APPRAISING THE RUBES: Dionne starts getting it right!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

Part 3—Pensions were looted, he says: Good god!

It wasn’t enough that Ed Rendell staged that brain-jangling segment with Sharpton, picking nits and defending Mitt Romney’s looting of pension funds. (It was “legal and proper,” Rendell said. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/22/12.)

It wasn’t enough to drive the nation into a state of narcolepsy, making angels leap to their deaths from the heads of pins.

None of that was enough. Yesterday, Rendell had to criticize Obama’s ads about Bain! Just like Darling Cory!

Self-dealers of the world, unite! On Sunday, Cory Booker said the ads are “nauseating.” Yesterday, Rendell followed suit; with great sorrow, he said the ads are “very disappointing.” Peter Baker reports the boo-hooing in today’s New York Times:

BAKER (5/23/12): But the White House approach has stirred dissent in the party. Two days after Cory A. Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark, called the focus on Bain Capital a “nauseating” part of campaigning, another top Democrat, former Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, added his own concerns about the attacks.

“I think they’re very disappointing,” he told the Web site BuzzFeed. “I think Bain is fair game, because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say, is important as well.”

Mr. Rendell praised Mr. Booker. “People in politics should tell the truth,” he said. “He could have qualified it better; he could have framed it better. But if you’re in this business, none of us like negative ads.”

None of us like negative ads! Truly, that’s world-class clowning. But in these ways, hustlers like Booker and Rendell keep the faith with their big-money friends. And the public keeps getting handed piffle concerning the work of Bain.

What did Romney do at Bain Capital? We would love to see major journalists report this matter with more clarity. Right now, very few voters have any idea how Bain Capital worked.

More generally, very few people understand what the term “private equity” means. Very few people could explain what “private equity” firms typically do, or how they differ from other firms. Very few people could explain what a “leveraged buy-out” is. Few people could explain how a firm like Bain can make big bucks by buying a company which is in decline, then taking it into bankruptcy.

The typical voter has no idea how such endeavors work. And sure enough! As usual, our big newspapers have made little attempt to explain such matters, even as the debate about Bain has rolled forward, picking up steam.

They’ll tell you about Mitt Romney’s dog, or about his conduct in high school. But what did Romney do at Bain?

The high lady Collins won’t say! More generally, our big newspapers have little attempt to tell you.

What did Romney do at Bain? Four months ago, Reuters presented a detailed report about some conduct by Romney which just doesn’t look very good. Last night, finally! One major pundit actually seems to have read it!

E.J. Dionne appeared with Big Ed. The analysts cheered as he said it:

SCHULTZ (5/22/12): You know, Romney wants everybody to talk about the positives of Bain Capital and that's what his surrogates are saying. But is he able to answer for the pain and suffering that his businesses caused?

This is a vital part of the campaign. When you kick 350 people to the road and you take $100 million, the American people, I don’t think they—I don’t think they are compassionate to that kind of business. Is the Romney campaign worried this Bain thing is not going to go away?

DIONNE: I think so because obviously the Obama people want to turn it into a character issue and people tend not to like the boss who has fired them.

The other issue is, what do these guys do with pension funds? You know, a lot of—some of these deals, the pension funds get looted and people who were promised a pension can’t collect it. Sometimes retirees who have health care promised to them, they lose that promise.

I think this will be a challenge for journalism because not all of these details are public...I think that you need a really detailed look at Bain because Romney started out making it a big deal in the campaign. And we need to know, what did they do?

Good God! Somebody finally said it! Pension funds got “looted,” Dionne said, using the language we’ve been suggesting for the past four months.

One night before, the utterly hapless Sharpton/Rendell were picking nits about numbers of jobs. Dionne actually took the discussion where rubber starts meeting the road.

Did Romney “loot” workers’ pension funds? Did the federal government have to step in to clean up after this looting? That’s what Reuters reported, four months ago, though the Rendells and the Sharptons still haven’t heard—or they’re just keeping quiet.

This Monday, in the Washington Post, Dionne was almost as tough:

DIONNE (5/21/12): [H]aving made an issue of Bain on the plus side, [Romney] also has to answer for the pain and suffering—or, as defenders of capitalism like to call it, the “creative destruction”—that some of Bain’s deals left in their wake.

This leads naturally to the question of how creative the destruction wrought by our current brand of capitalism actually is. Since the dawn of the leveraged buyout era three decades ago, many friends of capitalism have questioned whether loading companies with debt as part of these deals is good for companies and for the economy as a whole.

Does this approach cause unnecessary suffering among the employees of the companies in question and the communities that often lose plants and jobs as a result? Sucking pension and health funds dry to aggrandize investors seems less like a creative act than a betrayal of workers who made bargains with their employers in good faith.

In his column, Dionne didn’t name Romney’s name when he talked about “sucking pension funds dry.” Nor did he really explain what he meant by that construction. Nor did he mention subsequent bailouts by the federal government.

