EXPLAINING THE CRAZY: Fools for race?

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2013

Part 3—Walsh goes off: With apologies, it’s painful to write about Joan Walsh when she discusses race, or when she pretends to do so.

Our basic ground rules:

Because race has played such a savage role in our American history, we think people ought to be measured and mildly respectful when they address the subject. Also truthful, of course.

Alas! When Joan Walsh brooks this most potent subject, she very much tends to go off. Below, you see the way she started the first of her two recent pseudo-discussions of race. We’ll include Salon’s twin headlines, which Walsh may not have composed:

WALSH (10/1/13): The real story of the shutdown: 50 years of GOP race-baiting

A House minority from white districts want to destroy the first black president, and the GOP majority abets them

On the day the Affordable Care Act takes effect, the U.S. government is shut down, and it may be permanently broken. You’ll read lots of explanations for the dysfunction, but the simple truth is this: It’s the culmination of 50 years of evolving yet consistent Republican strategy to depict government as the enemy, an oppressor that works primarily as the protector of and provider for African-Americans, to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that everything came apart under our first African-American president wasn’t an accident, it was probably inevitable.

In comments, conservatives rolled their eyes at the idea that Walsh of all people was discussing “race-baiting.” Given Walsh’s performances down through the years, we’d have to say they have a bit of a point.

The fact that they have a bit of a point is bad for American interests.

In her piece, Walsh discussed, or seemed to discuss, the Republican Party’s relation to race over the past fifty years. As she started, she made a claim which she described as “the simple truth.”

We’ll do along with the part about “simple!” In this statement, Walsh is telling a very simple story, to the extent that we can determine what she’s actually saying:

The current government shutdown is “the culmination of 50 years of evolving yet consistent Republican strategy to depict government as the enemy, an oppressor that works primarily as the protector of and provider for African-Americans.”

Is that right? Is the current shutdown “the culmination of” the GOP’s depiction of the government as an oppressor which works primarily to provide for blacks?

That is a vastly sweeping claim, a claim with several moving parts. It makes us white liberals feel very good to hear a brave truth-teller say it. But it’s a little hard to paraphrase that claim, especially when we get to Joan’s mystical follow-up:

“The fact that everything came apart under our first African-American president wasn’t an accident, it was probably inevitable.”

Is that true? For starters, is it true that “everything” has “come apart” at the present time? More so than under the last Democratic president, the one who wasn’t African-American, when this very same Republican Party shut down this very same federal government?

Is Walsh making a true statement there? Or is she simply tugging her disc, turning race into a toy?

Personally, we don’t like people who make race a toy in the way this bad person does. As you may know, Walsh has been a bad person in many ways over the course of the past fifteen years, often in ways we pseudo-liberals were and are too dumb to notice and too meek to discuss.

That said, Walsh very much tends to make race a toy, dumbing us liberals way down in the process. A bit later on in this first of her screeds, she turns to the type of sweeping claim with which the world’s very bad people have always diddled the world’s swift-running herds:

Try to believe that a decent person would throw this gruel to us liberals:

WALSH: This is [Lee] Atwater talking to an academic interviewer in 1981, Year One of the Reagan revolution:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N–ger, n–ger, n–ger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n–ger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N–ger, n–ger.”

And then you say “Defund Obamacare,” and everyone knows why.

In that highlighted statement, Walsh makes a remarkable sweeping claim. She says everyone knows that “Defund Obamacare” is really a version of “N—ger.” In this way, Walsh tells us what tens of millions of people are thinking. What they’re thinking is evil and bad.

You have to be a very bad person to sell a big boatload of crap like that. And you have to be stupid to buy it.

The world of the right has been actively selling The Crazy for the last fifty years. Here on the left, we slept through the bulk of that period. At the end of Campaign 2000, for instance, Walsh was pretending that she hadn’t noticed what the press corps had just done for two years to Candidate Gore.

Walsh, who is a very bad person, was conning her liberal readers that way; her readers didn’t know that. She was also creating the path by which she would reach the top of the corporate-run liberal press world.

When very bad people ascend to such heights, they may peddle bullshit like this:

WALSH: Over and over, that’s how things got worse: Republicans who know better, who probably aren’t “racist” in the old-fashioned sense of believing in black inferiority and opposing the equality and integration of the races, nonetheless pander to those who are, for electoral gain. And when the election of our first black president riled up the racists and launched the Tea Party—supposed deficit hawks who tolerated skyrocketing government spending under George W. Bush—too many Republicans went along.

Today, the entire government has been taken hostage by leaders elected by this crazed minority, who see in the face of Barack Obama everything they’ve been taught to fear for 50 years. Start with miscegenation: He’s not just black, he’s the product of a black father and a white mother. (That helps explain an unconscious motive for birtherism: They can’t get their minds off the circumstances of his conception and birth.)

How crazy is Salon’s Joan Walsh, who is also a very bad person? She’s crazy right out of her corporate ascot, as she proves in that mindless passage, for which we liberals cheered.

In that first highlighted passage, is Walsh saying that the Tea Party is a bunch of racists? Not exactly, though she pleasures us with the kind of textual juxtaposition we used to decry when President Bush would stick al Qaeda and Iraq together that way.

(By the way, did government spending “skyrocket under Bush?” Not exactly, no! It’s amazing how much less such spending skyrockets if you adjust for inflation!)

But the genuine lunacy of this post is found in that second paragraph. In that passage, Walsh goes back to mind-reading tens of millions of people she doesn’t know. This time, her mind-reading concerns the way this crazed minority just can’t get miscegenation out of their crazy heads!

That’s an ugly thing to do and say, although people like Walsh have always done it, down through the annals of time. It’s also amazingly stupid. The fact that we liberals find this pleasing says unflattering things about us.

It shows how much we love to hate. Beyond that, it shows that we feel right at home with sweeping claims that are amazingly stupid.

According to Walsh, the voters who comprise the Tea Party constitute “a crazed minority.” When these millions of people contemplate President Obama, “they can’t get their minds off the circumstances of his conception and birth.”

Only a very stupid person would make such a blatantly crazy claim—a very bad person who seems to be a bit of a nut herself.

For the past fifty years, major groups on the corporate right have been aggressively selling The Crazy. For most of that time, climbers like Walsh averted their gaze from this obvious fact.

Darlings, pushback just wasn’t done! These climbers sleep-walked their way through life and maneuvered their way to the top.

In the recent years, a few ridiculous people like Walsh have begun to create money-making news orgs aimed at us liberals. It’s bad for liberals and other living things when crazy people like Joan Walsh peddle The Crazy this way.

Is race becoming a toy on the pseudo-left? We plan to write about that general topic all next week.

But how respectful is Joan Walsh when it comes to the vast brutality which constitutes our history of so-called race? Or is race a bit of a toy for Walsh, a way to run us pitiful rubes, who seem to enjoy being run?

Monday: What Kevin Drum said

Now they even have Kevin Drum!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013

The most obvious question on earth: Everybody makes mistakes. For example, we made a mistake in 2002, though we try not to dwell or obsess on it.

That said, we thought Kevin Drum got something wrong yesterday. He was annoyed with CNN’s Dana Bash for asking Harry Reid the most obvious question on earth.

Republicans had proposed passing a small CR to fund cancer treatments for children, which have been suspended in the government shutdown. Working from an account by Dave Weigel, Drum posted this version of the exchange in which Bash posed her question to Reid:

WEIGEL (10/3/13): CNN's Dana Bash asked Senate Democratic leaders if they'd back the new piecemeal bill.

"What right do they have to pick and choose what parts of government can be funded?" asked Reid.

"But if you can help one child with cancer, why wouldn't you?" asked Bash.

“Ugh. It's irksome that reporters like Bash are so eager to play gotcha with obvious Republican talking points,” Drum said.

We’re puzzled by that reaction, which was widely trumpeted in comments.

(Please note: We aren’t talking about what Reid said in reply to this question. Drum, and commenters, criticized Bash for asking the question at all.)

We’re puzzled by Drum’s criticism of Bash. That seems like the world’s most obvious question, given the fact that the GOP had advanced the piecemeal proposal.

Why wouldn’t a journalist ask that question once the proposal had been advanced? Beyond that, who won’t Democrats go along with these piecemeal CRs?

As the tribal lines hardened, commenters struggled to assert that this was an absurd idea. But it isn’t an absurd idea. Bash’s question made perfect sense, and we haven’t yet heard a good answer:

Why shouldn’t you fund the cancer treatments, if that is the only thing the GOP lets you do?

This is a time of tribal stress. Drum’s commenters tried to stay in line with the Democratic position, which said that all the funding should be done in one bill.

Ideally, we agree with that! But if the GOP will only do this, why wouldn’t you sign that CR?

Commenters seemed to fear that the GOP would score a political win that way. We have no idea why that would be the case. Each time Obama signed one of those tiny CRs, it would provide a high-profile opportunity to note the sheer absurdity of what the GOP is doing.

Politically, it would be a great gig for Dems. Everyone would be able to see how silly the spectacle was.

In this case, it would also get some kids treated for cancer! As an American journalist once memorably asked, “But if you can help one child with cancer, why wouldn't you do that?”

INVISIBLE CHILDREN: How to write elite con fiction!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013

Part 4—Our less advantaged great kids: We don’t always believe the stories in Amanda Ripley’s new book.

