We the people can't explain squat!

SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 2023

Concerning the value of masks, the later Wittgenstein scores: All kidding aside, how about it?

If you wore a mask during the recent pandemic, did that reduce the likelihood that you would come down with Covid?

Roughly one month ago, "a respected scientific nonprofit" issued a barely coherent study concerning some such question. That respected scientific nonprofit's barely coherent study resulted in a wide range of claims of this general type:

Masks don't work.

Tucker Carlson even broadcast that claim. And we all know how careful he is!

In this morning's New York Times, Zeynep Tufekci has penned a guest essay regarding the barely coherent study in question. In our view, Tufekci's essay isn't gigantically coherent itself, but it does start to resolve the widespread confusion about the findings of the barely coherent study—in part, because the respected scientific nonprofit has now publicly stated that its original work was, just as a matter of fact,  incoherent and pretty much wrong.

Tufekci's essay appears beneath the headline shown below. The headline offers the general drift of what her essay says:

Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work

Masks do work, Tufekci reports (though they can't provide perfect protection). 

Masks do work! After a month of widespread confusion, it's important to get clear on that basic point. But the most important learning here involves the inability of high-end elites to explain / articulate just about anything, no matter how important.

Tufekci starts her essay at a key point. The respected scientific nonprofit in question has now acknowledged that its recent, widely-cited report was incoherent and pretty much wrong. 

Here's how Tufekci starts:

TUFEKCI (3/11/23): The debate over masks’ effectiveness in fighting the spread of the coronavirus intensified recently when a respected scientific nonprofit said its review of studies assessing measures to impede the spread of viral illnesses found it was “uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.”

Now the organization, Cochrane, says that the way it summarized the review was unclear and imprecise, and that the way some people interpreted it was wrong.

“Many commentators have claimed that a recently updated Cochrane review shows that ‘masks don’t work,’ which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,” Karla Soares-Weiser, the editor in chief of the Cochrane Library, said in a statement.

The respected scientific nonprofit in question goes by the simple name, Cochrane. Or maybe it's called the Cochrane Library—three paragraphs in, we aren't sure.

At any rate, a Cochrane official has now said that Cochrane's recent review doesn't show that "masks don't work." 

That's "an inaccurate and misleading interpretation" of Cochrane's review of studies, the Cochrane official has at long last said. 

More strikingly, that same official has also said that Cochrane played a leading role in these misinterpretations. 

Why did people misinterpret the Cochrane review? According to Tufekci, people misinterpreted the review because "the way [Cochrane] summarized [its own] review was unclear and imprecise!" 

Cochrane mischaracterized its own review! And that isn't simply Tufekci's opinion. As Tufekci's essay continues, she quotes the Cochrane spokesperson saying that same thing, and worse:

TUFEKCI (continuing directly): She said that “this wording was open to misinterpretation, for which we apologize,” and that Cochrane would revise the summary.

Soares-Weiser also said, though, that one of the lead authors of the review even more seriously misinterpreted its finding on masks by saying in an interview that it proved “there is just no evidence that they make any difference.” In fact, Soares-Weiser said, “that statement is not an accurate representation of what the review found.”

Sad! The Cochrane spokesperson apologized for the way Cochrane had worded its own review. Cochrane's wording "was open to misinterpretation," the agency's spokesperson said.

Even worse, one of the lead authors of Cochrane's review didn't seem to understand what the review had determined! According to the Cochrane spokesperson, that lead author had issued a (widely-cited) statement which "is not an accurate representation of what the review found.”

For the most part, we're going to leave it right there today, though with a note on the basic anthropology. In our view, the anthropological takeaway here is this:

We the humans are vastly unskilled in many areas of rationality. Even at the highest levels, we can't explain a freaking thing—and when we offer incoherent or inaccurate work, few others are likely to notice.

On the level of high academic culture, this major anthropological finding is a confirmation of the later Wittgenstein's work—work which was itself extremely hard to summarize or follow.

On the level of the here and now, this remarkable episode instructs us in a basic fact—you can't assume the accuracy or the basic competence of anything you read, even when the work in question comes from respected upper-end sources.

For us, the background here went like this:

We began to read about the Cochrane review on February 13, in this piece at The Atlantic. The piece struck us as incoherent. It left us with no clear idea of what the Cochrane review had supposedly found.

The problem stemmed from the cavalier use of an unexplained technical term—"at the population level." The Atlantic's author never quite seemed to realize that she wasn't giving a clear explanation of what the Cochrane review had supposedly found, and her editor—if some such person exists—had waved her essay into print without requiring clarification.

After that, we read Bret Stephens' treatment of this matter in the New York Times. He too didn't seem to be up to the task of explaining what he was talking about—and when Kevin Drum critiqued the Stephens piece, the confusion wasn't addressed.

It seems to us that Tufekci herself struggles with clarity in today's essay. As best we can tell, the confusion lurking in this mishegoss revolves around the difference between masks and mask mandates:

On the one hand, masks did and do "work," though to an imperfect extent, for such people who wear them. Such people were and are less likely to become infected with Covid, or to spread Covid to others.

On the other hand, mask mandates may not reduce the spread of Covid through a large population. Many people will ignore the mandate, permitting Covid to spread.

Masks do work; mask mandates may not. We've read one report or essay after another in which high end journalists were unable to draw this fairly simple distinction. 

For the record, we can't fully guarantee that this is the key distinction. For our money, Tufekci is also rather fuzzy today, though she benefits from the statement of apology from the highly respected Cochrane org itself.

Key point:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we humans are extremely limited in our basic "rationality" skills. We aren't real good at explaining things, and when we traffic vast confusion, others aren't likely to notice.

As the later Wittgenstein confusingly noted, this is true at the highest academic and cultural levels. Sadly, we're forced to tell you this:

This is a basic part of the hapless way our self-impressed blue tribe works!

How dumb does it get on the lost boy's show?

FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2023

A groaner from Monday night: How dumb does it get on the lost boy's show?

It can get extremely dumb; it's very dumb a great deal of the time. Today, we thought we'd offer another example, this one from Monday night.

First, a bit of background:

The fallacious fellow has spent four nights flogging his miles of tape. Out of all the sturm und drang, he seems to have come up with one (1) allegation:

He alleges that the lawyer for Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman, wasn't given access to videotape he should have had for possible use in court. 

On Wednesday night, Chansley's lawyer appeared for an interview. In a perfectly respectable way, he made that allegation.

We have no idea if that claim is true; we'd like to see it discussed. That said, that seems to be the only serious allegation the silly boy has managed to harvest from his miles and miles of tape.

Instead of serious allegations, viewers are offered serial recitations of The Stupid, the Daft and the Dumb. 

The most shamelessly bogus presentation by the Fox child involves the way the death of Officer Brian Sicknick has been reported by the millions of liars in the mainstream press. For today, let's limit ourselves to a comical statement the silly boy made at the end of Monday night's performance.

The child was talking to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky). Based upon a Rasmussen poll, Massie told the silly child that 57% of Democrats think it's "at least somewhat likely" that "agents of the federal government were not just there, but were also encouraging people to riot or go into the Capitol" on January 6.

We don't know if that's an accurate account of some Rasmussen poll. (For the record, Massie may have slipped when he said the word "riot.")

Today, we offer you what the lost child said in response. As you can see at the Internet Archive, the lost child told Massie this:

CARLSON (3/6/23): It's very clear from the footage that our producers bravely slogged through for three weeks, and God bless them for doing it, that that's exactly right, that federal agents encouraged the violence that day. 

We just—we're just a TV show, and we can't show people without proof of who they really were. But I agree with your assessment completely. That obviously happened.

Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, thank you so much for coming on...

Logical lapses of this type are constant with the lost child. In this example, he doesn't have proof of who the alleged malefactors were, but it is completely obvious that they were federal agents!

All in all, it's just a humble TV show—a TV show with a special knack for knowing exactly what's right.

(To watch the full exchange in question, click on the Internet Archive link, then search on "Massie.")

FROM THEIR SIDE NOW: Palmetto Republicans wanted Tim Scott!

FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2023

Our blue tribe still needs Lester Maddox: Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay!

Last evening, the joy was general among the stooges who attend to our tribe's psychic needs on Our Own Cable News Channel. 

As we watched them service our needs, we saw Stephanie welcome a "dear, dear friend" into the scripted discussion. (Increasingly, being mere "friends" is no longer enough.)

Others introduced favored panelists as "the great [INSERT NAME HERE]." We're prepared to assume that many such people don't like being introed that way.

Reassuringly, some panelists had been selected from among "our favorite reporters and friends!" We were dumbly told that we'd "get smarter" with the evening's first collection of stars.

So it went as our tribal stooges pandered to our own needs. On one lone program, former senator Doug Jones (D-Alabama) briefly voiced a lonely word of warning about the evening's glorious news—but all in all, the pleasure was general across The One True Channel.

Why were the stooges so happy last night? Of course! The New York Times was reporitng that Donald J. Trump was on his way to jail! 

Did the feds once manage to get Al Capone on an income tax charge? In this case, Trump was going to be hauled away on a charge which was roughly equivalent to the mistreatment of postage stamps in a public forum. 

