ADVENTURES IN PARAPHRASE: Is that what the RNC said or meant?

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Adventures in recitation: Two days ago, we made a confession:

We were surprised when Judy Woodruff said what she said. 

In truth, we shouldn't have been surprised; Woodruff was merely reciting a bit of Mandated Tribal Script, something she's done in the past.

That said, Woodruff hosts the PBS NewsHour, the mainstream press corps' most respected news program. For that reason, we'll admit that we were surprised—disappointed, even!—when she launched this adventure in paraphrase on last Friday night's program:

WOODRUFF (2/11/22): Well, speaking of politics, another question I want to raise with both of you, and that is the move by the Republican National Committee last weekend, David, to censure two of its own, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, because of their role on the January 6 investigative committee, and then their statement that what happened, the assault on the Capitol January 6, was just normal political discourse.

Really? Had the RNC really said that on the previous weekend? 

As everyone knows, the assault on the Capitol on January 6 involved a substantial array of vicious, violent physical assaults against members of the Capitol Police. Had the RNC really said that those criminal assaults were normal political discourse?

There was Woodruff, saying they had! And when it came his time to respond, Jonathan Capehart agreed:

WOODRUFF: What does it look like to you, Jonathan?

CAPEHART: "Wow" is all I can say. To hear that the RNC is saying that the insurrectionists were engaged in legitimate political discourse told me that the RNC had lost its mind...

Capehart didn't get where he is by disputing Guild Narrative! That said, Capehart was certainly right on one point: 

If the RNC had actually said that the assault on the Capitol was "legitimate political discourse," that would mean that the RNC really had lost its mind.

Capehart was quoting from the actual resolution which was being interpreted and paraphrased by high-ranking players like Woodruff. In that February 4 resolution, the RNC had made a rather murky reference to people who had engaged in "legitimate political discourse." 

But could they possibly have been referring to the people who conducted those violent assaults? Can that possibly be what the RNC said or meant?

One day before, another highly respected mainstream figure had made that very claim. Last Thursday morning, E.J. Dionne had authored this remarkable statement in the Washington Post:

DIONNE (2/10/22): [Todd Gitlin's] final public project, an “Open Letter in Defense of Democracy,” was released in October...It warned that liberal democracy faced “serious danger.”

It declared flatly: “The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism.” The Republican National Committee effectively ratified this claim this past week when it voted—the day before Gitlin died—for the already-infamous resolution describing the violent rampage at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “legitimate political discourse.”

According to Dionne, the RNC had explicitly said that the violence at the Capitol had been "legitimate political discourse." According to Dionne, the RNC had specifically defended the violence in its February 4 resolution, which by February 10 was already famous.

Dionne was certainly right on one point. By the time his column appeared, the RNC resolution was definitely famous.

By the time Dionne's column appeared every liberal pundit and his crazy uncle had engaged in this same adventure—and so had major mainstream reporters. A wide array of reporters and pundits had explicitly said, or had seemed to say, that the RNC had described the violent behavior at the Capitol as "legitimate political discourse."

The scripted stars of our own failing tribe had said it and said it and said it again. To cite one example, here was the highly excitable Lawrence O'Donnell, making the claim on the corporate "cable news" program for which he's paid untold millions:

LAWRENCE (2/7/22): Ronna McDaniel led the Republican National Community in a unanimous vote on Friday to censure Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their participation on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and to praise the people who attacked the Capitol, to praise criminals.

The Republican National Committee unanimously agreed, quote, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democratic-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse. 

They wanted to hang Mike Pence. They wanted to kill him. They wanted to kill others. They threatened to kill others. They threatened to kill Nancy Pelosi. They threatened to kill anyone they could get their hands on. And they are praised, praised by the Republican National Committee in a unanimous vote.

So said Lawrence, again and again and again and again, as he played videotape of the violent assaults. 

In a unanimous vote, Ronna McDaniel and the RNC had praised the violent criminals! Four nights later, Woodruff was now reciting the claim, with Capehart chiming in.

Everyone and his crazy uncle had said that they actually said it. As Capehart correctly noted, you'd pretty much have to "lose your mind" to make such a crazy statement.

At this juncture, a brief point of personal privilege:

In our view, the RNC has been a joke since at least the late 1990s. In our view, McDaniel has behaved like the ultimate party hack during her excruciating tenure as head of the RNC.

That said, had the RNC actually said it? Had McDaniel actually said it? Had they actually said that those violent criminals had bene engaged in "legitimate political discourse?" Had they actually said, or meant, anything so crazy, insane, nutty, daft?

Had the RNC actually said it? We can't say that they had.  Consider what the highly presentable Woodruff was failing to mention as she and Capehart rattled script on the PBS NewsHour that night.

Woodruff and Capehart performed their recitations on Friday, February 11. Four days earlier, McDaniel had published an essay which started off as shown.

Sadly, we think she made a somewhat decent point right at the start of the piece:

MCDANIEL (2/8/22): If corporate news media wants to know why Americans don’t trust it anymore, they should look no further than the shameful, outrageous, and patently false coverage of the resolution adopted by the RNC to censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

Let me be abundantly clear: as Chairman of the RNC, I have repeatedly condemned the violence that occurred at the Capitol on January 6th and do so again today. On January 6, 2021, the members of the RNC released a statement that read, “These violent scenes we have witnessed do not represent acts of patriotism, but an attack on our country and its founding principles.” I tweeted that the violence was “shameful” and condemned it in the strongest possible terms. 

The events of that day are deeply personal to me and our team as the FBI found a bomb outside of RNC headquarters that afternoon, and I will never forget what it felt like to know that my staff was in immediate danger. Violence has no place in our political discourse, period, and those who engaged in violence on January 6th and committed crimes should be held accountable with due process by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and prosecutors.

In our view, McDaniel started with a fairly decent point. The behavior of corporate players like Lawence,  Capehart, Dionne and Woodruff can help explain why "corporate media" are no longer trusted by tens of millions of voters, though absurd dissembling by partisan hacks has played a larger role.

At any rate, by February 8, McDaniel and a host of others had insisted, over and over again, that the RNC wasn't conveying legitimacy on the rioters in its February 4 resolution.

As we noted in last week's reports, the RNC certainly didn't make any such explicit statement in the resolution itself. What Lawrence had said was pure interpretation—an adventure in highly creative paraphrase.

Now Woodruff was saying it too! And as she did, she didn't bother telling her viewers about what McDaniel had said—about the many denials she and others had lodged.

In the hands of the highly presentable Woodruff, McDaniel's denials were disappeared. This is ugly, profoundly stupid behavior, the kind which loses the world.

We'll admit that we were a bit surprised when we saw Woodruff recite. We shouldn't have been surprised, of course. Just like that, we recalled her earlier recitation—her earlier bow to the tribe.

It happened on January 26, 2000, as she moderated the final New Hampshire debate between Candidates Gore and Bradley. She was showered with praise for the recitation she staged that night—showered with praise by the rest of the guild.

Last Friday night, she did it again. What she did was ugly and dumb, and it was thoroughly human.

Our humans brains are wired that way, a wide array of experts reliably say. "Man [sic] is really the tribal animal," these disconsolate scholars all say.

Do you believe that the RNC actually "said" it or meant it? We see no evidence that they did. What we did see may have been worse:

We saw a very wide range of major journalists take a dive into the tank. And we aren't even mentioning the things that Ed Kilgore did.

If just for once you could step inside our shoes, you'd know what a drag it is to try to unpack this conduct.

Day after day after day after day, it's a drag to see us rubes as we swallow this ugly and brainless conduct from our tribe's "thought leaders." 

But there's no chance this is going to change, top major experts repeatedly say. They also say that behavior like this very rarely ends well.

How much was Chris Cuomo being paid?

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2022

Two very rare reports: CNN has been going through its latest very bad time. 

A few weeks back, Chris Cuomo got fired from his anchor post. Now, as of this week, CNN's two top executives are also gone, long gone.

We'll call attention to one apparent effect of the canning of Cuomo. We've now seen two (2) news reports describing how much he was paid!

For whatever reason, mainstream news orgs rarely discuss how much such people get paid. Yesterday, the New York Times offered this somewhat fuzzy assessment as part of a front-page report:

STEEL ET AL (2/16/22): Mr. Cuomo’s combative style made him an ideal on-air foil for President Trump. “Cuomo Prime Time” quickly became CNN’s highest-rated show. The success only strengthened Mr. Cuomo’s bond with Mr. Zucker.

After Mr. Zucker underwent heart surgery in 2018, he and Mr. Cuomo spent hours talking during long walks in Central Park.

Mr. Zucker soon signed off on a multiyear contract that paid Mr. Cuomo more than $6 million annually.

We can't say that we would have described Cuomo's style as "combative." But according to the Times, he was being paid more than $6 million per year.

How much more was he being paid? We have no idea. But two weeks ago, the Washington Post said this:

BARR (2/3/22): Cuomo’s legal team made moves to attempt to recoup some of the money he would have earned had CNN not fired him; the anchor made a reported $8 million a year and had a few years left on his contract, according to sources with knowledge of his tenure. 

According to sources, Cuomo made a reported $8 million per year. There's a double disclaimer lurking there, but the Post was willing to place Cuomo's salary at that particular level.

Presumably as a form of professional courtesy, mainstream news orgs almost never discuss how much these people get paid. We're told what a back-up second baseman or an NFL coach gets paid, but we aren't encouraged to think about the pay which gets dished to our giant "cable news" stars. 

Is it really a good idea to pay journalists that much? Long ago and far away, we offered the following framework: 

You can't run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps.

People will do a lot of things to hang onto jobs like that. In fact, people will do a lot of things to hang onto jobs which pay less.

