OCCUPY THE TEA PARTY: Are they the same? Or different?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011

Part 2—The Times gropes the elephant’s buttocks: Are Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party really “natural allies?” That’s what Matt Taibbi crazily said in a recent Rolling Stone post (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/24/11).

What could Taibbi have meant?

These movements seem to be very different. But are these movements alike in some way? Could they really be “natural allies?” Are they more the same than different?

There’s an obvious answer to those questions. That answer would be yes and no.

Consider two recent front-page reports. One appeared in the Washington Post, the other in the New York Times. In essence, each report asked a basic question: Are these movements the same in some way? Or are they totally different?

These news reports seemed to answer that question in totally different ways. But there was an obvious reason for this apparent divergence. One report chose to stress the similarities between the two movements. The other report rather plainly chose to stress the differences.

Are these movements the same? Or are they different? As with the apocryphal blind men describing the elephant, it depends on your point of view.

The New York Times went first. Last Saturday, Kate Zernike penned a front-page report which ran beneath a rather predictable headline: “Wall St. Protest Isn't Like Ours, Tea Party Says.”

According to that gloomy headline, the Tea Party had somehow said that Occupy Wall Street isn’t like them. But did the entire “Tea Party” say thAT? Since the “Tea Party” isn’t an actual organization, it’s hard to see how that could have happened. And sure enough! In her accurate but selective assessment, Zernike focused on political professionals in certain professionalized Tea Party orgs. Unsurprisingly, these professionalized players insisted that the Occupy Wall Street movement was nothing like the Tea Party. In this passage, Zernike quoted the co-founder or a professionalized Tea Party-related group:

ZERNIKE (10/22/11): ...Tea Party activists are indeed fighting the comparisons.

"They seem to be more in favor of anarchy than they are in favor of working out problems through the Constitution," Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said about the Occupy forces.

"We have worked very hard to be respectful of the laws," she said in an interview. "We protest and complain, but we're also trying to work within the system. It's frustrating to watch people who have an utter lack of respect for our form of government."

Tea Party Patriots issued a statement last week titled, "Occupy Wall Street? They're No Tea Partiers." Tea Party supporters, it argued, were the ones who "have stood firmly on principle."

What a shock! Professionalized activists in this professionalized group are resisting the notion that these two movements might be natural allies! In the bulk of her report, Zernike stressed this thoroughly predictable development. She focused on professionalized Tea Party elements—folk who are horrified by the thought that the Tea Party is anything like “those people” in the grimy Occupy movement. She noted the way conservative forces have been demonizing the Occupy folk, seizing upon the wackiest elements found around that group—much as professionalized liberal forces have seized upon the wackiest elements found around the Tea Party.

“The Daily Caller jubilantly noted Monday that the Nazi Party of America had endorsed the Occupy movement,” Zernike reported, describing the kind of brain-dead demonization in which a society’s brain-dead elements always engage. But even as she adopted this focus, Zernike managed to find a conservative writer who “acknowledged that [Occupy Wall Street] resembled the Tea Party movement in some respects.” And she cited “some Occupy demonstrators” who “seemed more willing to express some commonality with...the Tea Party.”

Zernike focused on elements who were rejecting the notion that the movements had something in common. The very next day, Marc Fisher did a front-page report in the Washington Post which took the opposite tack.

Fisher’s headline seemed to reject Zernike’s assessment. Fisher’s headline said the following:

“For tea party and Occupy Wall Street movements, some common ground”

For the most part, Fisher ignored the obvious differences between the two movements. Instead, he drew an important distinction—the distinction between organizers of these movements and “the rank and file.” Having drawn this distinction, he focused on certain regular people within the two movements. He had found people who seem to see a connection between the two groups:

FISHER (10/23/11): Although many organizers of the two populist efforts view their counterparts from the other end of the spectrum as misguided or even evil, attitudes among the rank and file of the tea party and Occupy Wall Street are often much more accepting and flexible. They start out with different views about the role of government, but in interviews and online discussions they repeatedly share many of the same frustrations, as well as a classically American passion for fixing the system.

No one expects the tea party and Occupy movements to merge forces, but their adherents are discovering that their stories are often strikingly similar...

Are these movements the same? Or are they different? Duh! Zernike stressed the obvious differences and the fiery people who love them; Fisher stressed the alleged similarities. It was like the apocryphal tale of the blind men examining the elephant. Fisher described the animal’s trunk and ears. By way of contrast, Zernike had been groping all around the elephant’s buttocks and tail.

Are these movements “natural allies?” Are these movements the same in some significant ways—or are they totally different? Duh. To state the obvious, it all depends on how one approaches the question. Tomorrow, we’ll return to Taibbi’s post, looking again at his reasons for seeing a natural kinship. We’ll also consider a warning he gave in his post.

Some people are going fight very hard to keep you from seeing the similarities! That’s what Taibbi said in his post. In part 4, we’ll show you how Digby has responded to claims that these two movements have something in common.

Digby has made some perfectly valid points as she has compared these two movements. On balance, though, we’d have to say this:

Taibbi called his shot.

Tomorrow: Taibbi’s warning

To read part 3 of this series: Just click here.

Famous journalist writes about low-income schools!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011

KRISTOF AMONG THE PROFESSORS: In last Thursday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof discussed a topic that is simply never discussed.

You didn’t see his column discussed at any normal “liberal” haunts. You see, Kristof discussed low-income schools. More precisely, he considered the interests of the low-income kids who attend such schools.

The liberal world quit on these kids long ago. To some extent, we thought this abandonment showed in Kristof’s rather puzzling column.

Let’s take this in three easy pieces. To read Kristof’s column, click here.

A murky framework: As he started his piece, Kristof proposed a rather murky framework. His column would discuss the potential benefits of expanded early childhood education. He tried to tie this topic to the basic framework of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

KRISTOF (10/20/11): Occupy the Classroom

Occupy Wall Street is shining a useful spotlight on one of America’s central challenges, the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.

Huh? That will seem naïve and bizarre to many who chafe at inequities and who think the first step is to throw a few bankers into prison. But although part of the problem is billionaires being taxed at lower rates than those with more modest incomes, a bigger source of structural inequity is that many young people never get the skills to compete. They’re just left behind.

If we may quote Kristof, “Huh?” Basically, this is a conceptual stretch. As Kristof notes, the Occupy movement is talking about “the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.” It’s talking about an inequality from the top down—an inequality in which the top one percent wreak havoc on everyone else.

Expanding early childhood education might be a very good idea. But it wouldn’t address the type of inequality raised by the Occupy movement. If Kristof is right, expanded early childhood education might allow more low-income kids to aspire to the middle class.

But that’s a different type of “inequality.” All bad things aren’t alike.

Conceptually, we thought Kristof was stretching a bit. Might this suggest that our globe-trotting correspondent hadn’t thought his topic through?

Is early education the cure: We’ll assume it would be a good thing to expand early childhood education. But we thought Kristof was lost in the weeds with this standard feel-good happy-talk:

KRISTOF: One of the Harvard scholars I interviewed, David Deming, compared the outcomes of children who were in Head Start with their siblings who did not participate. Professor Deming found that critics were right that the Head Start advantage in test scores faded quickly. But, in other areas, perhaps more important ones, he found that Head Start had a significant long-term impact: the former Head Start participants are significantly less likely than siblings to repeat grades, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty. Head Start alumni were more likely than their siblings to graduate from high school and attend college.

Professor Deming found that in these life outcomes, Head Start had about 80 percent of the impact of the Perry program—a stunning achievement.

As always, Kristof had been speaking with an array of Harvard professors. In this case, Professor Deming may have done some very good work. But if Head Start has 80 percent of the impact of the Perry program, would that be "a stunning achievement?" Based on Kristof’s account of the Perry program, this would mean that Head Start kids would be 17 percent more likely to graduate from high school than their non-Head Start peers.

Yes, that’s an improvement. But graduation rates are quite low among poverty children. As best we can figure from Kristof’s column, this finding might mean that Head Start would raise the graduation rate among poverty kids from 50 percent to 58 percent (without an improvement in test scores along the way). If that’s the kind of gain we’re talking about, we wouldn’t call it “a stunning achievement”—unless our constant absence from the country has us mired in “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Don’t get us wrong! Kristof’s column provided Times readers with some good solid therapy. It let them feel good about pleasing possibilities—and, of course, it let them feel that they care about topics like this.

To us, his findings didn’t seem all that great. Was this column a true journalistic effort? Or was it mainly therapy?

What was missing from this analysis: Here, as always, we were struck by the dogs that didn’t bark.

When Kristof writes about public schools, he relies on what “experts” tell him. He has no independent experience on which he can draw. If the “experts” tell him that teacher quality is the most important variable, it may not occur to him that they really mean this: It’s the most important variable of which we’re aware, sitting here in our offices.

When Kristof talks about early childhood education, he thinks about one variable: Are kids getting it, or not? It doesn’t occur to him to ask his experts about what happens on a day-to-day basis when low-income kids do get into such programs.

For our money, the most interesting part of his column occurred early on. As usual, Kristof was talking to an expert:

KRISTOF: “This is where inequality starts,” said Kathleen McCartney, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as she showed me a chart demonstrating that even before kindergarten there are significant performance gaps between rich and poor students. Those gaps then widen further in school.

“The reason early education is important is that you build a foundation for school success,” she added. “And success breeds success.”

Poverty kids are way behind their middle-class peers “even before kindergarten! “Those gaps then widen further in school.”

Question: Do those gaps widen further in school because of the ways these kids are instructed? Because their schools don’t adjust sufficiently for how far behind they are? Could it be that this even happens in Head Start? In other early education programs? Is it possible that these kids are sometimes pushed too hard, beyond their level of preparation, even before kindergarten?

We spend the first dozen years of our adult life teaching in low-income schools. True story: We have never seen a newspaper piece which talked about the most basic thing we observed in those years. We have never seen a newspaper piece which talked about the way low-income kids are constantly pushed beyond their level of preparation—are handed books they can’t really read, are exposed to instructional programs they can’t really keep up with.