Don’t get us wrong! Her book, The Smartest Kids in the World, is an interesting book; the book is well worth reading. It proposes two or three gentle education reforms—reforms which may make perfect sense in large swaths of our society.

That said, we don’t believe some of Ripley’s stories. And she basically disappears a large bunch of American kids.

Let’s start with the first tale we don’t quite believe. We’ve mentioned this story before. It starts on page 1 of the book.

At the start of her book, Ripley describes the way she came to write it. Starting with an assignment for Time in 2008, she develops an interest in public school education. Over time, her interest grows.

Over the course of several years, Ripley is increasingly puzzled by the wide divergence she finds in the academic outcomes of the world’s public schools. Finally, a light bulb goes off in her head!

In the passage below, Ripley explains what happened. We don’t quite believe this story, in which Ripley refers to a chart which appears on page 3 of her book.

That chart displays “test scores” for fifteen nations, dating from the 1960s through the present time. In this passage, Ripley describes the chart which “blew her mind” and led her to write her book:

RIPLEY (page 2): Then one day I saw this chart and it blew my mind.

The United States might have remained basically flat over time, but that was the exception, it turned out. Look at Finland! It had rocketed from the bottom of the world to the top, without pausing for breath. And what was going on in Norway, right next door, which seemed to be slip sliding into the abyss, despite having virtually no child poverty? And there was Canada, coming up from mediocrity to the heights of Japan. If education was a function of culture, could culture change that dramatically—that fast?

...Compared to most countries, the United States was typical, not much better nor much worse. But in a small number of countries, really just a handful of eclectic nations, something incredible was happening.

Apparently, these are the days of miracles and wonder, just as Paul Simon said!

In Ripley's book, that chart is woefully under-explained, as we noted in an earlier post. Most strikingly, you can see “test scores” rising and falling in various nations as the decades roll by. But there is no way to tell how large the corresponding academic gains are.

The chart shows countries scoring higher and lower, but how large are the academic gaps between the various test scores? Finland seems to gain about 35 points over the course of fifty years. The United States seems to gain about ten.

That said, how much additional learning and knowledge should we associate with a gain of 35 points? Ripley doesn’t explain that point, robbing us of a chance to know how important those score changes are.

Much more strikingly, Ripley grossly misdescribes what the chart on page 3 shows.

According to Ripley’s text, miraculous Finland rocketed “from the bottom of the world to the top,” apparently in a short time. Inspiring Canada “came up from mediocrity.”

But if you look at the actual chart, that isn’t what you will see! On the actual chart, Finland’s “test scores” start in the 1960s—and Finland is already scoring at a very high level compared to the other nations. By way of contrast, Canada’s test scores start in the early 1980s—and they seem to be about twenty points lower than Finland’s initial scores were.

Did that chart blow Ripley’s mind? Does that chart explain her reasons for writing this book? Since she grossly misdescribes the chart, we’ll sign up as skeptics.

That said, her bogus description does set up a classic adventure tale. Based on the chart, the tale isn’t true. But it makes for a thrilling story.

Ripley’s book is built around the claim that Finland came rocketing up from the bottom of the world, shooting to the top in a very short time. “Something incredible” took place in that land. Ripley sets out to explain it.

Because of that chart, which blew her mind, Ripley says she spent a year touring three foreign countries, trying to figure out how these incredible events occurred. But incredibly, she misdescribes what the chart shows about “test scores” in Finland and Canada.

The chart sits on page 3 of the book. Anyone can peruse it.

Whatever! Ripley’s book, which promotes two gentle reforms, is almost like a new literary form, a form you might call “con fiction.” In this new form, people backed by ranking elites feel free to tell us things that aren’t true, as long as their embellished tales lead us to embrace the reforms those elites have selected for us.

In Ripley’s case, her chosen reforms make perfect sense—until you consider the millions of kids her book has disappeared. This takes us to a second bogus tale in her frequently slippery book.

This second key story appears on page 17. It concerns the scores the United States achieved on the first PISA tests, back in the year 2000.

In this story, Andreas Schleicher bats away the ignoble idea that our mid-range scores can be attributed in some way to the diversity of our student population. What a silly notion! As we showed you yesterday, this is the way Ripley says Schleicher refuted that claim:

RIPLEY (page 17): Across the ocean, the United States rang in somewhere above Greece and below Canada, a middling performance that would be repeated in every subsequent round [of PISA testing]. U.S. teenagers did better in reading but that was only comforting, since math skills tended to be better predictors of future earnings.

Even in reading, a gulf of more than ninety points separated America’s most-advantaged kids from the least-advantaged peers. By comparison, only thirty-three points separated Korea’s most-privileged and least-privileged students, and almost all of them scored higher than their American counterparts.

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige lamented the results. “Average is not good enough for American kids,” he said. He vowed (wrongly, as it would turn out) that No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s new accountability-based reform law, would improve America’s standing.

Other Americans defended their system, blaming the diversity of their students for lackluster results. In his meticulous way, Schleicher responded with data: Immigrants could not be blamed America’s poor showing. The country would have had the same ranking if their scores were ignored. In fact, worldwide, the share of immigrant children explained only 3 percent of the variance between countries.

In this novelized tale, unnamed Americans “blame” the diversity of our student population for our “lackluster results.” Schleicher to the rescue! “In his meticulous way,” the hero of Ripley’s book-length tale bats this claim away.

“Immigrants could not be blamed America’s poor showing,” Ripley defiantly tells us. She goes on to make a grossly misleading, slippery statement about the role of immigrant children in public school test scores worldwide.

Long story short: As often seems to occur, Ripley almost surely knows something she isn’t telling us here. Here it is: Immigrant students can actually help a nation’s test scores, depending on where the children come from and depending on the country’s immigration policies.

Due to the government shutdown, we can no longer access the PISA Data Explorer. For that reason, we’re working from memory here. But when we checked this matter last week, immigrant students in Canada, Australia and New Zealand outscored those countries’ native-born students on the 2009 PISA. If we understand this matter correctly, those countries tend to get their immigrants from Asian nations, and their policies tend to bring in immigrants from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

Ripley seems to be saying less than she knows about how immigrant kids affect test scores. But that would be the more modest problem with that passage from page 17. Far more heinous is the plainly implied claim that the “diversity” of our student population is defined by our immigrant kids.

That is an utterly ludicrous notion, but Ripley smuggles it in.

Back when those first PISA scores were released, did someone really “blame” our scores on the diversity of our students? That’s an ugly way to put it, and Ripley forgets to name the people who did this.

Who is Ripley talking about? Even in endnotes to her book, she doesn’t cite an example. In the absence of actual names, we’ll take two guess about this general matter:

First guess: when people did discuss our diversity, they did so to explain and elucidate a problem, not to “blame” a group of kids. Second guess: they may have discussed two large groups of kids who virtually define the “diversity” of our student population as it’s conventionally defined.

Thanks to the shutdown, we can’t disaggregate those 2000 PISA scores today. But below, you see the PISA reading scores from 2009.

The bracketed numbers are painful to see, very hard to accept. They define the brutal racial history of our struggling, improving nation.

They also define an educational challenge—a challenge Ripley disappears in her elite-powered book:

Average scores, PISA reading, 2009:
[United States, Asian-American students 541]
Korea 539
Finland 536
[United States, white students 525]
Canada 524
New Zealand 521
Japan 520
Australia 515
The Netherlands 508
Belgium 506
Norway 503
Estonia 501
Switzerland 501
Poland 500
Iceland 500
United States, all students 500
Sweden 497
Germany 497
Ireland 496
France 496
Denmark 495
United Kingdom 494
Hungary 494
OECD average 493
Portugal 489
Italy 486
Slovenia 483
Greece 483
Spain 481
Czech Republic 478
Slovak Republic 477
Israel 474
Luxembourg 472
Austria 470
[United States, Hispanic students 466]
Turkey 464
Chile 449
[United States, black students 441]
Mexico 425

Let’s be clear. A lot of black kids are succeeding brilliantly in our public schools. The same is true of Hispanic kids. We’re looking here at average scores of very large populations.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, average scores by black kids and by Hispanic kids have risen by large amounts over the past forty years. The gains have been large in the last twenty years. The “achievement gaps” with white kids have been cut roughly in half, but substantial gaps remain.

That said, you can see the way these scores broke down on this PISA reading test. In this realm, we are a very highly stratified society:

Our Asian-American students slightly outscored Korea and Finland. Imagined regional warts and all, our white students trailed miraculous Finland by only 11 points. (At several places in her book, Ripley seems to imply that 40 points on the PISA scale is roughly equal to one academic year.)

Ripley’s proposed reforms may make perfect sense for most schools serving these populations. In her book, she travels the world with three exchange students. All are white, middle-class high school kids.

Ripley’s reforms may make good sense in the world of our middle-class students of all races, colors and shapes. Those kids may do better with “smarter” teachers and with increased academic “rigor.”

That said, our country’s black and Hispanic kids, taken as populations, are living in different worlds. It isn’t clear that Ripley’s proposed reforms are the perfect or even the most important ticket for most of those American kids.

Through that slippery story on page 17, Ripley disappears these kids. She turns them into invisible children. She doesn’t trouble us with their worlds or with their needs, or with the situations which may be holding their achievement back.