In the front-page New York Times report, you can read about the jumping-through-hoops which will be required to indict the former chief executive on the projected charge. But within our own tents, we need him indicted and shipped off to jail. The dirty little secret is this:

The corporate children who service our needs don't know how to win at the politics. The political problems we can't seem to solve must be handled through criminal means.

Has Donald J. Trump committed actual crimes? Except in the matter of the purloined and withheld classified documents, we can't say that the answer is clear. 

That said, all across our tribal networks, we have tended to speak about little else:

We need the man to be a criminal. We can't quite seem to beat the guy on the basis of his apparent insanity and his routinely inane "ideas."

American politics is now being played on the field of abnormal psychology. Our journalists refuse to accept this fact, and our own tribe refuses to see that we ourselves, with our own rather vast psychic needs, are a part of this rather obvious problem.

In fairness, top experts say that it's bred in the bone. At times of high stress, we humans divide ourselves into tribes and insist that the Others are evil.

In this morning's New York Times, Jennifer Finney Boylan describes the way this phenomenon played out way back when she was in college. 

Jimmy Carter, who Boylan deeply admires, had said that our nation needed something like a moral revival. In Carter's words, “piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

That's what President Carter had said. According to Boylan, this is the way it played:

BOYLAN (3/10/23): As Mr. Carter scrambled, new voters like me began to think about alternatives. We wanted an American hero, not an all-too-thoughtful negotiator. California’s progressive candidate, Jerry Brown, had plenty of supporters on campus. So did Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. He came to campus to see his son Ted Jr. in the fall of 1979. The visit was a zoo. It was as if we had been visited by all four Beatles at once.

Mr. Kennedy’s campaign sputtered out as quickly as it was briefly lit, but the damage to Mr. Carter was done. Mr. Reagan stopped seeming—to some—like such an impossible joke.

That was when it occurred to me that the mirror Mr. Carter held up to our flaws was not the thing we wanted. We didn’t want a guide to bettering our souls. We didn’t want to sacrifice for the common good. We wanted to be defined by what we owned, and what we wanted to own was as much junk as possible. We wanted to be told that we were great.

In Boylan's assessment, we liberals—or was it we Americans in general?—weren't the moral paragons we wanted to think we were. 

Or was it just the Reagan voters? Boylan's essay is unclear.

At any rate, whoever it was, we didn't want to sacrifice or fill our lives with purpose. We did want to own lots of junk.

We didn't want to listen to Carter discuss our possible flaws. At a time of substantial dislocation, "we wanted to be told that we were great," and so it plays today, again and again and again and again, even within our own blue tribe, with our utterly childish, multimillionaire tribunes never quite seeming to notice.

In fairness, experts say that these instincts are bred in the bone. Two Sundays ago, the psychic needs of our floundering tribe played out in Maureen Dowd's column.

In fairness to Dowd, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is about as hard to take as it gets (so far). In fairness to Greene, it seems that it runs in the family:

Her father believed in the "Taylor Effect." Once Greene herself became interested in public events, she signed on to "Frazzledrip," and things went downhill from there.

In the case of Rep. Greene, it's pretty much Very Few Dumb Ideas Left Behind. Especially from a blue tribe perspective, her statements will, almost surely, almost always be over the top. 

Still and all, the tweet in question was about as tame as a Greene tweet will ever get. When Greene rather dumbly said that we need "a national divorce"—a whole lot of Democrats agree—Dowd hauled out a pair of S-bombs, eventually landing on this:

DOWD (2/26/23): “Marjorie Taylor Greene is following in the footsteps of racist old bigots like Lester Maddox and George Wallace,” [Gerald] Rafshoon said.

In her tweet, Greene had complained about "sick and disgusting woke social issues." In the most primitive parts of our tribe's lizard brain, that meant she was a segregationist and a "racist old bigot," just like Lester Maddox and George Wallace of old!

Briefly, now, we'll tell you a secret about some modern GOP voters. We'll look at the state of South Carolina, one state to the north of Greene.

Way back in 1977, a 5-year-old girl named Nikki Haley wanted to enter the Little Miss Bamberg beauty contest. 

More specifically, she apparently wanted to enter one of the Little Miss Bamberg contests. At that time, the town of Bamberg had two. We're relying on NPR for the latest telling of this fascinating story:

MCCAMMON (2/19/23): At age 5, Haley was asked, mid-competition, to bow out of the Little Miss Bamberg beauty pageant—which had separate awards for Black children and white children—because they had no category for her, she told the New York Times Magazine in a 2011 interview. After that, the town integrated its pageants and many other social activities.

For the record, the 5-year-old girl had been born right there in Bamberg. She was a Carolina kid from the start. 

That said, her parents were Indian immigrants, and pageanteers couldn't decide which contest she belonged in.

Later, Bamberg integrated its pageant; the 5-year-old girl moved on. Thirty-three years later, in 2010, she was, at the age of 38, elected governor of the state, mainly by Republican voters.

We wouldn't vote for Haley ourselves. But in fairness, there's a term for that—major political talent. 

Had there also been a change in the weather in South Carolina? This fascinating story moves on:

In 2012, Senator Jim Dewine, an extreme conservative, announced that he was leaving his seat in the United States Senate. As governor, Haley would name his replacement.

Governor Haley named Rep. Tim Scott to the seat—and good God! Given the way we score these things, Rep. Scott was a black guy! 

(According to the leading authority on the matter, Governor Haley said this at the time: "It is important to me, as a minority female, that Congressman Scott earned this seat, he earned this seat for the person that he is. He earned this seat with the results he has shown.")

For the record, Senator Scott has gone on to win two statewide Senate elections. We wouldn't vote for Scott ourselves, but he has won those elections by wide margins, and he has mainly been elected by the state's Republican voters.

By our reckoning, the fuller story is even better than that. We take you back to the way Scott initially won his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives:

He won that seat in 2010, the same year Haley won her race for governor. He won his party's nomination in a run-off against fellow Charleston County Councilman Paul Thurmond—and Thurmond, who is no slouch, was and is the son of the legendary Strom Thurmond!

In this profile, we get a glimpse of the "racist old bigots" who now exist one state to the north of the almost always ridiculous Greene. They're such a bunch of racist old bigots that they somehow preferred Tim Scott over Strom Thurmond's son!

To us, that's an excellent story. But deep within the tortured minds of our clownishly atavistic blue tribe elites, facts like these don't yet exist—and when someone like Greene says something we don't like, we bring out our pleasing S-bombs and insist that she's Lester Maddox. 

Also, she has to be George Wallace—the truth can be nothing else! According to bedrock tribal rules, it's obvious that she has to be, not simply inane, but also a racist old bigot.

It gets worse in the column by Dowd, but we prefer to excuse the next person she quoted. Concerning the story we've told today, our assessment would be this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own blue tribe is part of the syndrome which has plunged our national discourse into the realm of abnormal psychology over the past how many years.

When our disordered tribunes take the stage, it's still 1955, or it's often some earlier year. In a new piece for The Atlantic, George Packer limns it as shown:

PACKER (3/8/23): In a country world-famous for constant transformation, historical fatalism believes that nothing ever really changes. Mass incarceration is “the new Jim Crow”; modern police departments are the heirs of slave patrols. Historical fatalism combines inevitability and essentialism: The present is forever trapped in the past and defined by the worst of it. The arrival of the first slave ship on these shores in 1619 marked, according to The New York Times Magazine, “the country’s true birth date” and “the foundation on which this country is built.” Cruelty, inequity, and oppression endure in the American character not only as elements of a complex whole but as its very essence. 

Also, the Others have to be Lester Maddox! No other ideas need apply.

Greene is pretty much always over the top. In fairness, it seems to run in the family—and also, she didn't write seven columns about Candidate Gore's profoundly revealing bald spot, the way a certain Pulitzer winner did.

Next week, we'll turn to the complaint the ridiculous Greene lodged in her infernal tweet. Also, though, the state of South Carolina may soon have two candidates in the race for the GOP presidential nomination:

One is the state's "minority female" former governor. The other would be the black guy the state keeps electing to the Senate. 

We wouldn't vote for either one, but we're also prepared to suggest that they, and possibly even Rep. Greene, may not be Lester Maddox. But within the tortured psychic framework of our own atavistic blue tribe, that seems to be the only thing they can possibly be.

For today, we'll close with a plea:

Blue tribe with whom we always vote, please consider healing thyself! We might start by getting those multimillionaire corporate stooges off our own corporate air.

How dumb does it get on the Carlson show?

THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023

It gets transcendently stupid: How dumb does it get on Tucker Carlson Tonight?

On a minute-by-minute basis, it gets extremely stupid. Consider what happened last night when Tucker bloviated about where Covid came from.

The silly lost child mentioned yesterday's congressional hearing on this topic. Then, introducing a guest, the angry lost boy offered this:

CARLSON (3/8/23): This will probably all get lost, and no one will ever be held accountable for destroying the U.S. economy and killing a million people. But the facts don't matter.

Jamie Metzl also testified. Metzl was one of the very first people to suggest what pretty much everyone now acknowledges is true, that this virus came from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan. And he said so today at the hearings.

...Mr. Metzl, thank you so much for joining us. Is it frustrating or vindicating for you to be one of the first people who was right about something that people who should have known better lied about for three years?

"The facts don't matter," the child sadly said. Then he proceeded to prove it!

As usual, Tucker said that everyone has been lying for years. Also, "pretty much everyone" now agrees with the view that Tucker prefers. 

