When Tucker Carlson got the goods...

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2023

...Lawrence missed the boat: Tucker Carlson finally has his hot, sweaty hands on the goods!

We refer to thousands of miles of surveillance footage from the January 6 attacks. Mike Allen broke the news in Axios, starting off like this:

ALLEN (2/20/23): House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News' Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources tell me.

Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.

Why it matters: Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as "vandalism."

Now his shows—"Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, and "Tucker Carlson Today" and "Tucker Carlson Originals" on the streaming service Fox Nation—have a massive trove of raw material.

Carlson and his gang of gumshoes now have their mitts on the tapes. Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell tried to explain what Tucker might do with the trove:

O'DONNELL (2/20/23): Tucker Carlson has called the January 6th attack on the Capitol, in which 150 police officers were injured, "a minor outbreak." He will no doubt find a surveillance camera in one of the hundreds of hallways in the Capitol complex, possibly in a Capitol office building away from the Capitol, where nothing was happening, and he'll show the footage of nothing happening in that hallway and he will tell his Fox audience that that proves, that footage right there, that nothing happened all day,

We do not know if the Fox audience is stupid enough to believe Tucker Carlson when he shows them that video, but we do know how stupid Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch think their audience is.

Lawrence repeated this speculation several times. He offered no other ideas about what Tucker might do with the 41,000 hours of surveillance tapes.

BREAKING! It begins to seem that Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't watch Tucker Carlson Tonight! (Or keep himself abreast of its contents.) If he did, he would surely have a better idea of what Tucker might try to do with the surveillance tapes.

What might Tucker try to do with those surveillance tapes? Tucker is fond of claiming that rioters were encouraged to enter the Capitol Building by a bunch of FBI plants. We'll guess that his devoted producers will search the 41,000 hours of tape looking for behaviors which can be described that way.

Tucker's most famous alleged FBI "false flag" instigator is, of course, Ray Epps. Tucker's claims about Epps have been fact-checked and rejected many times, but this is the obvious direction in which Tucker's tape search might run.

Lawrence seemed to be completely clueless about this general matter. Earlier in the day, we were surprised when we saw that Nicolle Wallace and three of her favorite reporters and friends also failed to mention this obvious possible angle.

For the record, it isn't just us. In his report at Maddowblog, Steve Benen linked to CNN's earlier report about where this would likely be going:

BENEN (2/20/23): As Axios’ report noted, Carlson has “repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as ‘vandalism.’” CNN’s report added, “[H]e has devoted significant airtime to the false claim that liberal ‘deep state’ partisans within the FBI orchestrated the insurrection as a way to undermine former President Donald Trump. He has conducted sympathetic interviews with some of the rioters who were subsequently charged by the Justice Department.”

To review the CNN report, you can just click here.

In closing, we'll note that we have no way of knowing with any certainty what Carlson will do with the tape. That said, we were underwhelmed by Lawrence's weak attempt at speculation.

With respect to stupid viewers, Tucker's viewers are likely to believe the things he says because of the silo within which they live. Our own cable stars may sometimes show the effects of living in silos too. 

Lawrence came up short this time. In our view, he and his staff should consider the possibility of watching Tucker more.

ENEMIES OR FRIENDS: "It's not to condemn the country," he said!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2023

That's what Al Sharpton said: What do you want American kids to be taught about American history?

Surely, they should be exposed to—in that sense, they should be "taught"—an array of basic facts. 

But what should they be "taught" after that? Should they be "taught" anything else at all? What should be presented to students in an American history class?

In the current instance, we're talking about American public school kids—American high school students.

What do you want those kids to be taught about the history of their country? Long ago and far away, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace offered these puzzling claims:

WALLACE (2/14/23): [Ron DeSantis has] put out a narrative. So to counter a narrative, you have to aggressively put the facts out there. 

But there's only one set of facts. There's only one history, and I wonder what you think threatens him about the one set of facts and the true history. 

We'd have to say that the highlighted statement by Wallace involved a huge swing and a miss. In fairness to Wallace, it's amazing to see how many scholars have been quoted, in recent weeks, making similar remarks.

Let's return to what Wallace said. Is it really true that there's "only one set of facts?" 

To the extent that that statement may be true, there are trillions of such facts. Inevitably, someone will have to decide which of those facts will be included, and may even be stressed, in a 36-week high school history course.

Also this:

 Is it really true that there's "only one [American] history?"

In the farthest recesses of Emerson Hall, someone might want to waste his time arguing some such proposition. But out there in the actual world where history is taught and discussed in the schools, that statement makes no real sense:

Inevitably, a year-long course in American history won't just be a jumble of facts. Something like a point of view will likely be involved in that jumble of facts, and there are as many possible points of view as there are architects of American history courses. 

Someone will be telling the story, ages and ages hence! Inevitably, the people who are telling the story will have some point of view.

One day after Wallace fanned on this question, she introduced "our friend and colleague, the Reverend Al Sharpton," on her Deadline: White House program. He proceeded to discuss his views on a current manifestation of this age-old problem. 

We've long admired Sharpton for his intelligence, but also for his sense of humor, which he often purs to good use. We also think he went badly wrong in at least one recent high-profile situation. 

Even within our own blue tribe, none of our tribunes qualify as the oracle at Delphi! Beyond that, we're not entirely sure that he and Wallace are actual "friends."

At any rate, how does Sharpton think American history should be taught to high school students? More specifically, what does he see as the story behind the jumble of facts?

On February 16, Sharpton described one possible view. At issue was his idea of the way our frequently brutal history should be taught to high school kids in the College Board's new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies. 

How should our frequently brutal history be presented in some such class? On that particular day, on Morning Joe, here's part of what Sharpton said:

SHARPTON (2/15/23): You're going to limit what we can read and write in AP history classes? Like, people won't be able to handle watching movements like the civil rights movement, like the Black Lives Matter movement, like LGBTQ rights? 

And it is not to condemn the country, it's to show how the country evolved. We need to know we went from slavery to electing Barack Obama. To try and eliminate that, I think, is un-American as much as it is racist.

We were most struck, as we watched that program, by the highlighted part of his statement. That said:

So many claims and suggestions, so little time! 

For starters, it isn't entirely clear what Sharpton meant in various parts of that statement. For starters, is someone trying to eliminate the fact that this nation "went from slavery to electing Barack Obama" from the College Board's AP class? 

Is someone trying to eliminate such facts from high school history classes? It's hard to believe that some such thing could be true. Who is trying to do that?

For better or worse, much of the conversation this day dealt with Ron DeSantis. 

For better or worse, our nation's pundits rarely spend much time talking about our high school students. Instead, they talk about him.

For the record, Sharpton had been in Florida one day before he appeared on Morning Joe. He had led a protest march against DeSantis' various, often murky complaints and threats concerning the AP course.

Perhaps inevitably, discussion of the AP course has largely turned into a discussion of DeSantis. 

On cable, our tribunes talk and talk, and talk and talk, about Ron DeSantis. They may not focus on the general interests and needs of American high school kids.

Setting all that to the side, we were struck by the part of Sharpton's statement which we've chosen to highlight. Was it our imagination, or had Sharpton possibly suggested that the AP history course could or should present a somewhat positive viewpoint?

"It is not to condemn the country," Reverend Sharpton said. "It's to show how the country evolved." It's to show that we somehow managed to make it all the way to Obama.

That statement could be the start of conversation about what a high school history course should present to American kids. Instead, our conversations tend to lapse into a kind of Babel, with furious talking-points repeated, again and again, about the Florida politician Sharpton was discussing.

Last Tuesday, Wallace adopted the view that "there's only one [American] history"—"the true [American] history." In principle, there are as many American histories as historians—and high school teachers—want to conceive and tell.

For ourselves, we don't think a high school American history course should "condemn America." We also don't think that some such course should resemble a feel-good old Disney film.

What type of American history should be presented to high school kids? We'd love to see that question discussed. Instead, the past few weeks have introduced us to a type of Babel, as warring groups denounce each other in familiar shopworn ways. 

Kids are going to enter classrooms to encounter their nation's history. One fact from our history is this:

"We must not be enemies," one president. said. For better or worse, wisely or not, that well-known president also said, "We are not enemies, but friends."

Tomorrow:  McWhorter? Gates? The press corps?

Black history for every public school kid!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2023

The way one state's mandate works: As we noted this morning, the College Board's new Advanced Placement course won't affect all public school kids.

By definition, advanced placement courses are mainly designed for higher-performing kids. Last week, the Washington Post's Hannah Natanson penned a report about a certain number of states who are requiring the teaching of African American history to all their public school kids.

Full disclosure! What actually happens in various classrooms may not always match what state law requires. That said, here's the way Natanson's report began, invidious headline included:

As red states target Black history lessons, blue states embrace them

Even as lessons on Black history draw complaints from Republican governors, who argue the instruction is ideological, several blue states are moving in the opposite direction—mandating classes in African American, Latino and Puerto Rican studies—and setting up a uniquely American division over how we teach our past.

Since 2019, partly in response to the murder of George Floyd, at least four reliably Democratic states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine and Rhode Island—have passed laws requiring instruction on Black history...Connecticut’s law says African American, Puerto Rican and Latino studies must be included in the social studies component of all public school curriculums. Delaware’s mandates that school districts offer instruction on Black history. Maine’s says that African American studies and the history of genocide must be included in state testing standards. And Rhode Island’s orders schools to include a unit on African History and Heritage.