Instead, she’s off in Finland with a middle-class kid who could be pushed much harder. (When it comes to middle-class kids of all races and ethnicities, we tend to agree with that.)

Make no mistake: When you look at those PISA scores, you’re looking at our brutal American history. No living person created that history, but we all live with its effects.

Resolved: If a nation spends three hundred years trying to eliminate literacy from a population, that population’s literacy will suffer. Beyond that, state-empowered poverty isn’t likely to help.

(For what it’s worth, African-American ethical literacy inspired the entire world during the last century. Dr. King joined Gandhi and Mandela as the moral giants of the century. Rather plainly, Dr. King’s astonishing moral literacy extended all through the wider black population. Moral literacy is a very powerful force in the world.)

Ralph Ellison said he was an invisible man. So with many of our black and Hispanic students, all through Ripley’s book.

Coming: What reforms might help the (invisible) kids in our nation’s low-income schools?

A quick side trip: When the 2000 PISA results were released, who “blamed” the diversity of our students for the imperfect results?

In 2011, Ripley wrote about this same topic in the Atlantic. On that occasion, she said that (unnamed) “American officials” had “defended their schools—blaming poor performance on the relative prevalence of immigrant families in the United States.”

Wow! That claim seems strange, especially given the things said by Paige, our top education official. (Above, see text from Ripley's book.) We note that Ripley doesn’t repeat that specific claim in her book.

In her book, Ripley only says that some Americans “blamed” the diversity of our students for our PISA scores. She no longer says that American officials did this. She no longer says that these Americans specifically blamed our immigrant kids, although that’s where she goes to defeat this charge.

Still, who “blamed” our deserving students at all? Even in the endnotes to her book, Ripley doesn’t say.

Reading this book, we often feel we’re involved with a new literary form. Because we lack a better name, we’ll call it “elite con fiction.”

EXPLAINING THE CRAZY: It can’t be us!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2013

Part 2—Tribal complaints about Kristof: The conservative world has been spreading The Crazy for lo, these past forty years.

Before Obama was born in Kenya, Clinton committed a whole raft of murders. And friend, is the government shut down this week?

The same thing happened back then!

That said, is it possible that the liberal world has started to traffic in The Crazy to some extent? Before we look at Joan Walsh’s two screeds about Those Racists Over There, let’s consider what happened to Nicholas Kristof last week.

This morning, Kristof got it right, with a sharp column about the shutdown. But last week?

Last week, if we might borrow from Rodney, he got no respect at all!

Last week, Kristof wrote a column which bore this headline: “Suffocating Echo Chamber.” As he started, he mocked Ted Cruz for his recent ridiculous conduct. He then described the conservative world of the past twenty years:

KRISTOF (9/26/13): In the 1990s, as conservative talk radio spread across America, liberals felt victimized. But, in retrospect, the rise of talk radio, Fox News Channel and right-wing Web sites may have done greatest harm to conservatives themselves.

The right-wing echo chamber breeds extremism, intimidates Republican moderates and misleads people into thinking that their worldview is broadly shared.

That’s the information bubble that tugs the entire Republican Party to the right and that transforms people like Cruz into crusading Don Quixotes. And that’s why Republicans may lead us over a financial cliff, even though polling suggests that voters would blame them.

On and on the columnist went, tracking the craziness which has been bred by The Crazy Machine on the right. Briefly, though, Kristof took a break from these labors.

Briefly, Kristof made the highlighted remarks. Please note how quickly he returned to listing the larger sins of those on the right:

KRISTOF: Of course, the left has long had its own version of this problem as well. After Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide re-election, Pauline Kael of The New Yorker famously said she was mystified because she knew only one person who had voted for Nixon. MSNBC and The Huffington Post have become cocoons for liberals, just as Fox News is for conservatives.

Both Fox News and MSNBC rely more on punditry than on reporting from the field, and I remember once early in the Iraq war when I was with American troops watching on Fox News Channel as blowhards in the studio claimed that Iraqis were welcoming us with flowers. We watched, stunned, wondering what war the network was covering.

Research suggests that the echo chamber effect is disproportionately a problem on the right, leading inhabitants to perceive a warped reality. Many Republicans were shocked that Mitt Romney was defeated last fall because they had been assured that he would win. And a Pew survey last year found that the proportion of conservative Republicans who believe Obama is a Muslim has doubled since 2008 to 34 percent.

Then there was the time Glenn Beck aired the theory that Obama is the anti-Christ (he later said he had been joking)...

From there to the end of the column, Kristof continued to bash the right. He ended with an unflattering comparison:

“I often cover dysfunctional, strife-ridden countries, from Congo to Syria, Sudan to Afghanistan. This fall, alas, it looks as if I won’t have to travel so far.”

Without any question, it was the conduct of the right which had Kristof thinking of those dysfunctional, war-torn countries. Within the passage we’ve quoted above, Kristof explicitly said that “the echo chamber effect” is disproportionately an effect of the right.

Ninety-five percent of Kristof’s column concerned the craziness spread by the right. But very briefly, he had said that the left can have “cocoons” too.

As a result, this was the fourth comment to Kristof’s column. Unkindly, we found ourselves wondering if the commenter knew what “equivalence” is:

COMMENTER FROM ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: You draw a parallel between the punditry of Fox and MSNBC, but cite not one transgression on the part of MSNBC.

[...]

This article described a real problem in the American media-political landscape but, like too many of your pundit colleagues, you had to spoil it with gratuitous false equivalence, blaming both sides equally for the excesses of one. That's not being even-handed, it's being misleading.

Might we offer our interpretation? Kristof didn’t cite any transgressions from MSNBC because he was writing a column about the craziness on the right. Because he wasn’t saying that The One Liberal Channel is Just The Same as Fox.

That wasn’t this reader’s assessment! In his view, Kristof had “blamed both sides equally” in his column. He had engaged in “gratuitous false equivalence.”

Nor was this the only commenter to notice the false “equivalence.” This was the very last of the day's 499 comments:

COMMENTER FROM ARIZONA: Good piece, except where Mr. Kristof throws in the obligatory both-sides-do-it trope. MSNBC and Fox are not equivalent and their viewers do not inhabit equivalent cocoons. For one thing, MSNBC airs a conservative daily talk show, Morning Joe. There are no liberal shows on Fox. For another, MSNBC's left-leaning shows are fully grounded in empirical analysis, the antithesis, say, of Rush Limbaugh proclaiming that if the government encourages getting vaccinated it is ipso facto a bad thing.

This both-sides-do-it false equivalency is obligatory in punditry circles, and if I as a reader have one general criticism of Mr. Kristof's writing it his tendency to succumb to it far too often.

By devoting five percent of his space to the left, Nicholas Kristof had committed the sin of “false equivalency!”

Personally, we wouldn’t have written that part of the column the way Kristof did. Personally, we would have been a bit harder on the right in the bulk of the column. But we also would have mentioned the left, though we wouldn’t have mentioned Kael.

If anything, we would have been a bit harder on the contemporary left than Kristof was.

Reactions to Kristof’s column were intriguing. Although he had plainly trashed the right, quite a few readers said he’d engaged in “equivalence.”

A commenter from Pebble Beach complained: “Even the NY Times continues to fall into the false equivalence trap.”

A reader in Florida said the same thing: “Ah, the old false equivalency tactic yet again...Shame on you, Kristof, for employing the false equivalency tactic which only serves to provide cover for the bold-faced lies and Frank Luntz sound bites conveyed 24/7 on Fox.”

From many other states, the complaint about the false equivalence rolled in:

COMMENTER FROM MAINE: It's sad, Mr. Kristof, that you write about the right-wing bubble and then demonstrate that one of its most pernicious effects, the demand that the media find false equivalency between liberal views and reactionary lies, has infected you as well.

COMMENTER FROM PENNSYLVANIA: Ah yes, the comfort of false equivalence: "MSNBC and The Huffington Post have become cocoons for liberals, just as Fox News is for conservatives." Not at all, Mr. Kristof.

COMMENTER FROM NEW YORK: Part of the problem is the false equivalency that Mr. Kristof, like all journalists, are apparently required to endorse.

We won’t record all the comments complaining about the “equivalence” in Kristof’s GOP-trashing column. We will record this additional comment, just the second comment in a very long list:

COMMENTER FROM JARAMA VALLEY: Please cite at least one case of MSNBC deliberately lying about anything (and the editing of the George Zimmerman tape should not count).

Fox lies and distorts daily. I would not call MSNBC a cocoon for the left. Compared to Fox and CNN, MSNBC is Cyclops in the land of the blind.

This commenter seemed to feel fairly sure that his channel had never “lied” about anything. He specifically cited the Zimmerman case, where MSNBC recited a boatload of false factual claims for well over a year.

(When you live inside an echo chamber, you feel sure that the other side has lied—and that Your Own Perfect Side has not. The chances are you'll never hear about the gross misstatements which have been shouted into your ear.)

The comments to the Kristof piece constitute an interesting study in tribal perception. Personally, we wouldn’t have written that brief note about the left in the way Kristof did. But many readers were offended by the brief heretical moment, by the false “equivalence.” Many others seemed eager to say that the channel they watch, MSNBC, never engages in the conduct Kristof was citing.