Indeed, Jamie Metzl had testified to that view in that day's congressional hearing! But sad! When the silly lost boy threw to Metzl, this is what Metzl said:

METZL (continuing directly): It's both frustrating and vindicating. In early 2020, when I started looking at the evidence, it looked pretty clear to me, not that we knew that it came from a lab, but it seemed a very, very credible hypothesis, a possibility that needed to be fully considered. 

It was really frustrating that it took so much to get more people to take this seriously. And now it's obviously vindicating that many people believe this to be a very serious possibility. And there was actually complete unanimity in the hearings today, among the members of Congress, that this was a fully viable hypothesis.

I said that it's a probability and a distinct possibility, but we still have a lot more work to do. We still need to have a comprehensive investigation...

It's hard to get dumber than that. Almost surely, the Fox News Channel's flailing lost boy will prove to be up to the challenge.

In his introduction, Carlson said that "pretty much everyone now acknowledges" that Covid came from a Chinese government lab. He also said that Metzl had testified to that effect at the day's hearing.

But sad! When it came time for Metzl to speak, that isn't what Metzl said. He merely said that he regards it as a distinct possibility that Covid came from a lab, but that we need to do "a lot more work" before we can draw that conclusion. 

Does "pretty much everyone now acknowledge" that Covid came from a Chinese government lab? That also isn't what Metzl said! It almost seems like the facts don't matter!

As is common on this show, Tucker sat there with his trademark "lost boy" look on his face as his inaccurate introduction was contradicted by his guest. This sort of thing happens all the time on this transcendently stupid program. 

Anthropologically speaking, it's hard to believe that people really behave this way. Unfortunately, it has become completely clear that people like Carlson do.

What explains the faux behavior of this angry abandoned child? How is he able to keep this nightly gong-show going?

What explains the behavior of this pitiful, helpless lost boy? In our view, journalists would have to turn to medical / psychiatric specialists to grapple with questions like those.  

To watch the exchange with Metzl, click here for the Internet Archive tape, then search on Metzl's name. You'll be watching the kind of spectacular dumbness which would, even recently, have perhaps been quite hard to believe.

FROM THEIR SIDE NOW: Rep. Greene complained about "woke!"

THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023

Dowd heard a pair of old bigots: Does Tucker Carlson believe the things he says on his nightly TV show?

We would assume that he doesn't. Among other astounding stupidities, the contradictions come thick and fast as he offers his novelized claims. 

We don't know who writes the monologues which Carlson delivers each night. But we find it very hard to believe that Carlson isn't able to hear the sheer inanity of so much of what he says on his astonishing program.

That said, it seems to us that his vast, wide-ranging intellectual illness should be addressed, within the journalistic context, by (carefully selected) medical specialists. It seems to us that the depth of Carlson's nightly inanity is a matter for some type of psychiatric / medical analysis.

Does Carlson believe the things he says? We would assume that he doesn't. We wouldn't make the same assumption about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, concerning whom we'd start by saying this:

When it comes to the work of Rep. Greene, there are Few Dumb Ideas Left Behind. 

As you may know, Rep. Greene has a new dumb idea this week. Back on Monday, February 20, she tweeted an earlier thought. 

In fairness, a lot of Americans say they agree with the dumb idea Greene was promoting that say. As we showed you yesterday, this is what she tweeted:

GREENE (2/20/23): We need a national divorce. 

We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. 

Everyone I talk to says this.  

From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.

"We need a national divorce," Greene said. She also said that everyone she'd been talking to was saying the same thing.

That last statement may have been basically accurate. As we noted yesterday, 47 percent of Democrats in the five Pacific states recently said that they agree with one version of that dumb idea—with the idea that we should seek a red state / blue state divorce.

A lot of people endorse that idea, at least when they're asked in some survey.

At any rate, Greene was tweeting a dumb idea on the morning in question. Simply put, there's no way that divorce is going to happen. 

Greene had tweeted the dumb idea anyway. Then, a leading tribune of our own blue tribe struck back against her proposal. 

We'd be inclined to say that the tribune's behavior went beyond the merely dumb. We'd be inclined to say that it went all the way over to ugly and self-defeating.

Maureen Dowd had seen Greene's tweet—and she hadn't been pleased. 

Dowd began her column in the Sunday New York Times with an encomium to Jimmy Carter's moral decency. After that, she turned to Greene, and to Greene's dumb idea. When she did, Dowd used some pleasing language:

DOWD (2/26/23): Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene followed up her furry catcalls to President Biden during the State of the Union by proposing secession.

“We need a national divorce,” she tweeted on Presidents’ Day. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

Georgia is purplish now, with two Democratic senators, as well as a governor and secretary of state willing to stand up to the Trump election lies that Greene helps spread. So it’s not clear if some states would have to be—what’s that word again?—segregated into blue and red bastions.

Question! When Greene gave voice to her dumb idea, had she proposed "secession?"

Greene had chosen a softer term, but Dowd quickly turned to that S-bomb. Later, Dowd played this particular card in a more aggressive way, offering this assessment of Greene's dumb proposal:

"It’s not clear if some states would have to be—what’s that word again?—segregated into blue and red bastions."

"What's that word again?" Dowd asked. She then employed an inflammatory term from the brutal American past. 

Rep. Greene hadn't used the term, but so what? Employing a logic she didn't explain, Dowd chose to use it "again." 

Shortly thereafter, she dropped her most aggressive bomb. She quoted a statement by an old Carter hand—an untraceable statement whose context she didn't describe or explain:

DOWD: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is following in the footsteps of racist old bigots like Lester Maddox and George Wallace,” [Gerald] Rafshoon said.

Greene is the apotheosis of those who love hating so much, they no longer have any interest in collaborating for the good of the country and the world. Carter is the apotheosis of the mantra “We’re better than this.”

Greene is "the apotheosis of those who love hating," Dowd said. She said that immediately after she herself had compared Greene to an iconic pair of "racist old bigots" from the Civil Rights era!

Was Greene proposing segregation, as Maddox and Wallace once did? Is she really a "racist old bigot" in the way Maddox pretty much was, or in the way the once semi-liberal Wallace decided he had to become?

Especially when viewed from the liberal / progressive / Democratic perspective, Rep. Greene is a fount of dumb ideas. In this instance, she had complained about "woke cultural issues." 

One major tribune replied with a bomb. It was dropped from a very high platform.

For the record, there isn't going to be a national divorce of the type Greene proposed. For better or worse, we aren't going to divide into two separate red and blue nations.

In the face of that obvious bit of reality, how might this New York Times column seem, if we're actually trying to look at life From Their Side Now? 

Our own frequently very dumb tribe rarely asks such questions. Instead, our tribunes turn to familiar old cards.

Tomorrow, we'll start right there.

Tomorrow: No Bombs Left Behind

Tucker serves a nothingburger!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2023

Joe keeps taking a pass: Last night was supposed to be the second night of Tucker's big exposé.

He served a giant nothingburger. Then too, consider this:

On Monday night, he served a stew of misdirection, fractured logic and wild, unsupported claims. And then, how revealing and sad:

As you can see by clicking this link, his program didn't post a transcript of what he said Monday night!

Amazingly, Tucker's staff normally posts a proofread transcript of his remarks every night of the week. But on this, the biggest night of the millennium, the silly, lost boy took a pass.

This makes it harder to show you examples of Tucker's leaps of logic. For the record, the withholding of transcripts is the route MSNBC chose to take with its own prime time shows as of late September, as you can see right here.

At any rate, sad! The abandoned / lost boy of the Fox News Channel wasn't willing to post his brave remarks from Monday night! 

Regarding Tuesday night's nothingburger, he has posted a transcript of the empty, braindead remarks in which he "sounded off on Chuck Schumer's call for censorship."

There has been no call for censorship. Cable's empty vessel sails on, with a sad, angry child at the helm.

A great deal remains to be said about Tucker's tales of the tapes. Then too, we want to mention today's Morning Joe.

With Mika and Joe in Abu Dhabi, it wasn't a normal show. Also, the Internet Archive hasn't yet posted the tapes from this morning's program.

That said, Joe has maintained his vast reluctance to mention Fox News by name. He loves to rant and rail about Trump, but he won't mention Tucker Carlson.

We'll offer more detail by the end of the week, but here's the way the shouting seems to have broken down:

Tucker Carlson won't post his remarks. Joe won't mention Tucker. 

FROM THEIR SIDE NOW: Rep. Greene proposed a divorce!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2023

Our tribunes heard secession: Rep. Greene had sallied forth with her latest dumb idea.

In fairness, her new idea wasn't as crazy as some of her previous offerings. For some examples of what we mean, let's revisit one part of Elaina Plott Calabro's lengthy biographical profile of Greene in The Atlantic:

CALABRO (12/5/22): To an extent, Greene had already signaled her attraction to conspiracy theories, questioning on American Truth Seekers whether the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas was a false-flag operation to eliminate gun rights. But with Q, Greene was all in. She has gone so far as to endorse an unhinged QAnon theory called “frazzledrip,” which claims that Hillary Clinton murdered a child as part of a satanic blood ritual.

She had started with the Las Vegas false flag, then moved on to frazzledrip. 