It's odd to think that these reliably blue states had to wait for George Floyd's death to create such mandates. But then, as Abraham Lincoln said, let's judge not lest we be judged.

Stating the obvious and the important, black history is American history. To the extent that such mandates are followed, all the public school kids in those states will be given the type of instruction described.

We're tempted now to show you the mandates which were recently adumbrated by one of our better-known states. That said, doing so would involve us in a type of snark we've never indulged in before.

In the end, this topic is too important to be packaged in snark. That said, we'll show you the statewide mandate in question before the week is done.

For today, we'll tell you this:

Black history is American history. So is Native American history, dating back to the years before European contact. 

Every child should get a chance to take this vast history in. At question is the way that vast history will be taught to all those kids. 

Also at question is the extent to which our modern-day warring tribes are able to speak to each other. Please don't assume that it's only the Others who may have some blind spots there.

STARTING TOMORROW: Babel Matters!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2023

The Furies discuss public schools: On the front page of today's New York Times, we find a report which starts by mentioning one teacher in one British school.

His students are being exposed to garbage. That said, is this the best way for a teacher to teach? We can't say the answer is clear:

BUBOLA AND KWAI (2/20/23): As the seventh graders settled into a lecture hall at a school near London, the topic at hand was not human rights, historical events or different religions. “Andrew Tate,” a teacher said, pointing to a photograph projected on the wall. “What do you know about this man?”

Some boys giggled at the mention of Mr. Tate, a social media influencer famed for his misogynistic comments. One boy said he liked him because “he has a strong masculinity,” fast cars and a fit body. The teacher projected some of Mr. Tate’s claims, among them that women who are raped should bear some responsibility. A few boys agreed.

“He is wrong,” said the teacher, Jake White. “That is a load of rubbish.”

In schools across Britain, educators are mobilizing to fight back against Mr. Tate’s messages...Mr. Tate gained a following of millions with videos glorifying wealth and a particularly virulent brand of male chauvinism, before being barred last summer from many mainstream social media sites.

Assuming the accuracy of the reporting, it's sad to think that seventh grade boys living near London are being exposed to such garbage. 

That said, will their teacher's approach be helpful? Is there any good way to respond to such garbage? We can't say the answer is clear.

Also this:

In the Letters section of today's New York Times, four letters appear beneath this heading: "What’s the Best Way to Teach Reading?"

The first letter strikes us as technically accurate, though perhaps a bit dogmatic. That said, also this:

Almost surely, there is no single "best way" to teach reading. But given the fact that reading is in part a culture, we would say that the third letter makes an excellent point:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (2/20/23): Experts grapple with phonics and “effective reading instruction,” but the best way to encourage kids to read is to read to them. It’s a win-win when parents, grandparents or caregivers snuggle up with a child and turn the pages of board books or picture books or alphabet books or singalongs at whatever pace the toddler prefers.

“Goodnight Moon,” “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” and “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”—I loved reading these classics to my daughters, and I love reading them now to my grandsons.

Librarians can help you pick out ideal age-appropriate books—our tax dollars at work. Going to a baby shower or birthday party? A bookseller can help you select something perfect that will outlast bibs or clothes. Books are gifts that children can open again and again.

In short, if we want our kids to read, let’s read with them, and make it joyful. And let them see you reading too.

Reading is, in part, a culture. There's no single way to teach reading in schools, but that letter makes an excellent point about the way reading can be passed on in the home if appropriate conditions prevail.

There's no perfect way to teach values. There isn't even a perfect way to teach reading! And as if that wasn't enough uncertainty, now we're involved in a great civil war, testing the way American history, or major parts of American history, can best be taught in the public schools.

When you turn to a daily newspaper—when you subject yourself to "cable news"—you may find that you're meeting on a great battlefield of that war. 

We refer, of course, to the current discussion, or pseudo-discussion, about the way important parts of American history will be presented in a new Advanced Placement high school course in African-American studies. 

More specifically, we refer to the discussion about the way such history will be taught to the higher-performing kids who qualify for the course, with the rest of our public school kids once again being left behind.

This morning, in the Washington Post, Nick Anderson presents a fascinating report about some of the ways that Advanced Placement course was changed by its authors, the College Board, in the course of the past year. 

When the final version of the course was released, some topics were IN and some topics were suddenly OUT. Anderson starts like this:

ANDERSON (2/20/23): A politically charged adjective popped up repeatedly in the evolving plans for a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies. It was “systemic.”

The February 2022 version declared that students should learn how African American communities combat effects of “systemic marginalization.” An April update paired “systemic” with discrimination, oppression, inequality, disempowerment and racism. A December version said it was essential to know links between Black Panther activism and “systemic inequality that disproportionately affected African Americans.”

Then the word vanished. “Systemic,” a crucial term for many scholars and civil rights advocates, appears nowhere in the official version released Feb. 1. This late deletion and others reflect the extraordinary political friction that often shadows efforts in the nation’s schools to teach about history, culture and race.

As Anderson notes—he presents a list of actual word counts—several other key words were basically OUT in the final version of the course, which was released this month. 

For better or worse, the word "womanism" is totally OUT. By Anderson's count, it was reduced from 15 uses in an earlier version of the course to the current none. 

Also for better or worse—there's no ultimate way to reach such judgments—the word "reparations" is basically OUT, reduced from 15 uses to one (1).

What isn't gone is the political fighting about what should be IN and what should be OUT, and about why such changes were made. We are now engaged in a great tribal war about this important general topic and—as routinely happens at times of war—an unhelpful Babel has rather quickly emerged.

As matters stand, there are some basic things we don't understand about this Advanced Placement course. (To review the College Board's "official course framework," you can just click here.)

For better or worse, the course seems to have reverted to a course in African-American history, rather than to the advertised course in "African-American studies." That said, we'll leave the basic things we don't understand for another school day.

What we do understand is this:

When we lapse into "a great tribal war," tribunes from all warring camps may tend to behave somewhat poorly. We'd say that's happening in this case. We don't think such conduct helps.

Now we're engaged in a great civil war, producing a bit of a Babel! And as you know:

When a journalistic / political Babel emerges, it's amazingly easy to see the bad faith and errors on the part of the Others. It can be hard to see the various ways our own tribunes may have misstepped.

We're inclined to regard Ron DeSantis as a demagogue and a bully. That said, we regard the journalists and professors within our blue tribe as being somewhat unreliable, if not perhaps a bit more so.

Beyond that, we regard the College Board as a profit-based, and somewhat political, corporate nonprofit entity. When a Babel breaks out among that array of parties, a whole lot of things can go wrong.

There's no perfect way to teach school kids values. There's no single way to teach reading.

There is also no one way to teach higher-performing high school students the basic components of our sprawling and frequently brutal history. But when a Babel starts to emerge, warring parties will tend to insist that perfect wisdom can be found on the side of their own infallible tribe.

It's very hard for a very large nation to function at a time of Babel. For better or worse, democracy struggles at such times, major experts will sometimes insist.

Tomorrow: Professors Gates and McWhorter and Ron DeSantis and the upper-end press corps oh my!

Online Post, print edition Post!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2023

Fox News disappears: Three cheers for the print edition of the Washington Post!

This very morning, there it sat, above the fold on the paper's front page. The headline above the news report said this:

Fox aired false claims to avoid losing its audience

In print editions, that news report sat above the fold, right on the Post's front page!

Moments ago, we decided to subject ourselves to the (frequently punishing) Online Washington Post Challenge. 

We searched in succession on the last names of the report's three authors. Sure enough! At present, this important news report doesn't exist on the online Washington Post's endless front page at all.

Every type of piffle is present. The report about Fox is not.

The Fox News Channel is quite a mess. Is it possible that the online Post is trying to get even dumber?

Just so you'll know: At present, the online Post gives banner treatment to six (6) news reports at the top of its endless front page.

Six reports get banner treatment. The last three such offerings are these:

A police department wanted to study the effects of pot. So it asked for volunteers—free pizza included.

This French onion pasta is internet famous—and lives up to the hype

When did NBA stars become too cool to dunk?

NBA stars have become too cool to dunk! That pointless report is bannered at the top of the endless front page. 

The important report about Fox News isn't on the front page at all.

Black history, trans issues and Fox News oh my!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2023

Everything all at once: We're happy to praise Nicolle Wallace for something she wisely chose to air on yesterday's Deadline: White House.

As was completely appropriate, Wallace spent the bulk of her two hours discussing the new revelations concerning the inner workings of Fox News. 

More specifically, a legal filing by Dominion Voter Systems had revealed a wealth of text messages between major figures at Fox—text messages dating all the way back to November 2020. 

In the texts, these major figures discussed the craziness of the claim—or at least, the craziness of some of the claims—that the 2020 election had been stolen from the incumbent, Donald J. Trump. 

Major players at Fox News knew that several specific claims were crazy. Therein lay the new revelation about the ways of Fox.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, the craziest claims about Dominion Voting Systems were coming from Sidney Powell, one of Donald Trump's more visibly unhinged lawyers.  At one point, the Dominion legal filing describes this private, text message exchange about Powell and her claims:

DOMINION LEGAL FILING: By November 18, Carlson told Ingraham “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson replied, “It's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it."

According to the legal filing, so went the private messaging inside Fox, 15 days post-election.