Kristof likes to linger with Harvard professors. Sorry. In our experience, those lofty souls tend to be a bit cosseted too.

Did Deming describe “a stunning achievement?” Funny our side shouldn’t ask!

Mormons are The Other watch: Two news orgs do the right thing!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011

The Washington Post answers Dowd: In the wake of Maureen Dowd’s latest sad, unfortunate column, the Washington Post got it right.

On Sunday, the Post published this intelligent op-ed column by Heidi Naylor. Naylor teaches literature and writing at Boise State. And omigod! People! Listen up!

Heidi Naylor’s a Mormon!

In the hard-copy Post, Naylor’s column appeared beneath this headline: “The blessings of being a Mormon.” On-line, the headline says this: “What it means to be Mormon.” Whatever! We aren’t Mormons here ourselves. Truth to tell, we have no religious or cosmological beliefs. But we felt cleansed as we read Naylor’s piece after being slimed by the nonsense which continues to be Maureen Dowd.

(For our critique of Dowd's "Mormons aren't like the rest of us" column, just click here.)

We got even luckier this Sunday morning. As we rode in the car to the bagel joint, we heard part of Krista Tippett’s weekly NPR program, “On Being.”

We hear part of Tippett’s wide-ranging program pretty much every Sunday. This week, the title of her program was “Mormon demystified.” Here too, we found her program cleansing in the wake of Dowd’s near-bigotry dump.

Tippett did the full hour with Joanna Brooks, chair and associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State. Brooks teaches American literature, including African-American literature, Native American literature, and women’s studies.

And omigod! People! Listen up! Brooks is Mormon too! Just like what's-her-face!

We didn’t listen to the full hour, though you can do so at Tippett’s site. (You can even listen to the full, unedited 82-minute interview.) For ourselves, we don’t gigantically care what Mormons believe. But Joanna Brooks isn’t stupid, insane, extraterrestrial or crazy, and she gave a fascinating account of her Mormon upbringing in the segment we heard in the car.

On balance, Dowd is stupid and borderline crazy. She’s also a long-standing major influence in your society’s broken-souled post-journalistic “press corps.” We felt cleansed by what we heard on Tippett’s program, which ranges far and wide pretty much every week.

Final key point, as always: A "liberal world" which tolerates Dowd pretty much doesn't exist.

OCCUPY THE TEA PARTY: Are they natural allies?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011

Part 1—What Taibbi said: According to Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, the Occupy Wall Street movement “is bigger than left or right.”

What could Taibbi mean by that? In this recent blog post, the highly suggestible Rolling Stone hothead made an outrageous statement:

“The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues.”

Say what? Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are somehow “natural allies?” As he continued, Taibbi cited those too-big-to-fail banks as the kind of issue on which the two movements should really eye-to-eye.

He also said this about the idea that the two movements are natural allies: “[T]hat's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle.”

Just for now, let’s put “our media” to the side. Let’s focus instead on Taibbi’s key claim. Are these movements really “natural allies” in some important respect?

Are these two movements “natural allies?” We wouldn’t put it that way ourselves. But Taibbi’s piece has generated a fair amount of discussion. Here at THE HOWLER, we have been most intrigued by Digby’s scowling reactions.

For today, let’s try to get clear on Taibbi’s basic assertions. Are these two movements “natural allies?” And why in the world is Matt Taibbi making these crazy statements?

For starters, let’s put Taibbi’s nugget statement into its larger context. This is the fuller text containing his outrageous statement:

TAIBBI (10/17/11): The Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other. The rest of the traditional media won't mind that narrative either, if it can get enough "facts" to back it up. They know how to do that story and most of our political media is based upon that Crossfire paradigm of left-vs-right commentary shows and NFL Today-style team-vs-team campaign reporting.

What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues, and that's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle.

Why does Taibbi think these two movements are “natural allies?” For the most part, it’s because he’s applying the Occupy Wall Street movement’s basic math. The Occupy movement claims to speak for “the 99 percent.” In this basic representation, this movement is saying that the top one percent—the so called Masters of the Universe—have waged a long and successful war against the interests of everyone else.

If that’s true, then the bulk of the Tea Party movement is drawn from the ranks for whom the Occupy Wall Street movement claims to speak. They’re from “the 99 percent” too, just like the Occupy people! If the top one percent has really been looting the 99, then most Tea Party supporters have been getting looted, just like everyone else.

In that sense, Taibbi can imagine the two groups becoming political allies. For our money, he overthinks the nature of this natural alliance as he describes the depredations those too-big-to-fail banks:

TAIBBI (continuing directly): Take, for instance, the matter of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, which people like me and Barry Ritholz have focused on as something that could be a key issue for OWS. These gigantic institutions have put millions of ordinary people out of their homes thanks to a massive fraud scheme for which they were not punished, owing to their enormous influence with government and their capture of the regulators.

This is an issue for the traditional "left" because it's a classic instance of overweening corporate power—but it's an issue for the traditional "right" because these same institutions are also the biggest welfare bums of all time, de facto wards of the state who sucked trillions of dollars of public treasure from the pockets of patriotic taxpayers from coast to coast.

Taibbi isn't "wrong" in this passage—but he may be overthinking a bit. Why is this a potential issue for the traditional left and the traditional right? Forget those standard political frameworks! At its simplest, this is a potential issue for both sides because “millions of ordinary people” on both sides have been put out of their homes! Whatever your general views might be, many people of your political stripe have been victimized by those “massive fraud schemes.” You may think tend to red or you may tend to think blue: Those “gigantic institutions” didn’t play favorites when they cooked up their vast schemes.

In that sense, we agree that people within these two movements have a great deal in common. Whether you’re red or whether you’re blue, people you know have been robbed by those banks. Whether you’re red or whether you’re blue, you are currently getting looted in the price of health care—and your wages have been stagnant because of that health care looting.

Many people who tend to think “red” may not see those issues this way. Might they become allies of the Occupy movement? That would depend on that movement’s ability to persuade such people to see the world in this new (accurate) way.

The extent to which these movements may become “allies” remains to be seen, of course. To some extent, that will depend on the way various people within the two movements react to this possibility.

Taibbi offered a warning in his piece: Many people in the red and blue worlds will fight to keep an alliance from happening!

Over here on our blue side of the aisle, we keep thinking we see that instinct in action when we read Digby’s work.

Tomorrow: What Digby said

For part 2 of this report: Just click here

Massive confusion watch: The New York Times sells you the flat tax!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2011

Why voters know squat about taxes: On Thursday morning, we were transfixed by the New York Times’ latest editorial about the very bad people of Alabama—the very bad people who aren’t like us.

For that reason, we’ve just read Thursday’s news report by Catherine Rampell—a report in which Rampell discusses Republican “flat tax” proposals.

Why do voters know so little about taxes? Why have Republican narratives and frameworks been swallowed so widely down through the years? In our view, Rampell’s attempt to explain the “flat tax” sheds light on these seminal questions.

Let’s take this in three easy pieces. To read Rampell’s piece, just click here.

Must a “flat tax” proposal be regressive: As she starts to explain how a flat tax would work, Rampell says that adoption of a flat tax “would generally make the tax system more regressive.”

In the real world, that statement is accurate. But let’s make sure we’re clear on the way this works:

RAMPELL (10/20/11): A major result of adopting a flat tax would generally make the tax system more regressive, thereby reducing the percentage for high-income earners but increasing burden on lower-income groups.

“It’s just simple basic math,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group. “To the extent that it is revenue neutral, a flat tax implies large tax increases on middle-class people and, mirroring that, a major tax cut on wealthy people.”

Ignore the jumbled pseudo-English in that highlighted sentence. Just for clarity’s sake, let’s frisk the claim that adopting a flat tax “would generally make the tax system more regressive.”

That’s probably true for any plan any Republican would ever propose. If a Republican proposes a revenue-neutral “flat tax” plan, it will typically raise the burden on middle-class people, lower it on high earners.

But just for clarity’s sake, a “flat tax” doesn’t have to work that way. Suppose a candidate proposed a 40 percent single tax rate, with an exemption on all income under $100,000. Presumably, that would lower the tax burden on most lower- and middle-income earners, raise it on those at the top.

No Republican would ever propose that plan. But a “flat tax” doesn’t have to be regressive by its very nature. You could propose a single-rate tax which would be highly progressive.

How many Americans "pay very little or no taxes:" As she continues, Rampell begins to discuss the overall shape of the current tax system. As she does, her writing is very unclear—and it tends to favor the talking-points of pseudo-conservative disinformation machines.

Why are so many voters so disinformed about our tax system? In part, thanks to fuzzy-math writing like this:

RAMPELL (continuing directly): For some conservatives, however, the regressive nature is actually a positive result of the flat tax system. Under current policy, the wealthiest earners are paying a higher tax rate than the poorest, with some Americans paying very little or no taxes.

That fact has angered many Americans who think they are shouldering too much of the country’s tax burden. The “99 Percent” slogan of Occupy Wall Street protests, for example, has been countered with a “53 Percent” movement, referring to the fact that 53 percent of Americans pay federal income taxes (although many more pay payroll taxes).

You can defend that passage as “technically accurate.” We think it’s very poorly crafted.

In her second paragraph, Rampell specifies that she is talking about “federal income taxes.” But as she starts, she paints a fuzzier, sweeping picture, in which the wealthiest earners are paying a higher tax rate than the poorest, “with some Americans paying very little or no taxes.”

That is a very murky portrait. It echoes right-wing claims which are designed to make people think, incorrectly, that higher earners and middle-class earners are being hugely ripped off.

Is it true that “some Americans pay very little or no taxes?” Actually yes, it is. Six-month-old babies don’t pay any taxes, to cite one striking example. But even second-graders have started to pay taxes in the form of state and local sales taxes. And if we look at the overall American tax system, the overall system is much less progressive than one might suppose or have heard. That is to say, if we factor in all taxes, including state and local taxes, the overall burden on high earners doesn’t differ by a huge amount from the burden on those in the middle.