Here’s a bit more from the reader in Florida. In this passage, the reader recites promotional messaging from that channel, as several others did:

COMMENTER FROM FLORIDA: The primary difference between MSNBC/Huff Post and Fox News is that the former are conveying FACT-DRIVEN news and opinion and Fox is NOT.

When an error is made at MSNBC there is a retraction, apology and correction. This NEVER occurs at Fox, where Beck famously said that Obama is a racist and has a "problem with white people". Based on what evidence? NOTHING! Retraction? Apology and correction?? NEVER....and this kind of "pull anything out of your derriere " approach is daily fare at Fox, the home of "death panels,” "Obama is a Muslim/non-citizen", Benghazi, IRS "scandal" rubbish and its ilk.

What's more, studies have demonstrated that Fox viewers are decidedly less informed about the world than any other group. Enough said.

“When an error is made at MSNBC there is a retraction, apology and correction.” For years, this has been standard, self-promotional messaging from Rachel Maddow. The messaging is plainly false, but liberal viewers recite it for Maddow in threads all over the web.

Meanwhile, the reader cited studies of Fox viewers, studies we think are a little bit shaky. (It all depends on what topics you choose to study.) Almost surely, these are the very same studies Kristof specifically cited, using the tricky word “research.”

Long story short:

The conservative world has been spreading The Crazy for lo, these past forty years. It’s amazing to see how many crazy things you can get people to believe when you devote yourself to such conduct.

(No, Virginia! Obama wasn’t born in Kenya! Bill Clinton didn’t murder all those people, the way Jerry Falwell said.)

The conservative world has been spreading The Crazy for lo, these many years. This has created a world of true belief, a “suffocating” world Kristof attacked all through this column.

That said, pleased be warned:

Being human, we liberals are capable of getting ourselves inside echo chambers too! Many commenters showed the warning signs as they reacted to Kristof’s “equivalence,” in which he was “blaming both sides equally”—as they insisted that their own favorite channel always corrects its mistakes, if it has ever made any, which they weren’t sure it had.

For our money, Joan Walsh has been spreading a bit of The Crazy in her recent screeds about race. Tomorrow, we’ll tell you why we say that.

We’ll start with her ability to discern when people, whom she doesn’t name, can’t get miscegenation out of their heads. She said that Tuesday, in her first screed. For yesterday's sequel, click this.

That was a crazy thing to say. Commenters thanked her for saying it.

Kristof gets the shutdown right!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2013

But also, four ludicrous letters: A lot of confusion surrounds the discussion of the so-called government shutdown. Example:

As Gail Collins jokes her way through the topic today, do you understand the highlighted point? Warning! Butch Otter joke:

COLLINS (10/3/13): So here we are. The Senate has passed a bill to keep the government running until Nov. 15. A majority in the House would probably go along, but the House leadership won’t let the bill come up for a vote. The fate of the nation now appears to be hinged on a couple dozen unhinged House Republicans who are demanding that government funding be coupled with Obamacare axing.

Public-spirited citizens are now forced to become acquainted with a whole new collection of characters who seem to be running the show, like Representative Raúl Labrador of Idaho. Actually, he is the easiest one to remember, since he once considered running for governor against the current incumbent, Butch Otter. I think I speak for us all when I say that Labrador versus Otter would have made 2014 worth waiting for.

If the whole west coast succumbed to bubonic plague, Collins would be joking about it in her very next column. In this instance, we’re forced to endure another “Butch Otter has a funny name” joke, for what is now the eighth time.

Ignore all that! In a chamber which has 435 members, do you understand how “a couple dozen unhinged House Republicans” could be ruling the fate of the nation?

We’re not sure we understand that either, and Collins doesn’t bother explaining. (We keep hearing different explanations.) And doggone it! Across the page in today’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof makes the same claim with a slightly larger number:

KRISTOF (10/3/13): The only reason for the government shutdown is that a small number of Republican hard-liners, around 40, insist on relitigating health care reform over and over. If Speaker John Boehner allowed an open vote on the budget, it would likely pass. But Boehner hasn’t done that.

Kristof says the number is forty. But in a chamber of 435 members; in a caucus of 234 Republicans; how can forty people keep Boehner from staging a vote?

Like Collins, Kristof doesn’t explain. But he does a great deal more in this morning’s column. He runs through four “excuses” being offered by Republicans for the ongoing shutdown. As he does, he bats them aside in clear, understandable ways.

A lot of confusion surrounds discussion of the shutdown. On TV, to cite one example, pundits and pols keep getting drawn into discussion of the merits of Obamacare.

We had that discussion for a year in 2009 and early 2010! Today, these reruns are constantly replacing discussion of the reasoning and the behavior of those who are causing the shutdown.

Kristof does an excellent job looking at the excuses they offer for their conduct. But good God! On the facing page, the New York Times has published five letters about this very same shutdown.

Who in the world selected these letters? We’d say that four of the five are either confused or utterly worthless. One of the letters says this:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (10/3/13): Who caused the government to shut down? You and I did by electing the wrong people to represent our interests in Washington. We made the mistake of believing the promises of professional politicians, both Democrats and Republicans.

What can we do to rectify our mistakes? Make better decisions about whom we elect to represent us in the future. Actions (of politicians) speak louder than (their) words.

D— R—
Dallas, Oct. 2, 2013

Could a letter be more pointless? It’s followed by a letter designed to stir the soul:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (10/3/13): As expensive, time-consuming, emotionally draining and senseless as the Congressional budget battle may seem, I am grateful to live in a country where a minority group with such strongly held opinions can act on its beliefs, exercising its rights in a peaceful way, within a democratic process, without fear of harm or retribution.

W— C—
Edina, Minn., Oct. 2, 2013

In Canada, those two dozen senseless people would almost surely get shot.

(Question: If those people are engaged in expensive, time-consuming and senseless behavior, wouldn't a minor bit of “retribution” possibly by a good thing?)

The New York Times must have received hundreds of letters about the shutdown. It’s amazing to review the bunch some editor chose to publish.

Again, a basic point:

It’s very hard to comprehend the low caliber of our upper-end press corps. Again, we’ll turn to The Kevin Drum Files for a possible explanation:

Was there too much lead in the air when these journalists were children? We’re thrashing around for a way to explain the work we find in the Times.

INVISIBLE CHILDREN: Ignoring the gap!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2013

Part 3—“A gulf of more than ninety points:” In her interesting book, The Smartest Kids in the World, Amanda Ripley proposes two reforms for American schools.

On the surface, each reform makes perfect sense. In many parts of our complex society, her reforms likely would make good sense.

What are Ripley’s proposed reforms? First, Ripley thinks we’d have better schools if we had better teachers—if our teachers had stronger academic backgrounds and more extensive university training.

Also this: Ripley thinks our schools should display more academic “rigor.” She thinks we should demand more of our students, for example in the study of high school math.

In many parts of our complex society, those suggestions may well make perfect sense. Ripley is plainly a tribune of our elites, but she is a centrist tribune. As a tribune of establishment thinking, she writes from the center of the world of standard “education reform,” not from the corporatist right.

In many of our public schools, “smarter” teachers and increased academic “rigor” might make very good sense! But then, there are all those other kids—the invisible children people like Ripley rarely seem to know much about.

Ralph Ellison was an “invisible man.” To approach the children who are largely invisible in Ripley’s book, let’s start with her silly portrait of Andreas the Giant.

We refer of course to Andreas Schleicher, the German education researcher who invented the PISA, the important international testing program for which Ripley plays the role of cheerleader in her book. Right from the start of Smartest Kids, Ripley buys the idea that the PISA is “a smarter test,” a test of “the kind of advanced thinking and communication skills that people need to thrive in the modern world.”

Because the PISA is “smarter,” Ripley chooses to ignore results from the PIRLS and the TIMSS, the other two major international testing programs—programs on which American students have scored better than on the PISA.

(On the 2011 TIMSS, American students matched the miraculous Finns in math in both grades tested, grade 4 and grade 8. In a 230-page book, Ripley can’t find time to report this fact.)

Whatever! Ripley starts her Chapter 1 with a silly portrait in which she explains how Schleicher became so prominent in the field of testing. Writing as if for 9-year-olds, she describes the way the youthful Schleicher, “his pale blue eyes focused and intense,” sat in on an education class as a college student in Germany.

By the end of that class, the professor “could tell that there was something different about this rail-thin young man who spoke in a voice just above a whisper.” In this ridiculous, mystical way, Schleicher’s career begins.

This is silly, novelized writing, of a type which is often directed at children, for whom it is age appropriate. It also signals an obvious point—everything Schleicher says later on will be assumed to be accurate.

It won’t be enough to say that Schleicher has devised an important set of international tests. His tests have to be better than all the others—so much better that the other tests don’t even have to be named!

In such passages, Ripley is virtually inventing a new literary form, a claim we’ll discuss on a later date. For today, let’s examine what happens in 2001, when the man whose pale blue eyes were so focused releases the first set of scores from his smarter invention, the PISA.

Those first PISA scores were released in December of that year, in a press event at “the Chateau de la Muette, the grand Rothschild mansion that served as [OECD] headquarters in Paris.” (For the record, that’s Paris, France.) When small little Finland is named as the top scoring nation, Ripley’s grants herself novelistic omniscience as she describes what happened right there in the room.