Assuming the legal filing is fundamentally accurate, it offers a jaw-dropping look at what major players were saying and thinking inside the castle at Fox. At that time, Carlson was saying that Powell's claims were "insane," and that he found her promulgation of those claims to be "unbelievably offensive."

For ourselves, we have no difficulty believing that that's what Carlson actually thought and felt at that time. Up jumped Wallace on yesterday's program, playing videotape of the way Carlson had chosen to open his Fox News show this very Thursday night:

CARLSON (2/16/23): Good evening, and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight! 

We haven't taken a poll, but it's possible, on this Thursday evening, you may be wondering what the hell is going on in our country. 

There are so many unanswered questions―some of them lingering. How, for example, did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his former boss, rock star crowd surfer Barack Obama? 

Results like that would seem to defy the laws of known physics and qualify instead as a miracle. Was the 2020 election a miracle? Honestly, we don’t know and we don’t expect to get an answer to it tonight.

Lomg story short:

Ignore the puerile insults which now litter this fellow's work. (Later that night, he described Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as "a low-IQ plastic surgery disaster," to cite just one more example.)

Ignore the disordered insults! As Wallace noted, Carlson was still suggesting, this Thursday night, that something was fishy about the 2020 election—that the official results of that election don't seem to make any sense.

Over at Fox, the disordered fellow lives in a world of puerile insult—and he continues to float the suggestion that the White House election was stolen. 

The apparent contradiction with what he said in November 2020 can surely be explained away. (Sidney's Powell's "insane" claims aren't the only claims which can be made about that election.)

That said, Carlson is still on the air every night, suggesting that something about that election's official outcome defies simple common sense. Puerile insults are thrown in the stew to pander to the same viewers on whose behalf he took offense back in the reign of the crackpot Powell.

"You may be wondering what the hell is going on in our country," Carlson said this Thursday night. Part of "what is going on," of course, is this behavior by Carlson. 

Alas! Marvin Gaye is no longer here to explain "What's Going On." Also this:

Wallace's program rarely expends any energy wondering how our own blue tribe can bring the news of Carlson's disorder to the attention of persuadable red tribe voters.

At present, our blue and red tribes live inside their own separate bubbles; very rarely the twain shall meet. Dueling propaganda mills now operate twenty-four hours a day. That has produced a high-speed, profit-based, round-the-clock train wreck which will be quite hard to resolve.

Within this discouraging state of affairs, all hail Feiler faster! In Thursday's report—it seems like a hundred years ago—we recalled the prescient thesis which was named by Mickey Kaus back at the turn of the century:

Feiler faster thesis

The Feiler faster thesis (FFT) is a thesis, or supported argument, in modern journalism that suggests that the increasing pace of society is matched by (and perhaps driven by) journalists' ability to report events and the public's desire for more information.

The idea is credited to Bruce Feiler and first defined by Mickey Kaus in a February 24, 2000 Kausfiles blog post...In an article published two weeks later, on March 9, 2000, Kaus gave the theory the name "Feiler faster thesis."

[...]

Kaus's second interpretation in a later article is broader and more succinct:

The news cycle is much faster these days, thanks to 24-hour cable, the Web, a metastasized pundit caste constantly searching for new angles, etc. 

Indeed! Thanks to all those new media, "the news cycle is much faster these days." 

Also, within that high-speed news cycle, "a metastasized pundit caste" really is "constantly searching for new angles, etc." Also, that metastasized pundit caste is increasingly partisan / tribal.

Plus, the rewards are too damn high! Tons of money are being made as that metastasized pundit caste pushes tribally segregated accounts of a fast-moving string of controversies. Faster and faster and faster and faster, disputes arise, one after the other, as do the dueling tribal accounts of those endless disputes.

The legal filing by Dominion gives us a remarkable look inside one "cable news" channel. We'd love to see what sorts of messaging may or may not occur within our own blue cable channel—a channel which also works to give us viewers the types of food product we want.

(See quote from Michelle Goldberg below.)

That said, the rush of events in this past week brought the wisdom of "Feiler faster" into very clear view. Consider:

On Monday, a news report in the New York Times heightened the focus on the way the College Board adjusted the original framework of its Advanced Placement course in African American studies.

A wide range of difficult questions are involved in this important topic. The difficulty is compounded by the polarization of the journalistic culture—by the way our dueling tribes will assure their respective populations that Only Our Own Instinctive Views Are Defensible, Moral, Correct.

Especially in this high-speed, highly polarized world, it would be very hard to create a sensible discussion of the questions involved in the design of the College Board's AP course. But then, mid-week, it happened again! 

All of a sudden, a new arrival on the front became the topic of general conversation. We refer to the highly-charged discussion of various issues in the realm of transgender rights.

Please don't make us link to the essays and public statements which suddenly shoved the College Board aside in favor of this new arrival. You could possibly start with this essay at Slate, then click a few of the links which you'll find therein.

Especially in this high-speed, highly polarized world, it would be very difficult to create a sensible discussion of the various important questions involved here. But then, on Thursday night, along came that legal filing from Dominion, and the fight about transgender issues had suddenly been supplanted at the front of the stage.

In this high-speed journalistic world, new arrivals on the front keep appearing day after day. Beyond that, the "democratization of media" produced by the Internet means that any subgroup can state its particular case. No journalistic platform required!

In theory, the democratization of media is a very good development. In practice, it's everything everywhere all at once, just in the course of one week!

Given the profit-driven partisanship of many of our media entities, conflicting claims would be extremely hard to resolve, even in the fullness of time.  When it's everything suddenly all at once, it becomes impossible to produce anything which even resembles basic clarity, let alone consensus, concerning the basic facts and the basic logic of any particular topic.

As a general matter, Wallace strikes us as being perhaps a tiny bit demagogue adjacent, if only as a matter of instinct. This doesn't mean that she's a "bad person," because she surely isn't.

It does mean that she's quite limited as a journalist. Others may know what our blue tribe needs, but she seems to know what we want.

Yesterday, Wallace provided a valuable service, alerting us to the way Carlson opened Thursday night's program. Left unaddressed was that same old question:

In the high-speed rush of highly emotional tribal disputes, is there any way that our blue tribe can peel voters away from Carlson's legion of viewers?

Back in November 2020, Carlson said that Powell's lunacy was "unbelievably offensive." "Our viewers are good people," he said, "and they believe" what Powell is saying.

Fox viewers still don't know that they're being misled by the gruel Carlson ladles. Somewhat similarly, it may not occur to our own tribe's viewers that we seldom hear "a discouraging word" on our own tribe's cable news programs.

Our own tribe's viewers will never see John McWhorter on their favorite programs. Next week, we'll examine some of things he and many others have said about the College Board's AP course, including the things we may not be allowed to hear on our tribe's favorite programs.

Our own tribe's favorite TV shows are profit-based entities too! The hosts are paid enormous sums to keep us watching. (We aren't allowed to know how much.)

Our own tribe's shows are profit-based entities. Can it be that we're being misled, mistreated and underfed too, not unlike Carlson's viewers?

Free the John McWhorter One! Why is it that we never see him, and who knows what others, on our favorite shows?

Not that there's anything right with it: In this morning's New York Times, Michelle Goldberg pens an excellent column about the Fox reveal.

Along the way, she offers this. She could have named a lot more topics our tribe won't hears about:

GOLDBERG (2/18/23): It’s certainly true that all cable news shows program with ratings in mind. MSNBC—where, full disclosure, I’m a contributor — pays much closer attention to various Trump scandals than to climate change or the war in Ukraine because it’s catering to its audience. But there is no analogue for the way Fox treats its viewers.

In addition to MSNBC, in the past I’ve appeared a number of times on CNN. Sometimes hosts are a little saltier when the cameras aren’t rolling, but I don’t recall ever hearing any daylight between the views they express on-air and off. Fox News is unique in its bad faith.

They keep serving our favorite food: Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

We're inclined to agree that Fox is the worst. But the other two channels address our own tribe. For that reason, we're the ones they're dumbing down in search of ratings and profit!

Tucker Carlson does it again!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Troubled youngster allowed to unload on "low-IQ plastic surgery disaster:" The New York Times put it on today's front page—on the front page of today's Business Day section.

Assuming the Times reporting is fully accurate, it might have belonged on page A1—on the front page of the whole newspaper. 

We refer to this report about the way major figures within Fox News privately mocked the Trump campaign's claims of election fraud in the first few weeks after the November 2020 election. Headline included, the report begins like this:

Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff.’

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation...

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.

The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”

The major players at Fox News thought the claims of election fraud were crazy! Even so, "the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air," the New York Times reports.

As the Times notes, its news report is based upon "a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems." You can examine that legal filing here, although it's fairly heavily redacted, producing occasional uncertainty about the context in which certain statements were made.

In its report, the Times quotes a statement by Fox which says that Dominion has "mischarcaterized the record." The Times proceeds to offer this account of an incident which occurred shortly after the 2020 election:

PETERS AND ROBERTSON: The brief shows that Fox News stars and executives were afraid of losing their audience, which started to defect to the conservative cable news alternatives Newsmax and OAN after Fox News called Arizona for Mr. Biden. And they seemed concerned with the impact that would have on the network’s profitability.

On Nov. 12, in a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion.

“Please get her fired,” Mr. Carlson said. He added: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Ms. Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the next morning.

