

Gossip TV and a cool family feud!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2013

Let them entertain you: We don’t know if we’ve even seen such an undisguised evening of Gossip TV.

Consider:

The featured news report on page 1 of today’s New York Times concerns a startling event. Essentially, the national Republican Party is refusing to fill empty seats on our nation’s most important courts.

“Senate Republicans on Monday blocked President Obama’s third consecutive nominee to the country’s most powerful and prestigious appeals court and insisted they would not back down, inflaming a bitter debate over a president’s right to shape the judiciary,” Jeremy Peters writes at the start of his front-page report.

This time, the rejected judge is named Robert Wilkins. We just entered “Wilkins” into the Nexis search engine. The name wasn’t mentioned, not even once, on cable “news” channels last night.

What names were mentioned on cable last night? Which names drove the gossip? The names included Rob Ford, Mary Cheney, George Zimmerman and Alec Baldwin. On MSNBC, Willie Robertson was named by Lawrence and by Chris Hayes.

Robertson is the star of Duck Dynasty. Rachel discussed that program too, although she skipped Robertson’s name.

(Rachel, in a wonderful moment: “If you haven’t watched it, you owe it to yourself to watch it, just so you understand your country.”)

Who broke the coffee table at the home of Zimmerman’s girl friend? Lawrence opened his program last night with a segment on that topic. On CNN, Anderson Cooper opened his 10 PM program like this:

COOPER (11/18/13): Hey, everyone. Welcome to AC360 Later.

Tonight, Oprah Winfrey's allegation. She says no one ever says it, but everybody is thinking it. President Obama, she says, is being disrespected because of the color of his skin.

Agree or disagree, it's quite a conversation starter. We will take her up on that.

Also, the Cheney family feud over same-sex marriage. And Alec Baldwin's eruption. We begin, though, with Toronto's crack-smoking mayor, Rob Ford.

It’s a conversation starter! All last week, we were asked to consider who said what to whom for what reason in the Dolphins locker room.

If you are extremely gullible, you may believe that this constitutes an attempt at reporting the news. We’re inclined to see it as something else—as the flight of multimillionaire TV stars into “conversation” and gossip.

Can we talk? They don’t give a good goddamn about topics affecting millions of people. Why have they been peddling Rob Ford in giant doses? Two weeks ago, Chris Hayes blurted:

HAYES (11/6/13): People around the world are finding out what we already knew, admitted crack-smoking mayor of Toronto Rob Ford is endlessly entertaining after his wild press conference yesterday.

It’s endlessly entertaining! One week later, Lawrence blurted too. “Coming up, the latest, and we hope the last, performance by the most entertaining mayor in North America. Toronto’s Rob Ford is in the spotlight tonight.”

Let them entertain you!

If you’re highly gullible, you may believe you were handed last night’s menu for reasons which extend beyond entertainment and the stoking of tribal furies and pleasures. If you choose to believe that, let’s consider the quality of analysis you get when these topics are examined.

Consider Frank Bruni’s column today about those “Cheney family values.” As he starts, we ask a basic question. Is this a discussion of news? Or is this dick-tugging and gossip?

BRUNI (11/19/13): If Liz Cheney, whose bid for the Senate has always had a stench of extreme opportunism, wants to discuss traditions and values, I’m all for it. Let’s start here: Isn’t there a tradition of close-knit family members’ taking care not to wound one another? Is there not value in that?

From the moment that Liz decided, from the perch of her longtime home in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, to act the part of an honest-to-goodness Wyoming resident and challenge an incumbent senator (and family friend) from that state, she must have known that the issue of same-sex marriage would come up. It is, after all, a prominent thread in the news. It’s also a prominent thread in stories about her family, given that her father, Dick, bucked his party to become an early Republican supporter of same-sex marriage, and given that her lone sibling, Mary, has a female spouse.

She must also have entertained speaking out against it, because that’s what she ended up doing on Sunday, on Fox News, saying that she believed “in the traditional definition of marriage.” And she must have foreseen that this would pain Mary, who was married last year and whose two children are being brought up with the understanding that their family has the same dignity as any other.

But she plunged forward anyway, disregarding the inevitable discord. As Jonathan Martin reported in The Times, Liz and Mary aren’t speaking to each other now, and there’s a long shadow over the Cheneys’ holiday get-togethers.

Question: Do you understand why you’re being asked to ponder the “long shadow over the Cheneys’ holiday” plans? Why is anyone supposed to care about that?

Leave aside that obvious question. Instead, examine Bruni’s fitful attempts at logic.

According to Bruni, Liz Cheney “must have known that the issue of same-sex marriage would come up” when she chose to run for the Senate. At present, Cheney is fifty points behind in the polls, making us wonder why any of this is being treated as news.

Whatever! In the passage we have posted, Bruni almost makes it sound like you shouldn’t run for the Senate if 1) your sister is gay and married and 2) you oppose same-sex marriage.

Bruni knows that doesn’t make sense. And so, after making a point of mentioning Cheney’s niece and nephew in the most personal ways, he tries to reason his way past that obvious point.

His attempts at logic are very weak. This is a simple-minded attempt to disguise the culture of gossip:

BRUNI (continuing directly): Is any political office worth that? Would victory redeem the public message that Liz just sent to her niece and nephew? I’m imagining her awkwardness the next time that she goes to hug or kiss them (and I’m assuming that she’s a hugger or kisser, which may be a leap). If there’s not a knot in her stomach, then there’s nothing at all in her heart.

Having a lesbian sister doesn’t compel her to support marriage equality. Having a gay relative doesn’t compel anyone to. There are earnest divisions here, often driven by deep-seated religious convictions.

But Liz’s decision to chart a course and publicize a view bound to offend her sister is entirely volitional. It’s also entirely different from airing other ideological disagreements within families. Conflicting views on abortion or the death penalty don’t challenge the very structure and foundation of a loved one’s home. Questioning the validity of a marriage does. You’re not saying that you part with the way someone thinks. You’re saying that you have qualms with who they are, and this is a statement—a sentiment—you can keep to yourself. Even once Liz had elected to run, she could have chosen to say that the issue of gay marriage wasn’t going to be part of her campaign.