Most American voters don’t know such things. We can think of two major reasons:

First, journalists like Rampell write fuzzy-math crap like this. Second, the liberal world has never really tried to explain these matters to the public. If you have a conservative or centrist friend who doesn’t understand the overall tax burden, would you know where to send your friend to see these matters explained?

Of course you wouldn’t! That location pretty much doesn’t exist. And to the extent that such data exist, you don’t know where to find them. In recent decades, plutocrat disinformation has been constant—and we liberals have slept in the woods, enjoying our nearly-wet dreams about how much smarter we are.

Does a “flat tax” make things simpler: Over the past several decades, several basic scams have driven the pseudo-conservative “flat tax” movement. As she continues, Rampell swallows one basic scam whole.

A “flat tax” would make the tax system simpler, Rampell parrots:

RAMPELL (continuing directly): The effects of these various proposals aside, replacing today’s labyrinthine tax system with a flat tax does have the virtue of simplicity. Americans would spend less time, and endure fewer headaches, figuring out how much they owe the government.

“Simplicity is good, but that’s not all you want,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “If all you want is simplicity, you could just tax everybody $10,000. That would be easy and simple. But most people wouldn’t think that’s fair.”

Would a “flat tax” make things simpler? Would Americans “spend less time, and endure fewer headaches, figuring out how much they owe?” This is one of the basic claims at the heart of the flat tax movement.

At its heart, this claim is a con. Rampell doesn’t seem to know.

Our federal tax code is of course extremely complex. It runs to truckloads of pages. But as anyone but a Times economics reporter can grasp, this complexity isn’t mainly caused by the fact that the tax code employs six different income tax rates. (At present, this ranges from a 10 percent tax rate on taxable income below $8500 to a 35 percent rate on taxable income above $379,151.)

Some complexity is created by the use of multiple tax rates, of course. But the application of those rates can be shown in a single chart! And duh. Once a tax-payer knows his taxable income, he can simply look at another chart to see how much he owes. He doesn’t have to do the multi-part computation himself. For the most part, Americans don’t “endure headaches figuring out how much they owe the government” because of those six different tax rates.

The real complexity in the tax code doesn’t come from the multiple rates. The real complexity comes from the endless deductions and exemptions which define the taxpayer’s taxable income. In itself, switching to a single tax rate wouldn’t affect that vast complexity. The complexity lies in the endless deductions, not in the multiple rates.

Plutocrats pimping the “flat tax” idea have always encouraged this point of confusion. Rampell swallows it whole in this passage, encouraging the bogus idea that a “flat tax” proposal automatically eliminates the tax code’s vast complexity.

In conclusion:

Why do voters understand our tax system so poorly? Over the past three or four decades, three players have been involved here:

Pseudo-conservative think tanks have run powerful disinformation machines, creating massive confusion. In response, liberals have tended to sleep in the woods, offering little attempt at clarification. We tell the public they’re slobbering racists. After that, we rest.

The third player here is the national press corps. Rampell is an economics writer for our biggest “liberal” newspaper.

Must we tell you more?

For connoisseurs of confusion only: Rampell’s murky writing continues as she discusses Steve Forbes. If you’re a connoisseur of murk and confusion, go ahead—keep reading. Enjoy.

Filibuster this: The fruit of our own conduct!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011

The voters know squat, thanks to us: Greg Sargent quotes a voter who favors Obama’s policies, but says he would vote for Romney because Obama hasn’t made things happen. Here are Sargent’s perfectly sensible thoughts:

SARGENT (10/21/11): This voter agrees with Obama’s policies, but blames the failure to get them enacted on generalized partisanship and Obama’s inability to roll over the GOP—and is prepared to vote against him as a result.

I don’t know if this voter is representative of broader sentiment or not, but I suspect he is, and his reaction to what’s happening is important to flag as a clue to a dynamic we should be watching. Voters either don’t understand, or they don’t care, that the GOP has employed an unprecedented level of filibustering in order to block all of Obama’s policies, even ones that have majority public support from Dems, independents and Republicans alike.

Their reaction, in a nutshell, seems to be: The Obama-led government isn’t acting on the economy? Obama can’t get his policies passed? Well, he must be weak.

"Voters either don’t understand, or they don’t care, that the GOP has employed an unprecedented level of filibustering?” People! Of course they don’t understand! This is from Hacker and Pierson’s Winner-Take-All Politics. The book appeared early this year:

HACKER AND PIERSON (page 108): Crucial and basic matters of political process are equally opaque to most voters. In early 2011, as Republicans brought Washington to a halt as effectively as the unexpected winter snowstorms, most Americans had no idea that not a single Republican senator had voted for health-care reform (two-thirds either put the number at between five and twenty or said they didn’t know), and less than a third could correctly identify the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster (sixty). Well over half of Americans said fifty-one votes were sufficient, or confessed they had no idea.

People! Voters don’t know anything! They don’t know how the Senate works. They don’t know what’s in the federal budget. They don’t know how the tax code works. For more examples from Hacker and Pierson, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/31/11.

News flash: This is nothing new!

Why are voters so clueless? In large part, thanks to us! They have been aggressively disinformed for decades by very skillful right-wing machines. During that time, the “liberal world” has sat around diddling its own ying-yangs. When we speak, it's normally to tell everyone else that they’re a gang of slobbering racists. Then we wonder why they won’t do the various things we suggest!

We liberals are a large part of the problem! We aren’t very smart and we aren’t very honest. Over the course of the past three decades, we have been amazingly lazy. Worst of all, we've brainwashed ourselves into thinking we’re exceptionally moral and just remarkably smart.

We are neither. It’s not even close. In many ways (not all), Rachel Maddow is a train wreck—and we’re so dumb that we’re convinced that Maddow is the bees’ knees! By way of contrast, Norquist and Luntz really are good at what they do. Until we get over ourselves and learn how to talk to the public, we are doomed to many more years of gruesome pathetic defeat.

Look in the mirror. The problem is us—although we’re much too dumb to see it. The voters don’t understand? People! Of course they don’t!

Gorilla dust watch: Flat tax, big fat lies!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011

A doleful bit of history: For various reasons, the so-called flat tax tends to be a comically awful idea. It also tends to be a scam—an attempt to lower the tax burden on upper-end earners under the cover of darkness.

The gorilla dust tends to be general when the old “flat tax” is dragged out.

In today’s Washington Post, Jia Lynn Yang details the political problems with flat tax proposals. Yang’s nugget statement: “The problem that many [flat tax] plans run into is that people want to tear up the current tax code until they learn they might pay more taxes in the new one.”

She fails to mention another basic political problem—the flat tax is easy to lie about. At least, that was the case in 1996, when Bob Dole—the press corps’ official “high character” candidate—lied his keister off in New Hampshire about Steve Forbes’ flat tax proposal.

Long story short: Forbes had proposed a 17 percent “flat tax” with a $36,000 tax exemption for a family of four. If a family of four earned $36,000 or less, it would owe no federal income taxes. It would only pay that 17 percent on income above that figure.

In New Hampshire, Forbes soared to the top of the pack. Candidate Dole fought back.

The Dole campaign aired a TV ad featuring New Hampshire Governor Merrill. Using a study which hadn’t factored in that $36,000 exemption, Merrill told voters that, under Forbes’ plan, the average family in New Hampshire would pay $2000 more.

Eventually, everyone in the political world came to realize that the ad was utterly bogus—a lie. But the voters themselves were much less clear, and the Dole campaign kept running the ad. Here’s Howard Fineman’s capsule summary in Newsweek:

FINEMAN (2/19/96): [A]n acrid odor rises from the campaign trail…

The Dole campaign aired an ad featuring its most important New Hampshire ally, Gov. Steve Merrill. In the spot, the governor says Forbes's flat tax would cost the "typical" New Hampshire family $2,000 more per year in federal taxes. The ad was effective—and wrong. It was based on a skimpy study by New Hampshire real-estate brokers who oppose the flat tax. Once Forbes assailed the spot, Newsweek has learned, Dole considered pulling it. But Merrill and campaign manager Scott Reed, who had by then realized the ad was flawed, argued to keep it on. To concede error could be fatal, they said. And Forbes, they contended, had no credibility on accuracy. Dole went along.

If anything, Fineman was being polite, and very credulous, about those internal deliberations. It may be he was being conned, or was agreeing to be conned. If memory serves, the Dole camp even pulled the old “we tried to cancel the ad, but everyone at the TV station had gone home for the weekend” trick at one crucial point.

Earlier, Forbes had been pulling away in New Hampshire. He seemed to be on his way to a major upset. This ad was widely credited with dragging him down. Buchanan won the state, but Dole came in a close second.

It would be much harder to pull this stunt now, although the press discussion of Cain's tax plan has been very dumb in the past five days. But this history remains quite striking. Did we mention the fact that Dole was the press corps’ “high character” candidate, the guy the voters might want to select as opposed to the big liar Clinton?

Three years later, these idiots got started on big liar Gore. The entire liberal world just sat there and let them do it. As a group, we just aren't smart at all. And our "leaders" are very dishonest.

Back to 1996: In his ludicrous new memoir, Jim Lehrer has an astounding account of his approach to the 1996 Clinton-Dole debates. We’ll post on that subject some day before long. We never realized was a complete chia pet Lehrer is until we read that book.

For our money, his account of the 1996 debates is the most ridiculous part. Gennifer Flowers! Good lord...

Failing the challenge: Maddow among the Amish!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011

Who qualifies as a bigot: We take back everything we’ve ever said about the nation’s professors.

This morning, a professor from Ashland University in Ohio writes a fascinating op-ed piece in the New York Times. On the surface, his piece concerns schisms among the Ohio Amish.

In fact, his piece is really about the way we humans love to hate other groups.

Joe Mackall writes about the way “the English” enjoy disliking the Amish. More memorably, he writes about the way the Amish in southern Ohio split up into rival camps and then enjoy hating each other.