Please note: this incident occurred six days before the incident in which Carlson told his colleagues that he had caught Sidney Powell lying. In our view, the Times could have done a better job making the chronology of this unfolding story clear.

That said, the Times report—and the legal filing from which it is drawn—tells a remarkable story about the internal communications within a major "news channel." The major primetime stars are involved, but so is almost everyone else, right up through Rupert Murdoch. 

The Times report may have belonged right on page A1. Then too, there's the rather typical doses of The Crazy which Tucker Carlson was offering viewers during last night's hourlong show.

As we've noted, the "excitable boy" has shed all pretense of journalistic regularity over the past few months. Consider one unhinged presentation we stumbled upon last night.

During his opening monologue, Carlson was complaining about the effort by some Democratic officials to regulate guns more effectively. With all attempts at journalistic regularity dead and gone, here's part of what Carlson said:

CARLSON (2/16/23): The people in charge are stupid, obviously, but they're not so dim they don't understand the consequences of serially mistreating the country over a period of many years. They're starting to get worried.  They are afraid of the people they govern. 

How do we know that? Because they're moving at high speed to disarm the people they govern.  Here's plastic surgery model Gavin Newsome of California last month.

At this point, Carlson played videotape of Newsom saying that sending "thoughts and prayers" in the wake of a mass shooting simply isn't enough. 

You can see the full segment here, including Newsom's statement. A full transcript of the segment is provided. Carlson continued as shown:

CARLSON (continuing directly): "Prayer? How stupid is prayer?" says Gavin Newsom. "People who pray are idiots. I'm the only God here. Bow down before me. You can no longer defend yourselves. Only I have the right to defend your life." 

Now think about that for a minute. It's not a reassuring message, really. Anyone who strips you of your basic God-given right to self-defense is probably not your friend, and anyone who does it in a moment of chaos like the ones we're living through, chaos that people like Gavin Newsom caused on purpose, anyone who does that is probably your blood enemy.

According to Carlson, the "plastic surgery model" had caused the current chaos on purpose. He was telling Californians that he himself is the only God, and that people who pray are idiots.

That makes Newsom the blood enemy of Carlson's millions of viewers. Carlon continued as shown: 

CARLSON (continuing directly): But Gavin Newsom is not alone. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan has the very same message: Stop praying and obey. 

Carlson now played videotape of Whitmer saying that "thoughts and prayers" aren't a sufficient response to our ongoing waves of mass shootings. After he had played the tape, Carlson offered this:

CARLSON: Another low-IQ plastic surgery disaster lecturing us about things she has no understanding of. So laugh at Gretchen Whitmer if you will, but then think about what she's saying. She's mocking prayer. 

Really? Well, now that you mention it, Gretchen Whitmer, we might use a little prayer right now. Prayers work better than equity. Prayers are safer than Norfolk Southern. Prayers are more comforting than Kamala Harris's laugh. 

There's nothing wrong with prayers.  What we don't need any more of is more totalitarian atheists with ill-gotten political power and designs on our lives. We've got enough of those, including you.

Newsom was a plastic surgery model, but Whitmer is a plastic surgery disaster. Also, Whitmer is a low-IQ plastic surgery disaster. 

As a special bonus, a jibe at Kamala Harris was included. There's little point in failing to note this fellow's undisguised resentment of, and anger at, the people he thinks of as women.

According to Carlson, Whitmer and Newsom are totalitarian atheists. They have designs on his viewers' lives, and they've been mocking prayer.

Carlson has abandoned all pretense of journalistic or human normalcy on his nightly program. Our nation is sliding toward the sea, and Fox News is letting its "excitable boy" push the nation from behind pretty much as hard as he can.

Rupert Murdoch is letting this happen. What do you think the network's texts may be saying today?

ANGER AND OTHER: "[Ron] DeSantis may have been right!"

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Home, home on the range: On Valentine's Day—this past Tuesday—one of our tribe's "most favorite" stars made an extremely dumb comment.

In fairness, her comment came in the form of a love letter to tribal belief. Speaking of the state of Florida's pushback against the College Board's original Advanced Placement course, the big star who once worked to outlaw same-sex marriage now piously told viewers this:

WALLACE (2/14/23): [DeSantis has] put out a narrative. So to counter a narrative, you have to aggressively put the facts out there. 

But there's only one set of facts. There's only one history, and I wonder what you think threatens him about the one set of facts and the true history. 

Presumably, Wallace is a good, decent person, but she's also perhaps been slightly "demagogue adjacent" throughout her substantial career. At present, she's loved by cable viewers of the blue kind because she's constantly sending us Valentines of that extremely dumb type.

Speaking of American history, or perhaps of African American history, Wallace said that "there's only one set of facts," and that "there's only one history!" The statement is amazingly dumb, but it helped drive the simple-minded approach to the world which tends to please cable news viewers.

Briefly, let's be fair. On the one hand, and in one sense, it could perhaps be said to be true that "there's only one set of facts." 

That said, there exists an infinite number of ways you can select the set of facts you choose to report, or to include in a textbook. Similarly, there's an infinite number of ways you can shape your account of our (frequently brutal) American history.

The idea that there's "only one history" is just amazingly dumb. But so is much of the cable food product we blues get fed on our tribe's "cable news" channel—a channel whose organization recalls the old American song:

Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

The lyrics track to Dr. Brewster Higley, a 19th century otolaryngologist. As a portrait of basic American culture, they remain apt today. 

Sure enough! Across our blue tribe's cable prairies, discouraging words are seldom heard as our favorite (corporate) TV stars tell us the stories we like.

Carefully selected groups of "our favorite reporters and friends" rarely offer a contradictory word in the face of preferred Storyline supplied by their cable news hosts. 

The skies are not cloudy all day long on our blue tribe's cable news channel! We get to hear the stories we like from our favorite multimillionaire stars. 

No reporter or friend will ever suggest that the Others may possibly have some small/tiny, semi-valid point concerning some topic under review. Around the campfires of the Fox News Channel, the lunacy may during prime time be even worse.

Seldom is heard a discouraging word from our favorite reporters and friends! That said, uh-oh!

Yesterday afternoon, a storm cloud blew down from the mountains and began heading our way. Over at the New York Times, a new opinion column—by a self-described liberal, no less!—appeared beneath this puzzling headline:

DeSantis May Have Been Right

The column was written by John McWhorter, a Times "Opinion Writer." 

McWhorter is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He's also the kind of professor you'll never see or hear on our blue tribe cable channel. 

Professor McWhorter plainly isn't one of our favorite reporters and friends! Just for the record, he also isn't a fan of the Florida official whose name appears in that headline. 

McWhorter isn't a fan of DeSantis. His thoroughly puzzling column started exactly like this:

MCWHORTER (2/16/23): In January, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced he would ban a draft curriculum proposed by the College Board for a new Advanced Placement course in African American studies, criticizing the educational merit of the course. This month the College Board released an official curriculum that revised the course by designating some of the writers and ideas in the draft curriculum as optional topics of study rather than core lessons.

The board claimed that the changes were responses to “the input of professors” and “longstanding A.P. principles.” I am unconvinced, to say the least, especially given the degree to which the counsel of these “professors” was mysteriously consonant with DeSantis’s.

I’d like to make clear that I disapprove of the vast majority of DeSantis’s culture warrior agenda, a ham-handed set of plans designed to stir up a G.O.P. base in thrall to unreflective figures such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. If DeSantis runs for president, he will not get my vote.

However, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and in terms of how we tell the story of Black America, the board did the right thing, whether because of DeSantis’s threat or for more high-minded reasons...

Is John McWhorter allowed to say that? On blue cable, the answer is no!

For the record, McWhorter disapproves of the vast majority of DeSantis' culture war bombast. If we can believe a word McWhorter says, Ron DeSantis reminds him of a stopped clock!

That said, we'll guess that McWhorter would have snorted at Wallace's silly claim that "there is only one history." 

Like everyone else, McWhorter isn't infallible, but he's a thousand times smarter than that. That is why you'll never see him on your favorite shows.

We're going to wrap it up quickly today, looking ahead to next week. But before we do, we'll make two important points.

First, we don't mean to denigrate all of the "favorite reporters and friends" you'll see on our tribe's cable shows. 

In its endless dissection of the one theme it truly adores—Trump Trump Trump Trump, Trump Trump Trump Trump, Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail! —our cable channel has introduced some very sound legal analysts into the public discourse. 

That includes some people who have vast experience and yet manage to be extremely disciplined in the things they say about our tribe's simple-minded desire to see Trump frog-marched to jail.

Some of our favorite friends are in fact very sound, but quite a few others are hacks. Seldom is said a discouraging word—and the skies are not cloudy all day!

Also this:

John McWhorter isn't necessarily right in all his views and assessments. In our view, his writing isn't always perfectly clear, as we would like it to be.

That said, we think he offers some good sound advice in this latest column. His advice concerns a rather simple-minded distinction—the age-old, frequently overlooked distinction between opinion and fact.

We think McWhorter's column offers some good advice. Everywhere else we look, we see an American rampage as our antelope-denuded prairies fill with warring groups. 

Those warring groups are inclined to behave as warring groups always have. In a column in Sunday's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof went anecdotal with an account of ridiculous tribal behavior from a less polarized time:

KRISTOF (2/12/23): I spent much of the 1980s and 1990s as a New York Times correspondent in East Asia, and children there (including mine) learned to read through phonics and phonetic alphabets: hiragana in Japan, bopomofo in Taiwan, pinyin in China and hangul in South Korea. Then I returned with my family to the United States in 1999, and I found that even reading was political: Republicans endorsed phonics, so I was expected as a good liberal to roll my eyes.