She could have said that the issue of gay marriage wasn’t going to be part of her campaign? Really? So when Chris Wallace asked her about that topic, she was supposed to say that she won’t reveal her position?

Same-sex marriage remains a political issue. It’s silly to think that a candidate can say she won’t talk about it. But when the children seek the chance to gossip about their favorite bête noirs, they will say any fool thing to move the project forward.

For our money, the problem started in the passage below. Wallace had already asked about Cheney's position on same-sex marriage. He then moved on to this additional question:

WALLACE (11/17/13): You talk about your position against same-sex marriage. Your sister, married—who is married to a woman—put out this post. She said, “For the record, I love my sister”—you—“but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage.”

CHENEY: Yeah. And I—listen, I love Mary very much. I love her family very much. This is just an issue on which we disagree.

When did that start? Do we normally ask a candidate to state her view on an issue, then to respond to something her sister has said?

Wallace waved the checkered flag and set the gossips off. Basically, that’s what you get from the multimillionaires who pretend to do news on TV.

This country is spilling with real news topics—real news topics which involve the interests of gays and black kids, among other groups.

The gossip groupies don’t care about that. As we have proven down through the years, they would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge before they’d discuss the interests of black kids. They simply don’t care about people like that. They prefer entertainment and gossip.

They care about gossip—and they care about ratings. Let them entertain you!

The most ridiculous segment ever: The most ridiculous segment ever was broadcast on last evening’s Hardball. It involved Michael Dukakis’ ride in that tank in 1988—and yes, it was a full segment.

Was that segment really broadcast? Or did someone slip us some acid?

Final question: Do these people cover Rob Ford because he’s so much like themselves?

TRIBE AND RACE: The plutocrats cheer!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2013

Part 2—They called him Mister Bush: Do people show disrespect for President Obama because of his so-called race?

(Race is an invention, as we all know. In this country, it’s a very prevalent invention.)

Do people show disrespect for President Obama because of his race? As stated, the question is highly imprecise. It’s so imprecise that it’s hard to see how it can be useful, except to the plutocrats who are tightening their hold on our floundering nation.

That said, a British journalist popped a form of that highly imprecise question to Oprah Winfrey last week. In Saturday’s New York Times, Charles Blow opened his column with one part of Winfrey’s reply:

BLOW (11/16/13): Disrespect, Race and Obama

In an interview with the BBC this week, Oprah Winfrey said of President Obama: “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs, in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he’s African-American.”

With that remark, Winfrey touched on an issue that many Americans have wrestled with: To what extent does this president’s race animate those loyal to him and those opposed? Is race a primary motivator or a subordinate, more elusive one, tainting motivations but not driving them?

We don’t mean this as a criticism of Winfrey, although we’ll pick some nits tomorrow. That said, the highlighted statement is so imprecise that it’s barely a statement at all.

Does disrespect occur “in some cases” because Obama is African-American? Presumably yes, it does. That answer is blindingly obvious.

Does this type of disrespect occur in “maybe even many cases?” Same answer! There are 315 million people in this country, and the word “many” is highly imprecise.

Alas! Unless we start to speculate about what Winfrey meant by the word “many,” her statement is so imprecise that it’s barely a statement at all. And yet, her extremely imprecise statement has launched a thousand pseudo-discussions.

As everyone knows, race is the central brutality at the heart of American history. We’ve barely even created a vocabulary with which to discuss the brutality of that history.

We aren’t real skilled at that discussion. But for obvious reasons, many people have very strong feelings about the historical role played by race, and about its role today. That’s why public figures should possibly try to be extra thoughtful in the things they say on this subject.

Can we talk? The plutocrats we mentioned above have always worked from a famous game plan. It’s called divide and conquer.

If the one percent can get the 99 to name-call, revile and despise one another, it becomes much, much easier for the one percent to rule.

(We’re really talking about the one-hundredth of one percent, of course. They hire the one-tenth of one percent to serve as their spear-chuckers. People refer to this guild as the one percent for ease of transcription.)

On the slopes of Mount Plutocracy, the gods take pride in their strength when they see the 99 percent fighting among themselves. And that’s exactly what they saw in reaction to Blow’s latest column.

As he continued, Blow attacked Rush Limbaugh’s response to Winfrey’s remarks. We can’t say we agree with the overall thrust of Blow’s reaction; more on that tomorrow. But for our money, Blow helped inspire the 99 percent to fight and divide.

And good lord, how Blow’s readers took that bait! In the very first comment to his column, a regular commenter to New York Times columns imagined a much better world:

COMMENTER FROM CALIFORNIA (11/16/13): I hope your readers will listen to the Oprah interview. She's right. Things will get better when the last of the racist generation dies.

How uplifting! If only Those Very Bad People would die! High on the slopes of Mount Plutocracy, the gods roared out their pleasure!

We’re not saying that commenter is “wrong,” although we think she’s extremely unwise and a gift to the plutocrat gods. For today, let’s consider one commenter who really was just flat-out wrong on his facts.

That first commenter declaims near the top of many New York Times comment threads. Last Saturday, this well-intentioned person commented much further down the line.

We assume this commenter was well-intentioned. But his memory was playing some tricks:

COMMENTER FROM NEW YORK CITY (11/16/13): I have believed from the beginning of his campaign that the ferocity and animosity directed against the president and his policies has less to do with ideology than it is a bunch of angry, threatened white men who resent being told what to do by an intelligent black man. I also find it interesting that the media often times refers to him as “Mr. Obama”, not “President Obama”. I don't remember hearing that in reference to any other president.

Is it true? Does the animosity directed against the president have less to do with his ideology than with his race? There is no way to answer that riddle. But we were struck by this reader’s belief that no president has ever been treated this way before:

This commenter “doesn’t remember” hearing any previous president ever referred to as “Mister.”

That recollection is completely faulty. We presume the recollection is heartfelt, though it does serve the plutocrats’ ends.