Miraculously, Ripley knows who “whispered” what to whom when Finland was named the top dog. This is purely novelistic. There’s no way Ripley can know the things she folds into her Boy’s Life-style story-telling.

Whatever! Eventually, Ripley starts describing how people reacted over here in the States. First, she describes the way U.S. kids had performed on these first PISA tests:

RIPLEY (page 17): Across the ocean, the United States rang in somewhere above Greece and below Canada, a middling performance that would be repeated in every subsequent round [of PISA testing]. U.S. teenagers did better in reading but that was only comforting, since math skills tended to be better predictors of future earnings.

Even in reading, a gulf of more than ninety points separated America’s most-advantaged kids from the least-advantaged peers. By comparison, only thirty-three points separated Korea’s most-privileged and least-privileged students, and almost all of them scored higher than their American counterparts.

As written, that second paragraph is fuzzy. Readers won’t able to explain precisely what it means. But Ripley has begun to hit a key point—American society is much more stratified than is the case in miraculous Finland or hamster-wheel Korea. As compared to those high-scoring PISA nations, much larger academic gaps separate various groups of students here in the U.S.

American students produced middling scores on those first PISA tests. As she continues, Ripley describes the reaction in the U.S. As she does, she starts disappearing large groups of American kids.

Millions of children are becoming invisible in this anodyne passage. Note the heroism of Schleicher, our focused and intense hero:

RIPLEY (continuing directly): U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige lamented the results. “Average is not good enough for American kids,” he said. He vowed (wrongly, as it would turn out) that No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s new accountability-based reform law, would improve America’s standing.

Other Americans defended their system, blaming the diversity of their students for lackluster results. In his meticulous way, Schleicher responded with data: Immigrants could not be blamed America’s poor showing. The country would have had the same ranking if their scores were ignored. In fact, worldwide, the share of immigrant children explained only 3 percent of the variance between countries.

According to Ripley, some Americans “defended their system, blaming the diversity of their students for lackluster results.” Ripley never says, in her text or her endnotes, who those Americans were. But true to her novelized drama, Andreas the Giant responds to those hackish Americans “in his meticulous way.”

Meticulously, Schleicher presented the data. No doubt his pale blue eyes were focused and intense as he did this. (Do you see how novels work?)

As Schleicher responds to those unnamed Americans, Ripley is working a sleight of hand. In the process, she is disappearing a large swath of American children. Beyond that, there is a second problem:

Worldwide, does the share of immigrant children “explain only 3 percent of the variance between countries?” That’s an unfortunate con job too, for reasons we’ll note tomorrow.

For now, let’s get back to the first sleight of hand in that slippery passage. As we do, let’s think about those invisible children:

Question: Does the diversity of America’s student population only derive from its immigrant children? Aren’t there other large groups of students who help define our “diversity?”

Ripley never says which Americans, if any, actually “defended their system” in the manner she describes. But there was a different group of kids who lowered America’s average scores on those first PISA tests. Ripley sweeps those children away in that slippery passage.

As a group, these children scored well below other parts of the American student population on those first PISA tests. Remember the way American students displayed an unusually large achievement gap on that first PISA reading test? That “gulf of more than ninety points” which Ripley cites on page 17?

In fact, at least two large groups of American kids scored well below other parts of the student population on those first PISA tests. And uh-oh!

The two reforms which Ripley promotes may work well in many parts of our land. But it isn’t clear that those reforms would address the needs of these disappeared and deserving American kids, the children who are largely invisible in this upper-class book.

Tomorrow: Concerning those first PISA test scores

Discourse on method: Doggone it!

Thanks to the government shutdown, the truly fabulous PISA Data Explorer is still out of commission at the NCES. (On the bright side, none of our “education reporters” will be inconvenienced by this!) Despite that fact, we hope to be able to dissect those first PISA scores tomorrow, courtesy of a top-secret, back-channel source.

If not, we have substitute data which will establish our point. Who are Ripley’s invisible children, the children the scribe disappears?

INVISIBLE CHILDREN: Forced to retool!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013

Interlude—Andreas the Giant: Doggone it! The government shutdown has shut down the data we planned to use today as we discussed an important part of Amanda Ripley’s new book, The Smartest Kids in the World.

For more, see yesterday's post.

Ripley’s book is well written and very interesting. We also think it’s an amazing example of a type of new journalism, in which “Nordic robots” repeat preferred narratives which come from ranking elites.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss a group of invisible children—a bunch of kids who get disappeared in Ripley’s book. But then, why shouldn’t those kids get disappeared? In the course of 230 pages, the TIMSS, the PIRLS and the NAEP all get disappeared too!

If we may borrow from our Shelley, only the PISA remains!

We don’t know when we’ve seen a book where so much data gets disappeared in service to preferred narrative. That doesn’t mean the book is all wrong. It means it’s a piece of work!

Jay Mathews called Ripley “a talented writer.” For today, you might scan her profile of Andreas Schleicher, the PISA’s inventor. The profile was published by the Atlantic in 2011.

Tomorrow, we’ll start with one part of that profile as we search for invisible kids.

What kinds of questions get asked on the PISA: Faithfully pushing a preferred narrative, Ripley says in her book that the PISA is “a smarter test” than other international tests, which she doesn't even name. On this basis, she simply ignores the data which come from the TIMSS and the PIRLS.

Is the PISA a smarter test? In 2009, Mathews wrote a blog post entitled, “Test that makes U.S. look bad may not be so good.” He started with a question from the PISA, a test which is designed to measure “creative thinking:”

MATHEWS (10/19/09): Politicians and pundits are using results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests to say our kids are falling behind the rest of the world, so maybe we should get some PISA practice. Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless, a member of the U.S. advisory board to PISA, offered this sample question for 15 year olds from the mathematics literacy section of the exam:

For a rock concert a rectangular field of size 100 m by 50 m was reserved for the audience. The concert was completely sold out and the field was full with all the fans standing. Which one of the following is likely to be the best estimate of the total number of people attending the concert?
A. 2000
B. 5000
C. 20000
D. 50000
E. 100000

I think this is a bad question, and not just because I got it wrong. I said 5,000. The answer is 20,000. I don’t see why deciding four people, not one, would fit better in a square meter is a sign of math literacy. There are some people I don't like to get close to at concerts.

Loveless, an expert on international testing, agrees that the problem was ill-chosen. “I think it would throw kids off,” he said. “The math is rather trivial.”

That’s only one question from the PISA; there was more to Mathews’ post. Still: How sure do you feel that the PISA is “smarter” when you see a question like that?

Opinions differed in comments to Mathews’ post, which we found surprising. We’ll restate our basic stance:

If there are three major sources of data, it's silly to disregard two of those sources in service to preferred narrative. Presumably, the PISA data are worth reviewing. Presumably, so are the data from the TIMSS and the PIRLS.

EXPLAINING THE CRAZY: What explains the growth of The Crazy?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013

Part 1—Kevin Drum asks: Yesterday, Kevin Drum asked a very important question. The question appeared in a headline to a new post:

“Why Are So Many People in a Blind Rage These Days?”

As it turned out, Drum really was asking a different question: Why are so many conservatives in a blind rage these days?

That’s an important question too, although it’s different from the question posed in that headline.

As Drum’s post proceeded, the actual shape of his question became more clear. He quoted a post in which Paul Waldman ruminated about the “craziness” of “Republican members of Congress.”

For ourselves, we think it tends to mark the end of discussion when one party declares the “craziness” of the other. That said, there’s been a lot of crazy conduct and crazy belief floating around these days—actually, for the past several decades.

(No, Virginia! Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t murder a whole lot of people. Bill Clinton didn’t run drugs through the airport at Mena.)

“Why Are So Many People in a Blind Rage These Days?” As he continued, Drum gave the conventional answer to this question. Then, for reasons he didn’t explain, he said this answer doesn’t quite do it for him:

DRUM (10/1/13): This is conventional wisdom, of course. The reason the tea party caucus isn't willing to compromise is because there's no pressure on them to compromise. Their constituents are as crazy as they are. They want the safety net slashed, taxes cut, the EPA put out of business, and the Fed eliminated. They believe that Obamacare is the thin edge of the wedge that's driving America into decline and ruin. They believe this so strongly that they're willing to do anything to turn the country around. If that means government shutdowns and financial panic, so be it.

But why? There's always been a faction of right-wing craziness in America. It's part of our DNA. But how did it become so widespread? The usual answer involves the rise of conservative think tanks, conservative talk radio, Fox News, the Christian right, and racial resentment toward a black president. And maybe that's it. Somehow, though, it doesn't feel quite sufficient. But if it's not, then what's going on? What's happened over the past decade or two to spin up so many Americans into a blind rage?

Complaining about tea party congressmen misses the big picture. The problem is the people who voted them into office. What happened to them?

Why is there so much “right-wing craziness” these days? Why are the people who elected those Republican congressmen so much crazier than conservatives used to be?

Drum gave the conventional answer, the one involving the rise of talk radio, partisan “think tanks” and of course Fox News. He even threw in “racial resentment toward a black president.”

Still, he said, these conventional explanations don’t feel sufficient to him.