The early critique of phonics in part was rooted in social justice, trying to address inadequate education in inner cities by offering more engaging reading materials. The issue became more political when the 2000 Republican Party platform called for “an early start in phonics,” and when President George W. Bush embraced phonics with a major initiative called Reading First.

For liberals, Bush’s support for phonics made it suspect...

Did we liberals really behave in so foolish a way? If you think that can't be true, "Who's being naïve now, Kay?"

Next to Kristof's column that day, a second column appeared. This column was written by Jamelle Bouie, and as with Kristof, so too here:

In our view, Bouie is sharper than the average mainstream press bear. We base this assessment on TV viewing and newspaper reading, and on things that the gods have said.

Bouie is a good, decent person; he's also perfectly sharp. That said, we thought we saw a tribal Otherization forming at the start of his piece. We thought we saw an ancient impulse—the tendency to believe that only Our Tribe can ever have a valid point of view on a matter where feelings are strong.

According to this ancient impulse, almost as if by definition, the Others are plainly all wrong, and this means that they're very bad people.

In yesterday's thoroughly puzzling column, McWhorter says that a certain stopped clock may have gotten the Advanced Placement matter right. He even goes so far as to suggest that our tribe's highest ranking, official savants can sometimes be thoroughly human, just like everyone else: 

MCWHORTER: Certain takes on race are thought of by an influential portion of progressive Americans—Black, white and otherwise—as incarnations of social justice. To them, our nation remains an incomplete project that will remain mired in denial until these ways of seeing race are universally accepted and determine the bulk of public policy...

I imagine that to people of this mind-set, incorporating these views into an A.P. course on African American studies is seen as a natural step, via which we help get America woken by appealing to its brightest young minds. But for all the emotional resonance, the savory intonation of key buzzwords and phrases and the impassioned support of people with advanced degrees and prize-awarded media status, views of this kind remain views.

To dismiss those in disagreement as either naïve or malevolent is unsophisticated, suggesting that racial enlightenment requires comfort with a take-no-prisoners approach and facile reasoning. Not even the tragedies of America’s record on race justify saying “I’m just right, dammit!” as if the matter were as settled as the operations of gravity.

Can it be—can it possibly be—that our tribe's most lauded professors can possibly be wrong, to some extent or in some way, in one of their Group Beliefs? Could they even be "unsophisticated" in their approach to some matter?

Dear reader! If you don't know that the professors can be wrong, we don't know where the heck you've been over the past few hundred years.

At any rate: Virginia, sadly no! There isn't "only one history," despite what Wallace said.

Everyone knows how silly that statement is, but no one said so on last Tuesday's show. It was Valentine's Day, after all! No discouraging words were allowed!

Our favorite reporters and friends seem to know the shape of the rules under which they're allowed to perform—how they're expected to show their love for the gigantic TV stars who just keep dumbing us down.

Coming next week: So much history, so little time!

Feiler faster strikes again!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Also, watching The Fabelmans: As the minutes have ticked by today, the Feiler faster thesis (FFT) seems to have struck again.

A new arrival on the front has shoved the debate about the College Board aside. We'll put the new arrival off until another day. Next week, we hope to offer a wider array of reactions to the debate about the College Board's Advanced Placement course—about the debate which seems to have been eclipsed by today's new arrival.

For now, we'll offer a quick reaction to something we did last night. In a bit of an homage to the Feiler faster thesis, we semi-watched the Oscar-nominated film, The Fabelmans, fast forwarding all the way through.

Having fast forwarded through the Spielberg film, we decided to peruse the reviews. We were stunned by the many raves it received, but no review was more surprising than the one by Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.

Dargis is one of the Times' two chief movie critics. Like her colleague, A. O. Scott, she didn't include The Fabelmans in her list of the year's ten best films. There's still justice in the world!

That said, in Dargis' case, it gets better, or possibly worse! As you can see by clicking this link, she also didn't include The Fabelmans in her list of 23 other films from last year which she said we should "make sure to watch." 

That would seem to mean that, for Dargis, The Fabelmans was, at best, the 34th best film of the year. And yet, her review of the film strikes us as a borderline rave. These major reviewers today!

The Fabelmans died at the box office too, though not as badly as Tár; it struck us as a serious dud. That doesn't mean that we hate all films. Last Friday, we stumbled upon 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a bit more than fifteen years after it first appeared.

The film appeared in 2007, live and direct from Romania. It won three awards at Cannes, including the Palme d'Or. 

It kept us watching till late in the night. We're grateful that we stumbled upon it. 

For background information, click here. We're very glad that we saw it.

Domestic box office to date: According to Box Office Mojo, The Fabelmans has brought in $17.0 million. Tár is closing in on 6.5.

ANGER AND OTHER: The Feiler faster thesis prevails!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Even among our own: It's hard to believe, but we're so old that we can remember when the column by Nicholas Kristof—and a second column on the same page—seemed to offer a chance to understand these deeply unfortunate times.

In fact, the columns appeared four days ago, in the New York Times Sunday Review. Their significance has been overtaken by the growing dispute over the College Board's AP course in African American Studies (not in Black History), which has become the culture issue of the moment.

We're older than that now! One thinks of the so-called "Feiler faster thesis," which—according to the leading authority—is now more than twenty years old:

Feiler faster thesis

The Feiler faster thesis (FFT) is a thesis, or supported argument, in modern journalism that suggests that the increasing pace of society is matched by (and perhaps driven by) journalists' ability to report events and the public's desire for more information.

The idea is credited to Bruce Feiler and first defined by Mickey Kaus in a February 24, 2000 Kausfiles blog post and Slate online magazine article, "Faster Politics: 'Momentum' ain't what it used to be." In an article published two weeks later, on March 9, 2000, Kaus gave the theory the name "Feiler faster thesis."

[...]

Kaus's second interpretation in a later article is broader and more succinct:

The news cycle is much faster these days, thanks to 24-hour cable, the Web, a metastasized pundit caste constantly searching for new angles, etc. 

The thesis even has its own acronym—it's known as the FFT! That distinguishes it from the much older FFV, "the fastest on the line."

So true, Mickey Kaus, so true! The so-called news cycle really is much faster these days, "thanks to 24-hour cable, the Web, a metastasized pundit caste constantly searching for new angles, etc."

("A metastasized pundit caste?" Whoever may have dreamed it up, it's an excellent turn of phrase!)

Quite plainly, the FFT has turned out to be true! Thanks to 24-hour cable—even thanks to the constantly changing, 24-hour Washington Post—there plainly is a constant high-velocity search "for new angles, etc."

Twenty-four hours must be filled! There's a constant need for product.

Alas! Along with that constant search for new angles, we get a constant supply of silly new claims—silly new claims, we're forced to say, which emerge from both major political / cultural tribes, and from subsets within them. 

That includes our own self-assured blue tribe, and subsets within that tribe!

At any rate, the claims have been general over cable in the course of the past four days. As those warring claims have emerged, they make it seem like a million years have passed since Nicholas Kristof offered this instructive recollection in last Sunday's column for the New York Times:

KRISTOF (2/12/23): I spent much of the 1980s and 1990s as a New York Times correspondent in East Asia, and children there (including mine) learned to read through phonics and phonetic alphabets: hiragana in Japan, bopomofo in Taiwan, pinyin in China and hangul in South Korea. Then I returned with my family to the United States in 1999, and I found that even reading was political: Republicans endorsed phonics, so I was expected as a good liberal to roll my eyes.

The early critique of phonics in part was rooted in social justice, trying to address inadequate education in inner cities by offering more engaging reading materials. The issue became more political when the 2000 Republican Party platform called for “an early start in phonics,” and when President George W. Bush embraced phonics with a major initiative called Reading First.

For liberals, Bush’s support for phonics made it suspect. That had some basis: The Reading First program was not well implemented, and careful evaluations showed it had little impact. It died.

Forget the rest of Kristof's column, which struck us as largely deluded. Can the story told by those highlighted passages possibly be true?

Can our own blue tribe have been so silly as to behave in the way that's described? Can Kristof's recollection possibly be accurate?

Kristof says that, "as a good liberal," he was told by others within our tribe that he should roll his eyes at phonics instruction! He says this happened at the turn of the century, at the very time when the FFT was barreling down the line.

Why was Kristof told, at that time, that he should roll his eyes at phonics instruction? According to Kristof, liberals were rolling their eyes at phonics because the GOP platform endorsed it!

President Bush had even embraced it! That told us that phonics was bad!

Nicholas Kristof is very bright; he has extremely good values. We were shocked, but not surprised, by his recollection, though we can't say to what extent his recollection is accurate.

That said:

It seems to us that Kristof's recollection is extremely valuable. We can feel sure that Nicholas Kristof isn't making this story up. Because the story is surely true to some extent, it teaches a potentially valuable lesson.

The lesson it teaches is very important, though only for such blue tribe members who are willing to "refuse to be a fool." The lesson it teaches is this:

Kristof's story teaches us that our own blue tribe can be amazingly silly too. That we're even capable of throwing American schoolkids under the bus in our ever-faster search for ideological purity.