No president was ever treated this way! Well-intentioned but clueless observers have constantly advanced this claim during Obama’s tenure. In this case, we decided to check the New York Times on the corresponding day in the tenure of the last president, a fellow named George W. Bush.

Over and over, the New York Times called him Mister Bush! Reporter Carl Hulse even displayed this form of contempt on the paper’s front page:

HULSE (11/16/05): Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader and a sponsor of the Iraqi policy approved by the Senate, sought to frame the approach as one of cooperation with the White House.

[...]

But the main opposition for the policy proposal came from Republicans who said it put too many constraints on the administration, was a step toward a timetable for withdrawal, was ill timed because Mr. Bush is out of the country and had been prompted mainly by political anxiety about the impact of the war on next year's midterm elections.

Mister Bush was out of the country? Edmund Andrews played the same game on the front page of the Business section:

ANDREWS (11/16/05): But House leaders are working on a very different measure. That bill would include a two-year extension of Mr. Bush's tax cut on stock dividends but would not include any tax breaks for hurricane reconstruction or any reduction of the alternative minimum tax. House Republicans are betting that they can pass those provisions separately from the main package because those tax cuts are urgently sought by lawmakers in both parties.

Back on page A1, Steven Weisman typed this:

WEISMAN (11/16/05): The Arab and European allies pressed for more American efforts to untangle the issues paralyzing the peace negotiations. Diplomats from allied countries have said the credibility of Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice is at risk, and they have besieged Ms. Rice to seize the opportunity or lose what they regard as the last chance of making peace for years to come.

For eight solid years, they called him Mister Bush. Have they ever behaved this way toward a Democratic president?

One such person was President Clinton. On the corresponding day in his tenure, Eric Schmitt took to the Times front page:

SCHMITT (11/16/97): Mr. Clinton's decision on Friday to send a second aircraft carrier, the George Washington, to the Persian Gulf was an important symbolic show of force. But it also served a practical purpose: If Middle Eastern allies of the United States balk at letting the 200 American warplanes in the region launch strikes from their soil, the 100 combat planes on the two carriers could conduct round-the-clock operations.

Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the commander of American forces in the gulf, has visited Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates this week seeking those countries' cooperation. "It isn't a done deal yet, but it's looking very positive," said one Pentagon official.

Moreover, Mr. Clinton and his top national security aides began building a case this week that would be the underlying rationale for any military strikes the United States might carry out.

We assume last weekend’s commenter was sincere about what he said he couldn’t remember. He was sincere, but absurdly wrong on the facts. Race, a very powerful topic, will often affect us that way.

Let’s be clear. We the people can be, and frequently are, wrong on a wide range of topics. But thanks to our brutal American history, nothing creates faulty perceptions, and understandable anger, as readily as issues of race.

The plutocrats cheer when this fury occurs—when one branch of the 99 percent starts attacking another. To see how sweeping these attacks can be, let’s return to that very first comment, the one in which the regular commenter was wishing death on roughly 49.5 percent of her own generation.

This very fiery pseudo-liberal wasn’t satisfied by the sweep of her death wish. She made it clear that she was prepared to clean out her own tribe too:

COMMENTER FROM CALIFORNIA: I hope your readers will listen to the Oprah interview. She's right. Things will get better when the last of the racist generation dies.

There are latent racists among Liberals too. Those are the ones with reduced expectations of people of color. Their racism is muted, in the subtext. It's just as ugly.

There is no doubt in my mind that the GOP/Tea Party obstruction is primarily borne out of racism, with elements of class warfare woven in, using tactics from the confederate era. I am convinced that any other president, while meeting some obstruction, would not have been disrespected as this one has been. I don't believe the White House denials that President Obama was told "I can't stand the sight of you."

Let’s give her credit—she got it all in! The other half of the 99 is primarily driven by racism, with tactics from the Confederate era. But there are latent racists within her own tribe! Their racism is just as ugly!

(Beyond that, she doesn’t believe a recent White House denial. By rule of law, any claim against one of The Others has to be true. That’s the way the facts get sifted by this lover of war.)

In our view, that regular commenter is one of the least constructive, least insightful people we’ve ever seen in print. Today, though, her number is legion in pseudo-liberal comment threads.

She’s also one of the very best friends the plutocrats could have.

The plutocrats have always lived off warfare among the 99. Given our brutal racial history, no topic can start such wars quite the way this topic can.

How sure we are of our perceptions! No one has ever been treated this way, one commenter said.

No one except all the other presidents! When we work ourselves into a fury, do those folk even count?

Tomorrow: Winfrey, Limbaugh and Blow

Chris Matthews goes crazy about the L-word!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

We recall when the L-word was Limbaugh: Watching MSNBC has become increasingly painful.

The station churns endless propaganda with its teams of propagandists. It’s often wrong on the simplest facts. For one especially embarrassing episode from Politics Nation, cover the eyes of the kids, then fight your way through this three-part report from PolitiFact.

(One example from that program, uttered by Goldie Taylor: "You know, our national debt is as low as it has been since World War II.” Good God.)

The channel is painful to watch. Even by its own declining standards, we thought Chris Matthews was especially clownish last Friday.

As he started, the irate talker was extremely upset. He was horrified by something Dick Cheney had said:

MATTHEWS (11/15/13): A new low from Dick Cheney. Let’s play Hardball.

Good evening. I’m Chris Matthews out in Los Angeles. Let Me Start tonight with this.

The political right in this country has reached a new low, as I said. It has shown from the beginning that President Obama doesn’t deserve the decency accorded other American presidents. His enemies have called him an illegal immigrant, a street corner con artist, a fraud, a Manchurian candidate brought to this country to undermine all we stand for.

Well, now Dick Cheney comes right out and calls him a liar. When a right-wing back-bencher did that four years ago, he was called out for rebuke even by his own party. Well, now what was condemned as historic bad behavior comes snarling out of Dick Cheney’s mouth, and nobody says to shut up.

Well, we can argue, as we do here, about the problems implementing the Affordable Care Act, but is this, calling the president a liar, the new language of American politics, or is it a language specially treated for the country’s first African-American president?