To see the results of this basic fact, just watch MSNBC tonight. The playlist you encounter will go very much like this:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Giuliani

That particular product line has been selling well for years. (Included is the nightly suggestion that he'll soon be frog-marched away.) Presumably, we're handed that astoundingly tedious product line because it sells so well. 

We'll now offer a terrible guess—it also loses elections. But "cable news" is profit based and, for those who can get you to watch, the pay days can be rather large. 

ADVENTURES IN PARAPHRASE: Dylan may have said it worst!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2022

We take a one-day hike: Long ago and far away, Robert Zimmerman may have said it worst.

The singer-songwriter was hiding behind his stage name, "Bob Dylan." His comment came right at the end of the admittedly compelling song, Positively 4th Street:

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you.

Oof! The highlighted lyric is rude, impolite. We don't recommend taking such attitudes toward others, or even toward Others. We don't even recommend that!

On the other hand, we're willing to say that our own attitude has perhaps been somewhat similar of late. First, though, a bit of background on Dylan's compelling song. 

"You'd know what a drag it is to see you," Dylan said at the end of the song. But who the heck was he talking about? Who was the bête noire of this song?

Who was Dylan deriding? In the passage shown below, the leading authority on the song offers a set of speculations, along with some basic facts:

"Positively 4th Street" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, first recorded in New York City on July 29, 1965. It was released as a single by Columbia Records on September 7, 1965, reaching No. 1 on Canada's RPM chart, No. 7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and No. 8 on the UK Singles Chart. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song as No. 203 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

[...]

The song is generally assumed to ridicule Greenwich Village residents who criticized Dylan for his departure from traditional folk styles towards the electric guitar and rock music. Many of the Greenwich Village folk crowd, who had been good friends of Dylan's, took offense and assumed that the song carried personal references. Noted Village figure Izzy Young, who ran the Folklore Center, had this to say of the accusation:

"At least five hundred came into my place [the Folklore Center] and asked if it was about me. I don't know if it was, but it was unfair...Dylan comes in and takes from us, uses my resources, then he leaves and he gets bitter. He writes a bitter song. He was the one who left."

Other possible targets of the song's derision include Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out! magazine and a critic of Dylan's move away from traditional folk styles, and Tom Paxton, who had criticized the emerging folk rock scene of the period in a Sing Out! magazine article titled "Folk Rot" (although Dylan wrote and recorded "Positively 4th Street" months before the "Folk Rot" article was published in January 1966). Michael Schumacher, in his book There but for Fortune: The Life Of Phil Ochs, claimed that Phil Ochs might be the target because Dylan got angry at Ochs for his criticism of the song "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", which supposedly prompted Dylan to throw Ochs out of his limousine (though Dylan wrote and recorded "Positively 4th Street" months before this incident occurred in September 1965). Another possibility is that "Positively 4th Street" (along with "Like a Rolling Stone") was directed at Edie Sedgwick and her association with Andy Warhol, though this seems very unlikely as Dylan recorded this song before his involvement with Sedgwick had turned sour. 

In classic human fashion, the leading authority names three "possible targets of the song's derision"—Paxton, Ochs and Sedgwick/Warhol—even as it notes the fact that these three speculations don't make chronological sense!

We human beings are strongly inclined to "reason" in such ways. We're even inclined to reason that way over here in our own liberal tribe!

We reason that way every day of the week. That leads us to our own brand-new decision.

In the course of this week, we had intended to deride certain aspects of our own's tribe's persistent behavior. In effect, we were reworking Dylan's closing lines, transforming them into this:

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see Us.

For us at this site, it is a drag, each weeknight evening and then every morning, to review the way our own failing tribe novelizes the day's alleged news events. On "cable news," the current play list goes something a great deal like this:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Tump Trump Trump Trump Trump Giuliani

Granted, this amazingly tedious product line sells. But in such ways, our self-impressed tribe keeps losing elections, and with those elections the world.

Routinely, our tribe is deeply unimpressive—and, like almost all human tribes, we're almost completely unable to grasp this obvious fact. That said, do you have any idea how depressing it is to move along, day after day, deriding the very folks who vote the same way you do?

It easy and fun to go after Others, perhaps with embellishment added. For that reason, it's quite widely done.

On cable, it leads major stars to very large paydays. But deriding one's own is no fun!

For those reasons, we're taking the day off from this week's planned report. Tomorrow, we'll summarize the issue which lay at the heart of the topic—but after that, the change!

Yesterday, we finally decided that we can't take it any more. All in all, our view at present is this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own tribe is hopelessly limited. Our analytical skills barely exist. We aren't always the world's nicest people.

That unwise, ugly reference to East Bumfuck County pretty much did it for us. That, plus the ugly comments the reference occasioned as the creepy crawlers of our own tribe slithered out of the woodwork!

If you aren't appalled by behavior like that, we'll suggest that you step aside for a while and take stock. You might consider the amazingly basic assessments offered in Professor Belsky's letter, as described in yesterday's report.

At present, the behavior which comes from the world of Trump is routinely insane. But within our own self-impressed tribe, our reactions tend to be unpleasant, and they tend to be notably dumb.

Here in our tribe, we have almost no observable skills; despite that, we're quite self-impressed. We expect to adopt a new approach to these problems next week, though we offer this brutal disclaimer:

Experts say this will never change. Channeling Sartre, these scholars all say that there seems to be "no way out!"

Tomorrow: Actually, no. We don't think The Others actually said that...

ADVENTURES IN PARAPHRASE: She defended the Others right there in the Times!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Also, some books really have been "banned:" Today we have parsing of words.

Also, we have examination of embellishment. We have the highly useful analytical tool which is often dismissed as "semantics."

We feature a letter to the New York Times—a letter which appeared in last Sunday's print editions. The letter came from a former professor at Middle Tennessee State, though her letter arrived from Chicago.

The letter was one of eight letters that day on a single topic. Online, the letters appear beneath this pleasing headline:

The Rise in Book Bans and Censorship

The letters discussed a series of actions which don't exactly constitute "book bans" or "censorship." With that simple declaration, let today's parsing begin!

Before we look at the letter we've come to praise, let's establish a simple point. Sometimes, well-known books really have been "banned." In certain cases, no semantic embellishment is needed to state this simple point.

Some well-known books really have been "banned!" Our first example would be this—the banning of the Nabokov novel, Lolita:

Lolita was published in September 1955, as a pair of green paperbacks "swarming with typographical errors." Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no substantial reviews. Eventually, at the very end of 1955, Graham Greene, in the London Sunday Times, called it one of the three best books of 1955. This statement provoked a response from the London Sunday Express, whose editor John Gordon called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography." British Customs officers were then instructed by the Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. In December 1956, France followed suit, and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita; the ban lasted for two years. 

[...]

Despite initial trepidation, there was no official response in the U.S., and the first American edition was issued by G. P. Putnam's Sons in August 1958. The book was into a third printing within days and became the first since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks. Orville Prescott, the influential book reviewer of the New York Times, greatly disliked the book, describing it as "dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion." This review failed to influence the book's sales

So the matter unfolded. In a fairly straightforward way, the book was banned in the U.K. and in France, though not here in the U.S.

Decades earlier, Joyce's Ulysses didn't get off so easy. The book was banned here in the U.S. in a semantically straightforward way:

Written over a seven-year period from 1914 to 1921, Ulysses was serialized in the American journal The Little Review from 1918 to 1920, when the publication of the Nausicaä episode led to a prosecution for obscenity under the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal to circulate materials deemed obscene in the U.S. mail. In 1919, sections of the novel also appeared in the London literary journal The Egoist, but the novel itself was banned in the United Kingdom until 1936...

The 1920 prosecution in the US was brought after The Little Review serialized a passage of the book depicting characters masturbating. Three earlier chapters had been banned by the US Post Office, but it was Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice John S. Sumner who instigated this legal action...At the trial in 1921 the magazine was declared obscene and, as a result, Ulysses was effectively banned in the United States. Throughout the 1920s, the United States Post Office Department burned copies of the novel.

In 1932, Random House and lawyer Morris Ernst arranged to import the French edition and have a copy seized by Customs...U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene, a decision Stuart Gilbert called "epoch-making". The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in 1934. The U.S. thus became the first English-speaking country where the book was freely available. Although Ireland's Censorship of Publications Board never banned Ulysses, a customs loophole prevented it from being allowed into Ireland. It was first openly available in Ireland in the 1960s.

According to that account, Ulysses wasn't merely banned in the United States. Copies of the book were literally burned! That banning went all the way!

Those would be a pair of examples where books were "banned" in perfectly straightforward ways. That said, when school officials select certain books for inclusion in a school system's curriculum, are they really "banning" all other books in a semantically sensible way?

We'd have to say they are not! If they decide that Textbook A or Novel B will be part of the official curriculum, they aren't "banning" Textbooks B, C, and D or Novels X, Y and Z. Nor are they "censoring" such books in any obvious sense of the word.

Millions of books exist in the world. Only a few will be selected for inclusion in some school system's curriculum. 

If a system decides to teach The Iliad, that doesn't mean that it has banned The Odyssey. But within our self-impressed liberal tribe, we love to rail about the banning of books. In this way, we goose our claim, in the same way Donald Trump does when he claims that he has been "spied" upon.

We love to discuss the banning of books. That's especially true when some group of Others have exercised a cultural judgment we ourselves don't share.

In fairness, it's a widely-known fact—these Others will never be as brilliant, as moral or as wise as we liberals instinctively are. 

"Bless their hearts," we sometimes say. "On occasion, these Others may try to keep up. But they persistently fail."

More often, we turn to embellished language—to our lingo about "banning books." It makes the conduct of the Others just sound so much worse!