At times, We may refuse to be like Them in the dumbest manner possible. We adopt our new heartfelt stance because the Others are known to be different and stupid and evil.

According to expert anthropologists, every bone in our human bodies teaches that antique lesson. And if you've been watching blue cable this week, you've seen that principle being enacted on an instant new field of play.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we liberals are human too! Our experts will sometimes have imperfect judgment. Our professors can sometimes be subsumed by the force of their preferred hobbyhorses, and our multimillionaire cable stars—more and more, and faster and faster—can perhaps be seen positioning themselves, in these latter days, as demagogue adjacent.

This phenomenon is coming on faster and faster, just as Feiler said. Tomorrow, we'll turn to the column—by a second very sharp player—which shared a page with Kristof's column on Sunday last.

Given everything which has happened since then, it seems like a million years have passed since those two columns appeared! So it goes, in large part, when our technologies drive our hard-wired, all too human brains to operate faster and faster.

On this basis, we invite you to take The Feiler Faster Challenge:

Can you conceive of the possibility that our own tribe's professors and experts may have imperfect judgment? Can you imagine the possibility that, in some given matter, they could even (perhaps) be wrong?

We've heard a lot of dumb claims this week, many from within our own tribe. According to an array of top experts, our brains are wired to work this way as we hurry ahead, ardent for some desperate glory, enjoying our latest war.

Please don't expose the children to phonics. George Bush said you should!

Tomorrow: These Extremely Bad Others Today! 

Was the College Board swayed by Florida's views?

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Kevin Drum says maybe not: Did the College Board adjust the contents of its new Advanced Placement course in response to criticisms or suggestions by the DeSantis administration?

In yesterday's lengthy front-page report, the New York Times seemed to suggest at several points that it did—or at least, that the "left-leaning scholars" with whom the Board worked seem to believe that it did. 

Here is one such passage:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL (2/14/23): In today’s political climate, a dispute [about the contents of the course] may have been unavoidable. African American studies has roots in the civil rights and students’ movements of the 1960s. Its left-leaning scholars often see their discipline as part of an anti-racist social justice movement.

For many conservatives, the field is an example of liberal orthodoxy run amok. They have argued the very premise of it, and called for an approach to Black history that focuses on heroic figures of the past and stays away from contemporary political debates or academic theorizing.

But the College Board also hurt its own cause among supporters, by whittling away material during the months it was engaged in discussions with the DeSantis administration, according to interviews with scholars, teachers and College Board officials, as well as a review of several drafts of the curriculum.

The organization also did not tell some of its academic colleagues of those frustrating discussions—or about the significant omissions.

Now, the College Board is defending the A.P. course it has spent years developing. The nonprofit has infuriated many African American studies scholars for what they view as a stealth betrayal. And its once-heralded course is mired in dissension.

Elsewhere, similar suggestions are made. For example, here's an account of how certain elements were dropped from the proposed course:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: The College Board understood from the beginning that introducing African American studies could draw sparks, especially given the laws in Florida, Jason Manoharan, vice president for A.P. program development, said in an interview.

[...]

The fall 2022 pilot curriculum required a weeklong set of lessons on “Black Feminism, Womanism and Intersectionality.” Required reading included a text by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the law professor who coined the term.

As Dr. Manoharan explained the concept, the state officials were “stone faced,” he said, and he was not sure they understood him.

“I have interacted with many DOEs—this DOE acts as a political apparatus,” he said of Florida’s Department of Education, adding, “It’s not an effort to improve education.”

He said that overall, Florida had not given useful feedback about what was wrong with the course, and he had been baffled and frustrated about how to respond.

“If they had substantive issues, I would have listened to them,” he said. “I welcomed their feedback. Not because I wanted to collude with them, but because I’m a responsible person who wanted to understand if there was something legitimate that they had to say.”

Florida officials declined to comment.

Following those discussions, intersectionality gradually faded from the course.

By the final document, the term was mentioned only as an optional project topic, and there was no mention of Professor Crenshaw.

Dr. Manoharan doesn't seem to be shy about denigrating Florida officials. Stating the obvious, there is no way to assess the accuracy of his various unflattering accounts of their reactions, understandings and comments. 

That said, the Times reports that various changes were made in the proposed AP course during the time of Manoharan's discussions with those Florida officials. 

The New York Times seems to think that the College Board made certain changes in its course as a reaction to those discussions. In this new post, Kevin Drum says he reads the evidence a different way.

Why did the College Board make various changes to the course? We have no ultimate way of knowing, but we don't think that's the main question here. 

The main question here involves the suitability of this introductory, year-long course for a wide range of American high school students. Whatever decisions it ultimately made, the College Board should have listened to criticisms or suggestions from red state sources.  

It's a sign of our nation's unfortunate culture war when liberal entities seek total victory over The Others as this curriculum is drawn into place. It's a sign that we live at a time of total war, with total defeat of the Others as the ultimate tribal goal.

Based upon that lengthy Times report, a lot remains to be said about the contents of this Advanced Placement course. Above all else, we direct you to the state of total war which seems to exist on the blue side of this debate.

In comment threads and in the Times report itself, blue forces seem to be declaring a state of Total War. We seek Total Victory in this Total War over the Others, who constitute the forces of evil.

Only our own infallible outlooks deserve inclusion in this course! The viewpoints of the Others must in all ways be defeated. Let's not create an introductory course in which eager students are challenged about various possible viewpoints and told that they must decide.

Our blue tribe needs to get over itself. Unfortunately, that's a type of analytical skill which is in short supply Over Here.

ANGER AND OTHER: Can our tribe pursue societal justice...

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023

...without inventing the Other?: We'll admit that we don't watch the Super Bowl halftime show. We simply start watching something else, then click back 28 minutes later.

We also don't watch the ads! Beyond that, we'll admit that we're puzzled by some of the values espoused by These Kids Today. 

The Washington Post's Monica Hesse isn't exactly a kid, but for current purposes, she comes reasonably close. She's twenty years out of college—Bryn Mawr, class of 2003—and she's been a highly successful writer, as the leading authority on her career explains:

Monica Hesse is a national bestselling author from Normal, Illinois. She is the recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery for her book Girl in the Blue Coat, and the Society for Feature Journalism's Narrative Storytelling award.

She is a feature writer for The Washington Post where in 2018 she was appointed first ever gender columnist.

If Bill Clinton was the Man from Hope, Hesse is the Woman from Normal!

Monica Hesse is a good, decent person; we have zero doubt about that. She did watch the halftime show last Sunday night, and that's where our puzzlement about These Kids Today begins.

Hesse actually was the Washington Post's first gender columnist. In theory, the institution of such a position suggests that the Post was taking a possibly somewhat belated interest in the sexism and the misogyny which had often been running the world.

That said, Hesse watched the halftime show Sunday night, and it seems that she liked what she saw. Headline included, her new column for the Post starts exactly like this:

Rihanna’s pregnancy was not the star of her halftime show

Rihanna’s pregnancy reveal was at once showstopping and subtle, dazzling and mundane. The impending birth of her second child was disclosed via a spandex jumpsuit on a stage floating at nosebleed altitude in the Super Bowl stadium during a halftime show performed for millions of viewers...

She was far from the first celebrity to orchestrate a public pregnancy reveal. Online chatterers likened the moment to Beyoncé’s bump unveiling (I’m sorry this language is all so revoltingly cutesy; we really need better pregnancy colloquialisms) at the Video Music Awards 12 years ago...

Comparatively speaking, that was a pregnancy announcement. Beyoncé’s reveal was a definitive entrance to motherhood, an invitation for fans to celebrate her transformation. Rihanna’s reveal was less an announcement than an acknowledgment, almost a casual one. Viewers had to wait until the halftime show finished to receive definitive confirmation from Rihanna’s representatives that they’d even seen what they thought they’d seen.

The reveal was seamlessly folded into her performance rather than given its own showcase. It conceded that, yes, something was happening inside this woman’s body—but meanwhile, when is the last time you listened to “B---- Better Have My Money”? That song bangs. And meanwhile, do you remember that Rihanna is also a business mogul? Let her remind you, by pausing mid-set to produce a compact from her own cosmetic line and powder her nose. Her choreography was sultry and sexy; less maternal-madonna than Madonna-Madonna, down to a few well-placed crotch grabs.

We're prepared to admit it! We're not sure we understand the values, including the feminism, of These Kids Today.

"There’s a lot you could find inspiring about what Rihanna did on Sunday night," Hesse writes as she continues. By the end of the column, it's plain that Hesse saw nothing in Rihanna's performance which wasn't inspiring.

Meanwhile, riddle us this:

In her column, Hesse asks readers of the Post when they last listened to the Rihanna hit, “Bitch Better Have My Money." (We're spelling the whole title out.)

We'd never listened to the song, and so we decided to check it out.

As it turns out, "Bitch Better Have My Money" has its own Wikipedia entry. After a fair amount of throat-clearing and folderol, the video gets explained:

The video was directed by Rihanna and Megaforce...The official trailer for the music video was released on June 28, 2015, at the BET Awards. The trailer captured a cryptic storyline: a rich woman, identity unknown, gets herself ready in her lavish apartment, clothes on and purse gathered in her arms, kisses her partner goodbye, and enters a dimly-lit elevator. As this occurs, Rihanna, wearing dark makeup, pulls up to the apartment complex at night. 