At this point in her profile, Calabro was sketching "the narrative of Greene’s descent into QAnon." Especially from the liberal / progressive / Democratic perspective, the descent had continued from there.

Indeed, especially from the blue tribe perspective, there are very few crazy ideas Rep. Greene hasn't endorsed. Judged by that standard, her latest proposal comes close to having been a bipartisan breath of fresh air.

In our view, her new idea was basically very dumb. That said, it was no frazzledrip. In the tweet in question—on Presidents' Day, no less!—Greene had offered this:

GREENE (2/20/23): We need a national divorce. 

We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. 

Everyone I talk to says this.  

From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.

"We need a national divorce," Greene said. Everyone she talks to says this!

As soon became apparent, this may not have been a fully developed idea.  A whole lot of blue voters live in the red states, and the opposite is true as well. 

Meanwhile, some states are neither red nor blue. Does Greene live in a red state herself? The answer is no longer clear.

What inspired Greene to propose this divorce? Perhaps there's been some reporting on that, but we ourselves have no idea.

Beyond that, no, Virginia! Absent some cataclysmic disaster, we simply aren't going to have this type of national divorce.

In truth, there's no conceivable way to split the country into two nations, red and blue. The very idea was defiantly dumb—but then, consider the proponent.

At any rate, blue tribe pushback quickly emerged concerning this latest idea. 

Peter Wehner is in the blue tribe now. Wehner, a good and decent person, pushed back one day later in The Atlantic, dual headlines included:

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Civil War 
The congresswoman is too influential within the GOP—and too representative of its views—for her calls for secession to be dismissed.

It was only a matter of time before Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—a peddler of far-right conspiracy theories, a speaker at white-nationalist rallies, a supporter of political violence, and an all-around unhinged individual—would renew her call for secession.

[...]

Greene is not alone in her views. She is giving voice to a widespread and growing sentiment in the Republican Party. Among Republicans in the South, for example, support for secession was 66 percent in June 2021, according to a Bright Line Watch/YouGov poll. (The poll found support for secession growing among every partisan group in the months following the January 6 riot at the Capitol.)

For today, we'll ignore one part of Wehner's framing, according to which Greene had called for "secession" and "Civil War."

We'll consider such language tomorrow. For today, we'll focus only on the statistic Wehner brandished in his piece, in which a lot of Republicans were said to have said that they favor the very same thing:

"Among Republicans in the South, for example, support for secession was 66 percent in June 2021, according to a Bright Line Watch/YouGov poll."

That was a lot of Republicans in the South! We decided to look at the survey in question—and you can do the same darn thing, simply by clicking here.

Framework selection to the side, Wehner isn't the kind of person who would make things up. For better or worse, the survey in question had posed this question to voters living all across the fruited plain:

Survey question:
“Would you support or oppose [your state] seceding from the United States to join a new union with [list of states in new union]?”

For better or worse, that was one of the (somewhat fanciful) questions this long survey posed. And sure enough! Among Republicans voters in thirteen states across the substantial expanse of the South, 66% of respondents had said that, yes, they would support that rearrangement.

That's a lot of public support for a rather unlikely idea. On the other hand, the desire for some such rearrangement wasn't limited to a bunch of rednecks like them.

Wehner didn't mention this fact, but there was a lot of support for secession among us overwrought Democrats too! For example:

In the five Pacific states, 47% of Democrats had favored secession too!

In fairness, let's be fair. Nationwide, the survey found more support for this new arrangement among Republicans, less support among Dems. Still, a lot of people said they favored flight from the union, as the survey's authors noted:

"Levels of expressed support for secession are arrestingly high, with 37% of respondents overall indicating willingness to secede. Within each region, the dominant partisan group is most supportive of secession."

More than one-third of respondents had favored this new arrangement. In regions where Democrats are the dominant group, more Democrats than Republicans said they favored this (impossible) roll of the dice.

Luckily, those numbers establish a key point. Those numbers mean that the Republicans are worse on this measure than we Democrats are!

To our taste, though, we'll have to say that we would have admired Wehner more if he had established the way many Democrats had responded to this fanciful survey question. In closing, he offered this appraisal:

WEHNER (2/21/23): Civil War–like secession isn’t going to happen in the United States, at least not anytime soon. But all of the emotions that are attached to a desire for secession—seething resentment, existential fear, an unforgiving spirit, contempt and hatred for those who disagree with you—are stoked by the kind of rhetoric employed by Greene and those who see the world as she does. Such language will further destroy America’s political culture and could easily lead to extensive political violence.

Are "seething resentment, contempt and hatred" stoked by Greene's relentlessly dimwitted rhetoric? 

We can't say that Wehner's statement is "wrong." But because we don't favor secession or Civil War, we can't say that we would rush to put it that way ourselves.

Rep. Greene had pushed for divorce. Wehner instantly framed that as a call for secession, and the headline on his piece referred to "Civil War."

Over at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd heard it that way too, if not substantially more so. Tomorrow, we'll start to ponder a certain question:

How might this instant framework have seemed to some of the Others? How might this instant framing have seemed to some people in the blue tribe?

Remember, we're asking you, all week long, to make the rarest of all human attempts:

We're asking you to try to look at life From Their Side Now!

Tomorrow: Just like Lester Maddox!

Is something wrong with Tucker Carlson?

TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2023

Sisyphus, Carlson and Trump: How do misconceptions arise? We're talking about the kinds of misconceptions which can be quite destructive.

Before we cite a recent personal experience, consider one part of Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times. 

In the column, Krugman is describing what it's like to live in New York City. Midway through, he cites one part of Donald J. Trump's crackpot speech to CPAC:

KRUGMAN (3/7/23): What about crime? There’s a widespread perception that New York [City] is a dangerous place. In his speech Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Donald Trump asserted that “killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.” Yet the reality is that New York is one of the safest places in America. No doubt, New Yorkers themselves were greatly upset by a surge in the crime rate during the pandemic, but this surge may be ebbing, with murders in particular down to their lowest level since 2019.

"There’s a widespread perception that New York [City} is a dangerous place," Krugman correctly says. Then he quotes a crackpot part of Trump's crackpot speech—a crackpot passage which will give many people that (generally) false impression.

As Krugman correctly notes, that impression does exist! Over the weekend, we visited a lifelong resident of New York City who now lives in the Hudson Valley. In passing, she relayed the impression that Gotham has become a much more dangerous place. She specifically mentioned the many killings.

We didn't have the specific numbers, but we said, to this lifelong New Yorker's street-smart surprise, that homicides were way, way down in Gotham compared to the 1990s, when she and her husband were out and about in their city's streets. 

And then, sure enough! In Sunday morning's New York Times, Linda Qiu fact-checked Trump's lunatic assertion:

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID:
“Killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”

False. Murders declined in New York by about 11 percent from 488 homicides in 2021 to 433 homicides last year. It was the lowest level since 2019, according to the city’s Police Department...

Those numbers also pale in comparison to the height of crime in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, when Mr. Trump was a mainstay of the city and when it regularly recorded more than 1,500 murders annually. Homicides peaked in 1990 at 2,245.

Last year, homicides in Gotham were roughly one fifth what they'd been in 1990! That said, one native New Yorker had no idea—and there was our disordered former president, engaged in the sort of disordered behavior which is now his disordered trademark.

Last night, things got worse when Tucker Carlson was allowed to go on the air. He was starting his exposition of what he has supposedly learned about the events of January 6 from those 44,000 hours of videotape.

All in all, the dissembling was general. As we imagined trying to fact-check Carlson's rolling collection of misstatements, we thought of the way Sisyphus famously labored under his irreducible load.

As always, there were leaps of logic and fractured facts, mixed with the O'Donnell-like claim that everyone has constantly been "lying." 

Sweeping claims were made, with all attempts at sourcing withheld. Indeed, if it weren't for the total absence of sourcing, there would have been no sourcing at all!

In all honesty, it's virtually impossible to fact check such an array of fake, fudged, phony statements. If you have the stomach for it, it's relatively easy to make an array of bogus claims. It takes a major effort to correct or address such a collection of groaners.

As always, there was a bit of a hint of a germ of truth to a few of Carlson's complaints. On the whole, we were left wondering, as we've wondered in the past, about what kind of intellectual or emotional breakdown might perhaps begin to explain where this lost boy has gone.

You can't really fact check such work! The waves of misstatements keep rolling in. By the time one misstatement has been addressed, six others have washed ashore.

Meanwhile, our highest end journalists still refuse to deal with the obvious fact that something seems to be "wrong" with people like Carlson and Trump. 

Over at The Atlantic, Tom Nichols recently tried to address this point. We'd have to say that he tried and he failed—in the end, that his courage abandoned him.

These people simply aren't up to the challenge of coming to terms with the current state of play within our failing pseudo-discourse. Tomorrow, with Sisyphus wearily trudging along, we plan to take you to Nichols' piece and show you where he lost his nerve concerning this existential problem.

Is something wrong with Tucker Carlson? Dangerous though the question may be, it's time that top "journalists" asked.

UPDATE / At long last: "At long last," at least half a dozen Republican senators are condemning what Carlson did last night. Also, Senator Schumer.

 Yahoo's breaking report is here. It offers plenty of quotes.

FROM THEIR SIDE NOW: In fairness, it may be a family tradition!

TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2023

No Crazy Belief Left Behind: Especially if we're viewing the world from the liberal / progressive / Democratic perspective, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is a real piece of work.