Is this president of a lower caste than those elected to the office before him? Or do those on the right believe he even is the legitimate president of the United States, or that someone like him could be?

Needless to say, Chris immediately advanced the idea that Obama was being accused of lying because he’s black. Surely, no white president has ever been accused of lying about something, or has even called a liar!

For ourselves, we rarely use the L-word; it’s hard to know when someone is lying as opposed to simply being mistaken. But the foolishness was already extremely thick at this point.

One example: Four years ago, Joe Wilson was widely condemned for yelling “You lie” during a State of the Union address. All through the segment, Matthews pretended he didn’t see the distinction.

To be fair, Matthews suggested at one or two points that he was only offended by the idea that politicians would drop an L-bomb on a president. But he made that distinction only intermittently, and he soon threw to regular guest David Corm.

As noted, we think people should stay away from the L-word, as was the norm long ago. That said, Corn was a slightly odd guest for this particular segment. His first book, published in 2004, bore this title:

“The Lies of George W. Bush”

Whatever! David even reinvented the definition of the word “lie” to give that book more punch. We’re not even saying he was wrong to do that, although he plainly was.

That said, the analysts roared at David’s reply to Chris. How odd!

David did the thing his host hates most! He dropped serial L-bombs on Cheney:

CORN: Well, can we just say of all the people to call anyone else a liar, Dick Cheney should not be at the top of that list? I mean if you go back to Iraq—we`ve talked about this over the years—he was the one who said that Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, no doubt, to use against the United States.

He kept talking about the lie that Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague. He talked about the aluminum tubes. He said there was no doubt there was strong evidence of strong connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. He lied repeatedly.

And he really, for all that, should sort of be drummed out of polite society and that of the media. But unfortunately, he’s not. Those lies actually were done, I think, maliciously to get the American public to back a war which they might otherwise not support.

We’re not even saying that David was wrong. But just like that, there he was calling a big pol a liar! It’s the very thing Matthews hates!

Suddenly, Chris didn’t seem to think the L-bomb was so offensive. But so it goes on this increasingly clownish cable pseudo-news channel.

Corn’s reaction provided a bit of short-term humor. Still, we really had to marvel at Chris. Was he really pretending that Obama is the first Democratic president or vice president to be attacked this way?

Back in the day, President Clinton and Candidate Gore were called liars until they were blue. As we mused, we recalled one of the most significant Hardball programs in history.

It was Thursday night, October 5, 2000. Candidates Bush and Gore had staged their fateful first debate two nights before.

On the night of that first debate, something unusual happened. Matthews was part of a five-member MSNBC panel which judged, unanimously, that Gore had cleaned Bush’s clock.

Even Peggy Noonan said it. Members of The Jack Welch Five searched for explanations for Bush’s gruesome performance. Matthews: “I don’t know whether he's tired tonight. People say he had a cold. People say he goes to bed normally before this time of night at 9:30.”

All five panelists said that Gore had cleaned Bush’s clock. The next night, Wednesday, October 4, Matthews took things one step farther. In a segment with Christopher Hitchens, he marveled at the fact that his colleagues in the press corps were largely refusing to say that Gore cleaned Bush’s clock.

(Matthews: “I couldn’t believe the number of people who chickened out last night. It was clear to me—and I am no fan of either of these guys entirely, and I can certainly say that about the one who I thought won last night, that’s Al Gore. I thought he cleaned the other guy’s clock, and I said so last night, and all four national polls agreed with that. In fact, the one with the largest sample, which was CBS, found a 14-point spread of those who thought that the vice president really leveled the other guy. I don't understand why people are afraid to say so.”)

Matthews had been trashing Candidate Gore in reprehensible ways for two solid years at this point. Suddenly, he was light-years off the reservation. And then, sure enough! On Thursday night, October 5, he reversed himself!

All of a sudden, Matthews said that Bush came across so well in the 15-second clips from the debate that he had pretty much won the debate after all! He began reciting all the standard new attacks on Candidate Gore. And who do you think he brought on the air for a very long segment as his honored guest?

Brother Matthews brought on Brother Limbaugh! Needless to say, the pair took turns dropping L-bombs on Clinton and Gore:

MATTHEWS (10/5/00): Joining me here in the studio, as advertised, is a true American hero and patriot, many millions of listeners believe, talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

LIMBAUGH: Great to be here. But you need some new video. You had a 100-pounds-ago video of me.

[...]

MATTHEWS: OK, let’s talk about this, if it happens. If Gore wins, how do you explain it? Is it just simply the power of the economy? Because Gore is not exactly, you know, Mr. Congeniality. He's not exactly your idea of the best guy to sit next to you on an airplane.

LIMBAUGH: I would— No, he's not. He’s not somebody that you want to go to a ball game with and chase women afterwards. He's not somebody that you want to go out and have a good time with. He's the guy that irritates you. I think that the explanation for a lot of things that you and I and a lot of people look at and don't understand is prosperity. Prosperity breeds contentment, which can breed laziness...

Bush has to make a case as to why there is a reason to change right now. And there are any number of ways he can go about doing it. I think he is succeeding in doing it. I think he will succeed. I think his performance in the debate as time goes on— You look at what’s happened since this [first] debate. The media's focused on Gore and on what specifically—that he lied, that he made things up. And now they're starting to ask, “Why is he doing it?”

He didn't have to grab Winifred Skinner. He could have gotten a legitimate woman with trouble.

MATTHEWS: This is the woman who went out to collect cans to pay for her—and now has a Winnebago courtesy of the Gore campaign.

LIMBAUGH: He could have gone to a school with a Winnebago and a crew that was paid for by the Democrats. He could have found a school that was in trouble, but he made one up, a school that's not in trouble. People are beginning to ask, “Why does he lie?” And when you start these psychologically—

MATTHEWS: Does anyone care? Clinton lied all of 1998 and it didn't bother anybody.

The L-bomb felt different to Matthews back then.

Matthews interviewed Limbaugh for the first half of the program. He completely abandoned his stance of the previous two nights.