According to Mackall, the most conservative of these groups is wonderfully called the Swartzentrubers. Mackall describes the way the different groups arrange to dislike each other. Just last week, these schisms led to some widely-discussed assaults:

MACKALL (10/21/11): Schisms and splinter groups are prevalent among the Amish that I know. Mr. Stutzman’s neighbor, Mr. Gingerich, also a Swartzentruber, recently broke off from Mr. Stutzman’s group over the issue of adding a second lantern to buggies. Mr. Gingerich is set to move to Maine later this month to start his own settlement.

All Amish seem to fall into the trap of believing their way is the true Amish way. The Swartzentrubers believe that the more liberal Old Order groups and the even more liberal New Order groups live dangerously close to the modern world, a world from which all Amish are to remain separate. The more liberal orders deride Swartzentrubers for taking baths only on Saturdays, and they call them gruddel vullahs (or “woolly lumps”) for getting cows’ milk in their beards. So it comes as no surprise that the attacks in Bergholz, which included the forced cutting of hair, were the work of a splinter group that believed somebody had betrayed the true cause, if the attacks can be credited with such lofty motives.

Routinely, comedians find an easy target in the ways of the Amish. These days, the Mormons are getting ridiculed too. This brings us back to the New York Times—and to Rachel Maddow, who failed a test called The Maddow Challenge on her eponymous TV program in the past two nights.

Two weeks ago, a southern preacher named Robert Jeffress stated his views on Mormons and Mormonism. “I believe Mormons are good people,” he said. Repeatedly, he described Mitt Romney as “a good moral person.” He said he will vote for Romney next fall if he’s the GOP nominee against Obama.

But Jeffress also said that he doesn’t think Mormons are Christians. With regard to the general way he votes, he said he would “prefer competent Christians to competent non-Christians.” He also said Mormonism is a “cult,” although he stressed that he didn’t mean the type of “sociological cult” one might associate with settlements like Jonestown. (He said he thinks Mormonism is a “theological cult.” He explained what he means by that term.)

On her eponymous program, Maddow described this conduct as “bigotry.” She thundered as she did, displaying her standard vast confidence. This set her up for The Maddow Challenge, which we incomparably issued this past Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday morning, Maureen Dowd wrote a typically unfortunate column about Mitt Romney’s religion. (For our previous post, click here.) Jeffress had gone out of his way to say nice things about Mormons in general, and about Romney in particular. Dowd provided no such courtesies. It’s impossible to imagine such a column appearing in the New York Times about a Catholic candidate for the White House—or about a Jewish candidate, or about a Muslim. Dowd was openly insulting about Mormon practice and belief. She made little attempt to show how her ruminations related to Romney’s candidacy.

Dowd is always a world-class ninny. But in two separate parts of this column, she groped about in this place:

DOWD (10/19/11): As for the special garment that Mitt wears, ''we wouldn't say 'magic underwear,' '' Bushman explains.

It is meant to denote ''moral protection,'' a sign that they are ''a consecrated people like the priests of ancient Israel.''

And it's not only a one-piece any more. ''There's a two-piece now,'' he said.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! In fairness, Dowd has groped so many pols in the past dozen years, she may have felt she had to go there. (She also likes to grope and insult their wives—as long as they’re Democrats. This includes Howard Dean's wife, who was much too mousy, and Barack Obama's wife, who was big, bossy and black.)

Maureen Dowd felt that she had to go there. But please understand: To Dowd, this special garment is comical, strange. Meanwhile, people of her own Catholic faith will often wear a pendant showing a person who is being tortured to death by dint of being nailed to a cross.

To a disordered mind like Dowd’s, the one adornment calls for groping. The other makes perfect sense.

As we’ve said, the fact that Dowd is a press corps icon is a deeply remarkable fact about this nation’s failing upper-end culture. The fact that “liberals” have widely accepted her reign means that we simply aren’t smart enough to create a political movement.

Our intelligence can’t be insulted; Maureen Dowd has proved it. That said, we asked a question on Wednesday morning: If Robert Jeffress is a “bigot,” why isn’t Dowd a bigot as well? Incomparably, we posed The Maddow Challenge:

Will Rachel Maddow denounce Columnist Dowd, as she denounced Pastor Jeffress?

Obviously, Maddow has done no such thing. This helps us answer a basic question: Who qualifies as a bigot?

The answer is fairly obvious: Exclusively, bigots are found in the other tribe. In Maddow’s world, Jeffress is a southern white conservative who is supporting Rick Perry. By definition, this qualifies him as a bigot. Pleasure is gained when Sister Rachel denounces him before her own congregation, which is every bit as tribal as any group Jeffress has led.

Dowd of course is a whole different story. It doesn’t matter what Dowd says or does. She comes from Maddow’s tribe!

“All Amish seem to fall into the trap of believing their way is the true Amish way.” Maddow’s tribal mind works that way too. She maintains an arsenal of B-bombs. But they’re only used against “those people,” the ones in that other tribe.

A note on the comments to Dowd: It’s interesting to note how few of Dowd’s regular readers seemed to see a problem with her Mormon-mocking column. A certain contingent said all religions are equally dumb. But even they didn’t seem troubled by the way she had singled out one.

Later in the day, more commenters posted complaints. We’ll guess that they heard about the column somewhere—that they may not have been regular readers.

Those comments are well worth reading. It’s instructive to see how many lofty New York Times readers had no problem whatsoever with the things Dowd wrote. Meanwhile, some Mormons said Dowd was clueless about various aspects of Mormonism. Given Dowd’s persistent clownishness, we’ll assume they’re probably right.

We’ll offer two comments from the first day. We thought each comment was on-target. The first is short but sweet:

COMMENT 190: It surprises me that Dowd would write this. It also surprises me that none of the comments, which strike me as unusually perceptive and thoughtful, have called her on it. The fact is that this article is blatantly bigoted. Dowd would never write this kind of shallow, catty, sensationalized, twisted piece about Catholicism, or Judaism, or Protestantism, or Hinduism, etc. But somehow Mormonism brings out the bigot in her. Why is that, Ms. Dowd? You owe the world an explanation, and you owe the Mormons an apology.

On the other hand, I suppose I'm puffing hot air. I see little evidence that any of the writers here or elsewhere ever read comments on their work.

We wouldn’t drop that B-bomb ourselves. We do think Dowd’s column came as close to outright bigotry as anything you’ll ever read in the Times. And we agree with the writer—it was striking to see how few of Dowd’s commenters were troubled in any way by her insulting, irrelevant remarks.

The next commenter made some strong points—though he shared a naivete with Commenter 190:

COMMENT 262: I must admit that even as a sometime critic of religious orthodoxy, I found Ms. Dowd's comments about Mormonism distasteful. A segment of our population will disqualify Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman for office because of the faith they inherited from their parents, and that is also distasteful. How Mormonism informs policy choices to be made by one seeking office is fair game, it would seem. That analysis was notably absent from this editorial.

There is so much to criticize in the public life of Mitt Romney, from his work at Bain to his plasticity of principle in Massachusetts, to his feckless politics. Why then, take the lazy way out and write about his religion, without connecting it to his worldview or his platform?

I would be troubled to read public criticism of Ms. Dowd's religion, whatever it might be, unbalanced by mention of what good it has brought to the world.

Making fun of Mormon beliefs might be easy, but I daresay you don't get to be an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times by going for the easy laugh that doesn't inform. Or maybe, these days, you do.

As with Commenter 190, Commenter 262 was surprised to find such lazy work being done by a Times columnist. In fact, garbage like this virtually defines the work of this upper-class newspaper.

Come back later to see Collins discuss that dog on the roof of that car.

Such garbage defines the work of this paper. It’s a major failure of the “liberal world” that intelligent people like these commenters still haven’t heard this said.

IN THESE (THERAPEUTIC) TIMES: The Times writes the great southern novel!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011

Part 4—Whites (and blacks) left behind: Sometimes, the New York Times even provides real journalism.

Often, though, the famous newspaper provides other services. Consider Campbell Robertson’s front-page report on October 4—his or her news report about the alleged effects of Alabama’s new immigration law.

In part, this piece was journalistic; it provided some real information about a recent event. But largely, Robertson crafted a novel. His dateline said “ALBERTVILLE, Ala.” This is the way he began:

ROBERTSON (10/4/11): The vanishing began Wednesday night, the most frightened families packing up their cars as soon as they heard the news.

“The vanishing” began that night? Is that a journalistic term? As he continued, Robertson reported the way some Hispanics were leaving Alabama in response to the state’s new law.

But was Robertson mainly involved in journalism? Or was he serving other functions? In part, he was plainly writing a novel. Before too long, he had acknowledged his novel’s rather obvious template:

ROBERTSON: The vanishing began Wednesday night, the most frightened families packing up their cars as soon as they heard the news.

They left behind mobile homes, sold fully furnished for a thousand dollars or even less. Or they just closed up and, in a gesture of optimism, left the keys with a neighbor. Dogs were fed one last time; if no home could be found, they were simply unleashed.

Two, 5, 10 years of living here, and then gone in a matter of days, to Tennessee, Illinois, Oregon, Florida, Arkansas, Mexico—who knows? Anywhere but Alabama.

The exodus of Hispanic immigrants began just hours after a federal judge in Birmingham upheld most provisions of the state’s far-reaching immigration enforcement law.

[...]

John Weathers, an Albertville businessman who rents and has sold houses to many Hispanic residents, said his occupancy had suddenly dropped by a quarter and might drop further, depending on what happens in the next week. Two people who had paid off their mortgages called him asking if they could sell back their homes, Mr. Weathers said.

Grocery stores and restaurants were noticeably less busy, which in some cases may be just as well, because some employees stopped showing up. In certain neighborhoods the streets are uncommonly quiet, like the aftermath of some sort of rapture.