Especially if we're viewing the world from the liberal / progressive / Democratic perspective, there are very few crazy beliefs which Rep. Greene hasn't endorsed at some point.  

Also though, and in full fairness, she seems to come by it naturally.

Long ago and far away, The Atlantic published an extensive biographical profile of Rep. Greene.  

The profile was written by Elaina Plott Calabro. Now that we doublecheck, the profile appeared in early December, beneath this pair of headlines:

WHY IS MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE LIKE THIS? 
On the ground in the Georgia congresswoman’s alternate universe

Why is Rep. Greene like this? Especially at this point in time, we'd call that an excellent question.

We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of every word in The Atlantic's lengthy profile. But as to why Rep. Greene has endorsed so many apparently crazy beliefs, it seems that the tendency may possibly run in the family.

At one point in the profile, Calabro offered a biographical profile of Bob Taylor, Rep. Greene's father. According to Calabro, he was also in possession of at least one strange belief:

CALABRO (12/5/22): Greene’s political origin story was not unlike that of millions of other Trump supporters. Despite having never hinted at an interest in politics, she found herself suddenly beguiled by a feeling, a conviction that despite the distance between Trump’s gold-plated world and her own, she knew exactly who he was. “He reminded me of most men I know,” she has said. “Men like my dad.”

In some ways, [Trump] was like her dad. Bob Taylor may not have been overtly partisan, but he rivaled Trump in his tendency to self-mythologize. In 2006, Greene’s father had published a novel with the small publisher Savas Beatie called Paradigm. As best I can tell, this is Taylor’s effort to demonstrate the value of a system he invented called the “Taylor Effect”—which purports to predict the stock market based on the gravitational fluctuations of Earth—in the form of a high-stakes international caper. The story follows twin scientists who discover an ancient Egyptian box in the bowels of the Biltmore estate, the contents of which, they soon realize, could “destroy many of the world’s most powerful families” if ever made public.

He considered his stock-market theory to be “the Genuine Article”; in the afterword, he likened himself to da Vinci, Galileo, Edison, Marconi, and the Wright brothers. “History,” he wrote, “is filled with characters who endured ridicule, imprisonment, and even death because they discovered things we know today with absolute certainty to be true.” Suzanne Thompson, a North Carolina author hired to help Taylor write Paradigm, recalls that Taylor had “a bit of an exalted sense of himself.” She was unaware that he was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s father, and gasped with dismay when I told her. “Oh my gosh, I had no idea. Oh my God.”

In many ways, Bob Taylor seems to have been an admirable high achiever. He had established a highly successful business despite humble family origins.

In other ways, it seems that he may have been out of his mind. 

Let us guess that Taylor didn't really invent a system which could "predict the stock market based on the gravitational fluctuations of Earth." That said, it seems that he believed that he had, and that he may have thought of himself as one of history's great inventors. 

(In full fairness, let it be said that Newton believed in witches and witchcraft, and also spent a lot of his time trying to find a way to make gold out of lead. Presumably, no one ever gets everything right, but we'll guess that Rep. Greene's father may have been wrong about revolutionary system now known as the "Taylor Effect.")

At any rate, Suzanne Thompson had helped Taylor write the adventure novel in which he's said to have displayed his "exalted view of himself." According to Calabro, Suzanne Thompson gasped with dismay when she learned that Rep. Greene was Bob Taylor's daughter.

Calabro doesn't attempt to explain that reaction. We'll only say that the capacity to form absurd beliefs may have been, to some extent, a bit of a family tradition.

At any rate, whatever! Elsewhere in her profile, Calabro describes the process through which Greene emerged as a person who seems to be able to believe almost any claim, no matter how absurd, bizarre or implausible.

"Despite having never hinted at an interest in politics," she found herself, as she reached 43 years of age, caught up in the emerging politics, journalism and social media of the ongoing Trump era.

We won't try to retrace it all. But as Calabro laid out "the narrative of Greene’s descent into QAnon," she offered a passage showing how far it quickly went:

CALABRO: To an extent, Greene had already signaled her attraction to conspiracy theories, questioning on American Truth Seekers whether the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas was a false-flag operation to eliminate gun rights. But with Q, Greene was all in. She has gone so far as to endorse an unhinged QAnon theory called “frazzledrip,” which claims that Hillary Clinton murdered a child as part of a satanic blood ritual.

Way back in the 1990s, the Reverend Falwell had toured the countryside, attempting to convince supporters of the reality of the Clintons' many murders.

By and large, the mainstream press corps had treated Falwell's behavior with a dose of benign neglect. Now, if Calabro's profile can be believed, the "frazzledrip" theory had taken things one step further, and Greene has endorsed the claim.

According to frazzledrip, it wasn't just that Hillary Clinton had been involved in a bunch of political murders. She had also murdered a child as part of a blood ritual—a satanic blood ritual at that!

The father believed that he had invented a world-changing economic / gravitational theory. According to Calabro, the daughter believed in frazzledrip, then continued along from there.

By now, she has become a major political player on our devolving American stage. Especially when she is viewed from the liberal / progressive / Democratic Party perspective, there are very few crazy, dumb or stupid ideas to which she hasn't given voice.

That said, consider this:

At present, we're living in a world in which tens of millions of American voters seem to believe various things which don't quite seem to make sense. In his new column for the New York Times, Paul Krugman offers this absolute keeper of an overview statement:

"But of course none of this is about rational argument."

We'll offer more on Krugman's statement this afternoon. But we've all been living through a highly instructive anthropological moment—a moment in which we're learning about the surprising human capacity for apparently crazy belief.

As it turns out, many people—not just Greene—are apparently able to believe in theories like frazzledrip. Until the "democratization of media"—until the rise of such communication technologies as talk radio, cable news, the Internet and social media—this basic fact about the human condition might have been hard to discern.

Today, it's clear that people can believe all sorts of things, if they're only given the chance. The liberal / progressive / Democratic world is struggling to deal with the armies of strange belief advanced by generals like Rep. Greene, but is it possible that we ourselves, within our blue tribe, contribute to this ongoing disaster?

As we admitted yesterday, we're going to be looking at things From Their Side Now this week—and yes, we're going to start with one of the most disordered of all major red tribe players this side of Donald J. Trump.

There seem to be very few things that Rep. Greene can't come to believe. That said, our own blue tribe has been an ongoing part of this very dangerous mess—or at least, so it says here.

In the past few weeks, Rep. Greene gave voice to her latest dumb idea. On its face, the idea was rather dumb—but then, the blue world struck back.

According to major anthropologists, members of all human tribes are strongly inclined to believe that the fault at times like this always lies with the Others, full and complete total stop. 

In the case of Rep. Greene, few crazy, dumb or unhelpful ideas seem to get left behind. Then again, and acknowledging that, how well are things going with Us?

How may this latest foofaw involving Greene have appeared to the Others? Tomorrow, we'll start to ponder that question. 

Incomparably, we'll be trying to do something unusual. We'll be trying to look at things From The Others' Side Now.

Tomorrow: The latest dumb idea

No, it doesn't actually matter!

MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2023

Hooray for Hollywood: No, it doesn't exactly matter. 

That said, this Sunday night is our nation's annual Oscars night. Also, we're interested in the sorts of things you can occasionally read in the New York Times, perhaps from interested parties.

We refer to today's guest essay about the Oscar-nominated feature film, Tár. The essay was written by Stephen Mauceri, a conductor and author.  

Headline included, the essay starts like this:

Who’s Afraid of Lydia Tár?

The Academy Awards are still a week away, but at least one verdict is in: “Tár” is a hit, having already won some 60 international awards and six Oscar nominations, including for best picture, best directing and best actress in a leading role. It has also engendered passionate conversations, articles and interpretations.

“Tár” is a hit, Mauceri writes. From there, he proceeds to list the film's many awards, and he cites its six nominations. The film has also engendered passionate conversations, we're told.

Tár has won a lot of awards, but is it really "a hit?" Traditionally, that designation has been a reference to a film's performance at the box office—and to this day, for all the fanfare and all the nominations, Tár remains a major flop when judged by that brutal metric.

As of today, Tar's total take at the "domestic" box office—in the United States and Canada—stands at $6.7 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Unless we use the term "critical hit," it's odd to see a film which performed so poorly at the turnstiles heralded as a hit.

Box office isn't a measure of quality, but it has proven to be impossible to get people to go see Tár. Example:

As of this past weekend, Tár was showing in 444 domestic theaters. That was a jump from the previous number (236), presumably in anticipation of pre-Oscar rumbling.

Result? This past Saturday, the average take for Tár was just $40 per theater—and no, that isn't a typo. You can't make us the people go see Tár—but in this morning's New York Times, you can read that it's a hit.

Box office isn't a measure of quality. For us, Tár has been especially interesting because of the chasm  between highly favorable critical assessments and the public's refusal to show.

Has Tár been a hit? As noted, the claim was lodged by John Mauceri, who may well be an excellent conductor. That said, what else is John Mauceri? The identity line tells us this:

Mauceri is a conductor and author, and was the musical adviser to the filmmakers of “Tár.”

Mauceri may have been an excellent musical adviser to the filmmakers too! Journalistically, though, a question lingers:

No, it doesn't exactly matter—but was this film a hit?