Can we talk? Those conventional explanations do feel sufficient to us! In our view, the past few decades have constituted a remarkable experiment in the true nature of human nature. Here’s the way it has worked:

The so-called democratization of media has created a world in which it’s easy to hear crazy, dishonest, or partisan people telling you crazy things which fit your preconceptions. Back when there was less “right-wing craziness in America,” it was actually fairly hard to hear people say crazy things.

Walter Cronkite wasn’t crazy; neither was David Brinkley. If you wanted to hear crazy ideas or ridiculous claims, you had to seek them out. You had to go to the corner bar and talk to the crazy guy in the corner. You had to send away to John Birch or to similar orgs.

Now, The Crazy is everywhere; The Crazy is very big business. It’s very easy to hear crazy claims which fit your preconceptions. And uh-oh! In our view, here’s what we’ve learned about human nature as this experiment has played out:

It’s easy to get people to believe Crazy Things! You just have to let people hear them!

Plainly, Drum isn’t crazy. He strongly tends toward the sober; that's why we like his work. We’re just guessing: This may explain why Drum is so puzzled when he sees so many people believing so many crazy things.

To him, the picture still doesn’t compute. He understands the theory of the way The Crazy spreads. But to him, it still seems odd to think that we humans are prone to believing The Crazy to this impressive extent.

We’ve been surprised by the last few decades too, but the conventional wisdom does seem sufficient to us. In part, that may be because we’ve allowed ourselves to see The Crazy spreading a bit among our own tribe too.

In our view, Kevin’s post comes from an ancient tribal warp in which only The Others are crazy. His headline seemed to be ecumenical. His analysis was not.

In a very seminal post, Drum turns out to be explaining one of the race’s oldest questions: Why is the other tribe so crazy? We’ll suggest that, in this new piece by Joan Walsh at Salon, we see a wider swath of We the People behaving in Slightly Crazy Ways too.

All liberals know how to respond to such claims. We know that we should denounce such statements as “moral equivalence.”

This has become a Key Tribal Skill. And alas! It’s part of the ongoing problem!

All the way back into prehistory, we humans have always known one thing. We’ve always known that The Crazy and Vile can only be found among Them.

Tomorrow: In what way is Walsh’s piece perhaps just a bit semi-crazy? Also this:

Are writers like Walsh “in a blind rage these days?” Perhaps just a small tiny bit?

Still to come: King and Mandela!

The flow of information curtailed!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

We just received the word: Doggone it.

We were about to start collecting data for tomorrow's post.

The data in question would have been scores from the 2000 and 2009 PISA testing. We were going to show you how well different groups of American students scored on the tests.

We reviewed the information last weekend, but we didn't record it. Our thinking went something like this:

The PISA Data Explorer will always be there!

Well guess what? As of today, the PISA Data Explorer isn't there! The site is run by the National Center for Education Statistics. When we tried to access the site, we received a personal message:

Dear Users,

Due to a lapse of appropriations and the partial shutdown of the Federal Government, the systems that host nces.ed.gov have been shut down. Services will be restored as soon as a continuing resolution to provide funding has been enacted.

Dear "users," the message said. Should we be offended?

Dang! As we've read The Smartest Kids in the World, we've been impressed by the extent to which Amanda Ripley is willing to ignore the experiences of certain groups of American kids. Surely, though, the reforms which allegedly worked in Finland will also work for those kids!

We wanted to show you how those kids have done on the PISA. Thanks to the shutdown, we may not be able to do that tomorrow. Dang!

Luckily, conservatives feel their position on the shutdown is morally right, as Ashley Parker helped us see on the front page of today's New York Times. We'll see where their inspiring stand leaves us as of tomorrow.

In the meantime, we're forced to report the flow of information curtailed.

Joan Walsh profiles her Darling Chris!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

Her uncles get drunker than yours: For our money, Chris Matthews’ relationship with Jack Welch is the great unexplored story of modern pseudo-journalism.

That said, we liberals aren’t even allowed to know that this question exists! We’re programmed to cluck about Rupert Murdoch. At the same time, we’ve never heard about Welch and NBC News and Clinton, Clinton and Gore.

Joan Walsh maintains this embargo in today’s Salon. Absurdly enough, Walsh is assigned to profile Matthews, the fellow who helped her earn her bones as a cable news star. For that reason, Walsh is willing to start the day’s con like this:

WALSH (10/1/13): Anyone who enjoys MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews will like his new book, “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked,” because it’s Matthews’ story too. From a job as a Capitol policeman to a place on Air Force One writing speeches for President Carter to his stint as a special assistant to House Speaker Tip O’Neill throughout most of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Matthews shows how he developed the ideas about politics he shares with his guests and his viewers daily.

A lot of what he tells President Obama he ought to try, he and O’Neill tried with Ronald Reagan and the 1980s Republicans. And sometimes, it worked.

On both Hardball and in “Tip and the Gipper,” Matthews’ realism vies with his romanticism, and his frank desire to like the politicians who serve us—even if they don’t deserve it. His Ronald Reagan is a good guy of genuine if harsh convictions who might have turned out like Tip O’Neill if he’d represented O’Neill’s North Cambridge district, he says.

Yay! We get to hear Matthews’ story too! For the record, this new book involves part of Matthews’ story, the part we’re permitted to hear.

With that in mind, excuse us? Does Chris Matthews really possess “a frank desire to like the politicians who serve us?” We’d love to see Walsh connect that desire to the many years Matthews spent trashing Clinton, Gore and Clinton in the most reprehensible ways possible, with terrible consequences for the nation and for the world.

(Matthews was actually quite influential in the late Clinton/Gore years.)

Almost surely, Matthews was simply serving Jack Welch, especially in the twenty months he spent savaging Candidate Gore. But Walsh will never ask him about those years or about that conduct. She is sitting on the inside. To her, Salon readers serve as the rubes.

That profile of Matthews’ “frank desire” was our first complaint with this ridiculous interview. Our second complaint concerns the way these two gigantic hacks began playing the tired old game, We Irish.

Yecch! The analysts always wail when Walsh goes into throwback mode and starts discussing “her people:”

MATTHEWS: Tip could never figure out Reagan’s hold on people. He’d say, “He’s cutting all these programs!” I mean, Tip thought more like you, he thought in terms of policy, not personality. He couldn’t believe a guy whose policies were tough on working people could win working people—

WALSH: The Reagan Democrats—my people—

MATTHEWS: He got the Irish, the Italians—the “Subway Alumni,” people who didn’t even go to college, because of “Knute Rockne, All American.” I think that’s one of the best things in the book, I show how Reagan won the “Subway Alumni.” It’s an old cultural thing. I still check the Notre Dame score—they lost to Oklahoma Saturday—and then Holy Cross. The first thing Tip and Reagan talked about was Knute Rockne.

[...]

MATTHEWS: [Tip] was also a human being. He’d sit in that chair, I’d be scared to death. He’s 300 lbs., he’s 6-foot-3—he was the only white guy in his Weight Watchers group, it was all black women, he would go to these meetings to try to lose weight, but he couldn’t deal with it. But you know what? He liked to eat.

WALSH: He didn’t just have a bad metabolism—

MATTHEWS: No, he’d eat corned beef hash with an egg on top, he’d say, “Got another muffin? With butter on it?” When I’d meet him for lunch, sometimes I’d have eaten, and he’d say, “Don’t you dine at noon?” And when we’d go out and have a drink, and I was trying to quit, he’d say, “Can’t you take the stuff?”

WALSH: Wow.

MATTHEWS: And the answer was no, I can’t take the stuff, and I did quit. Reagan didn’t really drink at all, by the way, he was afraid of the Irish curse, his father had it. And you can’t argue with it. It’s the Irish curse.

WALSH: Yeah, I have it in my family, too. What do you think it is?

MATTHEWS: I don’t know. Maybe it’s that we still think it’s cute. It’s what you do.

WALSH: My father had to quit at 35, and some of my uncles had a hard time with it, he was no fun anymore. One of them used to spike his drinks to try to trick him.

MATTHEWS: Tip thought it was a discipline issue. He didn’t believe in alcoholism, you just had to control yourself.

My uncles get drunker than yours! This throwback Irishism would simply be annoying if it weren’t so clear that Irishism played a key role in the way the East Coast Irish Catholic crowd went crazy about Bill Clinton’s blow jobs, then turned against Candidate Gore as an extension of their cultural frenzy.

As Chris said to Joan about something safe, “It’s an old cultural thing.” At any rate:

In a truly strange and comical move, Welch reinvented NBC News as an East Coast Irish Catholic preserve. The cultural values of that group played a blindingly obvious role in the chase against Clinton and Clinton and then against Candidate Gore.

But as liberals, you aren’t allowed to think about that. Let’s talk about Rupert Murdoch instead. Hey, look over there! Roger Ailes!

How ridiculous is Walsh? Try to believe that Chris said this without a burp from Joan:

WALSH: Do you think Hillary Clinton should run in 2016?

MATTHEWS: You know, I saw her yesterday, I ran into her at the airport. And if she’s as healthy as she looks, she should run. I actually thought, “You know, maybe I should drop everything and help her.” I get these impulses. Because she needs guys around her like me. Guys who have a little more traditional attitude. She should put up with guys like me, because then she’ll win 70 percent.

WALSH: What would you tell her?