Robertson’s template was The Rapture, in which a whole population disappears from the earth. And make no mistake—the scribe was writing a novel. On whose authority did he say that “certain neighborhoods” in Albertville were “uncommonly quiet” this day? (Whatever that was supposed to mean.) Robertson cited no source for this claim. Does he know how quiet it normally is in this town’s different neighborhoods? Or was he just enjoying the liberties which go to those who type novels?

When Robertson did attempt journalism, his effort sometimes seemed peculiar. At one point, he pretended to buttress a major point by giving us a statistic:

ROBERTSON: When Judge Blackburn was finished, Alabama was left with what the governor called “the strongest immigration law in this country.” It went into effect immediately, though her ruling is being appealed by the Justice Department and a coalition of civil rights groups.

In the days since, school superintendents have reassured parents—one even did so on television in Spanish—that nothing had changed for children who were already enrolled. Wary police departments around the state said they were, for now, awaiting instructions on how to carry out the law.

For many immigrants, however, waiting seemed just too dangerous. By Monday afternoon, 123 students had withdrawn from the schools in this small town in the northern hills, leaving behind teary and confused classmates. Scores more were absent. Statewide, 1,988 Hispanic students were absent on Friday, about 5 percent of the entire Hispanic population of the school system.

Throughout this putative news report, we receive heart-rending descriptions of “teary and confused classmates” and the like. In these ways, a novelist lets us spot his novel’s heroes. But look what happened when Robertson decided to throw in a fact! Five percent of the state’s Hispanic students were absent? (Sorry—five percent “of the entire Hispanic population of the school system” This sounds more sweeping.) This masqueraded as evidence of “the vanishing”—of the rapture, the exodus. But:

Is five percent a high absentee rate? It didn’t sound real high to us. And sure enough: On October 15, Robertson filed a shorter report which seemed to say that the normal attendance rate for the state’s Hispanic students would be perhaps two points higher than it was on this earlier day, the day that was said to be part of the rapture. On a normal day, the attendance rate would be 97 percent. After the rapture—after the vanishing—it stood at 95.

Whatever this Times employee was doing, it wasn’t exactly journalism. In part, he was plainly writing a novel, providing his readers with the pleasures long derived from that form. But in part, he was providing a type of therapy—a type of therapy which is quite common at the slick, amoral Times. Robertson was letting his readers know that they are the better class of people—the class of people who don’t discriminate against Hispanics, the group which was cast as the innocent victims in Robertson’s novelized tale.

To state the obvious, people shouldn’t discriminate against Hispanics. They certainly shouldn’t discriminate against beautiful children who are living in Alabama only because their parents brought them there. (To see a few of their beautiful faces, click here. Obviously, those beautiful children have done nothing wrong.) To Robertson’s credit, when he quoted an unemployed Alabaman, the scribe was decent enough to say that this person didn’t seem to have a “problem” with the Hispanic workers themselves. (“Mr. Lolling’s problem seemed to be with the system that had brought the illegal-immigrant workers here, not with the workers themselves.”)

But quite plainly, Robertson’s novel made heroes of the one group—and it paid little attention to several others. Elsewhere in the New York Times, those other groups really did vanish—disappear.

Soon, the editors began to thunder and roar about this “shameful” new state law. As they did, the therapy services were ratcheted up—and the editors treated their readers to the kind of conduct which, in some other setting, might be seen as a form of soft bigotry in and of itself.

Robertson’s novel featured Alabama’s Hispanics. It paid little attention to other groups—although, to Robertson’s credit, he at least mentioned those other groups’ possible problems. He briefly mentioned prison inmates who may be losing job placements due to the presence of undocumented Hispanics. When he quoted that unemployed Alabaman, the Alabaman said that people like him were losing employment because of illegal immigration. But Robertson made little attempt to determine if those complaints were valid—and when the editors started to type, they ignored these other groups completely. Let us tell you a dirty secret about the New York Times’ lords and ladies: They simply don’t care for southern whites—especially for the ratty, working-class people they saw portrayed, some years ago, in films like In the Heat of the Night. The editors are older and more self-impressed now, but they formed their group preferences long ago. Being largely dumb and uncaring, they maintain their preferences right to this day. If you read the Robertson news report and the subsequent editorials, you had a chance to observe a fact about those at the Times:

The people who run this insular paper like certain groups a great deal—and they don’t care for certain others. Robertson’s novelized “news report” soon gave way to those editorials, which completely kicked native-born whites to the curb. In the process, the editors ignored native-born blacks who may need work in Alabama too. But these editors know who they like—and they know who they look down on.

It’s southern whites whom these editors scorn. But they’re willing to kick southern blacks to the curb as part of their dumb, ugly preference.

As such, we’re forced to note a strain of novelized near-bigotry in the work the editors have been producing. In their dunderhead editorials, Hispanics are the very good people—and native-born Alabamans are not. The native-borns are “xenophobes,” of course, though that isn't what their reporter said. (The editors love to throw bombs all around.) And to the extent that they may need jobs, these chimps don’t exist at all. Just read what the editors wrote about the way no one could possibly gain from the new state law (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/20/11).

Sorry, but there’s a strain of near-bigotry in such work. If you can’t see that from the editors’ scribbles, you may be a redneck too!

It’s hard to have sufficient contempt for the work of these insular, upper-class “editors.” They wear their prejudices on their sleeve—and these prejudices align with those of many Times readers. Robertson made little attempt to explore the claim that native-born, working-class Alabamans are being harmed by the influx of undocumented workers; the editors made no attempt to consider these people’s interests. Neither did your darling Rachel Maddow when she told you, by inference, that those native-born working-class people murdered four children in 1963, back on Birmingham Sunday. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/18/11. Remember when liberals used to complain about guilt by association?) Neither did Judy Woodruff, when she pretended to conduct a discussion of this law on the NewsHour.

Are native-born Alabamans, white and black, being harmed by the inflow of illegal immigrants? We don’t know, but we have an excuse: We read the New York Times, and we watch Woodruff and Maddow! In the upper-class (northern) cultural precincts patrolled by these tribunes, working-class Alabamans don’t count—unless they came from somewhere else. By way of contrast, working-class residents are showered with sympathy—as long as they aren’t native-born.

People! Divide and conquer!

That said, the Times presents a lot of novels—and it offers a lot of therapy, from the school called “moral superiorism.” In the past few weeks, it has handed you a front-page report which helped you see that you’re morally better than a teacher who would discriminate against a student who stutters. It has offered a front-page report which let you see that you’re morally better than people who would stare at a mixed-race family. In each case, the journalistic content of the report was virtually non-existent; these putative “news reports” were more like novels (or memoirs), novels designed to offer you therapy. We’ll have to say we have a somewhat similar reaction to Nicholas Kristof’s frequent columns about sexual assaults in the third world. These columns describe the world’s most disgraceful misconduct—but we’ll have to say that the purpose they serve strikes us as therapeutic. They connect to little other journalistic or political work. But when we read them in their endless number, they help us see how lofty our own values are.

In fact, they help us see how lofty we are even when we don't bother to read them.

Can we talk? There is little evidence that New York Times readers are better people than anyone else. But the paper routinely offers a service. In these therapeutic offerings, readers are told that they’re good enough and they’re smart enough and that, doggone it, people should like them. They care about Hispanics in Alabama—and this means that they’re good people. In the process of being pampered this way, they may not notice that they don’t give a flying fig about several other groups.

No one should discriminate against Hispanics—certainly not against innocent children brought to Albertville by their hard-working parents. But which groups really experienced a “vanishing” in that New York Times “news report,” in those editorials? In the report in which Rachel rode the backs of four dead children—just so she could help Our Tribe see how good and moral We are? As compared to those people?

Robertson wrote about one preferred group. When their school attendance dropped two points, this was described as “the vanishing.”

But which groups really disappeared in the Times? Funny you shouldn’t ask!

From the tribal thinking files: Other people are not all alike!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011

Some is less than most and most is less than all: We were surprised by the start of David Atkins’ post at Hullabaloo. We’ll highlight the points of surprise:

ATKINS (10/20/11): The Cain Conundrum

October 2011 marks two events in the Republican Party that political observers from ten years ago would have claimed were utterly impossible: first, an African-American man is leading in the polls for the Republican nominee for president. Second, the same GOP frontrunner openly admits he wants to hike taxes on most Americans.

That is seriously revolutionary in the political landscape, and should cause intelligent political observers to recalibrate their assumptions about the Republican Party on the issues of taxes and race. The Republican Party has long been assumed to rely on racial resentment and voters' own distrust of government and hatred of taxes to win elections. But Hermann Cain's meteoric rise certainly disproves that thesis, at least viewed in simplistic terms. It is difficult to ascribe overt racism to a Party base that would push an African-American to the front of its field. And it is well-nigh impossible to claim that anti-tax fervor animates a portion of the electorate that advocates raising taxes on most Americans, especially those of modest means.

Really? Does Herman Cain “openly admit he wants to hike taxes on most Americans?” Luckily, Atkins provided a link. It went to a brief Politico post, which quoted Cain saying this:

CAIN: "Some people will pay more. But most people will pay less," Cain, a former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza who has never held elected office, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.

Most people will pay less, Cain said. To Atkins, this meant that most would pay more! Cain was openly admitting it!

For the record, some and most are two different things. Some is less than most.

Atkins’ piece deals with race more than it deals with taxes. Here too, we see a conceptual problem that seems to dog Hullabaloo—the difference between some and all.

“The Republican Party has long been assumed to rely on racial resentment and voters' own distrust of government and hatred of taxes to win elections,” Atkins writes. But: “It is difficult to ascribe overt racism to a Party base that would push an African-American to the front of its field.”

Really? Why? In recent polls, Cain has been preferred by roughly 30 percent of Republican voters. That leaves 70 percent who could be snarling slobbering racists, thus pleasing our liberal souls. In the last year, we’ve been amazed at the difficulty Digby seems to have separating some from all. But this kind of typological thinking really infests this whole site.

Might we describe a certain type of disordered thinking?

To the tribal mind, “those people” must always be all alike. We often see Digby thinking this way. If one tea party supporter spits on the sidewalk somewhere, then all forty million have done it!