STARTING TOMORROW: From Their Side Now!

MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2023

Taking the David French Challenge: "I've looked at life from both sides now?" 

It's a well-known historical claim.

Joni Mitchell was the first to report this accomplishment. She did so in this famous song from 1966 or 1967, which Judy Collins quickly recorded.

In fairness, Mitchell admitted that looking at life from both sides hadn't been fully successful. 

"It's life's illusions I recall," she admitted at the end of her song. "I really don't know life at all."

Even given that admission, it may be that the time has come to emulate Mitchell's conduct. That brings us to a task we'll describe as The David French Challenge.

We'll base our reading on material found in French's March 2 column for the New York Times. Like others before him, French described a world of poisonous political conflict—a nation in which our "unrelenting mutual political hatred informs our judgment."

Unrelenting mutual hatred informs our judgment—and not in a good way, French says. Here's the part of the hymn within which we've spotted a challenge:

FRENCH (3/2/23): [O]ur nation’s unrelenting mutual political hatred informs our judgment. The group More in Common recently attempted to measure partisan animosity in connection with our cultural conflicts over teaching American history. Its findings were disturbing. America’s most partisan citizens view their political opponents as deeply reprehensible. Overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats view the other side as “hateful,” “racist,” “brainwashed” and “arrogant.”...They see no value in the speech of people they despise. Instead, they see only bad people expressing bad ideas in bad faith.

We’re losing the capacity for empathy. We simply can’t place ourselves in the other person’s shoes. Yet it takes a certain degree of arrogance to presume that we’re so obviously correct that disagreement isn’t just a sign of error but of moral defect.

Even worse, we’re wrong. Our presumptions of our opponents’ views are often simply false. Even as More in Common found unrelenting political hostility between red and blue, it also found that Democrats and Republicans have a “deeply distorted understanding of each other.” In fact, Democrats and Republicans believe that 55 percent of their opponents hold extreme views. In reality, the number is only 30 percent.

"Democrats and Republicans believe that 55 percent of their opponents hold extreme views"—but "in reality, the number is only 30 percent?"

We don't know of any objective way to generate that second statistic. That said, French's portrait of our political culture seems to be on the mark.

It's true! When large numbers of Republicans and Democrats discuss those in the other party, it frequently seems that they "see only bad people expressing bad ideas in bad faith."

Beyond that, people do frequently seem to presume that their tribe's view on some matter is obviously correct—so much so that disagreement on the part of others can only be "a sign of moral defect."

One's own side is plainly correct; the Others are simply "bad people." In French's view, that isn't the way we Americans, red or blue, should let ourselves picture the world.

As a general matter, we think French is right on that general point—but what solution to this problem does French suggest? Continuing, he offers this:

FRENCH (continuing directly): How can we end this cancel culture? Switch the presumptions. Rather than beginning with the idea that our opponents are evil people who express evil ideas, operate with a rebuttable presumption that our political foes are decent people expressing heartfelt thoughts in good faith.

In French's view, we shouldn't "begin with the idea that our opponents are evil people who express evil ideas." Instead, we should "operate with a rebuttable presumption"—with the presumption that "our political foes are decent people expressing heartfelt thoughts in good faith."

A key word there is "rebuttable." French isn't saying that we'll end up thinking that all our foes are decent people. We'll still be allowed to have people we hate, but we'll train ourselves to avoid hating tens of millions of unknown people live and direct from the jump!

Does French's presentation make sense? Should we operate with a (rebuttable) presumption that our political foes are decent people expressing heartfelt thoughts in good faith?

For ourselves, we tend to agree with French's view. In effect, he has issued a challenge:

He has challenged Americans, red and blue, to consider the possibility that people who disagree with them may have a reasonable motive for the ideas they express.

Meanwhile, who knows? It could turn out that some of those others even have the occasional germ of a valid point!

At this juncture, full disclosure! In a political realm of blue and red tribes, we ourselves always vote with the blues.  In that sense, French is issuing this challenge to us:

He's challenging us to imagine the possibility that people who belong to the red tribe may in fact be "decent people expressing heartfelt thoughts in good faith."

Imaginably, such people may even be reacting to some shortcoming in the general views of our own blue tribe! To some tiny extent, it could turn out that their complaints about our tribe are reasonable, sensible, valid!

So goes The David French Challenge. For those of us who vote with blue America, we're being challenged to consider the possibility that members of red American may have some valid observations or concerns.

Starting tomorrow, we're going to take that challenge! In fact, we're going to start a lengthy attempt to find the possible merits in various red points of view.

We're going to try to see the world as the red tribe sometimes does. In effect, we'll be trying to look at life From Their Side Now.

Is it possible that red voters have some valid perceptions or complaints? Is it possible that Our Side has even been a tiny bit wrong on occasion?

For many years, it has seemed to us that our own blue tribe is much too self-impressed. We can easily spot the evil in Others, but we can't see the flaws in ourselves.

It also seems to us that this behavior may tend to harm blue interests. When we can't see the flaws in our own behaviors and points of view, this tends to harden the tribal division which makes national progress impossible.

At this difficult juncture, French has issued a challenge. We've decided to take the challenge—even to heighten its terms:

With apologies for our language, we're going to start with the dumbest public figure who's currently part of red tribe politics. Also, with the way one of our own Pulitzer winners recently chose to characterize that public figure's most recent dumb remark.

The dumbest person among the Others made a dumb remark. Is it possible that her dumb remark, however dumb, stemmed from a valid set of concerns?

Also this:

Is it possible that our own tribe's reaction to her remark was dumb, and possibly ugly too? Is it possible that we actually harm progressive interests when we react in such ways?

Starting tomorrow, we'll be looking at life From Their Side Now. Is it possible that "life's illusions" have somehow managed to worm their way inside our own tents too?

Tomorrow: Just like Lester Maddox!

BREAKING! We won't be posting today!

 FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 2023

Also, here's what it says in the Post: We're headed off on a brief trip and we won't be posting today.

That said, we scanned the front page of the (online) Washington Post at 5:45 A.M. This was the banner headline on the second news report from the top (with apologies to young women):

Young women are criticized for this vocal tic — but it helps whales survive

As of 5:45 this morning, that was the (online) Post's number two news report worldwide!

We're amazed by what's happening at the (online) Post. Also, by the fact that no one else seems to be amazed!

How should Dems "wage war on Fox News?"

THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 2023

Good luck trying that: Based on this piece for the Washington Post, Greg Sargent seems to think it's time for Dems to "wage war on Fox News."

Good freaking luck with that!

At issue are measures of basic competence. The Democratic Party leadership has shown little of that in such matters down through the many long years, and our major mainstream journalists have perhaps shown even less

Sargent links to a letter from Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch. Reading that letter, we get little sense that Schumer and Jeffries are real clear on the basic facts involved in Dominion's recent legal filings. 

Reading what Sargent had written, we get little sense that he's real clear on that either.

"Like it or not, Democrats are in an information war," Sargent writes. In fact, Democrats were in an information war all the way back in the mid 1990s—an information war which was being waged by mainstream news orgs like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

(For example, see Gene Lyons, Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater. In the main, the news orgs to whom Lyons referred were the Post and the Times. Starting in March 1999, along came the war against Gore, starring Ceci and them.)

People like Sargent were determined not to tell you such things at that time. Today, they're desperate for some ardent glory, but when we imagine them planning a war, we'll suggest you hold onto your hats.

Like it or not, our whole country is involved in an information war at present. Sadly, our own blue academics, pundits and journalists are knee deep in that warfare. Our own team's a part of the problem.

Our own vastly self-impressed team is a part of the problem! Until we learn to recognize and correct our own shortcomings and foibles, we're unlikely to do real well in an attempt to wage war on Fox. 

"Physician, heal thyself," someone is said to have said. It isn't likely to happen here. As with human groups all over the world, our team isn't drawn to such work.

Next week: Our own team's a part of the problem? 

Full disclosure: We don't think we've ever met Greg, but we do know that he's a good person.

HOW TO TEACH IT: Lawrence's statement was baldly inaccurate!

THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 2023

Morning Joe moves on: Ambition can be a driving task master. 

That thought came to mind as we read the front-page report in yesterday's New York Times about the political career of former president Jimmy Carter, a person who is generally understood to be both good and decent.

Manifestly, Carter's a good and decent person, but he was also ambitious. He first sought office in 1962, when this local condition prevailed:

KING AND FAUSSET (3/1/23): [T]he repressive environment of the mid-20th century meant that he had no Black voters to woo when he started his first foray into electoral politics with a 1962 bid for a South Georgia State Senate seat. Due to racist restrictions, hardly any Black people were registered to vote in his district at the time.

How many black people were registered to vote in the Georgia of that era? The Times report doesn't specifically say.

That said, the report describes the way Carter campaigned for office at that time, up to and including his first campaign for governor in 1970. Here are a pair of excerpts, with the key word "ambition" in play:

KING AND FAUSSET: [E]nduring Black support for Mr. Carter illuminates two intertwined and epochal American stories, each of them powered by themes of pragmatism and redemption. One is the story of a white Georgia politician who began his quest for power in the Jim Crow South—a man who, as late as 1970, declared his respect for the arch-segregationist George Wallace in an effort to attract white votes, but whose personal convictions and political ambitions later pushed him to try to change the racist environment in which he had been raised. 