MATTHEWS: I’d keep a lot of the old Clinton stuff: Stand up for “the people who work hard and play by the rules.” “Make abortion safe, legal and rare.” And work on the culturally conservative people. You’ve already got the left. Be careful on the war issues. Don’t be hawkish. Don’t let Howard Dean or somebody go to your left on the war, and force you to the right. This party was burned by the Iraq War, all the leaders of the party burned us, except for Barack. Biden, Kerry, they were all wrong. They have this default to sign onto war. Which I hate. She starts with the women’s movement, women my age. Then she turns to the white working class, the Appalachian folks, even the folks with race problems like her, she did well with them. She has a chance to be Lyndon Johnson in ’64. I don’t know who could beat her.

He's keep a lot of the old Clinton stuff! Is this piece on loan from The Onion?

As Walsh knows perfectly well, Matthews’ behavior toward Hillary Clinton was unvarnished poison from the 1990s right through 2008. Now, he says that a future Candidate Clinton should sign him up as her brain!

Joan knows she mustn’t say boo about this. Chris is her beau ideal.

By the way: Did all the leaders of the Democratic Party “burn us regarding Iraq, except for Barack [Obama]?” If memory serves, a fellow named Gore gave several speeches warning against that war.

But so what? This is the way Matthews was talking about Gore at that time. He said this on the radio to his pal, Don Imus, with all of Washington listening:

MATTHEWS (11/1/01): He doesn’t look like one of us. He doesn’t seem very American, even.

In the wake of September 11, Al Gore didn’t seem very American to Chris.

Joan has forgotten all that. She hopes you will forget it too. Hillary Clinton should hire Chris Matthews! Everyone can see this!

SPOTTED: Some truly awful “he said/she said” reporting!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

MINOR HINT: It’s on the front page of the Times: Yesterday, we hung our head over the pitiful work of our liberal tribe.

At Salon, a tribal leader denounced some outrageous “he said/she said” reporting about the government shutdown. Despite his claim that everyone’s doing it, his examples came from some very minor sources—and his four examples were highly underwhelming.

That was pitiful work. This morning, though, we awoke to some truly horrible “he said/she said” reporting about the shutdown. And this reporting appears in a high-profile spot, on page one of the New York Times!

Good God, this report is awful! It’s written by Ashley Parker, one of the emptiest youthful droogs in our whole upper-end “press corps.”

Last night, we saw the fatuous Parker opining, or trying to opine, on The One True Liberal Channel. Instantly, all the analysts groaned.

They didn’t know what was coming.

Parker (Penn '05) got her start in horrific fashion as “research assistant” to Maureen Dowd, whatever that could possibly mean. She tidied up after Dowd for five years. As she did, the “creeping Dowdism” may have wormed its way into her soul.

This morning, Parker starts her front-page piece like this, headline included. Truly, this is awful:

PARKER (10/1/13): Conservatives With a Cause: ‘We’re Right’

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, was the first to take to the Senate floor to publicly pose a question gnawing at an increasing number of lawmakers and ordinary citizens alike as the deadline for a government shutdown neared: Has Congress gone completely crazy?

“It’s very hard from a distance to figure out who has lost their minds,” said Ms. McCaskill immediately after the Senate on Monday rejected a Republican plan to not finance the government unless Democrats agreed to delay the new health law. “One party, the other party, all of us, the president.”

We know, we know! You think we’re kidding, but that’s the way Parker starts her report, which is apparently designed to illustrate a key fact:

Conservatives think they’re right about the government shutdown!

If that was really Parker’s assignment, the fault lies with some editor. But Parker starts by quoting McCaskill in a very peculiar way—in a way which makes it sound like McCaskill can’t figure out who to blame for this completely crazy mess!

We’re going to guess that McCaskill went on to say a bit more than what was quoted. Up until now, McCaskill has had little trouble explaining who she thinks is at fault.

But that is the actual start of Parker’s front-page report! It gives the impression that even major Democrats can’t figure out who to blame for this nonsense.

Obviously, that impression is false. As Parker continued, she turned to a second big Democrat:

PARKER (continuing directly): Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, had his own colorful, if somewhat skewed, metaphor about why much of the government was about to grind to halt in a take-no-political-prisoners fight over what is essentially a simple six-week funding bill, attributing it to the emergence of a “banana Republican mind-set.”

Mr. Reid’s language was evocative, and the implication was serious. With Democrats controlling the White House and Senate and with millions of dollars spent getting the health care law to the starting line, what gives House Republicans the idea that they can triumph in their push to repeal, or at least delay, the Affordable Care Act when so many veteran voices in their party see it as an unwinnable fight?

In this case, a major Democrat was at least blaming the GOP, though his metaphor was said to be “somewhat skewed.”

As she continued, Parker made no attempt to explain Reid’s accusation. Why would Reid describe the situation that way? Parker doesn’t ask, doesn’t tell!

Instead, she simply moves ahead to a third figure, a Republican this time. As she continues, Parker lets Rep. Steve King tell an uplifting tale.

In this passage, King becomes the Man from La Mancha, daring to dream the impossible dream! Parker lets King and two other Republicans explain why the GOP thinks it can win this “unwinnable fight.”

The fight involves a “higher quest,” the three Republicans say:

PARKER (continuing directly): “Because we’re right, simply because we’re right,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, one of the most conservative of House lawmakers. “We can recover from a political squabble, but we can never recover from Obamacare.”

Representative Raúl Labrador, Republican of Idaho and one of the original proponents of the so-called Defund Obamacare movement, was similarly sanguine. “We can always win,” he said Monday afternoon, as he jogged up the stairs to a closed-door conference meeting, where House Republicans gathered to plot their next move.

Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Rules Committee, hinted that Republicans were unlikely to give up without at least another round since they see their campaign against the health care law as something of a higher quest. And many, if not most, people they talk to—colleagues, friendly constituents, activists, members of advocacy groups—reinforce that opinion, bolstering their belief that they are on the right side not just ideologically, but morally as well.

“This isn’t the end of the road, guys,” Mr. Sessions said with a grin. “This is halftime.”

The distance between the House and the White House has never seemed greater.

Let’s see if we’re able to follow the logic here! According to Parker, Republicans “believe that they are on the right side” of this issue, “not just ideologically, but morally as well!”

Do Democrats think they’re on the right side? Crackers, please! Claire McCaskill can’t figure out which side is at fault!

In fairness, this isn’t a case of “he said/she said” reporting. In this report, the Democrats are never even allowed to say that they think they are right!

Is it news when Republicans say they think they’re right about some issue? Actually no, it isn’t.

Members of both parties constantly say that their side is right, no matter what the issue may be. It’s hard to know exactly why Parker was assigned to do such a weird report, which is apparently devoted to stating the obvious:

The GOP says it’s right!

That said, when it comes to fatuous work, no one does it better! This is a truly awful report—and it appears above the fold on the front page of the New York Times, our nation’s most famous newspaper.

Perhaps for that reason, the kids at Salon still haven’t noticed Parker’s work as we post this piece. Yesterday, Salon was very upset about nothing. Today, they don’t notice this.

Our liberal team is very weak—inept, quite lazy, career oriented, quite low on the trait known as skill.

INVISIBLE CHILDREN: The Dumbest Adults in the World!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

Part 2—One different world: Why do students in miraculous Finland top the world in reading and math on international tests?

Correction! Miraculous Finland’s very good students don’t always top the world. Let’s recall what happened in 2011 on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), one of the three (3) major international tests in which the developed nations take part.

You heard it! There are three major international testing programs (3), not just one (1).

What happened on the 2011 TIMSS in both grades tested (grades 4 and 8)? Demographic warts and all, American students matched the miraculous Finns in math! And hold on! It gets even better!

Finland is a small, homogeneous, middle-class country. (We don’t mean that as a criticism.) Its population is 5.4 million. That means it’s even smaller than Massachusetts, population 6.6 million.

There’s nothing wrong with being a small, homogeneous, middle-class country. Indeed, back in 2010, Newsweek and the Daily Beast announced that they had judged Finland to be the overall Best Country in the World. (Best large country? Japan.)

That said, Finland wasn’t best in math on the 2011 TIMSS. Massachusetts took part in the testing as if it were a stand-alone nation—and at both grade levels, its students massively outscored the Finns in math!

Indeed, despite the achievement gaps which still obtain in this country, black kids in Massachusetts outscored the Finns in math that year. That was a very strong performance. But how strange! This news doesn’t appear in Amanda Ripley’s 230-page, ballyhooed book, The Smartest Kids in the World.

Ripley wrote 230 pages, but she doesn’t mention the TIMSS! A cynic would say there’s a reason for that. People who like to trash American schools disappear the TIMSS and the PIRLS, international tests on which American students tend to score fairly well. They only discuss the slightly offbeat Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), on which American students tend to score more poorly.

So it goes in the talented Ripley’s rather scam-ridden book. In all those 230 pages, there was no room to let us know how American students did on the TIMSS or the PIRLS. We only heard about the PISA, whose most recent scores date to 2009.

In this way, ideological worker bees like Ripley work to turn the American public into The Dumbest Adults in the World.

Is Ripley an ideologue herself? We’ll guess the answer is basically no. But for today, let’s return to the (very good) students in less than miraculous Finland.

Why do students in Finland score so well, as a general matter, on international tests?