We’ll guess that this astonishing flip was executed at the request of Matthews’ owner, Jack Welch. But whatever the reason might have been, Matthews went back to playing all the familiar old cards:

MATTHEWS: Forget the fact you are on the more conservative side of things than I am. I think we share some reverence for the White House and the presidency in this republic.

LIMBAUGH: Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: And when I watched The West Wing last night, which was absolutely spectacular, although they have a liberal point of view for the president, Josiah Bartley, the reverence for the office of the presidency is almost religious. The reverency, reverence for the White House, for the place, is sacred.

How can the American people on Wednesday nights when they watch that show have this unbelievable romance with the office of the presidency and let a guy like Clinton prance through the office?

LIMBAUGH: I don't know.

MATTHEWS: How does that happen?

LIMBAUGH: I don't know.

MATTHEWS: The disconnect doesn't make sense to me.

LIMBAUGH: I don't know that there's a connection there. I haven't seen The West Wing, I have to tell you, so I don't know specifically to what you refer. But I don't think—

MATTHEWS: The romance of the office, that this is where a great man rules.

LIMBAUGH: OK, but they're not watching the show for that reason. For instance, if they were, Clinton would be long gone. If they're watching that show for any reason, it's because it entertains them. They're not associating the reverence for the office that may be in that show with real life. I don't—they can't possibly be, as you point out.

MATTHEWS: That's the problem.

Chris clambered back on message that night. He made himself right with the team.

He returned to his Clinton/Gore-hating stance of the previous several years. The L-bombs didn’t faze him.

Matthews let Rush rant for half an hour. The interview aired at 5 PM. It was re-aired by Brian Williams in the 8 PM hour, during the lead-in to that evening’s vice presidential debate.

In other words, Jack Welch’s cable “boy toys” went deep into the bag on that high-profile night.

Just for the record, Clinton and Gore were trashed as liars for years. But Matthews is one of the biggest frauds ever let loose on TV.

Joan and David pretend they don’t know what he did in the bad old days. They do know what he did, of course. It’s just that they’re being paid.

Chris was paid to say those things back in the Jack Welch era. Today, he’s being paid to pretend that the L-word was never uttered before—that it must be happening now because Obama is black!

When we liberals tolerate this sort of thing, we prove again that we’re dead in life. We show why we'll never be up to the task of achieving progressive reforms.

You got scammed by Chris back then. Chris is also scamming you now. David and Joan are along for the ride. The Benjamins help them forget.

Ripples: Your Daily Howler keeps getting results!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

To his credit, Bill Keller backs down: Incomparably, your Daily Howler just keeps getting results!

This morning, right there in the New York Times, Bill Keller starts backing down:

KELLER (11/18/13): The decline of our education system is exaggerated but real, especially in the scientific and technical fields.

Say what? “The decline of our education system is exaggerated?” Where in the world did that come from?

Back in August, Keller was saying this about our K-12 schools. His column that day concerned the new Common Core:

KELLER (8/19/13): This is an ambitious undertaking, and there is plenty of room for debate about precisely how these standards are translated into classrooms. But the Common Core was created with a broad, nonpartisan consensus of educators, convinced that after decades of embarrassing decline in K-12 education, the country had to come together on a way to hold our public schools accountable.

Say what? Have we experienced “decades of embarrassing decline in K-12 education?”

We don’t blame Keller for thinking we have, given all the clueless young people who pose as “education reporters.” But actually, no—we have not experienced such a decline, if our most basic data can be trusted at all.

Here’s what the math scores of black students look like over the past twenty years:

Score gains, black students, 1992-2013
National Assessment of Educational Progress
Grade 4 math: 37.04 points
Grade 8 math: 26.61 points

On the NAEP scale, ten points is often compared to one academic year. We regard that as a very rough rule of thumb. But it’s often applied by “education reporters” when it can be used to spread the gloom about our achievement gaps.

Does that look like an embarrassing decline? On average, our black kids have a long way to go. (Don’t we all? Many black kids are doing brilliantly, of course.) But that doesn’t look like any kind of K-12 “decline” to us.

It looks like major K-12 improvement! Imagine that!

We don’t blame Keller for thinking what he apparently thought. The cluelessness is everywhere in the “mainstream press;” understandably, people like Keller believe what they read. This morning, to his credit, the gentleman starts to back down.

We’ve spent quite a few weeks on various aspects of Amanda Ripley’s ballyhooed book, The Smartest Kids in the World. Scripted people like Ripley have misled people like Keller over the past many years.

This morning, Keller pulls back from that earlier statement! In an exciting new feature called “Ripples,” we’ll do a short post each day right through Thanksgiving, adding to our award-winning review of Ripley’s widely-praised book.

TRIBE AND RACE: Race-fueled street fight on the left!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Part 1—Perlstein belittles Winfrey: Last week, historian Rick Perlstein took out the knives in a street fight he launched against Oprah Winfrey.

Or did he?

This street fight, which we have imagined, concerns the role played by race in the denigration of President Obama. In the course of disagreeing with Winfrey’s view, Perlstein displayed his rather obvious sense of white privilege.

Or at least, a person could say that he did!

In a lusty, name-calling piece at The Nation, Perlstein claimed that the tea party is just the latest example of a well-known, recurrent force in American political history. Name-calling to the side, we’re inclined to agree with that view.

Eventually, Perlstein offered his assessment of the vituperation which has been aimed at Obama. We’re inclined to agree with this too:

PERLSTEIN (11/25/13): This time, liberals are also making a new mistake. Call it “racial defeatism.” Folks throw their hands up and say, “Of course reactionary rage is going to flow like mighty waters against an African-American president! What can we possibly do about that?” But it’s crucial to realize that the vituperation directed at Obama is little different from that aimed at John F. Kennedy, who was so hated by the right that his assassination was initially assumed by most observers to have been done by a conservative; or Bill Clinton, who was warned by Helms in 1994 that if he visited a military base in North Carolina, he’d “better have a bodyguard.”

On balance, we tend to agree with the thrust of that paragraph. Is the denigration of President Obama something new? On balance, we’re inclined to think that it’s more like the denigration of President Clinton than it is different.