[...]

After winning his 1962 State Senate race, Mr. Carter, a man of searing ambition, set his sights on the governor’s mansion but was defeated in 1966. He ran again and won in 1970, with a campaign full of unsubtle dog whistles to aggrieved white voters that included promises to restore “law and order” to their communities and, according to [biographer Jonathan] Alter, the dissemination of a “fact sheet” that reminded white voters that Mr. Carter’s Democratic opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, had attended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.

Assuming the accuracy of those accounts, this is all part of our American history—American history from a fairly recent era. That said, how should such history be taught in the public schools? 

How should it be taught to third graders? Also, how should such history be understood by contemporary American adults?

We hope to pursue such questions in our reports next week. For today, with a few days of travel approaching, we want to focus on something Lawrence O'Donnell has said.

He said it on last evening's Last Word. At the start of his program's second major segment, he offered this baldly inaccurate statement:

O'DONNELL (3/1/23): Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Rupert Murdoch's home country of Australia, tweeted today:

"Rupert Murdoch has done more damage to American democracy than any other person alive today."

Rupert Murdoch has had many co-conspirators in his attack on American democracy, including the most hysterical liar he has ever employed in his Fox primetime lineup, Tucker Carlson, who, like Rupert Murdoch, has been exposed in legal filings by the Dominion Voting Corporation as privately not believing any of Donald Trump's lies about the election while he and Rupert Murdoch did everything they could to publicly support and advance those lies.

Lawrence knows a lot of things about the workings of the federal government. Along the way, he has done a fair amount of good work. 

Also, he has created a brilliant campaign to help the school children of Malawi. Admittedly, he has done this while paying little or no attention to the interests and needs of lower-income schoolkids here in the U.S.

That said, last night's statement about Tucker Carlson was just baldly inaccurate. Did Tucker Carlson "do everything he could to publicly support and advance" the crazy claims at issue in the Dominion legal filings?

As you can see in last Saturday's report, that statement is just wildly inaccurate. It comes to us, live and direct, from the land of The Lazy and Scripted.

In fairness, it's entirely possible that Lawrence didn't and doesn't know that his statement was baldly inaccurate. Many of our cable stars are frequently just a bit fuzzy concerning the world's actual facts, as opposed to preferred Storyline.

That said, the statement was wildly inaccurate. That said, the pleasure it gave to blue viewers may have appealed to Lawrence's ambitions.

Yesterday morning, we offered you a quick overview of Carlson's disordered presentation from this past Monday night. It's hard to know what words to use for such manifest journalistic disorder. (Lawrence has long seemed to know only two such words. We refer to "liar" and "lies.") 

At any rate, such lunacy is offered on Fox, night after night, to millions of unsuspecting viewers, and newspapers like the New York Times rarely take note of this fact.

Last night, Lawrence entered the fray with a baldly inaccurate statement. In fairness, it was almost surely "close enough for journalistic work"—and in fairness, it's quite possible that he had no idea that his statement was baldly inaccurate.

So it goes as our tribe's TV stars tells us the stories we like. Quite often, they tell us these stories shorn of all context and shorn of all nuance, and in ways which may simply be wrong.

It's easier to do their jobs that way! Presumably, it helps them produce better ratings, their version of stock prices / votes.

In our view, this isn't an especially helpful way for our blue tribe to proceed. In large part, it stems from mammoth sloth. But this is the business our big stars have chosen, along with the corporate players who lurk behind the scenes.

To Lawrence's credit, he was at least discussing the legal filings which were made public within the past two weeks. At Morning Joe, a different approach has come to an end with the gang's return to form on this morning's broadcast.

As the program opened today, Joe and Mika—but mainly Joe—were back in the saddle again. 

Joe went on and on and on about former president Donald J. Trump, concerning whom he loves to rant. Also though, it became clear that the program has escaped the gravity of Monday afternoon's legal filing concerning the testimony of that same Rupert Murdoch—a topic this normally brash show had gone to heroic lengths to avoid in its previous two broadcasts.

It had never occurred to us until this very week! It had never occurred to us that Scarborough loves to rant about Trump, but may be strongly inclined to give Fox News wide berth. As the Morning Joe gang pursues its ambitions, Fox may be more potent than Trump!

As we've noted in the past, it's much easier to notice the things a performer says than to notice the things he doesn't. That said:

"I never knew until this day that it was Barzini all along." 

That's what Don Corleone once famously said at an earlier point in our history. For ourselves, we never realized, until this very week, that the Morning Joe team seems to have made a commitment to leave Fox News alone, even as it repeats its daily rants about Trump.

"I woke from my dream / My idols were clay?" 

So says an unnamed person within the American song book.

The idols we're sold by our tribe's news organs may not always be playing it straight! Next week, we may start with Maureend Dowd's column from this past Sunday as we consider some of the ways this practice plays out in our world, even in our tribe's increasing focus on our brutal American history.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but millions of people saw Carlson's disordered performance on Monday night. For the most part, blue tribe America sleeps as this disordered figure engages in this bizarre and disordered behavior.

We'll be tossed a set of bones; at times, those bones will be absurdly inaccurate. It's easier for our tribe's stars to play it that way, but where does the country end up?

In conclusion:

According to that Times report, Jimmy Carter's political ambitions eventually "pushed him" to change his approach with respect to race. We would also assume that his new approach brought his public conduct more in line with his private beliefs.

How should we present this American history to children in the public schools? To third graders, let's say. Or how about to middle school students? Or all they all the same?

Also, how should we American adults view the unfolding of this history—in columns like the one Dowd wrote, or in Charles Blow's new column?

Our history's a very long and winding and brutal road. How should we adults approach it?

We don't even have a word...

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2023

...for what Tucker Carlson did: In this morning's widely praised report, we discussed some of what Tucker Carlson did in Monday night's opening monologue.

Just this once, let's be frank: We don't even have a word for what this "lost boy" did.

Also, we don't really have a word for a related phenomenon:

We don't have a word for the fact that someone can do what Carlson did and no one will say a word.

At this site, we've tended to describe this cultural phenomenon as an "imitation of life"—more specifically, in this case, as an imitation of discourse. 

But no, we aren't the rational animal, and we don't have a national discourse. We have a culture in which tribes shout soundbites at each other and call each other names.

In fairness, it's very, very, very hard to critique what Carlson did. The lapses of logic and self-contradictions come at you thick and fast. 

The false or unfounded factual claims are instantaneous and general. It's easy to create a realm built on misdirection, much harder to take it apart. 

We tend think of something the later Wittgenstein said in a totally different context:

Here it is difficult as it were to keep our heads up...We feel as if we had to repair a torn spider's web with our bare hands.

Speaking to millions of people each night, Carlson tears spider's webs. His viewers don't hear the logical leaps and the flight from facts—and for the most part, the rest of the world just lets the whole gong-show go.

For what it's worth, we'll mention Morning Joe once again:

How did the virulently anti-Trump show react to Monday afternoon's court filing, in which Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that at least four Fox hosts had "endorsed" Sidney Powell's crackpot claims about the way Dominion Voting Systems had stolen the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump?

How did the program react to that front-page news? As we noted yesterday, the fiery program completely ducked the issue on Tuesday morning. 

On this morning's four-hour show, the name "Murdoch" was mentioned exactly once. It was mentioned in the manner shown, right at the start of a new segment at 6:24 A.M.:

[Videotape begins]

JIMMY FALLON: A new court filing shows that Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted some of the network's hosts endorsed false claims about the 2020 election. Today, Fox News promised to focus on real issues, then introduced their newest host, Dilbert.

[Videotape ends]

MIKA: Oh, wow! O.K. Welcome back to Morning Joe. 

It's 24 past the hour. I guess we should give Trump a moment to not watch, because he doesn't want to get triggered, Willie.

From there, Mika introduced a discussion of Ron DeSantis. Translation:

When someone out in the world says "Fox," Morning Joe plays it safe and says "Trump."

We lack a word for what Tucker does, or for the ongoing dumbnification of the online Washington Post and the increasingly fatuous Slate. It's a dumb, dumb upper-end media world, and the media tends not to say so.

HOW TO TEACH IT: What Carlson said on Monday night!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2023

As blue tribe America slept: As we noted yesterday, the headline on Kate Cray's short piece asked an excellent question:

"How Should We Teach the Story of Our Country?" 

Especially given the recent dispute about a new Advanced Placement course, that headline was asking an excellent question! 

In a slightly different world, it could have triggered a lengthy discussion about our nation's history, such as it is. Also, about the kinds of frameworks we might build around our understanding of that topic.

How should American history be taught in the public schools? It would certainly start with the state of the Americas before European contact and in its immediate aftermath—with the history Charles Mann explored in his 2005 book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

The story should start before 1492. Proceeding with all deliberate speed, it would soon reach 1619—a time "before the Mayflower."

That said, what frameworks should our public schools build around the exploration of the brutal behavior which is often involved? In a slightly better world, we could have had that discussion.

In fact, we don't live in any such world, and there's no sign that we will at any imaginable point. 

At present, tribal warfare tends to intrude on the possibility of some such discussion. All too often, the foolishness may come from within our own blue tribe, though we members of that tribe have a very hard time coming to terms with that fact.