Go ahead—read the comments to the Atkins post. You will see this intellectual tendency suffusing the comments.

At some point, pseudo-liberals should bite the bullet and accept the bitter truth: Other people are not all alike. Not even among those people!

A FULLER REPORT: Anderson Cooper’s hat trick!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011

A truly appalling performance: Last night, cable TV’s biggest waste meat corrected himself on the air.

His brow was furrowed, so you knew that he meant it. Anderson Cooper apologized for getting that tax matter wrong in Tuesday night’s debate (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/19/11).

Cooper’s mistake was enormously basic. It took a real waste meat to make it. But it wasn’t Cooper’s only mistake in Tuesday night’s proceedings. Let’s take note of two other key moments where Cooper failed to act.

For one point, we’ll refer you to Kevin Drum. This concerns a claim Herman Cain kept making—a claim Cooper should have been prepared to address:

DRUM (10/19/11): Cain kept claiming that a new report on his website showed that the poor and middle class wouldn't see their taxes go up. That apparently prompted enough excitement to crash his site. When it came back up, I found the report, which doesn't appear to include any kind of distributional analysis at all.

Dittos. If Cooper had actually prepared for this important task, he would have reviewed Cain’s bewildering report. For ourselves, we agree with Drum. When we reviewed that report yesterday, we couldn’t find any relevant data either.

You can bet the house that Cooper had no idea what Cain was talking about. Like so mnay others on cable, this big waste meat is paid millions per year—and he hadn’t prepared.

Another failure came in the hour after the debate. Cooper shared this moment of shame with an entire panel.

Coop asked smokin’ hot conservative firebrand Dana Loesch to comment on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Loesch fulfilled her two contractual obligations to CNN. She made outrageous/stupid remarks. She looked good while she did it:

COOPER (10/18/11): Dana, I heard you scoffing when [Occupy Wall Street] was compared to the Tea Party.

LOESCH: There's a couple of things. There's a couple of things that I have to say. I disagree with the notion that this is anti-greed. Any movement that protests for a living wage, regardless of whether or not you're employed, employed, is the epitome of greed, No. 1.

No. 2, there's no, there's no responsibility given to Washington at all whatsoever. This current administration is propped up by Wall Street. This is the Wall Street president. This president has received more from Goldman Sachs and the very entities that these protesters are out there protesting than any other president.

Three, I think the grassroots element in this has been hijacked already. One of the things that the Tea Party—the Tea Party had to deal with two fronts. The Tea Party fought against Republican establishment. I was very involved in New York 23. Newt Gingrich and I went round and round over Dede Scozzafava. I was—the establishment was not of me; still is not a fan of me.

And we also had to fight against progressives and progressive agenda, where you have the Occupy Wall Street— They have the endorsement of the president. They have the blessing of Nancy Pelosi. They're also endorsed by the Nazi Party of the United States. They're also endorsed by Communists. These are things that we did not see with the Tea Party movement. So there's another difference. I could go on and on and on, but those are the three major differences that I see between both of these movements.

There are many points to dispute there, but let’s focus on that third major difference: Occupy Wall Street is endorsed by the Nazis! The Tea Party movement is not!

No one batted an eye about this representation. Cooper said nothing, as always—and Donna Brazile simply plowed ahead as if nothing had been said. Cooper is gigantic waste meat; the problem seems to be spreading to his panels. Borger, Fleischer, Gergen and King also took Loesch’s statement in stride.

Cooper stood around tugging his dick Tuesday night when he should have been making Perry and Santorum stop their ridiculous talk-over-everything-Romney-says filibusters. (In one widely-aired clip, note the way he grins and chimps when the camera goes to him.) Hours later, he was still tugging his dick—and the kids at Occupy Wall Street were now in league with the Nazis!

What an absolute piece of meat is Gloria Vanderbilt’s best baby boy! The next afternoon, he was back on TV, doing his tabloid pretend-to-talk show.

Topic: “Are we a germ-obsessed society?” We will be by the time Cooper gets done! Partial synopsis: “Anderson also meets a mother of four who took matters into her own hands after a trip to a fast food restaurant play area revealed various bacteria, bodily fluids and clumps of hair.”

Prediction: In hands like these, your society’s downward spiral will never get undone.

SPAWN OF DOWD: O'Donnell buys the con!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011

The Pew Center’s latest victim: In itself, it doesn’t hugely matter. But it was just as we told you in yesterday’s post! (Click here, scroll to the bottom.)

Last evening, on the Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell was saying that voters are obsessed with the fact that Mitt Romney’s a Mormon. As Lawrence explained how bad things are, he became Pew’s latest victim:

O’DONNELL (10/19/11): Ron Carey, the new NBC poll of South Carolina and Florida Republican voters goes to another problem that appears to be—it doesn’t exactly say how it plays in the campaign. But the question, the Mormon question, that we all don’t even quite know how to talk about.

For example, in South Carolina, the NBC poll found that of Republican primary voters, 53 percent say, no, a Mormon is not a Christian. In Florida, 42 percent of Republican primary voters say a Mormon is not a Christian.

And then there’s another question. A recent poll, it asked to describe Mitt Romney in one word. 60 percent used the word Mormon. The next thing down was health care, at 17 percent.

Is there a way to factor in what the Mormon factor is in Republican primary voting and how it’s going to affect Romney going forward?

Do we know “how to talk about the Mormon question?” First, Lawrence said we didn’t. Then, he proceeded to prove it.

No, it doesn’t hugely matter. But as the videotape makes clear, Lawrence was talking about the new Pew survey, which asked respondents to describe Romney in one word. But it wasn’t sixty percent of respondents who blurted out the word “Mormon.” It was sixty respondents—sixty respondents in all, out of 1007 adults who were surveyed. To verify this, just click here.

In fact, the actual percentage who said the word “Mormon” was just under six percent. But people! What's a factor of ten? It's close enough for cable!

Several points:

It’s an indictment of the (generally worthless) Pew reports that its people keep asking this question. As we told you yesterday morning: “This survey question rarely produces useful data—and it constantly produces confusion.”

Ten hours later, O’Donnell went on the air. He and his viewers became Pew’s latest marks.

The people at Pew should drop this question, along with a lot more of their work. But let’s include a brief word about O’Donnell.

Who is Lawrence O’Donnell? In 1994, O’Donnell got hot. He married a movie semi-star and scored a few profiles in the press. At the time, O’Donnell was a top aide to Daniel Moynihan, who would spend the rest of the decade helping George Bush find his way into the White House. You had to chuckle at something Jeanne Wright wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

WRIGHT (8/12/94): Sen. Boxer said O'Donnell is "extremely effective because of his special relationship with Pat Moynihan. That kind of relationship is rare in life. There is a certain kinship there."

Others are quick to criticize that relationship.

"Lawrence brings out the worst in Moynihan," said a White House staffer. "He fosters and encourages the testy Moynihan, the easily offended Moynihan, the Moynihan who reads insults when they are not given."

Said one Administration official: "He's adopted Moynihan's intellectual arrogance, but without the intellect."

We're not saying that's accurate. Meanwhile, in the home-town Boston Globe, Jack Farrell had already described the various forms of the steamy man-love, including a quote from a memoir O’Donnell had written about his father:

FARRELL (3/20/94): "O'Donnell Abu!" Moynihan sings, when asked about his protege. "That's a-b-u," says the Senate's reigning intellectual, spelling out the traditional Irish victory chant.

"God, he's something special, isn't he? Put it down there: The country is better off because O'Donnell is looking after your health care," Moynihan says. "We want to give the president a bill, and if it can be done O'Donnell will do it."

[...]

O'Donnell certainly suffers no shortage of self-esteem. In his book he describes his brother Michael as a "handsome . . . six-footer with the arms of a blacksmith . . . pale blue eyes and movie-star teeth." Without missing a beat he goes on to write, "we are occasionally mistaken for each other."

Presumably, Farrell was jealous.

Moynihan went on to undermine Candidate Gore, braying on the front page of the New York Times when Gore dared to use the word “privatization” to describe Candidate Bush’s proposal for Social Security.

Yes, that really happened. The “liberal world” sat and stared.

O’Donnell went on to cable stardom. No, it doesn’t gigantically matter. But last night, O’Donnell Abu became the Pew Center's latest score.

Coming tomorrow or Saturday: Disregard those recent Pew rankings of positive/negative coverage

IN THESE (THERAPEUTIC) TIMES: Better than Alabamans!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011

Part 3—Unworthy groups left behind: The therapeutic service continues in today’s New York Times. We enjoyed the dual messaging as we were told about how lofty we are:

In Gail Collins’ latest pitiful column, we learn that we are better than Mitt because he didn’t get rid of his illegal workers.

But how weird! In today’s featured editorial, we learn that we’re better than people in Alabama because that state did move to rid itself of such folk!

Let’s examine the therapy offered by that thundering editorial. First, let’s see how we are helped to feel better about our own empty souls and lives. Then, let’s spend a moment thinking about the types of people liberals like us don’t even stop to consider.

The editors thunder loudly in today’s editorial. They have nothing to add to their last editorial on the subject of Alabama’s new immigration law. But good lord! How good it felt when the editors dropped their latest X-bomb:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (10/20/11): Alabama’s reputation has also taken a huge hit just when it is trying to lure international businesses. No matter how officials may try to tempt foreign automakers, say, with low taxes and wages, the state is already infamous as a regional capital of xenophobia.

If Alabama succeeds in driving out all of its estimated 120,000 unauthorized immigrants, restrictionists will surely cheer. They will have only 49 states and 11 million more people to go.

“Restrictionists!” Even we had to cheer! According to Nexis, it’s just the second time the word has appeared in the Times in the past year. (The term has appeared in the Washington Post eleven times in the past five years.) For the most part, the term has been invented for use in discussions of immigration.

“At least we’re not restrictionists,” we liberals get to tell ourselves as we apply cucumber to our eyes and receive our moral therapy.