Quite often, we liberals act as if the denigration of Obama is an utterly puzzling new phenomenon, like nothing that’s ever been seen on the earth. We then attribute the vituperation to Obama’s race. What else could it possibly be?

As a general matter, we find that reaction maddening. That said, let’s be clear about what Perlstein seemed to be saying in this part of his piece.

Let’s be clear, though Perlstein isn’t! As he continues, Perlstein seems to say that the denigration of President Obama actually is “racism-soaked.” It’s just that the wars against Presidents Kennedy and Clinton were soaked in racism too.

In some ways, we don’t understand the next paragraph in Perlstein’s piece. In particular, we don’t understand what his mid-paragraph examples are meant to be example of.

That said, Perlstein’s overall view seems fairly clear. According to Perlstein, the denigration of President Obama really is “racism-soaked:”

PERLSTEIN (continuing directly): All right-wing antigovernment rage in America bears a racial component, because liberalism is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks. Racial rhetoric has been entwined with government from the start, all the way back to when the enemy was not Obamacare but the Grand Army of the Republic (and further in the past than that: Thomas Jefferson, after all, was derided as “the Negro President”). When former IRS Commissioner T. Coleman Andrews ran for president in 1956 on a platform of abolishing the income tax, it was no accident that his war cry—he was fighting against the “degeneration of the union of states into an all-powerful central government!”—was indistinguishable from that of the Southern governors enacting a policy of massive resistance against Brown v. Board of Education. Every time the government acts to expand the prerogatives of citizenship and economic opportunity to formerly disenfranchised groups, a racism-soaked backlash ensues. Defeatism—or ideological accommodation—only makes it worse.

Ironically, liberals of previous generations understood this better than we do now, despite decades more experience watching how the right’s game is played...

Our first observation would be this: everything becomes possible when we let ourselves list the things The Others believe “unconsciously.” (“Liberalism is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks.”) Once we grant ourselves that power, there’s no judgment we won’t be able to make about the vile hearts and ugly souls of those in The Other Tribe.

Even granting ourselves that license, Perlstein’s mid-paragraph examples seem a bit hard to parse. Are they meant to be examples of “racism-soaked backlash” fueled by “right-wing antigovernment rage?” For example:

When Jefferson was derided as “the Negro president,” it wasn’t exactly a case of “right-wing antigovernment rage.” The denigration came from forces in the north. They were complaining about the way Jefferson won the White House despite receiving fewer popular votes than his opponent, John Adams.

(For a brief overview, click here.)

Jefferson’s margin of victory came from the twelve electoral votes he won due to the “three-fifths” rule. Under that constitutional provision, an enslaved person in the south was counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation.

Because he won the White House on the basis of those extra electoral votes, Jefferson was derided as “the Negro president.” It’s hard to see how this was a case of “right-wing antigovernment rage,” if that’s what Perlstein is saying.

That said:

In the modern liberal world, the need for clarity disappears when we fulminate about the racial bad faith of everyone who isn’t Exactly Like Us. No precept could be more obvious.

Second example: Was T. Coleman Andrews’ very minor campaign in 1956 an expression of “right-wing antigovernment rage?” Did it bear “a racial component?” Was it “racism-soaked?” Was Andrews engaged in “racial rhetoric?”

To us, those claims seem like a large and pointless stretch. Andrews ran in opposition to the “steeply graduated” income tax rates of the day, which included a marginal rate of 91 percent. He received very few votes and is little remembered.

That said, it seems that everyone else agreed with his general view. Over the next three decades, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan kept lowering the marginal tax rate until it reached 28 percent. Under Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama, the marginal rate has bounced around between 31 and 39.6 percent.

Is Obama himself racism-soaked? Can we discern that from his embrace of a sub-91 percent rate? Remember, everything is possible when we liberals get a good snootful, then start to declaim about race!

We’re puzzled by Perlstein’s examples; we’re not even entirely sure what they’re example of. That said, Perlstein’s overall claim seems fairly clear: All opposition to modern Democratic presidents seems to constitute a “racism-soaked backlash” driven by “right-wing antigovernment rage.”

Maybe that isn’t what Perlstein meant. His writing is a bit hard to decipher. Rules of clarity do disappear when our tribe declaims about race.

In fairness, Perlstein’s name-calling is loud and impressive all through his piece. Even so, we’re inclined to disagree with his overall claim, if we understand what his overall claim actually is.

We’re also inclined to think that our tribe should be a bit less promiscuous with our charges and claims about race. Is there a way for us liberals to challenge The Others without scattering R-bombs all over the land? Without scattering our bombs in an incoherent, promiscuous manner?

We know, we know—it feels so good to do it! Still, we think it’s possible to go without this ultimate tribal pleasure.

We agree with one basic part of what Perlstein said. On balance, we think the vituperation aimed at Obama is similar to the vituperation which was aimed at Clinton.

For Kevin Drum’s view, click here.

Tomorrow, though, we plan to examine Perlstein’s race-fueled attack on Oprah Winfrey, the race-fueled attack we’ve imagined. Let’s face it. White privilege is never far from the surface when people like Perlstein start to spout.

Or at least, claims like that can be voiced!

In making that ridiculous statement, we are behaving in much the way Perlstein has done in his lusty piece. We have only forgotten one rule:

That is the way our liberal tribe goes after the people known as The Others. Among Our Own, in best tribal fashion, we’re much more discerning, more sane, more fair.

Tomorrow: What Oprah said!

A fascinating interview from 1956: When T. Coleman Andrews ran for president in 1956, was he involved in a racism-soaked backlash fueled by right-wing antigovernment rage? Was he spewing “racial rhetoric?”

It sure feels good to say so! It makes us liberals feel Better Than Them. It makes Us, the living dead, feel like we’re really alive.

Let’s set that thrill up our legs to one side. What are the actual merits here? Was Andrews involved in a racism-soaked backlash fueled by right-wing antigovernment rage? Was he even offering “racial rhetoric” in any discernible way?