At this point, we return to the eight letters which appeared in Sunday's New York Times. The Times positioned them under that headline—The Rise in Book Bans and Censorship—even though it isn't clear that any of the books in question were being censored or banned in any straightforward way.

One book that plainly hasn't been "banned" is the widely-acclaimed graphic novel, Maus. 

One school system did decide that the book wasn't right for their eighth-grade kids. Because the board was in Tennessee, this occasioned instant talk of the Scopes monkey trial, and at least one citation of Bumfuck County.

In these ways, our liberal tribe is very, very dumb. We were impressed when we saw the Times publish these words of dissent:

To the Editor:

Re “Tennessee Board Bans Teaching of Holocaust Novel” (news article, Jan. 29):

I’m Jewish, from New York City, and I taught at a state university serving low-income Tennessee students for 25 years. So I need to set the record straight.

Every Tennessee fifth grader is required to learn about the Holocaust. My university, with its minuscule fraction of Jewish students, has a Holocaust studies minor. We host an international Holocaust conference every two years.

To convey the magnitude of six million lost, three decades ago teachers in Whitwell, Tenn., asked their eighth-grade class to collect that many paper clips. They ended up with 30 million, sent to the school from people around the world. These are on display in the school’s Children’s Holocaust Memorial, housed in a boxcar from Germany, which may be the most riveting testament of young people working together to vow “Never again.”

People in the rural South have different cultural norms. After moving to Tennessee, I learned you don’t swear in class. But painting a state as yahoos and Holocaust deniers for rejecting cursing or nudity in one book epitomizes the very stereotype we people who study the Holocaust should always abhor.

Janet Belsky / Chicago

Our youthful analysts stopped their moping. For once, they stood and cheered. 

Professor Belsky went to Penn. She then got a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Chicago. 

Along the way, she plainly picked up some cosmopolitan values.

After teaching at Lehman College, CUNY, she taught at Middle Tennessee State for more than twenty years. On that basis, she seems to have a rough idea of what she's talking about.

According to Belsky, every Tennessee fifth grader is taught about the Holocaust. Beyond that, the students in the Tennessee county under review spend two months on the Holocaust when they're in eighth grade.

Belsky's cosmopolitan values allow her to understand an amazingly basic fact. Sometimes, people in certain places or regions may have cultural values, norms or beliefs which aren't 100 percent exactly the same as Ours.

Our values will be better and wiser, of course. But Belsky offers a peculiar thought:

Trashing a region in the way we've done is very, very stupid. In Belsky's view, it also seems to fly in the face of the values we pretend to uphold.

As a general matter, the other seven letter-writers bashed the hapless book-banners in the less than thoroughly brilliant ways our self-impressed tribe prefers. Here's an example of the way we often behave despite our self-diagnosed brilliance:

To the Editor:

Re “A Disturbing Book Changed My Life,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Sunday Review, Jan. 30):

One could argue that Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” which depicts the fascism and bigotry flourishing in Poland in the 1940s, mirrors a disturbingly similar political climate, albeit to a lesser degree, in America today. Maybe that is the real reason the Tennessee school board preferred to limit this information to its young scholars...

Maybe that's the real reason why the board did what it did!

That was the letter which came right after Belsky's. Just like that, we had returned to speculating in the darkest possible way about the hidden motives of The Others, who just aren't as decent as we are.

If their values aren't exactly like ours, there must be a vry dark hidden motive! That's the way our war-inclined species has always been inclined to reason, all around the world.

Eight letters appeared on the topic of banning and censorship. Most were written from script, supporting this rime-honored Storyline:

Plainly, we're smarter and better.

We broadcast this attitude far and wide. In such ways, we lose elections, and with them we lose the world.

Meanwhile, there was Judy Woodruff last Friday night, with an adventure in paraphrase. Tomorrow, we'll show you the words of many other tribal icons as they too have taken this mandated trip to a tribal paradise.

The woods are lovey, dark and deep, but we liberals may not always be the people we say we are. Like other tribes, we also tend to be fairly dumb a fair amount of the time.

As with tribal groups all over the world, we tend to find it very hard to discern these obvious points.

Tomorrow: All the scripted people, where do they all come from?

Complexification is everywhere!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2022

Charlie Savage (almost) gets it right: Increasingly, the gong-show quality of our discourse is its distinguishing characteristic.

In this morning's New York Times, Charlie Savage makes a very wise statement about certain Trump-based narratives. His news report starts like this:

SAVAGE (2/15/22): When John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel investigating the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, filed a pretrial motion on Friday night, he slipped in a few extra sentences that set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.

But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news—the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.

Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time—raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t.

Savage identifies two basic problems with these convoluted Trumpian narratives: 

They're often based on outright misinformation, or on misleading presentations. Also, the bogus claims are built upon so much complexity—involve so many "dense and obscure issues"—that they're intrinsically hard for anyone except a specialist to follow. 

Basically, these balls of confusion can't be explained. Sagaciously, Savage says it isn't obvious that news orgs should even try.

We'll offer two points about that:

For starters, alas! Our own liberal tribe also churns highly complex narratives which may be full of erroneous or misleading claims. TrumpWorld churns such bullshit in its sleep, but our tribe is involved in such foolishness too.

Here's our second point:

Even when journalists try to explain these "dense and obscure" Trump narratives, they may not possess sufficient skill to untangle the confusion. Consider Savage's own news report.

Savage is reporting on a new filing by special counsel John Durham. We won't even try to tell you what it is that Durham is claiming. However, when Savage tries to present a clear account of this murky matter, we're soon given this account of a key technical term:

SAVAGE: The conservative media also skewed what [Durham's] filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign.

Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data—so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet—came from Barack Obama’s presidency.

According to Savage, DNC logs "are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet."

Do you have any idea what that means? Let's just tell the truth this time: 

Almost surely, no, you don't!

Let's simplify matters a bit:

Do you know what it means to say that a computer has communicated with a server over the Internet? Could you explain that to someone else?

We'll guess that the answer is no. But according to Savage's attempt at clarification, that isn't what a "DNS log" records! 

According to Savage, "DNS logs" are records of when a computer has prepared to communicate with a server over the Internet! Go ahead! Sit your next-door neighbors down and explain to them what that means!

This morning, Marcy Wheeler appeared on Morning Joe for a (roughly) five-minute segment on this Durham filing. Wheeler is deeply informed about these matters. Almost surely, that was the problem.

Joe and Mika, along with Willie and four other stooges, sat around pretending to understand what Wheeler was talking about. At some point, we'll create a transcript of her remarks just to show you what can happen when a person who is highly informed tries to explain one of these convoluted, deeply obscure affairs in five minutes or less.

Our discourse constantly runs on such complexified Storylines. No one knows how to explain the events in question, but because of our highly tribalized news arrangements, everyone knows who the heroes and villains are.

Savage's initial assessment was very much on target. These narratives are so dense and so complicated that they basically can't be explained, not even by well-intentioned journalists who will routinely lack key clarification skills. 

No one is able to untangle these balls of confusion. Tribally scripted talking-points pretty much take over from there.

The result? Nobody knows what they're talking about, but everyone knows what to say! So it goes as our failing discourse continues to run on its trademark fuel—on imitations of life.

To watch Wheeler's segment, click here.

ADVENTURES IN PARAPHRASE: PBS in paradise!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2022

Woodruff, working from script: As we've noted in the past, it's a fairly obvious form of punishment. It's directed at New York Times readers on a weekly basis.

This morning, the punishment was dished again. Right there in our print edition, the weekly submission known as The Conversation started off like this:

Bret Stephens: Gail, don’t know if you’ve heard, but Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused Nancy Pelosi of running the “gazpacho police.” Do you think she might also accuse Joe Biden of overseeing a vichyssoise regime?

Gail Collins: Bret, when I heard that gaffe I knew it’d be on your memory wall. Normally, making fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene is too obvious for your talents. But this was truly a classic.

Bret: There’s the old expression “from soup to nuts.” When it comes to Representative Greene, it’s better to say, “from nut to soups.”

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow," our youthful analysts cried.

Collins chose to continue. "On the opposite end of things, today is Valentine’s Day," she said, perhaps one day roo late. (The column appeared online yesterday.) "Any politicians you’d like to give your heart to?"

Stephens continued to punish subscribers. "None I can easily confess, other than Queen Elizabeth II," he cheekily said.

Before the apir were done, things got worse, but you may get the point. We liberals are trained to regard the New York Times as our number-one brainiac newspaper. But its product, like much of our own tribe's mandated discourse, is often stupendously dumb.

How dumb can it get in our tribe's smartest paper? Yesterday, we subjected you to some of the peculiar matter found in a lengthy guest essay in this past weekend's Sunday Review. The piece was penned by best-selling author Lisa Taddeo. Headline included, her essay starts as shown:

TADDEO (2/13/22): My Husband and I Don’t Speak the Same Love Language

I hadn’t heard about the love languages until it was too late, until I was married to someone who didn’t speak mine.

There are five of them—the five languages of love. I say that as though they exist somewhere out there in the ether, as though they have always been. But in fact it has been only 30 years. In 1992, Gary Chapman, a pastor and radio host in North Carolina, published “The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate” with a small religious press. Over 20 million copies were sold, and the book was translated into 50 languages and made its way into the hearts and minds of laypeople and clinicians and Oprah. It has been on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a decade.

Taddeo seems to believe that there may be five "love languages"—not four, not six and not eight. For the record, Pastor Chapman's book may have "been on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a decade," but it doesn't seem to be on any such list at the present time.

Without any question, the pastor's book was a best-seller in the "Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous" category over a substantial period of time. Many people may have gained insight of some kind from this book—and if so, that would of course be a good thing.