Romney didn’t restrict illegals enough; Alabama is restricting them too much! Oh lord, how good it all feels! In the new editorial, we also get pleased by a thundering reference to the way Alabama has avoided the necessity of “a police-state roundup.” Possibly showing their age, the editors open with the claim that Alabama “is already reaping a bitter harvest of dislocation and fear.” To those who aren’t as old as these moral ciphers, that phraseology rings of “Harvest of Shame,” a famous TV documentary of the 1960s, the last decade in which the editors seem to have paid any real attention to the issues involved in this matter.

In this therapeutic editorial, we are told that we aren’t bad people, like those people in Alabama. We’re also told that no one is hurt by the presence of undocumented workers. For ourselves, we have no earthly idea if that’s true, largely because we read the Times. But in this passage, the editors let us know that we can fully enjoy our moral superiorism:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: The problems do not stop there. Farmers are already worrying that with the exodus, crops will go unpicked. Like much of the rest of the country, Alabama needs immigrant labor, because too many native-born citizens lack the skill, the stamina and the willingness to work in the fields—even in a time of steep unemployment.

Here again, readers are told that farm work is at issue here—and that native-born Alabamans are simply too lazy, too unskilled, to do the work that is currently done by the illegal residents.

(For the most part, you’re supposed to picture southern whites when you read those words.)

Just a guess: Andrew Rosenthal spends his happiest hours on the weekends, laboring in the potato fields of the Hamptons, working himself into a good hot lather. What a shame that native-born Alabamans lack his skill and stamina! That said, today’s editorial assures us, several times, that absolutely no one stands to gain from Alabama’s new law. “Nobody is winning there,” the editors say as they finish their piece. This answers the question posed by the paper’s last editorial:

“Whom could [the new law] possibly benefit?” Last week, the editors asked this question. This week, they give us the answer: No one! This lets us liberals fully enjoy the therapy offered today.

Might someone benefit from this new law? We don’t know; we read the Times. But let’s examine this newspaper’s brief bit of reporting on this seminal topic.

On October 4, Campbell Robertson wrote a highly novelized account of the alleged effects of the new state law. Tomorrow, we’ll look at some the novelization, which helped us appreciate our own compassion that much more profoundly. But uh-oh! In a few brief shining moments, Robertson actually engaged in a small bit of journalism! He (or she) interviewed an Alabama state legislator—and he spoke with an unemployed, native-born worker! When Robertson stooped to engage in these functions, these are the things he was told:

ROBERTSON (10/4/11): Backers of the law acknowledge that it might be disruptive in the short term, but say it will prove effective over time.

"It's going to take some time for the local labor pool to develop again," said State Senator Arthur Orr, Republican of Decatur, "but outside labor shouldn't come in and just beat them every time on cost and put them out of business."

Mr. Orr said there were already signs that the law was working, pointing out that the work-release center in Decatur, about 50 miles to the northwest, was not so long ago unable to find jobs for inmates with poultry processors or home manufacturers. Since the law was enacted in June, he said, the center has been placing more and more inmates in these jobs, now more than 150 a day.

On Monday morning, one of the poultry processing plants in Albertville had a job fair, attracting an enormous crowd, a mix of Hispanic, black and white job-seekers, lining up outside the plant and down the street.

"This needed to be done years ago," Shannon Lolling, 36, who has been unemployed for over a year, said of the law.

Mr. Lolling's problem seemed to be with the system that had brought the illegal-immigrant workers here, not with the workers themselves.

"That's why our jobs went south to Mexico," he said. "They pay them less wages and pocket the money, keep us from having jobs."

Huh! In this brief resort to journalism, Robertson wasn’t discussing work in the fields. He was discussing the placement of native-born folk “with poultry processors or home manufacturers.” He even discussed the placement of “inmates” in such jobs, although—in best New York Times fashion—he didn’t explain if these are former inmates, newly released, or inmates still serving their sentences. Robertson even stooped to the point where he spoke to a native-born worker—a man who has been unemployed for over a year, a man so lower-class, so inconsequential that it seems he’s even willing to work in a poultry plant! In Robertson’s assessment, this man doesn’t have a problem with the striving people who have come here as immigrant workers. His problem was with the state’s big business interests, who “pay them less wages and pocket the money, keep us from having jobs.”

The New York Times rarely wastes your time worrying about such matters.

Question: Should inmates be able to get jobs on the way out of prison? Many of these inmates may well be black. Though the editors may not know it, the south has changed since the days of Hud, when even its chain gangs were reserved for white people. Meanwhile, should people like Lolling matter to lofty white liberals like us? (He may be black, or he may be white. Nost readers saw him as white.) As we pseudo-liberals get our therapy from our New York Times editorials, are we supposed to ask ourselves if the current system is adding to unemployment among working-class, native-born Alabamans? Are we supposed to ask if such people are being hurt as undocumented workers enter the state, accepting lower wages from Alabama’s business moguls?

Trust us: People like these don’t count a whole lot in the world of these editorials.

It has long been part of our dogma—we white liberals are the very good people. “Those people”—the xenophobes in Alabama—are the very bad folk. (As Rachel Maddow explained it, they’re the people who killed the four children on Birmingham Sunday!) The New York Times would sell its soul to keep feeding us this therapy—has sold its soul a great many times to fulfill this function, in fact.

But how about it? Is there some chance that Senator Orr was right in what he was saying? Is it possible that native-born people—including blacks!—“might possibly gain” from this law?

The Times editorial board doesn’t care. Every part of their works makes it clear—they simply don’t care about those kinds of people. And they plainly assume that readers like us don’t about “those people” either.

Might people be gaining from this new law? We don’t have the slightest idea.

You see, we read the New York Times. And when it comes to “native-born” working-class folk in the south, the lofty souls at the New York Times transparently do not care.

Tomorrow: Even more front-page Times therapy

Does Judy Woodruff give a shit about such lower-class people: Last Thursday, Just Woodruff discussed this same matter on the NewsHour (click here). She tolerated a few remarks from Mike Ball, an Alabama state legislator:

WOODRUFF: We want to talk now a little bit more about the impact of the Alabama law. And we want to turn to Representative—state Representative Mike Ball of Huntsville, Alabama, who supports the law.

[...]

We talked today with a contractor in the state who is concerned about people leaving these jobs. Was that the consequence you expected when the law was passed?

BALL: Yes, I think so. I think that was the—that was the purpose of the law, was to discourage those who are here in Alabama illegally. We have a huge poverty problem in Alabama. We have a problem with unemployment. And many of the folks that come to Alabama illegally, they have a different set of rules that they’re hired by. They don’t have to have workman’s comp insurance. They don’t have to have employee tax.

A lot of them were paid 1099—or paid under the table. So it puts our working, undereducated, the very people that’s having a problem with unemployment, it puts them at a competitive disadvantage, and we need a level playing field.

Judy had already conducted a weirdly incoherent discussion with someone who “delivers locally grown produce in the state.” In this part of the segment, she made no attempt to pursue what Ball said—to determine whether “native born” working-class Alabamans might actually gain from this law.

Darlings! Those kinds of people simply don't count in the world of the press corps’ upper classes. Today, the editors assured us that such folk don’t exist.

This helps the therapy work.

Dowd on Romney: More thoughts!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2011

Often giving imperious guidance on everything: Concerning Maureen Dowd’s column, we’ll offer a few more thoughts.

Our first thought comes in the form of a question: Has any “journalist” ever spent so much time rummaging in the underwear drawers of so many presidents, first ladies and presidential candidates? We paid a terrible price for this broken-souled obsession in the Clinton-Gore years, especially in the mainstream press coverage of Campaign 2000.

One specific example: Dowd’s horrific coverage of Candidate Gore helped send Bush to the White House. It’s absurd to pretend otherwise. Your country has paid a horrible price for this person’s borderline lunacy.

Many people have come to see how destructive that past obsession was. Dowd couldn’t wait to rummage around in those underwear drawers once again.

Our second thought concerns the following part of Dowd’s column, to which we paid insufficient attention this morning:

DOWD (10/19/11): In The Times on Sunday, Sheryl Gay Stolberg chronicled Romney’s role as a bishop in Boston often giving imperious pastoral guidance on everything from divorce to abortion.

Question: Does Stolberg’s lengthy front-page profile really portray Romney that way? Does she really show him “often giving imperious pastoral guidance on everything from divorce to abortion?” (With emphasis on the words “often” and “everything?”) We strongly suggest that you read Stolberg’s profile, if only to see the way you get played by horrible crackpots like Dowd.

We wouldn’t vote for Romney ourselves. But in a sane nation, a person like Dowd would have been canned long ago.

What was Romney like in the 1980s when he served as a Mormon bishop in the Boston area? We have no idea; nor can we say we hugely care. But we think Stolberg’s profile is well worth reading, if only as a way of checking the account you’ve been offered by Dowd.

Dowd has been at this a very long time. Here’s a stunning fact about our culture: The “press corps” “elite” think she’s smart.

Anderson Cooper: The garbage this nation accepts!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2011

Empty head, furrowed brow—Cooper declaims about taxes: You can tell that Anderson Cooper cares. He lets you see his furrowed brow.

But good God! The intellectual garbage this nation accepts! About twenty minutes into last night’s debate, Cooper was asking the candidates questions about tax policy. The savant turned to Michele Bachmann.

Incredibly, Cooper said this:

COOPER (10/18/11): Congresswoman Bachmann, you said in the last debate that everyone should pay something. Does that mean that you would raise taxes on the 47 percent of Americans who currently don't pay taxes?

It’s hard to have an emptier head that the one Cooper employs.

Forty-seven percent of Americans currently don't pay taxes! That is just utterly bogus, of course—but that’s clearly what Cooper had said. And instantly, things got worse. Here is the fuller exchange, exactly as it is transcribed in the CNN/Nexis transcript:

COOPER: Congresswoman Bachmann, you said in the last debate that everyone should pay something. Does that mean that you would raise taxes on the 47 percent of Americans who currently don't pay taxes?