You can judge for yourself! In May 1956, U.S. News published a lengthy interview with Andrews. And oh, what a different world it was! Here you see one exchange:

U.S. NEWS (5/25/56): Shouldn’t everybody have the same income? President Franklin Roosevelt said nobody should have more than $25,000—

ANDREWS: You know I don’t subscribe to such socialistic demagoguery as that. I say everyone should have what he can make honestly, with a minimum of taxes. Everyone should be able to keep a much larger share of his income than he can at present, and everyone’s right to expect to be protected in his possession of what he makes should be respected, especially by the Government.

Things were different back then! Imagine a time when a politician could denounce a “socialistic” proposal without even stretching that much!

Does Andrews seem to be racism-soaked? We link, you decide:

For the full interview with U.S. News, just click here. You will be whisked to a different time—a time when the top tax rate was 91 percent and the most conservative of the weekly news mags might ask a question like that.

McLatchy examines Lara’s song!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013

Schieffer sang it too: McLatchy, the last of America’s news orgs, has done a long analysis of Lara Logan’s horrific Benghazi report.

For Kevin Drum’s summary, just click here. For McLatchy’s report, click this.

We were very much struck by Drum’s summary of the McLatchy report.

“McClatchy's Nancy Youssef takes a deep dive through Logan's story and finds problems with nearly everything she reported,” Drum writes. “In particular, Logan's repeated insistence that the attack was a well-planned Al-Qaeda assault is questionable at best.”

Drum presented excerpts from Youssef’s report. We flashed back to last year:

YOUSSEF (11/14/13): The report repeatedly referred to al Qaida as solely responsible for the attack on the compound and made no mention of Ansar al Shariah, the Islamic extremist group that controls and provides much of the security in restive Benghazi and that has long been suspected in the attack....It is an important distinction, experts on those groups said. Additionally, al Qaida’s role, if any, in the attack has not been determined, and Logan’s narration offered no source for her repeated assertion that it had been.

....Logan claimed that “it’s now well established that the Americans were attacked by al Qaida in a well-planned assault.” But al Qaida has never claimed responsibility for the attack, and the FBI, which is leading the U.S. investigation, has never named al Qaida as the sole perpetrator. Rather, it is believed a number of groups were part of the assault, including members and supporters of al Qaida and Ansar al Shariah, as well as attackers angered by a video made by an American that insulted Prophet Muhammad....Moreover, questions remain over how far in advance the attack on the U.S. compound had been planned. Rather than a long-planned attack, investigators have told McClatchy it was likely planned hours, rather than days, in advance.

It's all there! Did al Qaeda stage the attack? Had the attack been preplanned for months? (Was it designed to coincide with 9/11?) Was it crazy to think that it might have been triggered by that anti-Muslim video, which had set off protests all over the Muslim world?

Logan aired the latest horrific report. But all these questions were instantly bungled by CBS New and the rest of the “press corps” in the aftermath of the attack last year.

This includes our “liberal” news orgs, who proved to be utterly worthless.

Logan didn’t start this. The poisonous flap surrounding Susan Rice turned on the matters highlighted in Drum’s excerpt, matters which are only now being clarified. And please note:

CBS News was completely unable to handle these basic questions last year. The reason for that is simple:

Our culture is an intellectual wreck. This includes all major sectors, including our utterly silent professors. But we’ve reached the point where our major “journalists” have absolutely no intellectual skills.

They can’t paraphrase what someone said. They can’t identify relevant facts. Basically, they don’t know how to read.

These facts became abundantly clear in the months of attacks on Rice.

Last year, we presented months of posts about the Susan Rice flap. From Day One, the “press corps” was completely unable to paraphrase or report what she actually said on the September 16 Sunday programs, performances for which she was crucified.

From Day One, “journalists” offered bungled accounts of what Rice had said on those programs. With lightning speed, those bungled accounts hardened, then turned to stone.

At CBS, Bob Schieffer was especially helpless. But he had plenty of company all across the press.

As Rice’s remarks were misreported, the flashpoints involved the degree of preplanning, the role of al Qaeda and the possible role of that video. Fifteen months later, it falls to McLatchy to straighten these basic points out.

Fifteen months later!

Basically, American “journalists” possess no intellectual skills. Whatever skills they may have had are gone. They can now do only one thing:

They can memorize scripts.

Last year, in the wake of Benghazi, the script they memorized came from the RNC. This was similar to what happened in 1999 and 2000, when the mainstream press corps memorized a bunch of scripts calling Candidate Gore a liar.

For two solid years during that campaign, the liberal world failed to challenge those bogus scripts. They engaged in the same conduct last year when Rice was being attacked.

Alas! Your heroes in the liberal world have no basic skills either! As in 1999, so too last year—they seemed to have no idea how to attack a bogus script.

When Gore was attacked for two years, no one knew how to respond. Last year, MSNBC ran and hid as Rice’s statements were thoroughly jumbled.

Everyone ran except Chris Hayes. In October, he went on the air and recited the RNC scripts!

Is Rachel Maddow a former Rhodes Scholar? She ran and hid while Rice was attacked. For two months, the darling child didn’t say a word in Rice's defense. But then, Maddow is largely a fraud. She’s one of the biggest fakes in the history of TV stardom.

At long last, McLatchy is reviewing the crap we discussed for months last year. All those posts sit in our archives, where they did no good.

All last autumn, the “mainstream press” recited a pile of bogus scripts. Memorization of such script is their last remaining skill.

They kept it up for months. Because they also have no skills, the children who pose as liberal stars didn’t know how to respond.

A worm has eaten American brains. If you haven’t noticed that problem yet, your brains have fed the worms too.

Please note: Paraphrase is one of the most basic journalistic skills. You really can't do a news report unless you know how to do it.

Paraphrase is an extremely basic skill. But our “journalists” don't know how to do it, and we've seen no one take notice.

Continuing: Holland’s ongoing use of The Bomb!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013

A tribally pleasing discussion: These are highly tribal times. If you want to avoid being dumb in the oldest and dumbest ways, we would make two suggestions.