Taddeo may have been speaking puckishly at the start of her essay. As we noted yesterday, the apparent dumbness began picking up steam when she seemed to reveal that her own principle "love language" is the language known as "lying to your spouse," mixed with "mak[ing] up evidence" and "add[ing] caveats so that it doesn’t look as if I’m lying."

That last two quotes come right from the Taddeo essay. But that isn't where the dumbness began. That's where it began gaining steam.

Taddeo's peculiar essay struck us as remarkably dumb. We wondered why any half-way intelligent newspaper would have dreamed of putting it in print.

Quite a few commenters seemed to have similar reactions. Those who defended the essay generally claimed that Taddeo had just been joking around as she made her weird statements and claims. 

It didn't read that way to us. It read like an example of a familiar journalistic form—Contemporary New York Times Dumb.

In fairness, the Times published a latter on Sunday which struck us as very sharp. It was surrounded by seven letters on the same topic which adopted quite different points of view, but we don't want to skip the fact that this one letter struck us as informative and analytically sharp.

We'll start with the text of that letter tomorrow. Today, we want to move to what Judy Woodruff said, last Friday night. She said it on The PBS NewsHour, our tribe's most presentable news show.

We'll admit that we were surprised by what we saw Woodruff say. We were also disappointed, although, for reasons dating back 22 years, we'll admit that we shouldn't have been.

It seems to us that Woodruff's statement is still quite hard to credit or sustain. On the other hand, everyone within our tribe has been saying the exact same thing—has been engaged in the very same "Adventure in Paraphrase."

Her statement, made to Capehart and Brooks, came to us Straight Outta Script. Eventually, Capehart said it too. Brooks chose to talk around it:

WOODRUFF (2/11/22): Well, speaking of politics, another question I want to raise with both of you, and that is the move by the Republican National Committee last weekend, David, to censure two of its own, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, because of their role on the January 6 investigative committee, and then their statement that what happened, the assault on the Capitol January 6, was just normal political discourse.

We saw serious pushback from people like Mitch McConnell, other prominent Republicans. What's going on in the Republican Party?

According to Woodruff (and everyone else), the RNC had made a very peculiar statement about the events of January 6. According to Woodruff (and everyone else), they'd said that the people committing those violent assaults on police officers had simply been engaged in "normal political discourse."

That would be an amazingly strange thing to say. Had the RNC actually said it?

Here within our liberal tribe, the answer is now clearly yes.

Within the Matrix-like novelization vastly preferred by our own flailing tribe, yes they certainly said it! Everyone has said that they said it. On our brightest TV news show, Woodruff was joining the gang.

For the record, Woodruff's brief quotation was in fact slightly skewed. In the resolution under review, the RNC had actually used the phrase "legitimate political discourse."

That said, the claim that's being bruited all over our tribe involves an unmistakable "Adventure in Paraphrase." One tribal sachem after another has stated it as an established fact:

The RNC has said that the vicious attacks at the Capitol Building were legitimate political discourse!

Woodruff joined the adventure last Friday night. We'll admit that we were surprised.

We discussed this matter last week. We've decided to hold this feature film over this week because, with more and more icons signing on, it strikes us as a truly remarkable manifestation of our failing discourse.

It's an adventure in paraphrase. Just for the record, this is the way such paraphrase works:

Inventive paraphrase lets a tribe script both parts of an ongoing discourse. The tribe gets to say whatever it likes—and then, the tribe also gets to say what the other tribe said!

It's extremely hard to lose that debate! It's also very, very dumb when leading lights like Woodruff engage in such tribalized dreck.

Absent some attempt at justification, Woodruff's statement strikes us as deeply dumb. But here's the dirty little secret:

Endless parts of our tribal discourse really are stupendously dumb.

Long ago and far away, Gardner McKay spent three years starring in the TV show, Adventures in Paradise (1959-62).

McKay was unusually handsome, but he was also a serious sculptor and playwright. At some point, he came to his senses. He left Tinseltown behind.

In terms of political discourse, it's a form of paradise when you get to define the other guy's position—when you get to state the other tribe's view after you've stated your own. In the current instance, it seems to us that our tribe is playing that very dumb game.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we liberals are nowhere near as sharp as we constantly claim. 

At present, the other tribe often seems insane, but much of our discourse is hopelessly dumb. We'll explore this sad topic all week as the analysts scream in pain.

Tomorrow: Very, very, very dumb—dumb a great deal of the time

Ethan Crumbley was hearing voices...

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2022

Young people in need of help: Joyce Vance seems to think that Jennifer and James Crumbley should be headed for prison.

Who knows? She may even be right!

We rarely root for sending people to prison, though sometimes it has to be done. With respect to Jennifer and James Crumbley, it was their son, Ethan Crumbley, who shot and killed four students at an Oxford County, Michigan high school in November of last year.

Vance is one of our legion of former federal prosecutors. In her essay for the New York Times, she tells us that prosecutors say the Crumbleys left the murder weapon unlocked, without mentioning the fact that the Crumbleys still seem to be denying that claim.

(Or at least, so we gather from clicking one of Vance's links.)

We don't know what the Crumbleys did or didn't do. We thought it might be instructive to know a bit more about their son.

After reading Vance's essay, we hit upon this ABC News report about the Crumbleys' court appearance last week. Included was an account of testimony about their son's state of mind in the days and weeks before the fatal shootings. 

We think there's a great deal to learn from that ABC News report. There but for fortune, we'd initially be inclined to say:

EL-BAWAB (2/8/22): Detective Edward Wagrowski from the Computer Crimes Unit at the Oakland County Sheriff's Office testified about evidence he was able to gather from the Crumbleys' phones, which allegedly showed that Ethan Crumbley was hallucinating and hearing voices, according to texts submitted into evidence by prosecutors.

In March 2021, Ethan Crumbley texted Jennifer Crumbley, saying there was someone in the house and asked when she would be coming home. On another day that month, Ethan texted his mother saying he was worried about being home and that he thought there was a demon in the house throwing bowls, according to text messages retrieved from their phones by Wagrowski.

His mother does not respond to these messages and Ethan responds "can you at least text back," but she still doesn't, according to evidence gathered from her phone by Wagrowski.

In a text exchange retrieved from Ethan Crumbley's phone between him and an unnamed juvenile, Ethan says he will talk to his parents and ask them again to see a doctor. He says in the texts that he will tell them he was hearing voices, according to Wagrowski.

"I only told them about the people I saw," Ethan Crumbley said in a message to the same individual on April 5, 2021, according to evidence.

"Like I am mentally and physically dying," read another message from the alleged shooter, according to evidence gathered by Wagrowski.

By looking at his internet search history, Wagrowski testified that he found Ethan Crumbley visited a website the prosecution refrained from naming 421 times in November 2021 to look at graphic content from school shootings and bird mutilations.

We're nobody's experts on severe mental illness, and our journalists tend to avoid such sources of moral complexification. But in that passage, we think we see the terrible nexus between a young person who seems to be suffering badly and the terrible inclination to dream about mutilations and shootings.

We think there's a lot to learn from such tragic manifestations. In fact, we still owe you some information about the deeply tragic youth of Joseph Rosenbaum, the first person who was shot and killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin on that other unfortunate night.

(He was chasing Kyle Rittenhouse through the streets that night, not the other way around.)

Vance apparently wants to send the Crumbley parents to prison. Who knows? In the end, it may turn out that she's right. 

Our first reaction would be quite a bit softer. There but for fortune, we'd be inclined to say.

STARTING TOMORROW: Adventures in paraphrase!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2022

The author Taddeo's lies: Can you believe the various things you read in our greatest newspapers?

Also, can you believe the various things you're told by our most trusted journalists and academics? 

It's natural to assume that the answer must be yes. But can you safely believe the various things you're told by our leading lights?

Can you believe the things you're told? Not necessary, no! Consider one part of the way Lisa Taddeo's book was reviewed back in 2019.

Full disclosure! We're not sure we'd heard of Taddeo until yesterday morning. Yesterday morning, Taddeo's very strange guest essay appeared in the Sunday Review of the New York Times.

To their credit, many early commenters noted the fact that the essay was very strange. As a general matter, commenters who defended the essay tended to say that Taddeo must have been joking around.

We regard the fact that this essay appeared in the Sunday Times as a "teachable moment"—a teachable moment concerning the intellectual caliber of our floundering nation's most famous newspaper. This week, we hope to explore the intellectual horizons of our liberal tribe writ large.

For ourselves, we've now learned that Taddeo published a substantial best-seller, titled Three Women, back in 2019. The book received a decidedly mixed review in the Times. Parul Seghal started like this:

SEHGAL (6/28/19): Each of us possesses three lives, Gabriel García Márquez told his biographer Gerald Martin: a public life, a private life and a secret life.

Imagine a biography that only charted the secret life. The journalist Lisa Taddeo has produced something of the sort in “Three Women,” a vexed, nearly decade-long investigation into the sex lives and desires of three American women...

Taddeo spent “thousands of hours” with the women, crisscrossing the country six times, moving to their towns for years on end. She even tailed Lina on assignations with her married lover: “After they left, I would go to exactly where they’d been to take in the scenery and the smells and the sounds.”

“Three Women” arrives on gusts of fulsome blurbs and comparisons, by its publisher, to the works of J. Anthony Lukas, Katherine Boo and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, giants of narrative journalism. It’s a pity. To unfairly and unnecessarily elevate this book gives it so far to fall...

Sehgal's review was decidedly mixed. We aren't saying Sehgal was right or wrong in her overall view of the book. We will make one small observation:

We don't know how Sehgal could have been so confident about the amount of research, and about the types of research, in which Taddeo engaged in the course of composing her book. But for our purposes today, we only note the way the publisher was bruiting the book around.