She opens up her car's trunk and pulls out a large suitcase. Struggling with the suitcase, she too enters the elevator. In one scene, the elevator doors close on the two standing women. In the next, the doors open and Rihanna struts out, alone, except for her heavy suitcase. The full video, which is seven minutes long, was released on Thursday, July 2, 2015, and was rated MA for graphic violence, nudity, and adult language. In France, the music video is broadcast after 10:30 pm with a warning Not advised for kids under 12 years old (in French, déconseillé aux moins de 12 ans)...

The actual plot of the video involves Rihanna and friends intoxicating and then later sadistically torturing the woman (Rachel Roberts), and also her corrupt accountant husband (Mads Mikkelsen), who has been stealing money. A video was later posted on Metro.com of deleted scenes from the video, showing the torture of the accountant in greater detail. The music video was inspired by Rihanna's real life experience with an accountant who cheated her of her money.

On November 18, 2016, it surpassed 100 million views, becoming the first age-restricted Vevo Certified video to reach that mark.

Those French! Just as Steve Martin once claimed, they have a different word for everything!

Meanwhile, so unbelievably cool! Bitch and her husband get sadistically tortured—and Rihanna gets her money! Even cooler, the video was "inspired" by Rihanna's real life experience!

Bitch Better Have My Money bangs, Hesse opines. These gender columnists today!

Just last week, we had a brief conversation with a lifelong friend about this popular music today. 

"Why does anyone care about Taylor Swift?" we skillfully asked at one point. Our friend, who had introduced the topic, said he had no idea.

When we were kids, our popular singers were busy stopping a war. Also, they described the murder of Medgar Evers—and the lonesome death of Hattie Carroll, which happened here in Baltimore, just a few miles from our current campus.

(Decades later, a coffee shop friend told us that his southern Maryland family had always known the Zanzingers. He'd known "Billy Zanzinger" his whole life, he said, to our surprise.)

That's what the songs of our big stars were like, way back in the day. Today, the big stars' songs all seem to be about their angry disputes with other money-grubbing big stars, we thoughtfully told our friend.

Why would anyone care about songs like that? We have no idea. Beyond that, why would a gender columnist seem to endorse a song in which a billionaire extracts even more money from a bitch she decides to sadistically torture?

We've long been puzzled—on occasion, appalled—by the seemingly faux pseudo-feminism our pathetic blue tribe performs. 

This takes us back to the slimy misogyny widely directed at Namoi Wolf all through the fall of 1999 as a way of taking down Candidate Gore, but also to the bizarre arracks on liberal women unleashed by Chris Matthews, with no one even saying a word—way back when Hardball was one of the most influential of the relative handful of "cable news" political shows.

(For the record, the misogynist attacks on Wolf came at her, again and again, from major figures of the mainstream press. We know of two major figures who complained about this ugly behavior—Bill Kristol and the late William Safire. We liberals all shut our traps!)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our self-impressed, highly moral blue tribe can sometimes give voice to somewhat puzzling values. In other ways, though, our struggling blue tribe has been pushing the frontiers of decency forward. 

(We tend to do that when such conduct doesn't force us to say bad things about major misogynist billionaire stars, until they show up at Mar-a-Lago kissing the ascot of Donald J. Trump with their antisemitic friends.)

Blue values have produced large gains for gays and lesbians in the past in the thirty years. Elsewhere, though, we blues, like many other humans, may display an unfortunate tendency to insist on creating The Other as we pursue further gains.

Can our tribe pursue social justice without engaging in tribal warfare? Without sinking into the brainless types of reactions Nicholas Kristof described in Sunday's column in the New York Times?

Without insisting on the Other? Without insisting that the Other exists? Without demonizing the Other?

Can our tribe pursue greater justice without creating and denouncing the Other? Or have we reached the point where tribal anger forces us to behave that way?

We ask because that hard-wired impulse may possibly tend not to work.

Tomorrow: These Very Bad People Today!

Why did the College Board change its course?

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Also, could it be that our scholars are wrong?: A new arrival on the front became the topic of general conversation.

It also became the primary focus of our unending culture wars.

The new arrival on the front was the College Board's Advanced Placement course in African American studies. In a fascinating front-page report in this morning's New York Times, a trio of reporters describe the scene when the new AP course was unveiled:

HORTOCOLLIS ET L (2/14/23): On the second night of Black History Month, a sparkling crowd of academics and teachers gathered at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to celebrate the unveiling of the first ever Advanced Placement course in African American studies.

But clouding the festive mood was a nagging concern. Compared with the original plans for the high school course, it now lacked, or had less of, certain topics that people at the gathering thought were essential to the discipline, like Black Lives Matter and reparations. And they wondered if the explanation was pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a probable Republican presidential candidate who has railed against what he calls “woke indoctrination” in schools.

What could explain the missing mentions of queer studies and police brutality, and the new inclusion of Black Republicans, like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice?

The College Board was unveiling an introductory course for high school students. As the Times explained a bit later on, the Board had decided ro create a course in "African American studies" rather than "a more conventional history course."

Be that as it may! The question we would start with is this:

Do you understand why an introductory high school course in African American studies would include a unit, or perhaps a few lessons, on "queer theory?" Also, are you sure you want to see blue tribe politicians going head-to-head with Candidate Ron DeSantis over a culture war topic like that?

The lengthy New York Times report presents a fascinating overview of the process by which this new AP course was created. It seems quite clear, at several junctures, that the College Board misled the public about the extent to which they adjusted their original course in response to objections and criticisms from DeSantis World, an emerging Florida theme park.

It also seems fairly clear that the College Board misled the professors and experts with whom it had designed the original course. As to who those professors and experts are, the Times describes them in this general way at several points in the report:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: In today’s political climate, a dispute may have been unavoidable. African American studies has roots in the civil rights and students’ movements of the 1960s. Its left-leaning scholars often see their discipline as part of an anti-racist social justice movement.

[...]

But after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 inspired global protest, the College Board decided to roll out an African American studies class, with a strong emphasis on United States history, politics and culture. The selection of African American studies instead of a more conventional history course was pivotal, putting the staid, mainstream College Board into close contact with a left-leaning group of scholars deeply engaged in contemporary politics.

Stating the obvious, there's nothing necessarily wrong with being a "left-leaning scholar." There isn't any obvious reason why the College Board shouldn't have consulted with "left-leaning scholars" as it developed its course.

That said, there also isn't any guarantee that groups of "left-leaning scholars," however erudite and well-intentioned, will necessarily come up with the wisest plan for an introductory course on a challenging topic—an introductory course designed for use in public high schools nationwide. 

Especially to the extent that such left-leaning scholars are "deeply engaged in contemporary politics," it's possible that their ideas, however well-intentioned, may not always trace the wisest path for a group like the College Board to follow.

In theory, the College Board's Advanced Placements courses will go into public schools in all fifty states. Especially at times of high partisanship, it's important that the Board shows good judgment in the decisions it makes—and that's especially true concerning the vitally important topics involved in this new course.

In this instance, the Board has designed a course in a field which is unavoidably rich with political overtones. Here, for example, is a slightly fuller passage than one we have posted above:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: In today’s political climate, a dispute may have been unavoidable. African American studies has roots in the civil rights and students’ movements of the 1960s. Its left-leaning scholars often see their discipline as part of an anti-racist social justice movement.

For many conservatives, the field is an example of liberal orthodoxy run amok. They have argued the very premise of it, and called for an approach to Black history that focuses on heroic figures of the past and stays away from contemporary political debates or academic theorizing.

In theory, this new AP course is being designed to serve public school students from all over the country. Also, to serve students who hail from families with various political views.

This AP course isn't being designed for use in a private college with a particular orientation or point of view. In the following passage, the Times describes the way the course had been designed before the College Board responded to challenge and criticism from one side of the national aisle:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: The February 2022 document, based mostly on a survey of college syllabuses, included Black queer studies, womanism (a form of Black feminism), mass incarceration, reparations and Black Lives Matter.

It stated that students should understand “structural racism,” “racial formation” and “racial capitalism.”

And the February document also included intersectionality, a fundamental concept in Black studies that refers to the complex ways that overlapping categories of identity—such as race, class, sex and gender—shape individual experiences of the world.

Over the following 11 months, most of those concepts gradually dropped out of the course’s required topics.

We're not saying that any part of that original design was "wrong."

We're also not saying that every part of that original design actually made good sense. Also, we're going to ask those questions again:

Are you sure you understand why "Black queer studies" and "womanism (a form of Black feminism)" should be included in an introductory high school course for use in the public schools? Are you really super-sure that you really understand that?

Also this:

Do you want to see your Democratic candidate arguing with Candidate DeSantis about the presence of those elements in the (very important) high school course our very dumb tribe would be sponsoring?

We haven't seen the original plan for the new AP course. We haven't seen the plan for the course as it has ended up.

We do know this:

Our rampaging blue tribe's "left-leaning scholars" are fully capable of losing elections all by themselves, on their own, without any help from others. We'll also offer this:

We're inclined to regard DeSantis as a demagogue and as a bully. But that doesn't mean that he's always wrong when he lands on a culture war issue. 

In any given case, he might be right—he might be disastrously right—when it comes to the politics. In this particular case, he might even be right on the merits, given the audience for whom this course is being developed. Our own tribe's scholars, such as they are, may sometimes turn out to be wrong!