First suggestion: If some study says the other tribe is more likely to think X, Y or Z, always ask yourself this: How much more likely are they?

For background, see yesterday's post.

It’s easy to read a statement like that and think The Others are all like that. That’s kind of the way the headlines worked when Salon reprinted the interview we’ve been discussing, the interview between Joshua Holland and Chris Mooney:

SALON HEADLINES (11/7/13): Can science explain Tea Party rage?
Conservatives, one study shows, find it easier to dismiss the unpleasant consequences of their beliefs

For starters, please note that science isn’t being asked to explain anything about our tribe’s behavior.

That headline assumes that our tribe is all right. As always, it’s the other tribe which needs explaining by science.

Beyond that, the headline says conservatives find it “easier” to dismiss unpleasant consequences of their beliefs. Who knows? That may be true, in some sense.

But even assuming that it’s true, how much easier do conservatives find it? Could it be just five percent easier? If so, is it worth discussing?

(By the way, did you note that the headline says we're talking about one study?)

Headlines like that may lead you to picture absolute differences between the two tribes. If you want to avoid being dumb, you should learn to challenge that impulse.

This would be our second suggestion: Don’t take your bombs to town!

As we noted yesterday, Joshua Holland brandished an A-bomb midway through his session with Mooney. Out of nowhere, he said this:

HOLLAND (10/31/13): And we’ve discussed authority before. That’s really central to understanding the conservative mindset. There’s been a lot of research on the so-called authoritarian personality type, and I want to connect this with the idea of political polarization.

One of the things that we understand about authoritarians is that they have a stronger sense of the importance of loyalty to one’s own in-group. How does that factor into this equation, do you think?

All of a sudden, the fellows were talking about “authoritarians.” Warning! A-bomb alert!

Talk like that is dangerous. All of a sudden, you’re creating a very powerful category. Through its use, you can easily start constructing The Other.

For our money, Mooney didn’t put up much of a fight concerning the use of that loaded term. We’d say he was eager to play:

MOONEY (continuing directly): Again, this is an area where liberals and libertarians differ from conservatives markedly. Liberals and libertarians aren’t particularly tribal in the sense of having loyalty to their group, and they aren’t particularly authoritarian in the sense of thinking you have to follow a strong leader. And basically, authoritarianism is also associated with sort of black and white, “you’re with me or you’re against me” thinking. But it’s also about deference to authority, whether that’s the police officer or your father or God. You must obey authority and if you don’t, that’s a moral wrong.

It sounds like a very bad thing to be an “authoritarian.” But just like that, Mooney said that this is an area where the two tribes “differ markedly.”

Mooney’s comments are rather disjointed, but he’s talking very pleasing tribal talk. The other tribe is markedly more likely to exhibit a trait—a trait which sounds very bad.

There is no attempt to define this trait, or to say how markedly the two warring tribes may differ. How many people are authoritarian? There’s no attempt to explain that either!

By the way: Is it your experience that liberals “aren’t particularly tribal in the sense of having loyalty to their group?” That isn’t our experience either. But that’s what Mooney said!

Be careful! When we liberals start dropping our R- and A-bombs, tribal juices start flowing. Personally, we think opinion leaders should be very careful when they brandish such weapons. In the case of this discussion, impressionable readers may not realize they really have no idea what these fellows are talking about. Unfortunately, they’re hearing history’s oldest and falsest tale:

Our Tribe contains all the good decent people. The Other Tribe does not.

Sure enough! With the A-bomb rattling about, silly season gets started. This was the next exchange:

HOLLAND (continuing directly): Jonathan Weiler at the University of North Carolina did a study which found that you can predict a person’s ideological leanings by how they answered just a few questions about child rearing. And one of the questions was whether someone values obedience or creativity more in a child. It’s really—it’s telling stuff.

MOONEY: Yeah, this is another way of measuring authoritarianism, because the theory is—and it seems pretty sound to me—that if you’re an authoritarian, one of the places it’s going to come out is in how you view child rearing. That is a situation in which the parent has to exert some level of authority, but parents interpret that differently. And if someone interprets parenting as sort of a strict father model—you need to obey the rules—then that’s an authoritarian style of parenting. So he’s just saying, “Let’s ask about parenting and we’ll figure out who our authoritarians are,” and what’s good about that as a scientific method is that you’re not actually asking anything that seems politically tinged. You could be confounding your variables if people get the sense that you’re asking them something political, but that’s not the case here—you’re just asking about parenting. That’s what’s nice about it.

By now, the conversation is very deep in the weeds. But a pleasing tribal story is being advanced: Their tribe has a bunch of authoritarians. Our glorious tribe does not.

What exactly are these fellows saying at this point? Do you really have any idea? Do you think these guys really know what they’re talking about?

Holland says Jonathan Weiler has shown that “you can predict a person’s ideological leanings by how they answered just a few questions about child rearing.”

Really? How well can you make such a prediction? Do you think Holland has any idea? But in this instance, it’s Mooney who makes the leap. According to Mooney, you can tell if someone’s “an authoritarian” by the way he rears his child!

That is probably true, of course. But how many “authoritarians” actually exist in the world? The boys have made no attempt to speak to that rather obvious question. But they’re making it sound like there’s quite a few, and they’re all in The Other Tribe.

This is loose, lazy tribal talk. At the start of the book to which Holland refers, Weiler actually spends several pages discussing the danger of using a loaded term like “authoritarianism.” He criticizes John Dean for his lazy, politicized use of the term in the 2006 book we liberals all knew we should love.

It is “nearly impossible to discuss [authoritarianism] in nonscholarly circles,” Weiler writes, early on in the book Holland cites. As you can see, warnings like that aren’t likely to slow the loose talk at Salon.

Holland mentions “the tendency of people with authoritarian personalities” at one more point in the session. Again, he makes it sound like he’s talking about a lot of people and they’re all in the other tribe.

Do you think he knows what he’s talking about? Second question:

When you throw bombs around in such tribal ways, could that be seen as a vaguely “authoritarian” thing to do?

People! We’re just asking!