According to Sehgal, the publisher was comparing Taddeo's book to well-known works by three "giants of narrative journalism"—Lucas, Boo and LeBlanc. 

The publisher had every right to say such things, of course. But one month later, the Washington Post's rave review of Taddeo's book included the highlighted passage—and yes, you're allowed to laugh:

FLOCK (7/26/19): To find these three women, Taddeo drove across the United States six times, posted fliers in diners, casinos and coffee shops, and even started a discussion group at the Kinsey Institute, which researches human sexuality and relationships. In some cases, she moved to the women’s towns to interview them over long periods of time. To write this kind of nonfiction—it’s true, but reads like a novel—Taddeo smartly employs not only interviews but also diary entries, legal documents, letters, emails and text messages. The result is a book as exhaustively reported and as elegantly written as Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” or Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s “Random Family.”

We don't know how Elizabeth Flock could have felt so sure that the book, which "reads like a novel," could also be said to be "true." Also, we don't know how Flock could have felt so sure about the extent of Taddeo's research methods.

Let's ignore such nagging points—the niggling question of truth. Instead, let's notice this:

Right there in the Post's review was the comparison the Times review had cited one month before! According to the Post's review, Taddeo's book was "as exhaustively reported and as elegantly written as" those books by Boo and LeBlanc! 

One month before, the publisher had been shipping that claim around. Now, the claim appeared in the Post review, presented as the independent judgment of the reviewer herself.

Who knows? It may be that the Post reviewer agreed with the publisher's claim. It could even be that the reviewer included the source of that comparison and some editor took the citation out.

That said, we emitted mordant chuckles when we stumbled upon that bit of text. "Our journalism often works this way," we brusquely told our youthful analysts as they screamed and tore at their hair.

Concerning Taddeo's essay in yesterday's Times, it struck us as borderline nuts. We really began to edge slowly away from the Times when Taddeo, in best Valentine's Day fashion, began describing the various ways she gets her husband to exercise the type of "love language" she prefers:

TADDEO (2/13/22): Say I want to convince Jackson that it’s not safe for our daughter to ride the ski lift by herself. I somehow cannot bring myself to say, “I’m scared, and I don’t want her to go on the lift alone, even though you ski with her often and it is your observed and considered opinion that she is ready.” I understand my fears are not rational, and I know he doesn’t go in for irrationality.

So instead I make up evidence because he respects studies and publications. I often say, “Oh, well yes, they published a study in The Times.” In this case I say there was a study I read, in The Times, about the psychological effects on children ages 5 to 8 of riding ski lifts alone. “They found,” I say, “that it has caused feelings of …”

And here I pause, not dramatically but not casually either, and wait for him to look up—his ears, his eyes, everything ready and willing and open.

“Abandonment,” I whisper. That’s one of his buzzwords.

I add caveats so that it doesn’t look as if I’m lying. “But,” I say, “this was back in 2009, which means of course and naturally things must have changed. Maybe now there are no effects. Like, you know, because of the pandemic.”

But that nonexistent 2009 article will stick in his head. He won’t let her go up alone. I will be happy because I will have gotten my way. I will feel safe.

I am aware that I want to be able to just say, Don’t put her on the lift alone because it scares me. I am aware that I want to be married to my mother. I am aware I am not always or even often in the right. But I am aware that I do not care.

I think this is a feminist perspective?

As Taddeo lies to her husband (her admission), she "adds caveats" so it won't look like she is lying. In this manner, she gets her way. 

She adds the thought that this may be a feminist perspective. And yes—in context, this is all about Taddeo's search for the type of "love language" she says she prefers. Happy Valentine's Day!

The nuttiness of Taddeo's essay certainly doesn't end there. As we noted, commenters who defended the essay generally said that they assumed that Taddeo was joking around. 

We see no particular sign of that in the lengthy piece. We regard the fact that this essay appeared in the Sunday Times as a teachable moment about the intellectual horizons of our deeply flawed liberal tribe.

Within our liberal tribe, we tend to be very sure of our intellectual superiority to The Others. At present, The Others often seem to be baldly insane—but truthfully, we aren't gigantically better here within our own self-impressed tribe.

How dumb can it get within our tribe? It can get extremely dumb. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our basic skills are extremely limited, and our ranking journalists and academics are extremely fallible.

At certain times, they may even seem to be less than obsessively honest, though such matters are hard to assess.

We plan to offer examples all week, but we'll focus on one recent point of widespread tribal agreement. It involves an "adventure in paraphrase," one in which our tribe's highly fallible leaders have generally agreed to take part.

We tip our cap to Gardner McKay's TV series, Adventures in Paradise (1959-1962). McKay, who was a serious sculptor and playwright, walked away from such Hollywood dreck at a rather early age. 

Several stars took similar routes during that general period. When will we liberals walk away from the highly fallible establishment stars we're trained to mimic and trust?

Tomorrow: Judy Woodruff's adventure in paraphrase

The dog which keeps refusing to bark!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Also, Harvard professors and Woodruff: A truly remarkable "news report" appears in today's New York Times.

We're sorry to be the ones raising this topic. But this highly peculiar news report involves the death of Bob Saget. 

We cite the news report because it displays the peculiar behavior of our upper-end "press corps."  The news report, by Benjamin Mueller, begins as shown below, headline included:

MUELLER (2/12/22): Bob Saget’s Autopsy Report Describes Severe Skull Fractures

Bob Saget, the comedian and actor, died after what appeared to be a significant blow to the head, one that fractured his skull in several places and caused bleeding across both sides of his brain, according to an autopsy report released on Friday.

The findings complicated the picture of Mr. Saget’s death that has emerged in recent days: Far from a head bump that might have been shrugged off, the autopsy described an unmistakably serious set of injuries that would at the very least have probably left someone confused, brain experts said.

The report, prepared by Dr. Joshua Stephany, the chief medical examiner of Orange and Osceola counties in Florida, ascribed Mr. Saget’s injuries to a fall.

“It is most probable that the decedent suffered an unwitnessed fall backwards and struck the posterior aspect of his head,” Dr. Stephany wrote, referring to the back of the skull. 

The headline says that Brother Saget suffered "severe" skull fractures (plural). According to Mueller, Saget is now known to have died "after what appeared to be a significant blow to the head, one that fractured his skull in several places."

(Mueller never explains why he's still prepared to assume that there was only one blow to the head, given the extent of the injuries.)

According to Mueller, the findings in the autopsy report have "complicated the picture of Mr. Saget's death." The findings suggest that Saget didn't die from a mere "head bump that might have been shrugged off," as earlier reports had suggested. 

According to Mueller, the autopsy report "described an unmistakably serious set of injuries." Later, Mueller reports what he has been told by at least some of the "brain experts" with whom he has spoken:

MUELLER: Some neurosurgeons said that it would be unusual for a typical fall to cause Mr. Saget’s set of fractures—to the back, the right side and the front of his skull. Those doctors said that the injuries appeared more reminiscent of ones suffered by people who fall from a considerable height or get thrown from their seat in a car crash.

The autopsy, though, found no injuries to other parts of Mr. Saget’s body, as would be expected in a lengthier fall. The medical examiner ruled that the death was accidental. The local sheriff’s office had previously said there were no signs of foul play.

Puzzling! The set of fractures involved in this death appear to be "reminiscent of ones suffered by people who fall from a considerable height or get thrown from their seat in a car crash." That said, the autopsy "found no injuries to other parts of Mr. Saget’s body, as would be expected in a lengthier fall."

At this point, we offer these findings—findings drawn from the world of universal experience and basic common sense:

As a general matter, it's hard to fall from a considerable height when one is in one's hotel room. It's impossible to get thrown from one's seat in a car crash when in such a setting.

By now, anyone with an ounce of sense would perhaps be asking an obvious question. Horrifically, is it possible that Brother Saget was the victim of an assault?

Under the circumstances, it's the world's most obvious question. But Mueller shows no sign that he ever posed that question to the brain experts with whom he consulted.

Meanwhile, who knows? Perhaps if he had asked that question, Mueller would have been told that Saget's injuries do not suggest some such event.

But alas! Like the dog which refused to bark, Mueller refused to address that obvious question in his news report. Times readers are restricted to the one suggestion found in this paragraph:

MUELLER (continuing directly): “This is significant trauma,” said Dr. Gavin Britz, the chair in neurosurgery at Houston Methodist. “This is something I find with someone with a baseball bat to the head, or who has fallen from 20 or 30 feet.”

At last, a baseball bat is mentioned! That one tiny hint is allowed!

Stating the obvious, we don't know what caused Saget's death. Nor do we know why a major newspaper would publish such a strange news report.

On the other hand, we've been puzzled since Thursday night by mainstream journalists' refusal to ask the world's most obvious question about these autopsy findings. Once again, that obvious question would go like this:

Is it possible that Brother Saget was the victim of an assault?

On Thursday night, we marveled at the strange "discussion" of this topic involving Don Lemon and Sanjay Gupta. Absurd discussions involving Lemon are nothing new to cable news viewers, but Gupta has always struck as highly competent—and their discussion was notable for The Obvious Question Which Didn't Get Asked.

As of Thursday night, how serious did Saget's injuries now seem to be? At the start of the "discussion," Gupta offered this:

LEMON (2/10/22): Let's get some insight on this new information from CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Dr. Gupta, thank you so much for joining us. What more have we learned from the autopsy documents?

GUPTA: Well, I think, you know, compared to last night, we are getting more information about just how significant these injuries were. I mean, this was not sort of a simple bump on the head. 

You know, there was a concern last night that maybe he hit his head, sort of on the headboard of the bed, or something like that. He didn't recognize the severity of it and went to sleep and had this bleeding in his brain.