BACHMANN: I believe absolutely every American benefits by this magnificent country. Absolutely every American should pay something, even if it's a dollar.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

BACHMANN: Everyone needs to pay something in this country.

How do voters get disinformed? You just saw part of the process.

So typical! A roomful of voters heard Cooper say that forty-seven percent of Americans “currently don't pay taxes!” Not absurdly, they cheered and applauded when Bachmann said these freeloaders should pay something, even if only a dollar. Cooper himself is paid millions per year to serve transplendent crap like that. He is now getting paid millions more for clowning around in the afternoon on his tabloid talk program.

Why is Cooper so dumb at night? In part, could it be because he wastes his time clowning around in the daytime?

It’s hard to be as dumb as Cooper. For his efforts, he’s massively paid. We liberals prefer to blame the voters who get disinformed in these ways.

Actual bigotry watch: In RE the bigot Dowd!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2011

As close to bigotry as you’ll see in the mainstream press: The hacks and the haters are really putting dead children to use this week.

On Monday evening, Rachel Maddow used the dead children of Birmingham Sunday to help us see—well, to help us see what? That we aren’t supposed to support that new immigration law? (To review Maddow's work, click here.)

This morning, Maureen Dowd plays a similar card. At the top of her New York Times column, Dowd attracts a bit of attention with the following headline:

“Anne Frank, a Mormon?”

Dowd has been a fool for years. Beyond that, she’s long been a visible crackpot. Her presence at the top of American “journalism” is one of the most remarkable facts about modern American culture.

The liberal world has tolerated her status. This tells us all we need to know about the liberal world’s status as an imitation of life.

Dowd has long been a visible nut. But this morning, she goes to a new, dimmer place. It’s hard to define the point of her column, other than to say that it comes very close to being the work of a bigot.

As bigots and near-bigots typically do, Dowd believes that she's providing a brave and valuable service. As she starts, she tells us she’ll be saying the things her colleagues won’t go near:

DOWD (10/19/11): At an appearance at George Washington University here Saturday night, Bill Maher bounded into territory that the news media have been gingerly tiptoeing around.

Magic underwear. Baptizing dead people. Celestial marriages. Private planets. Racism. Polygamy.

“By any standard, Mormonism is more ridiculous than any other religion,” asserted the famously nonbelieving comic who skewered the “fairy tales” of several faiths in his documentary “Religulous.” “It’s a religion founded on the idea of polygamy. They call it The Principle. That sounds like The Prime Directive in ‘Star Trek.’ ”

The press corps’ tiptoeing-around stops here! Dowd will be discussing Mormonism in her daring column! That will include the underwear and—of course, this being Dowd—the polygamy.

That said, the religion abandoned polygamy in 1890, a point Dowd never quite remembers to make. But then, this is the press corps’ most visible crackpot, the Rosetta Stone of modern America’s intellectual breakdown.

Dowd starts out by repeatedly quoting a comic, perhaps forgetting that she herself is supposed to be a journalist. Of course, Dowd isn’t a competent journalist. Consider the evidence she seems to cite in support of an early assertion:

DOWD: Maher was not easy on the religion he was raised in either. He referred to the Roman Catholic Church as “an international child sex ring.”

But atheists, like Catholics and evangelical Christians, seem especially wary of Mormons, dubbed the “ultimate shape-shifters” by Maher.

In a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday, people were asked what single word came to mind for Republican candidates. For Herman Cain it was 9-9-9; for Rick Perry, Texas; and for Mitt Romney, Mormon. In the debate Tuesday night, Romney said it was repugnant that “we should choose people based on their religion.”

According to Dowd, Catholics and evangelicals “seem especially wary of Mormons.” For her apparent evidence, she cites a fact from that recent Post-Pew survey.

According to Dowd, “people” were asked what single word came to mind for different Republican candidates. “For Romney...it was Mormon,” Dowd says.

But alas! If you look at the actual Post-Pew survey, you’ll see the kind of pseudo-evidence on which this visible crackpot feeds. In fact, the Post-Pew survey asked 1007 “people” to give a single word for Romney. Exactly sixty (60) of these people volunteered the word “Mormon.”

That’s right: Slightly fewer than six percent of respondents said the word “Mormon” when asked about Mitt! But in the world of this blowsy old drunk, this is cited as (apparent) evidence that “atheists, like Catholics and evangelical Christians, seem especially wary of Mormons.”

(We say “apparent” because here, as in everything Dowd ever writes, the lady implies a logical link which she doesn’t actually state.)

Your “press corps” has functioned this way for decades, with very few words of complaint from the career liberal world. A modern nation simply can’t function with pseudos like this in charge. This includes pseudos like Dowd herself—and pseudos like her enabler colleagues, who aren’t a whole lot smarter or saner than this big drunk is herself.

As Dowd continues, she bravely “bounds into territory that the news media have been gingerly tiptoeing around.” Soon, she’s making use of Anne Frank. At great length, she discusses a peculiar Mormon practice which was abandoned in 1995—without offering any evidence about Romney’s view of the former practice.

And of course, there is more—so much more. First example:

Dowd cherry-picks an incident from Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s recent profile of Romney’s time as a Mormon leader—a profile which is largely favorable, until Dowd starts picking her fruit.

In this instance, Dowd doesn’t just cherry-pick the single incident she wants to discuss. She also offers a cherry-picked version of Stolberg’s account of the incident! But with modern practitioners like Dowd, if it weren’t for cherry-picked accounts, there would be no accounts at all. Everything you read from Dowd is likely to be pure garbage.

What’s the point of Dowd’s venture into the land around which her colleagues have tiptoed? She never quite states the point of her mission, but it’s fairly clear that this is an assault on Mormons in general—and on Candidate Romney in particular. In the last large chunk of her column, she describes various aspects of the Mormon faith, making no attempt to explain the relevance to Romney’s candidacy. She discusses an aspect of “Mormon lore,” failing to clarify whether the belief in question is, or isn’t, a part of the faith. She discusses what Mormons think about Jesus; she discusses what Mormons think about heaven. And of course, she returns to the “magic underwear,” devoting several paragraphs to that requisite topic.

Lying face-down on Jack’s favorite shag, she closes her daring column with this defiant statement:

“Republicans are the ones who have made faith part of the presidential test. Now we’ll see if Mitt can pass it.”

Although nothing is ever clear in Dowd’s work, this may be a reference to pastor Robert Jeffress, a Perry-supporter whom Dowd had cited earlier in her column. Inside Dowd’s disordered mind, the “logic” may proceed like this: Republicans like Jeffress have made religious faith part of the test. So somehow, that means that journalists should proceed to push the matter further.

Or something. Dowd rarely makes her “thinking” clear—and her “editors” always accept this.

Dowd’s column today is a troubling document. Let’s understand why that’s so. Then, let’s advance the Maddow Challenge.

Dowd’s column comes very close to being an act of pure bigotry. She keeps savaging Romney's religion, without making any attempt to explain the relevance to his candidacy. When Jeffress said that he would prefer an evangelical Christian candidate to a Mormon, he repeatedly praised Romney as a “good, moral person;” he said he would vote for Romney in a race against Obama. “I believe Mormons are good people,” he further said. Jeffress never quite explained why he would prefer a competent Christian to a competent non-Christian, but that was largely because interviewers like Chris Matthews were too dumb to ask.

Dowd offers no such niceties. She has nothing good to say for Romney, nothing good to say about Mormons or about Mormonism. She makes no attempt to explain the relevance of her attacks on Romney’s religion. Her column comes about as close to textbook bigotry as work ever does in the mainstream press. It’s rather plain that she doesn’t like Mormons. She just doesn’t like Romney’s kind.

This raises a question about Maddow.

Jeffress was quite polite in what he said about Romney. Repeatedly, he praised Romney’s character. He said he would vote for Romney in a general election.

But so what? On her eponymous cable program, Maddow confidently denounced Jeffress’ conduct as “bigotry.” This raises the Maddow Challenge:

Will Maddow say the same thing about Maureen Dowd tonight?

Almost surely, she will not. You see, Jeffress belongs to the other tribe; he’s a southern white conservative. Maddow’s ministry is all about teaching you to dislike such people. So it was when she used the dead children on her program this past Monday night.

By way of contrast, Dowd is a major player inside the upper-end “press corps,” the careerist bubble within which Maddow pockets $2 million per year. Rather relentlessly, Maddow kisses the keisters of such ranking players.

Dowd’s column really does approach bigotry. Tune in tonight to see if Maddow lets a deranged colleague slide. You’ll learn about the ways of the tribe—and about the death of your nation’s intellectual culture.

Maureen Dowd is one of the world’s most disordered people. But she sits at the top of your nation’s “press corps!” In the grip of this disorder, a modern nation simply can’t expect to survive.

About that Post/Pew “one-word” question: In fairness to Dowd, many players have stumbled over the useless question Pew asks as part of its candidate surveys.

Pew asks respondents to state the first word that comes into their head when a candidate’s name is mentioned. Then, Pew posts a chart of the responses. People routinely think the chart is showing percentages, even though Pew always includes a note saying that it doesn’t.

What’s wrong with this survey question? Few respondents say the same words about particular candidates. For that reason, this survey question rarely produces useful data—and it constantly produces confusion. Even a very smart person like Kevin Drum misunderstood the nature of this question in 2008. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/2/08.

When it comes to Pew's "one-word" question, the confusion and foolishness never end. For a ridiculous assessment of the new “one-word” results, just click here. Regarding Cain, 25 respondents said the word “business;” 24 respondents said “9-9-9.” And yes, that was 25 respondents out of more than a thousand!

To see an NPR analyst try to figure out what that means, go ahead—click that link.

Dowd of course was just pimping her junk when she cited the one-word reaction to Romney—when she gave readers the false impression that everybody shouted out “Mormon!” when they were asked about Mitt.

Dowd’s work doesn’t run on data. Dowd’s work runs on mental disorder—has done for many long years.