This is no country for solid discussions! By now, that fact is quite clear. Consider what happened on Monday night when Tucker Carlson instructed millions of voters concerning where Covid came from.

We'll start with a disclaimer. Except in the most obvious way, we ourselves have no idea where Covid came from.

We don't know whether it came from a lab or from a Chinese "wet market." The disordered fellow who works for Fox News doesn't know where Covid came from either, but minor matters of that type rarely intrude on his lectures.

How many miles past clowncar stupid can it get on our major "news channels?"  Today, we'll show you part of the we saw, this past Monday night, when we watched the excitable fellow pretending to shape our understanding of this recent historical matter.

For starters, it's one of the heartbreaking ironies of modern "cable news" culture. The craziest presentations of all are given the cleanest transcription.

So it went on Monday night as Tucker fumed and posed. The transcript of the bulk of his monologue has been carefully proofread, and the videotape is also presented. The headline on the transcript says this:

TUCKER CARLSON: Why did people 'lie about the truth' of COVID's origins?

People had "lied about the truth!" Setting that odd construction to the side, we'll start as Carlson says this:

CARLSON (2/27/23): Nobody understands the principles of political venture capitalism better than, ironically, the communist Chinese government does. They paid Hunter Biden, too. And this weekend, we learned a little bit about what they got in return.

The Wall Street Journal reported the Biden administration has finally concluded that, yes, COVID was not naturally occurring. It didn't emerge organically from a pangolin, whatever that is, at a wet market, whatever that is. 

No, the virus came from a Chinese military lab where it was created. That's the determination of the Department of Energy, based on new intelligence that of course, everyone already had. 

As we mentioned yesterday, this fellow's misstatements come so think and so fast that it's virtually impossible for a fact-checker to keep up. And so it was in that short passage, which started with an unsupported, unexplained claim that the Chinese government was rewarded this weekend for having paid Hunter Biden.

That was just the appetizer. Instantly, viewers were handed this flat misstatement:

"The Wall Street Journal reported the Biden administration has finally concluded that, yes, COVID was not naturally occurring."

As you probably know, that isn't what the Journal reported. Also, it isn't what the Biden administration is known to have concluded. 

It isn't even "the determination of the Department of Energy," unless you include the fact that department has rated its degree of certainty as "low confidence." 

Also, the Department hasn't described the intelligence upon which it based that most likely / low confidence assessment. That said, had "everyone already had" that undefined intelligence?

Readers, please! This is Fox's excitable boy on one of his expeditions.

This week, pundits are asking why Rupert Murdoch, back in 2020, let Dobbs, Bartiromo, Pirro and Hannity pimp Sidney Powell's crazy claims about Dominion Voting Systems. We've seen no one ask why Murdoch lets his excitable boy go on the air with presentations like the one he offered this Monday night.

Setting that irony to the side, let's chart the fellow's performance:

Carlson had already given voice to multiple clowncar statements, including his silly reference to the pangolin. As he continued, he continued to suggest that the Biden administration now "knows" that Covid came out of a lab.

Does the Biden administration "know" that? As with everything else, everything is possible!

That said, Carlson never defended or supported his claim. Instead, he offered this:

CARLSON: Now we know all of that. Does Joe Biden still consider Vladimir Putin, he's so bad, the greatest threat to world peace and stability? It does seem like this story could overturn some of our previous assumptions. 

Well, Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, went on CNN yesterday to answer precisely none of these questions. Instead, he told us, "We're still not sure where it came from." Watch this.

(Videotape begins)

DANA BASH: Did the coronavirus pandemic start in a lab? Is that what you believe now?

JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, Dana, there is a variety of views in the intelligence community. Some elements in the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don't have enough information to be sure. And if we gain any further insider information, we will share it with Congress, and we will share it with the American people. But right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.

(Videotape ends)

CARLSON (mockingly): We just can't say for sure where COVID came from! There's no consensus! We're still debating it! 

Well, there's never a consensus in Washington about anything, particularly not with the intel agencies. They're lying! We know perfectly well COVID came from. We've known this for years. 

Sullivan's lying, the silly boy said. Without quite remembering to define his principal term, he said, "We've known this for years."

Who is this "we" to whom Tucker referred? And in what sense has this "we" known these things "for years?"

The excitable child proceeded to lay out his brief. As he did, it began to seem that he meant that he—possibly, he and his staff—had known these things for years. This is what he said: 

CARLSON (continuing from above): They're lying! We know perfectly well COVID came from. We've known this for years. 

In fact, one of the very first things we knew about COVID was that it was an engineered virus that escaped somehow, intentionally or not, from a Chinese military biolab in Wuhan. 

It was in early March of 2020, three full years ago, at the very beginning, that we did a long open on this show about the Chinese research paper whose authors later disappeared. Now, these Chinese scientific researchers scolded the Chinese government for the lax safety standards that they said allowed COVID to escape and infect the world. 

This was three years ago. Watch this.

He'd known it since March 2020, three years back, when he'd done a long open about a research paper! 

On the basis of that long open, we'd all known, for the past three years, that Covid escaped from a lab! Ever since that program, we'd all known that fact—but here was the tape he now played:

CARLSON (continuing from above): This was three years ago. Watch this.

(Videotape begins)

CARLSON (March 2020): In fact, the outbreak may have begun, not in a public meat market, but in a poorly run Chinese laboratory. Now, that's not our theory. Anyone who raises that theory on American television is attacked as a conspiracy monger. But this is a theory from a now censored Chinese paper, a draft paper posted in mid-February. 

Scientists at the South China University of Technology suggested the virus outbreak, coronavirus outbreak, began at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, where an animal may have infected a researcher who then spread the disease outside the facility. 

The paper is explicit about this. We're going to quote it. "The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan," end quote.

(Videotape ends)

CARLSON: So it's not like we did a lot of hard hitting reporting with our Chinese speaking staff. That paper was in English on the Internet and anyone who was interested could have found it. We were just interested. That's why we found it. And then we found someone who was there. 

Back in March of 2020, the child had found a paper on the Internet! Anyone could have found the paper, but only Carlson did!

Also, and most clownishly, be sure you understand this:

Carlson had only said, in that three-year-old broadcast, that Covid "may have begun" in a Chinese lab. He had described that as "a theory."

That Internet paper was "explicit," Carlson had said. He had said that he was going to quote it!

And then, Rupert Murdoch's silliest child did quote the paper he'd found on the Net! When he did, the paper had only said that Covid "probably" came from a lab. 

On Monday night, the silly child said that Sullivan was lying when he said that we still aren't sure where Covid originated. He seemed to say that he knows this based on a paper from three years ago—a paper whose authors had also said they weren't sure!

Carlson never explained why we should assume that anything in that research paper was actually accurate. As he proceeded, he fleshed out this last statement from above:

"And then we found someone who was there."

He was referring to Li Meng Yan, a Steve Bannon discovery and functionary whose claims, rightly or wrongly, have been widely challenged over the past several years. 

At this point, Carlson played tape of one of her interviews on his show from past years, without explaining why we should assume that her claims are accurate. Later, he introduced her for a brand-new guest appearance.

You can watch the videotape of that new appearance here. At that same site, Fox News summarizes what was said, this Monday night, in this manner:

CARNAHAN (2/28/23): Host Tucker Carlson asked Yan on Monday if she still believes the virus was intentionally released nearly three years after the pandemic started. 

"Of course, it was not an accident," she responded. 

[...]

Carlson suggested the Chinese government unleashed COVID to destroy Western economies and elevate their own position globally. 

Yan said based on the evidence she has seen and the source she has spoken to, the virus was "intentionally brought out of this strict lab and released in the community."

"However, I don't think the outbreak in Wuhan was intentional. I would say it was because [the] CCP government and the military scientists underestimated the transmissibility," she added. "That's why finally it got out of control and the cost [was] a local outbreak. However, we should know that [the] CCP government intentionally let it go all over the world to kill millions of people all over the world later."

Up to this point, Carlson had repeatedly said that he didn't know if the release of Covid has been intentional. Now, he effusively vouched for his star guest as she offered a different assessment.

Viewers were told that Covid was deliberately released by the Chinese government with the intention of killing millions of people all over the world. No doubt, we knew it all along, thanks to the papers Carlson and his staff have managed to find on the Net!

In the past few days, journalists have asked why Rupert Murdoch let Dobbs and Bartiromo clown in the way they did in November 2020. We've seen no one ask why Murdoch lets this baldly disordered boy go on the air at the present time.

As we noted yesterday, it's very. very. very hard to fact-check a program like Carlson's. As we told you yesterday, the leaps of logic and the fractured facts come at us thick and fast. They're accompanied by Carlson's smirk and sneers, and by his weird gales of laughter.

So how about it, Pilgrim? How should our American history be taught to the nation's kids?

No such discussion could ever occur within our broken journalistic / academic culture. At present, The Crazy comes from several directions, frequently joined by The Merely Stretched or Overwrought, and of course by The Dumb and The Performative and The Merely Ludicrous.

This has been happening for a long time. We started this site in 1998 because things had gotten so bad within the mainstream press.

Our own blue tribe is involved in this cultural breakdown, though we're generally unable to see this. Meanwhile, as Carlson thrashes and flails, mainstream reporters frisk Murdoch's lassitude from three years ago, except on Morning Joe.

Tomorrow: Maureen Dowd?