That sequence of events still seems to be plausible. But just the extent of injuries, Don, I think is far more than certainly was originally conveyed. 

Let me show you here. We put this together, Don, to give you an idea of just how many fractures we're talking about.

Using a picture of the brain, and then a model of the human skull, Gupta proceeded to describe the large number of fractures Saget suffered in various parts of his brain. After that complex demonstration, Gupta offered this:

GUPTA: If I didn't know anything else about this, I would say is this someone who was unrestrained in a car accident. Is this someone who fell down a flight of stairs, for example, or something like that?

When we look at this from a, from a neurosurgical perspective, there's a few different things that we're trying to figure out. What was the mechanism in injury? Again, fall? Car accident? What was it? 

But also, the energy of the injury, how much energy was actually put on the skull and the brain. And what we can say from that pattern of injuries, as outlined in the autopsy report, it was a significant, significant blow to the head.

We don't know, again, exactly what caused that. It also does not appear he was on blood thinners, Don, something we talked about last night, which could make, you know, the bleeding worse. 

But from that force alone, there was enough to cause fractures in the skull, and bleeding on top of the brain.

Based on Saget's multiple fractures, Gupta would have thought that he had been in a car accident, without his seat belt on. He said that Saget had received "a significant, significant blow to the head"—and that word was repeated for emphasis.

In his usual fashion, Lemon stammered out a generally pointless non-question question. In response, Gupta continued to describe the severity of Saget's injuries, perhaps attempting to offer some hints: 

GUPTA: This idea that someone was, you know, in a hotel room and sort of slipped and fell or hit their head on something—you know, a cabinet or the headboard or something causing this degree of injury—I think would be very unusual.

Again, if there is something else, where, you know, he fell flat on his back and on the side, also on the side of his head and that caused this pattern of injuries, perhaps. But it also seems like he was at least lucid enough maybe to even have a conversation and get into bed after that. So it's kind of, it's a little bit hard to piece together. 

This is certainly someone, if he had come into the hospital, to the emergency room, would have, you know, gotten a CAT scan, and most likely an operation to try and take that pressure off of this.

If you look at, you know, these types of head injuries across the board, people who have significant head injuries who then develop some amount of bleeding on top of the brain or within the brain, it happens in about a quarter of the time.

But again, this was not just a simple blow to the head. I think that that's what we can say. It was significant, you know, it really was an unprotected, it seems, you know, blow to the head. Maybe falling straight on his back. But still, how does one get fractures above the orbits over here at the same time? Was there some back and forth to the head at that time?

It's tough to talk about. It's so sad, Don, just the overall, you know, whatever happened here. Now, we may never know for certain what happened. But this would not be something that you would expect just from, again, a simple blow to the head. Something much more significant happened here.

Was Gupta dropping hints, perhaps in the face of CNN policy? "This would not be something that you would expect just from a simple blow to the head," he now told Lemon. "Something much more significant happened here."

Gupta had stressed, again and again, the severity of Saget's multiple injuries. But along the way, an obvious question had gone unasked:  "Is it possible that Saget was the victim of an assault?" 

That question went unasked. Instead, in standard "cable news" fashion, Lemon responded with this:

LEMON (continuing directly): Boy, boy. Dr. Gupta, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

With that, the "discussion" ended.

We watched that five-minute "discussion" in real time Thursday night. We wondered if anyone watching the segment had failed to wonder whether Saget had perhaps been the victim of a violent assault.

We felt fairly sure that no one could have failed to wonder about that possibility. That said, Lemon didn't ask this obvious question, and Gupta didn't speak to the possibility in an explicit way.

Is it possible that Saget was the victim of an assault? We have no way of knowing—but even today, 36 hours later, the New York Times still isn't willing to ask.

Instead, the Times doles out one tiny hint. “This is something I find with someone with a baseball bat to the head," one brain expert is quoted saying. There is no attempt to examine that suggestion.

Why does your "press corps" behave this way? We can't answer your question. 

In this deeply unfortunate instance, we're reminded of the press corps' refusal to consider the possibility that Donald J. Trump is, and has been, mentally ill. There are certain topics they just won't discuss. Instead, they keep feeding us product.

We were amazed by the dog which didn't bark as we watched Thursday night's segment. Thirty-six hours later, we see the lordly New York Times playing the same reindeer game.

We're going to stop right here today, but we'll point in two other directions. We'll point to the clueless behavior of three dozen Harvard professors within the course of the past week. We'll also point to Judy Woodruff''s behavior on The PBS NewsHour last night.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our top journalists and our top professors are often strangely inept. They agree to say things which are hard to defend. They agree to suppress the world's most obvious questions.

Do we live insider The Matrix? We don't know, but we do know this—we live inside the novelizations which come to us from these frequently incompetent upper-end sources. 

This situation dates back decades. It involves the Standard Group Statements they agree to make, and the topics they're too clueless to notice, or simply refuse to discuss

Brother Saget took a terrible blow (or blows) to the head. In the hands of these consummate fops, no further questions have been asked.

At some point, someone is going to address the question we have raised today. Larger parts of our failing society's warring novelizations will never be discussed.

Dearest darlings, use your heads; it simply isn't done! Each tribe has its favored claims. Within the tents of these warring tribes, few voices ever dissent.

Also this: Gupta spoke with Lemon in Thursday's 10 P.M. hour.

In the 8 P.M. hour, he spoke with John Berman. For that transcript, click here.

Something Gitlin said in 1989!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2022

Something Shapin said this past week: At one point, Todd Gitlin was head of SDS, back during the early Vietnam street-fighting days.

He went on to become a widely respected, influential professor and author. When Professor Gitlin died last weekend, Michelle Goldberg offered this well-composed memorial essay in the New York Times.

Also in the New York Times, Katharine Seelye authored this detailed obituary of Gitlin. At one point, she linked to a profile of Gitlin from early 1989.

In that earlier profile, Professor Gitlin made an interesting statement about the 1960s "New Left." First, though, consider the things Professor Shapin said to The Atlantic's Yair Rosenberg just in the past few days.

"For decades, Steven Shapin has taught the history of science at Harvard University," Rosenberg says early on. "We sat down to discuss why some people trust podcasters over professors, how Joe Rogan and other iconoclasts tap into the myth of Galileo, and why 'following the science' [about the pandemic] is a lot harder than it sounds." 

Why do so many people refuse to trust the usual experts? To our ear, Rosenberg's interview with Shapin seems a bit murky early on. But near the end, the analysis by the Harvard professor seems to pick up steam.

Professor Shapin has spent his academic career studying the question of why people believe the things they believe and trust the people they trust. This may seem maddening, he seemed to say, but we possibly need to get over ourselves and we might try behaving like humans.

Long story short! Professor Shapin seems to feel that we probably shouldn't be calling The Others names:

SHAPIN (2/10/22): I think it’s really wrong that people believe Joe Rogan and Trump, but I understand, and I think we should all understand, why they do this, and how we might hope to move them. It’s going to take a lot of work; it’s going to take a lot of time. But we need the right science in this, and that involves the science of credibility and the science of people—their beliefs, their perceptions, their emotions, and the science of how people come to know science.

[...]

It needs a face, it needs PowerPoints, it needs metaphors, it needs analogies. It needs a face of sympathy, and a face that says, “I am caring about you and we are all in this together.” Because America is so divided, it’s very difficult to talk about that. But if you want to ask people to believe something, and to do something based on that belief, you’ve got to show that you care. And you’ve got to show that we’re all doing our bit. It’s following the science of credibility as well as the science of viruses. But it bloody well is complicated.

Professor Shapin is quite a squish—but so, perhaps, was Professor Gitlin. He led the SDS back in the fabled street-fighting days—but a few decades later, when he'd become a Berkeley professor, he said these things to Katherine Bishop of the New York Times:

BISHOP (1/8/89): Even on the Berkeley campus where it happened, it can be difficult to separate the F.S.M. from the mythology surrounding it. ''The Free Speech Movement has something of a halo around it,'' Dr. Gitlin said. ''My sense of it is that there's a vacuous pride, a feeling that whatever it was, it was good for us. It's our glory. But the attitude is disconnected from knowledge.

''There's a temptation to say that our crowd was better than you—that we were more moral,'' Dr. Gitlin added. ''It's not true. I try to convey that nobody was walking on water.''

Professor Gitlin was there at the start. In his view, it just isn't true that Our Own Exalted Crowd was better, more moral, than They Were.

We offer these observations for entertainment purposes only. There is zero chance that our self-impressed tribe will ever drop the various poses by which we express our superiority and alienate many Others.

We love to scold them for "banning books." We're fairly sure they're Nazis.

We believe they hail from East Bumfuck, or perhaps from some place worse. We don't mind saying so.

We invent crazy statements they didn't make, and then we insist that they made them. This is part of our tribal DNA in a way which isn't going to change. We've been signaling these deep beliefs for a very large number of years.

Today, truckers are blocking a bridge to Detroit. This may be the early face of our coming "civil war." Much more of this may be on the way. This may be just the start.

To many residing within our own tribe, this is simply the way our lessers behave. Within our tribe, we're fairly sure of such facts.

According to major anthropologists, nothing about this is going to change. This is the way we humans are wired, crestfallen experts now tell us.

IMITATIONS OF LIFE: Lawrence and Krugman, working from script!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2022

Next "civil war" emerges: Much as the Chinese warned, we live in interesting times.

We mean that as a matter of anthropology. We live in times which make it all too easy to see the truth about our war-inclined, vastly self-impressed species:

Man [sic] is the tribal animal—the creature which works from script.