There's a great deal more to be said about this fascinating report in the New York Times. We'll close by saying that the New York Times' Dana Goldstein embarrassed herself yesterday by the highly selective way she described the report on Deadline: White House.

Goldstein is on the verge of becoming one of Nicolle Wallace's "favorite reporters and friends." She picked and chose from among the contents of the report as she discussed it with Wallace, in a way we'd be inclined to regard as less than obsessively honest.

We blue tribe members get misled as we watch such cable discussions. This serves the interests of Candidate DeSantis.

The other tribe owns this nation too. With that obvious fact in mind, we close this chapter with a warning:

The corporate stars we see on cable are full of passionate intensity, but they're often deeply unwise, even demagogue-adjacent. It's also true that our "left-leaning scholars" could imaginably lose a White House election pretty much all by themselves.

As for you yourself, we ask you to riddle us this:

Can you live without insisting on constructing and denouncing the Other? A certain apparent demagogue / bully apparently plans to find out!

ANGER AND OTHER: Bret Stephens repeats what Kristof said!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Upper-end journos perform: This morning, as part of his weekly "Conversation" with Gail Collins, Bret Stephens of the New York Times has said the same darn thing(s)!

He says the same things Nicholas Kristof said in Sunday's New York Times. For background concerning Kristof's column, see yesterday's report.

This morning, Bret Stephens says the same things Kristof said! Singing sweetly from the hymnal of a long-abandoned religion, Stephens starts with this:

Bret (2/14/23): But speaking of long-term threats to the country, Gail, I was shocked but not surprised to read that two-thirds of American fourth graders are not proficient in reading. What a disaster. Thoughts on fixing?

Gail: Nothing more important to worry about than reading skills. 

(We're presenting the pair as "Bret" and "Gail" because that's what the Times itself does.)

At the start of this exchange, Stephens says he was "shocked but not surprised" by something he'd recently read. He links to a report by the NAEP as the source of what he'd learned.

At this point, we'll take a guess. It's much more likely, that Stephens read about our fourth graders' reading performance in Kristof's column, which also linked to a recent report from the NAEP.

According to Stephens, he was "shocked but not surprised" to learn that "two-thirds of American fourth graders are not proficient in reading." For starters, let us say this about that: 

What qualifies as "proficiency" on some particular test? That is always a subjective assessment—and it has long been claimed, by some education specialists, that the NAEP sets its standard for "proficiency" artificially high.

That's the sort of question you will never see discussed in a newspaper like the New York Times. Instead, you'll see the extremely occasional mention of the overall performance of American kids, generally in a way intended to show how terrible everything is.

Should Stephens have been surprised by what he recently read about the nation's fourth graders? Not hardly, no! The proficiency rate from last year's test was only down by two or three percentage points from the rate recorded in 2019—the last year before Covid hit, and the last time the NAEP had been administered.

In short, roughly two-thirds of fourth graders have always failed to demonstrate "proficiency" in reading, based on the NAEP's (subjective) standard. There was nothing new or surprising about last year's performance, though we'd be very surprised if Kristof, Stephens or Collins had actually known such a fact.

In this morning's "Conversation," Stephens and Collins present the kind of drive-by discussion which is accorded, though only extremely rarely, to such "important" public school topics. As they do, they sing from the hymnal designed to show readers how deeply the New York Times cares.

The pair recite the standard piffle, including Collins' instant claim that there's "nothing more important to worry about than reading skills." 

Then, as if to prove the obvious fact that they don't worry about such matters, the pair go on to reach the same conclusion Kristof did, with a few other bromides tossed in:

Gail: Nothing more important to worry about than reading skills. But you don’t want to encourage an obsession over tests. There’s way too much of that already—even preschools are drilling their kids in preparation for kindergarten entrance exams.

Bret: On this point, Gail, we agree. The endless testing is turning kids into nervous wrecks. And clearly it’s not helping them get any better at reading and math.

Gail: Let’s focus on early childhood education—if it’s the right quality, kids will move on to grade school with skills in problem solving and critical thinking that make the next level so much easier.

That, of course, would require a lot more money. Jill Biden has made it one of her top crusades, and cheers to the first lady for that.

Bret: I’m pretty sure the United States spends much more per student than most other countries, only to achieve lackluster results. Different suggestion: Let’s adopt phonics more widely for early reading, give up new math for old math and urge parents to read to and with their children for at least an hour each night.

Gail: Preschool education is one of our biggest fights, so I guess this conversation needs to be continued.

This conversation needs to be continued, Collins says. And it will be continued—at some point in the next decade! For today, the standard bromides were hauled out:

We shouldn't engage in over-testing, the well-versed pundit pair said. Also, we need to focus on preschool education. It's one of our biggest fights!

Most instructively, Stephens ended up offering the same conclusion Kristof offered two days earlier. "Let’s adopt phonics more widely for early reading," the gentleman thoughtfully said. 

Two days earlier, Kristof had made a pair of ludicrous claims. He said we know how to "fix" education, and he said that phonics instruction will do it. 

Two days later, there was Stephens, linking to the same NAEP report and suggesting the same solution.

When people like these behave in these ways, they tell us who they are. They also tell us how little attention they actually pay to the obvious problems which exist in our nation's public schools, and to the needs and the interests of the millions of good, decent kids who attend them.

In the Conversation we've posted, Stephens makes a snarky remark about the way educational testing hasn't helped our dumbbell kids get better at reading or math. 

Collins proceeds to offer her own simple-minded assessment, sillily saying that early childhood education will send the nations kids to grade school "with skills in problem solving and critical thinking that make the next level so much easier," full other-worldly stop.

Kristof said that phonics instruction would "fix" our reading shortfall. According to various experts, it's easy to make such ridiculous statements when you don't actually care.

Briefly, let's be clear. Nicholas Kristof has long brought a superb set of values to his work at the Times. That said, and in our view, he's always had a major blind spot when it comes to the public schools.

The notion that phonics can "fix" our nation's education problem is a notion which comes to us from the land of I Don't Really Care. No serious person could think such a thing, and no serious person does. 

Before moving on from the latest performance by this trio of Timespersons, let's get clear on the kinds of problem Nicholas Kristof crazily said that phonics instruction can "fix."

Yesterday, we showed you the way reading scores on the NAEP improved between 1998 and 2009—during a period when Kristof says that many liberals had turned against phonics instruction for partisan political reasons.

(President Bush had endorsed phonics. According to Kristof, that turned our blue tribe against it.)

Did any such thing actually happen? We have no idea. But as we showed you yesterday afternoon, these were the average scores in Grade 4 reading during those long-ago years:

Average scores, Grade 4 reading, NAEP
American public schools: 1998 / 2009
White kids: 223.07 / 229.21
Black kids: 191.61 / 203.96
Hispanic kids: 191.70 / 204.10

According to a widely used (though very rough) rule of thumb, ten points on the NAEP scale is roughly equivalent to one academic year. If we apply that very rough rule of thumb, all three of those demographic groups achieved large performance gains during the period in question. 

It's also true that very large "achievement gaps" still obtained between those groups of kids as of 2009. Kristof never mentioned such gaps as he pleasingly told the world that more reliance on phonics instruction can fix our reading shortfall. 

Does any sane person really think any such thing? Bringing ourselves up to date, here are the average scores from last year's NAEP, following two years of dislocation due to Covid:

Average scores, Grade 4 reading, NAEP
American public schools, 2022
White kids: xxx
Black kids: xxx
Hispanic kids: xxxx
Asian American kids: xxxx

Doggone it! The NAEP's web site is currently down, a not infrequent event. 

That said, large "achievement gaps" still exist between those different groups. No sane person could possibly think that we have a magic solution for this state of affairs—an increase in phonics instruction.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our upper-end news orgs would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge before they'd willingly conduct discussions of this educational shortfall. Presumably, the current state of affairs is too embarrassing for these well-intentioned, upper-class figures to report, debate or discuss. 

Instead, they avoid the subject altogether, focusing on their favorite topic—Who will get into Stuyvesant High and possibly even go to Yale?—and offering magical solutions to an unmentioned problem on the extremely rare occasions when public school education gets discussed at all.

Kristof's claim about "fixing" the school comes to us straight from The Crazy. Meanwhile, members of our vastly self-impressed blue tribe need to come to terms with a basic observable fact:

Our tribe quit on the interests, the needs and the happiness of black kids a long time ago. Very few things are ever more clear than that.

Here within our self-impressed tribe, we aren't the supremely moral super-persons we seem to think we are. That doesn't mean that we're bad people. It just means that we're people people.

We aren't the supremely moral people we constantly say we are. This blind spot regarding our own imperfection is one of the factors which had led us, down through the years, to endless political defeats.

This brings us back to Kristof's claim—the remarkable claim that liberals turned against phonics instruction because George W. Bush endorsed it.

Did that actually happen? We have no idea. But the claim provides an entry point to the current state of our nation's tribal war, in which two warring tribes, red and blue, take turns demonizing the Others.

Did liberals really behave that way when Bush was in the White House? We have no idea—but our tribe routinely behaves unwisely now, with a rather large dollop of possible dishonesty constantly thrown on the pile.

A second column in Sunday's Times—a column by a good and decent person—helps us see the casual way we tend to play this game. 

Our anger encourages us to invent the Other. The anger may be understandable, but are its outcomes helpful?

Tomorrow: These Extremely Bad People Today!