According to Ripley’s book, Finland’s students don’t exhaust themselves in all-night, every-night tutoring sessions, the way South Korea’s high-scoring students do. Kids in Finland get high test scores, but they don’t live like that, in a “hamster wheel” educational culture.

Why do Finland’s kids score do high? Seeking the reasons for their success, Ripley repeats Standard Memorized Elite Explanations concerning the apparent high caliber of Finland’s teachers.

Do Finnish kids get high test scores because their teachers were top students in high school who then received demanding training in college? Ripley advances this standard account without ever quite explaining how she knows it’s true.

It certainly could be true. But is it true? If so, how much of Finland’s success can be explained this way?

We don’t know, but we have an excuse. We’ve read Ripley’s book!

Ripley repeats the Standard Official Approved Explanation for Finland’s high test scores. She even pretends that Finland is working miracles with its immigrant kids, although it’s clear that she knows she’s giving a false impression.

(There's a word for Ripley's presentation about Finland's immigrant students. That word is “inexcusable.” For our post on this topic, click here.)

We’ll assume that Finland does have very good teachers. That said, is there any other possible explanation for the country’s high test scores, which don’t always top the world?

A bit of background:

Finland became the toast of the world when its students scored high on the first PISA testing in 2000. Scores were released in December 2001. Before long, faddish explanations for Finnish success were being recited by worker bees, hamsters and journalist drones all through the “developed” world.

Some of these faddish explanations may have been tied to some actual evidence. For the most part, though, the Ripleys did what they always do—they began repeating what they were told by the world’s most powerful people.

In 2002, the late Gerald Bracey penned a profile of Finland for the Phi Delta Kappan. Bracey, an education researcher, was never real big on fads.

In his profile, Bracey described the shock which ran through the German press when German kids performed poorly on the first PISA, scoring behind the United States and a wide range of other nations. We’re struck by several parts of his portrait of Finnish culture, in which he quoted the observations of a Swiss journalist.

We’re especially struck by that journalist's portrait of Finland's culture of literacy:

BRACEY (11/1/02): Shocked by the U.S. and impressed by Japan, European nations fell all over themselves in Finn worship. According to the Geneva paper Le Temps, the Finnish system is "a dream come true." The paper reported, "For six weeks, German delegations have been going weekly to Finland to visit Finnish schools and teachers." (At the time, the results had only been out six weeks.)

[...]

Le Temps sent one of its reporters, Francois Modoux, to check things out. Modoux found that the Finns spend a lot of money on schools, that schools in poor communities get more money, and that classes are small (under 20). He also noted that, despite the presence of a Swedish minority and of Lapps in the north, Finland is quite homogeneous. Unlike Americans, Finns appear to have taken the concept of "no child left behind" to heart, providing much individualized attention to students who are having difficulty, even to those referred to by the head of one school as "the impossible cases." There is no tracking in the "basic school," which all students attend for nine years.

Finns assess students a lot, but the Ministry of Education practices “positive discrimination.” That is, schools with high test scores lose resources while those that score lower gain. "It's certainly very frustrating," said one school head, "but it's also a challenge. We have to innovate to keep our scores [high] with fewer resources."

Finland doesn't pay its teachers particularly well, but it does hold them in high esteem, and the profession attracts some of the ablest people. Teachers-to-be have considerable training, which stresses, according to Modoux, "didactics and pedagogy." Here's how he characterized what he saw:

“In the homeland of Nokia, the tremendous popularity of the mobile phone and the computer have not taken away the pleasure of reading. The Finns remain the greatest devourers of newspapers in the world, and their town public libraries, set up even within the village schools or in the local district, are always full. In addition to reading, [information technology] holds no mysteries for young Finns: at school they have an e-mail address which they know how to send messages from; they learn how to create their own Web page and are trained 'to learn to learn' by using the Net. Early exposure to several foreign languages (from the third grade) is the other strong point. Bilingualism is highly valued in all public places, and employees [serving the public] can get by in English.”

On this first pass at the Finnish miracle, the Swiss reporter Modoux noted that Finland was quite homogeneous. Beyond that, were Finns really “the greatest devourers of newspapers in the world,” as Modoux reported? Was it true that public libraries in Finnish towns “are always full?”

Was it true that “the pleasure of reading” was part of Finnish culture, as Modoux suggested? Was it true that this pleasure was hanging on in Finland, in a way which made Finnish culture perhaps a bit distinctive?

We don’t know the answers to those questions. But is it possible that Finland, a small, homogeneous, middle-class country, simply has a stronger tradition of literacy than other nations which are larger and more complex? And by the way:

Might this regional culture explain why Finland “holds its teachers in high esteem?” Might this explain why the teaching profession is able to “attract some of the ablest people” in Finland?

We don’t know the answers. But this takes us back to the graphic with which Ripley opens her book, a graphic she grossly mischaracterizes in accordance with Standard Establishment Narratives which must always be pushed.

The graphic appears on page 3 of Ripley’s book. Quite plainly, it shows Finnish students leading the world on international tests all the way back in the 1960s, long before the ballyhooed reforms which are supposed to explain the country’s current strong performance.

Sticking to established scripts, Ripley says on page 2, while describing the graphic, that miraculous Finland “rocketed from the bottom of the world to the top, without pausing for breath.”

Plainly, that isn’t what the graphic shows. But the claim makes Ripley’s story better, a pattern which appears again and again all through her scam-friendly book.

Finland’s kids don’t drive themselves crazy in hagwons every night. But Bracey’s profile makes us wonder if a pre-existing culture might help explain the small country’s educational success. And by the way: The homogeneity of Finland’s population may help explain other parts of Bracey’s portrait, whose basic elements Ripley largely repeats in her book.

Why do the Finns give extra money to schools which are getting lower scores? Could it be because of Finland’s homogeneity—because those schools are full of Finnish kids?

Beyond that, could that generosity reflect Finland’s tradition of middle-class literacy? Could it reflect the fact that Finnish kids who are “having difficulty” in school simply aren’t that far behind, can’t be seen as lost causes?

Homogeneity can be like that! Based on the graphic Ripley presents, Finnish kids are scoring higher today than they were in the 1960s, but they were always high scorers. Does this homogeneous country simply have a strong traditional culture of literacy? In the ethnic and tribal sense, could you call it “a family tradition?”

Finnish kids grow up in a homogeneous, middle-class culture. Here in this country, many kids don’t grow up that way at all. Compared to the way many American kids grow up, Finland represents a bit of a different world.

Let's get a bit more granular. In our country, many black kids grow up in a different world. True to the diktats of her handlers, Ripley is eager to disappear those deserving all-American children, whose test scores have gotten much better in recent decades, a fact Ripley forgets to cite.

Remember Ralph Ellison? Well, Ripley renders those children invisible! Tomorrow, we’ll consider various parts of their worlds, and we’ll look at their average test scores on the glorious PISA.

A visit to The Best Country: Is Finland really the overall Best Country in the World?

Such rankings are silly, of course. But does this small, homogeneous country have an unusually literate culture? In a later portrait of Finland in the Phi Delta Kappan, Bracey mused about another unusual part of Finnish culture:

BRACEY (5/1/03): As I reported here in November 2002, convoys of educators are moving north to Finland, Europe's highest-scoring nation in PISA...These educator pilgrims are seeking explanations for the successes of the Finns. Mostly, I see the reasons as a combination of good early childhood education, small classes, respected teachers, and a true dedication to an ethos of "no child left behind."

Now, I offer another factor: music. The research link is indirect and no doubt would not pass the U.S. Department of Education's criterion of being "scientifically based," but there is a link. As reported here in February 2001, there is research to indicate that music—especially playing music (as opposed to just listening)—has cognitive benefits in other areas, including reading, mathematics, and spatial intelligence. Finland has 50,000 students studying music professionally. That's roughly one out of every 25 Finns between the ages of 6 and 18. Finland fields 31 symphony orchestras. For the U.S. to be on par with the Finns, we would need 2.8 million professional music students and 1,700 orchestras. We do have 1,200, according to the American Symphony Orchestra League (www.symphony.org). I don't know how many students are deeply involved in studying music.

But whatever the numbers are, music isn't the unifying force in our nation that it is in Finland. Talk to Finns about the importance of music, and the conversation comes down to one word: Sibelius. Composer Jean Sibelius led the struggle to free Finland from Russian rule and Swedish cultural dominance. His intense first two symphonies reflect this struggle, as does his stirring nationalist composition, Finlandia.

According to Leif Segerstam, conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, Sibelius left this legacy: "Music is our national language...." Not only that. Thirty years ago, the Finns decided to devote considerable tax revenue to music education. And it has paid off. Finnish conductors hold positions in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Toronto, Brussels, London, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. At lower levels, "choosing to play a violin instead of becoming a cross-country ski racer does not mark you as a dweeb." Tell people about this when they want to cut school music programs to make way for tests in reading and math.

When he mused this way, did Bracey know whereof he spoke? We have no idea. That said, you won’t hear the Ripleys musing this way. This isn’t what they’ve been told to repeat by their nation’s elites and swells.

That said, is it possible that small, homogeneous Finland simply has a highly literate regional culture, a culture which is passed on in the home? Cultures differ all over the world. Could it be that the culture of small, homogeneous Finland is just a bit brighter than most?