In his new column today, David Brooks quotes René Girard, "a French thinker who is enjoying a vogue." As quoted, Girard is voicing that very same bromide, though in a fuzzier form:

“Man [sic] is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind.”

That's what the late philosophe is said to have written. Presumably, Girard is being quoted in translation. 

Is man [sic] the creature who turns to others in order to make up his mind? Is man [sic] the creature which works from script?

We'd say there's a great deal of truth to such claims! Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell, sans Dorchester accent, opened his "cable news" hour with this pitiful though thoroughly human statement:

LAWRENCE (2/10/22): Well today, a federal judge responded to the unanimous declaration by the Republican National Committee that the attacks on the Capitol on January 6 were, quote, "legitimate political discourse."

He challenged no one to a fistfight this time. Sadly, though, he said that. 

Lawrence then went on to quote the federal judge to whom he had referred. Unsurprisingly, the federal judge hadn't made the statement Lawrence attributed to her.

Unsurprisingly, Lawrence had misparaphrased the judge. That said, he had made a truly remarkable claim, speaking in his own voice. 

Had Lawrence made a remarkable claim? Just consider:

During the January 6 attack on the Capitol, substantial numbers of people conducted vicious, violent assaults on members of the Capitol Police. 

As the weeks and months have passed, reams of video footage have emerged showing those vicious attacks.  Everyone has seen the footage of those violent attacks. No one hasn't seen it.

Everyone has seen the reams of footage of those vicious, violent attacks. And yet, according to Lawrence's statement, the RNC has unanimously declared that those violent physical attacks were—and he even used the word "quote"—"legitimate political discourse!

Has the RNC actually said that? In all honesty, it seems fairly hard to believe.

Briefly, let's be clear. As a general matter, the RNC's members don't tend to be the sharpest knives you can find in the drawer. 

Their views may sometimes tend to be strange. They may not always be compulsively honest.

The RNC isn't the world's most impressive bunch. But had its members really said that? Lawrence hadn't sought a fistfight this time, but he had made a truly remarkable claim.

In a world which wasn't inherently tribal, such a remarkable claim would be hard to believe. But we live in a world which is thoroughly tribal, and deeply unsettling.

We live in a world whose creatures don't necessarily know what to say, and so they may be inclined to turn to others in order to make up their minds.

Anthropologically, we humans are the animal who repeats whatever it is the last ten tribals have said. For that reason, everyone in our failing blue tribe has been making the remarkable claim which Lawrence made.

By now, that claim qualifies as mandated speech. Here are two of our tribal intellectuals in today's New York Times:

LEONHARDT (2/11/22): On Tuesday, [Mitch McConnell] criticized the Republican National Committee for its response to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee—the party’s official organization—had described the events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse”...

KRUGMAN (2/11/22):  I wonder how many voters remember how close the Trump administration came to repealing the Affordable Care Act...That effort failed only because three Republican senators had the courage to stand up to Donald Trump.

Does anyone imagine that we’ll see a similar display of courage if a party that considers a violent attack on the Capitol “legitimate political discourse” regains control of Congress and the White House?

Leonhardt and Krugman have said it too! According to the RNC, those vicious beatings at the Capitol were "legitimate political discourse!"

Members of the RNC are rarely the sharpest knives in the drawer. But did they really make a crazy statement like that?

To be honest, no—no, they actually didn't. Unless you're just a frightened child who wants a newer, even crazier claim to make about The Others, as you yourself crazily beat the drums for a good solid tribal war.

Did the RNC "unanimously declare" that those violent attacks were "legitimate political discourse?" In yesterday's award-winning report, we showed you the full text of the resolution which has been paraphrased in that way—and no, they never even mentioned those violent attacks, except in the minds of the frightened children on MSNBC and in the New York Times who hand you the scripts you should now run out and repeat.

They tell us what scripts we should recite. We run off and repeat their creative paraphrases, just as it ever was. 

They did this to Candidate Gore in an earlier day. Today, these hapless, frightened children are directing their skills at misparaphrase at a group of more hapless players.

The RNC has never been especially bright, dating all the way back its years under Chairman Nicholson. (At the 2000 Democratic Convention, we interviewed him for MSNBC.com, but failed to pull the trigger.) 

The RNC has never been especially bright. Perhaps not unlike the DNC, the RNC has often seemed to perhaps be slightly less than compulsively honest.

That said, even the RNC isn't so utterly stupid as to have made the crazy statement in question—the crazy statement our frightened children now say that the RNC made. 

The statement simply doesn't appear in the text of their resolution. Over the course of the past week, its members have said, a million times, that they don't regard those violent attacks as "legitimate political discourse."

They've said it and said it, then said it again—but so what? The Krugmans, Leonhardts and Lawrences continue to state the preferred tribal claim. According to disconsolate experts, this is the way our benighted species has always invented its wars.

Did the RNC actually say that those vicious physical beatings were acts of "legitimate discourse?" If you live with Alice, in Wonderland, it's possible that they did.

Otherwise, we're sorry, but actually no—they didn't. On Tuesday night, "CNN political commentator" Mike Shields offered an account of where that claim had come from.

Years ago, Shields was chief of staff as the RNC. On Tuesday, spoke with John Berman, who was subbing for Anderson Cooper. 

Berman began with a poorly paraphrased account of something Mitch McConnell had said. Shields then offered this account of where that standardized claim had come from:

BERMAN (2/8/22): Mike, as a Republican, I'm curious—why do you think Mitch McConnell felt the need to be so forceful in rebuking the "legitimate political discourse" notion? And you agree with him?

SHIELDS: Well, look, I think that this was a resolution passed at the RNC that's not binding, it doesn't carry the weight of law. They passed four other resolutions that day.

When it was passed in the room, none of the reporters in the room thought that they were talking about the violent part of January 6. But afterwards, a reporter said, "Hey, we can make this connection." 

And now, here we are on Day 5. Mitch McConnell is being asked about it. We're talking about it—and it's not the position of the Republican Party.

The RNC has said many, many times, including today, including yesterday, that they condemn the violence, okay?...

We'll actually no, it's not OK! During this segment, Berman and Van Jones went on to embarrass themselves as they pushed back against Shields' claims. 

We thought their behavior was almost shocking, but was also entirely human.

Meanwhile, it was true! The RNC had already said, many times, that it condemned the January 6 violence. But any such statements will disappear when frightened children in a failing tribe need an even more astonishing claim to lodge against The Others.

We can't speak to the overall accuracy of Shields' novelistic account. Expressed most simply, he was saying that journalists had invented the remarkable claim about what the RNC had supposedly said.

We don't know who invented the claim, but the supposed statement by the RNC doesn't exist in the text of the resolution. It's a thrilling, imaginative paraphrase—and by this morning, everyone including Paul Krugman is repeating the thrilling claim while ignoring (while disappearing) those endless disavowals.

Anthropologically, this is the way our species behaves when its members divide into tribes, then begin longing for war. (We often mention the silly Southern boys who pranced about, telling Miss Scarlett what they would do to the Yankees.)

Your lizard brain will tell you it's true—that the RNC actually said it. We showed you the full text yesterday. Except in the minds of frightened children, the crazy statement in question simply isn't there.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our coming "civil war" has begun to take shape. 

What would a modern "civil war" look like? It would start by looking like a bunch of truckers, with very large trucks, bringing international commerce to a major halt.

The scenes would continue from there. Last night, Tucker went on and on, then on and on some more, about the greatness of the way the truckers were blocking those bridges between the United States and Canada. Meanwhile, our silly Northern boys were all over our own channels, repeating the crazy statement the RNC had supposedly made.

More such scenes are likely to come. This is part of the shape of a new "civil war," modern post-American style.

All in all, our own corporate stars don't know what to say or to do. And so they're doing what our species always does:

Engaging in imitations of life, they repeat whatever it is that the last ten people have said. The craziness of what they're saying about The Others just makes their statement more pleasing.

On the whole, the RNC is a gong-show organization. But no, they didn't actually say what our children are now standing in line to say that the RNC said. 

He didn't challenge anyone to a fight, but Lawrence was pleasingly wrong again last night. How do we like our blue-eyed boys now, as Cummings once thoughtfully asked.

Who is Flores suing, for what?

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Can anyone here play this game?: Like everyone else, we were surprised when Brian Flores got fired.

He had spent three years as the Miami Dolphins' head coach. Except for a horrible 1-7 start this year, his record there had seemed to be surprisingly good, especially given the mess the Dolphins seemed to be in when he arrived on the job.

That said, can anyone here play this game? In part, we're asking about some of the oddnesses associated with the lawsuit Flores filed in the immediate aftermath of his recent firing after three years as head coach.

Mainly, though, we're talking about the way the lawsuit has been discussed within the mainstream and liberal press. Consider Will Leitch's description of the suit in this report from New York's Intelligencer site.

According to Leitch, Flores has "sued the league and three of its teams for racism in its hiring practices." That's a standard account of the suit. Also, everyone knows who those three teams are:

The Broncos, the Dolphins, the Giants.

That said, has Flores really sued the Dolphins for racism in its hiring practices? We ask that question because of the last three major hiring decisions made by Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, including his hiring of Flores:

His last three major hires:

In January 2016, he hired Chris Grier as Dolphins' general manager. Grier continues to hold that post. He's one of only five black GMs in the NFL.

In February 2019, he hired Flores as head coach. Flores was one of only three black head coaches in the NFL that year.

Last week, he hired Mike McIntire to be the Dolphins' next head coach. McIntire identifies as multiracial. He's one only four non-white head coaches in the NFL.

Given that track record, is Flores really suing the Dolphins for racism in its hiring practices? He's lodged other serious charges against Ross, but is he suing the Dolphins for racist hiring practices? 

That's what Leitch said in his report, but is that statement accurate? Does that statement seem to make sense?

