"Segregation by viewpoint" looks like this!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2024

Ken Burns visits Deadline: As we sit and type, the jury has started to deliberate. As a bit of an overview, we can tell you this:

As part of his (hour-long) jury instruction, Judge Merchan apparently accepted the part of the prosecution's legal theory which we discussed this morning. 

Based on what we've heard, Judge Merchan instructed the jury that all twelve jurors don't have to agree about the identity of the "other crime"—the additional crime which could transform 34 misdemeanor counts into 34 stone-cold felonies.

Based on what we've heard, the jury has been told that they have three potential "other crimes" from which they can choose. Most strikingly, there's no need for all twelve jurors to agree on one single "other crime" which Defendant Trump was attempting to commit or conceal when he falsified some or all of those 34 business records.

The jury can do it "cafeteria style!" In order to reach a unanimous verdict, there's no need for all twelve to agree on one single "other crime" Trump was trying to commit or conceal.

Of course, the jury could always decide that Trump didn't falsify any business records at all! It remains to be seen what the jury will decide. But legal analysts at the Fox News Channel, including some who aren't visibly crazy, are expressing shock at the "cafeteria / buffet style" jury instruction concerning the possible "other crimes."

That's what the analysts are saying at Fox—and no, we don't assume that their assessment is wrong. Nor do we know if it's right.

Moving right along:

Yesterday morning, we showed you excerpts from Ken Burns' recent graduation address at Brandeis. We started with parts of the address with which we very much agree. In part, those excerpts went like this:

BURNS (6/19/24): I've been struggling for most of my life...to try to tell good, complex, sometimes contradictory stories, appreciating nuance and subtlety and undertow, sharing the confusion and consternation of unreconciled opposites.

But it's clear, as individuals and as a nation, we are dialectically preoccupied.  Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway. 

Everywhere, we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties. For filmmakers and faculty, students and citizens, that preoccupation is imprisoning. 

Still, we know and we hear and we express only arguments, and by so doing, we forget the inconvenient complexities of history and of human nature.

[...]

If I have learned anything over those years, it's that there's only "us." There is no "them." And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life, that there's a "them," run away. 

Othering is the simplistic, binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment.  

We agreed with every word—or at least, we thought we did! We have no idea how Burns got from there to the heart and soul of his address, in which he told the graduates, but also their parents, that there's only one possible way to vote this year—the way Burns plans to vote.

We're going to vote the way Burns does, but we have no idea how he got from Part A to Part B in that graduation address. It amazes us to think that someone would deliver a graduation address in which he tells the audience, absent an elaborate apology, that it's his way or the highway this year.

Burns, of course, is a good, decent person. Also, he's a highly skilled filmmaker. His voluminous work has made that fact abundantly clear.

That said, good grief! He appeared yesterday on Deadline: White House, and we're not sure ever seen a less coherent presentation. You can see it by clicking here, then by continuing to click. 

Needless to say, Nicolle Wallace was swooning over Burns' declaration that the only possible way to vote is the way we Blues plan to vote. That's the way we'll be voting, but we'd never tell a bunch of college graduates, and their fully grown adult parents, that there's no way for them to understand the world except for the infallible way we ourselves infallibly do.

Needless to say, Wallace especially loved that part of Burns' address. After a series of fawning teases and a swooning introduction, she asked a set of incoherent questions, producing a string of incoherent replies.

Burns is a very talented filmmaker. What he said yesterday made little sense, except within the form of Babel our current organization of media is producing. We refer to the practice known as "segregation by viewpoint," in which no speech or statement, no matter how fuzzy or improbable, ever gets critiqued or challenged by anyone else on the set.

Ken Burns is a good, decent person. In our view, Wallace disappeared around the bend a long time ago through her landlocked, "our way or the highway" approach. We hope she finds her way back.

Burns says there's only one way to vote. For better, or perhaps for worse, that isn't and can't be true. 

It simply isn't that way on this planet! Over here, in Blue America, we ignore that obvious fact at our own substantial risk.