We started this post with a familiar old question from the world of sports: Can anyone here play this game? In the main, we're asking this question about the members of our liberal and mainstream press. 

Other parts of the Flores suit strike us as rather odd. As best we can tell, Flores did a good job as coach of the Dolphins. But some of the claims which he has lodged don't seem to make perfect sense. 

(His claims against Ross may be perfectly accurate. We have no way of knowing.)

We're asking one limited question today—does Leitch's statement make sense? 

As Groucho Marx might have said, "It's a familiar statement, one you hear every day." But does the standard, familiar statement actually seem to make sense?

Eventually, we'll move ahead to other aspects of the Flores lawsuit. Relevant hiring data in the NFL have been widely discussed for decades. But can anyone in our liberal and mainstream press establishments actually play these games?

We'd say the answer has been clear for decades. As a general matter, and anthropologically, we'd say the answer is no.

IMITATIONS OF LIFE: Your chance to see what the RNC said!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Goofus and Gallant meet Kafka: Long ago and far away, Franz Kafka stood out from the rest of the herd.

Along literary types, he best understood the revolution Mr. Darwin had fashioned when he told the world, in revolutionary fashion, that we humans are just an animal too, just like the animals are.

Kafka took it in. He was even able to picture Gregor Samsa, and possibly even himself, as a rather low species of animal, rather than as a celestial figure who had been "made in God's image." 

We humans weren't really all that celestial! We might not even be the world-famous "rational animal!"

We thought of Kafka, and of Gregor Samsa himself, as we watched Morning Joe this morning. We also thought of a misconception we ourselves held in the past.

Long ago and far away, we miscalculated the amount of analytical skill possessed by our mainstream press corps. We assumed that these people were far more skilled that they have turned out to be.

As it turns out, they aren't very skilled at all—and they seem to be unaware of this basic fact. We thought of Kafka, and of this unfortunate state of affairs, when we watched Peter Baker, Gene Robinson and Willie Geist Junior serially selling the new Storyline on Morning Joe this morning.

Eventually, Jackie Alemany even joined in, despite her Harvard degree! The analysts sobbed and tore at their hair as visions of Kafka, a mere creature, forced their way into our heads.

Right there on our TV screen, the children were offering script in support of the tribe's Storyline. We refer to the Storyline about the way the RNC once typed these words:

"Legitimate political discourse"

Deeply useful words!

Last night, John Berman, subbing for Anderson Cooper, compounded his conduct of the previous night in a truly remarkable way. Within our segregated news environment, in which the tribes only hear their own Storylines, the children have been pushing this Storyline very hard, much as everyone once rushed out to push this magical script:

Al Gore said he invented the Internet!

There's nothing too dumb for these creatures to say, just so long as it comes out of script. For ourselves, we'll tackle only one task today:

We'll show you what the RNC actually said. This is a service our own news orgs will never, ever provide.

Readers, "the power to paraphrase is the power to spin." We told you that long, long ago.

The national committee's tale:

Long ago and far away, the RNC was pushing endless claims under the direction of its chairman, Jim Nicholson. At the 2000 Democratic Convention, we actually got to interview Nicholson for MSNBC.com—and we failed to pull the trigger as planned when the big moment arrived.

That's a story for some other time. Today, the RNC is headed by Ronna McDaniel. She has been an absolute mess ever since attaining the post.

Ronna McDaniel has been a mess—but then too, there's the basic question of what she and the rest of the RNC actually meant and said. In the main, the announcement which launched a thousand scripts was designed to censure Cheney and Kinzinger, a pair of renegade Republicans.

The resolution appeared at the end of last week. All-caps headline included, it started exactly like this:

RESOLUTION TO FORMALLY CENSURE LIZ CHENEY AND ADAM KINZINGER AND TO NO LONGER SUPPORT THEM AS MEMBERS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values;

WHEREAS, The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism; eliminate border security in favor of lawless, open borders; create record inflation designed to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren; neuter our national defense and a peace through strength foreign policy; replace President Trump's “ Operation Warp Speed” with incompetence and illegal mandates; and destroy America's economy with the Green New Deal;

WHEREAS, Winning back the majority in Congress, including the United States House of Representatives, in 2022 must be the primary goal of the House Republican Conference (“ Conference”) and requires all Republicans working together to accomplish the same;

WHEREAS, The Conference must design the strategy to stop the radical Biden agenda and retire Nancy Pelosi, tasks which require that all Republicans pull in the same direction;

WHEREAS, The Conference must not be sabotaged by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who have demonstrated, with actions and words, that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022...

That's how the brilliance began. 

The all-caps headline announced the resolution's main idea. A pair of renegades were being formally censured. 

We've highlighted one part of the brilliance—the segment in which we're told that the Biden Administration has "embarked on a systematic effort to...create record inflation," but also to "destroy America's economy with the Green New Deal."

Do those claims seem to make sense? Given the way public opinion works, why would a sitting president seek to create record inflation? Beyond that, why would a sitting president "embark on a systematic effort to...destroy America's economy?"

Does any of that make sense? Sadly, there are probably answers to those questions, and the RNC could provide them! 

That said, we're asking you to notice the fact that pronouncements by this group may not always make perfect crisp, clear sense. Also, we'll ask you to notice this:

So far, the RNC hasn't said a single word about any of the conduct in which people engaged on January 6. 2021, at the Capitol Building. In fact, the RNC hasn't mentioned January 6 at all!

At this point, one part of that forbearance would end. As they continued, the RNC extended their list of complaints about the censured parties. At issue was their membership on the January 6 Select Committee, as is described below:

WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger have engaged in actions in their positions as members of the January 6th Select Committee not befitting Republican members of Congress, which include the Committee's disregard for minority rights, traditional checks and balances, due process, and adherence to other precedent and rules of the U.S. House and which seem intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat Party's bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections;

WHEREAS, Congressional Republicans bear ultimate responsibility for their own success or failure and the RNC supports their efforts by denouncing those who deliberately jeopardize victory in November on which the future of our constitutional republic depends at this critical moment in history...

According to the resolution, the censured parties were helping "the Democrat Party" as it tried to buoy its prospects! 

We mention that passage because it shows how childish these people can be. Issuing a proclamation on behalf of a major political party, the RNC joined the decades of clowning in which partisans aren't even willing to state the correct name of the Democratic Party.

You can't get much more childish than that, though our own tribe's stars will try. That said, we'll call your attention to this additional fact:

The resolution still hasn't said a word about the violent behavior which occurred at the Capitol Building on January 6. In fact, none of that day's conduct has been mentioned, and we're already nearing the end of the RNC's text.

What has been mentioned in the RNC's text? According to the RNC, Cheney and Kinzinger have misbehaved in various ways in their roles on the January 6 Commission. In particular, they've shown a "disregard for minority rights, traditional checks and balances, due process, and adherence to other precedent and rules of the U.S. House." 

What did the committee mean by those complaints? Pretty much everyone knows. Those are complaints about the way the current form of the commission was adopted and about some of the procedures the commission has adopted as it has conducted its task. 

At any rate, in behaving in these enumerated ways, the pair of renegades "seem intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat Party's bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections." In fairness, if they actually believe those premises, the RNC can hardly be blamed for kicking this pair to the curb!

That said, the RNC's resolution was almost completely done—and the specific events of January 6 hadn't been mentioned at all.  Below, you see the way the resolution concludes—and you see a fuzzy clause which was quickly paraphrased by the journalists who tumbled out of our own tribe's well-stocked clown car:

WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger purport to be members of the Republican Party; and

WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the Conference.

That's the way the resolution ended. Also, that's the way a remarkable wave of propagandization began.

Question:

What the heck did the RNC mean when it said that Cheney and Kinzinger are "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse?"  

Which "ordinary citizens" did the RNC have in mind? Who was the RNC talking about? What did the RNC mean?

It seemed that this alleged "persecution" was somehow connected to a "Democrat [sic] abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes." But what did the RNC actually mean by this overall statement?

The RNC had included an extremely fuzzy clause near the end of its declaration. As you can see, there was no specific reference to any of the behaviors exhibited on January 6. Indeed, no such behaviors, violent or otherwise, were ever explicitly mentioned in the resolution at all.

The RNC had included an extremely fuzzy clause near the end of its declaration. Traditional norms would direct a scrupulous journalist to ask them what they meant.

The children of our own news orgs skipped right past this task. They'd done the same thing long ago, when they creatively "paraphrased" a wide array of crackpot things Gore had allegedly said.

As for the RNC, it hadn't explicitly mentioned the behaviors of January 6 at all. Normal courtesy—normal human intelligence—would suggest that they should have been asked what the heck they had meant.

That's where Kafka enters the scene. He understood that animals of our particular species don't run on "rationality," or on journalistic norms, or on Enlightenment values.

He understood that creatures of our particular type are perhaps strongly inclined to do what our tribe's "journalists" and politicians stampeded off to next:

Our tribals invented a pleasing version of what the RNC meant. When McDaniel and many others gave a vastly different account of what their fuzzy clause actually meant, the "journalists" of our own failing tribe disappeared those statements.

Late last night, we were visited by Goofus and by Gallant. What do Goofus and Gallant do when they encounter fuzzy statements? We'll paraphrase what we were told:

What Goofus and Gallant do when they encounter a fuzzy statement:

Gallant asks the person or the organization to explain what they meant. When he discusses the statement in question, he remembers to include their response.

Goofus simply creates his own account of what the fuzzy statement meant. He proceeds to bruit his own self-serving account all through the streets of his town.

When challenged about this conduct, Goofus behaves just like Trump. He insists that everything he said and did was completely and totally right.

Tomorrow: What have they done with John Berman?