But Dionne was moving in the right direction when he wrote that column. Last night, he took another large step, suggesting that Romney—omigod!—had looted some pension funds.

“Looted!” He used that word!

Did Romney “loot” workers’ pension funds? Four months ago, Reuters reported on his conduct with respect to GST, a Kansas City steel mill. “The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp…determined in 2002 that GS [Bain] had underfunded its pension by $44 million,” Reuters reported. Reuters noted that the PBGC, a federal entity, had to bail out the underfunded pensions, though workers still lost large chunks of their pensions because of Romney’s underfunding / looting.

Romney underfunded those pensions—then Bain walked away with large profits. And the government picked up the tab!

Reuters did that report four months ago. That same week, David Cay Johnston told Schultz that there were other companies where Romney had similar problems.

But so what? From that day to this, the silly hacks we get sold as our “intellectual leaders” haven’t shown the slightest sign of wanting to explore this conduct. The Bookers and Rendells have bellowed and cried, with a hustler like Rachel Maddow trying to cover for what Booker did. (Incredibly, she continued this scam last night. More to come.) Sharpton probably has some reason for keeping his fat trap shut too.

Can we talk? In many cases, your corporate-assigned “intellectual leaders” are actually hustlers. And younger “leaders” on the way up aren’t about to tattle.

What did Romney do at Bain? Last night, Dionne broke a code of silence. He referred to the looting of pension funds! “I think this will be a challenge for journalism,” he said.

Last night, Maddow was still pretending that Darling Cory is being mistreated for what he said. In such a corporate world, will “journalism” ever tell you what Bain did?

Suckers! Unless you scream and yell and shout and insist, you don’t even stand a chance!

Tomorrow: Back to the initial theme of this week’s reports

Concerning your corporate-selected intellectual leaders: Your lizard brain says they’re on your side.

Well guess what? They aren’t on your side!

Cable debacle watch: Kornacki slams Booker but then averts gaze!

TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012

The problem that can’t be named: At Salon, Steve Kornacki bats Cory Booker around for his slippery, disingenuous series of filibusters on last night’s Maddow show. For an accurate account of Booker’s performance, just click here.

Kornacki refers to Booker’s performance as a “12-minute display of charismatic evasion last night.” For ourselves, we’ll skip the “charismatic,” sign up for all the rest.

Kornacki nails Booker’s performance, only failing to note his nauseating suggestions that he was for Obama before being for Obama was cool. But even as he complains about Booker’s “filibusters,” Kornacki fails to name the well-known person who allowed this crap to go on.

Kornacki is an MSNBC analyst. He can’t tell you that Maddow was as bad as her disingenuous guest. Or boy howdy! Perhaps a bit worse!

Audio expert hears a hoo!

TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012

And the Post extends a script: Did George Zimmerman commit a crime when he killed Trayvon Martin? Should he have been charged as he was, with second-degree murder?

The facts are emerging in dribs and drabs, and so we can’t really tell you. But plainly, major journalistic scams have been staged concerning this tragic case.

This worst offender has been MSNBC; more on their horrible conduct tomorrow. But on Sunday, the Washington Post extended a preferred point of view with a very strange, very lengthy, highly speculative front-page report.

In the Post’s front-page report, Stephanie McCrummen told us what two “audio experts” have said about the tape of the 911 call on which the fatal gunshot is heard. One of the “experts” is Alan R. Reich, “a former University of Washington professor with a doctorate in speech science”—and an active imagination.

Or maybe not! Everything's possible, of course. It may be that Reich is right about what he hears on the tape.

That said, “audio experts” have already failed, in major ways, in an earlier part of this case. But this didn’t stop the Post from publishing a highly speculative report in which Zimmerman turns out to be guilty again, with McCrummen engaging in some slightly comical pseudo-journalism.

What does Reich think he hears on the tape? You can read McCrummen’s full report for yourself. But this is the point where McCrummen semi-comically describes Reich’s basic conclusion:

MCCRUMMEN (5/20/12): The analysis does not discount the possibility that there was a physical struggle between Martin, who had an abrasion on his left ring finger, and Zimmerman, who had a one-inch laceration in the back of his head, an abrasion on his forehead and a bloody, fractured nose, according to newly released photos and police and medical reports.

Rather, Reich’s analysis suggests that whatever physical struggle occurred was over by the time the recorded 911 call began.

From that point until the gunshot 45 seconds later, Reich said, it is Zimmerman who seems to have the upper hand, not Martin.

“It is Trayvon who felt threatened,” Reich said. “The help cries are all Trayvon.”

Who knows? It’s possible that Reich is right—that the “help cries” all came from Martin. But note the rather comical writing at the start of this passage:

It’s possible there was a physical struggle between Zimmerman and Martin? As McCrummen notes, Zimmerman emerged with a fractured nose, with lacerations and abrasions on the back of his head. Unless he just walks around with a fractured nose as a matter of course, it does seem fairly obvious that a struggle occurred this night. And of course, the one eyewitness with a very good view told police that he saw such a fight—with Martin on top, punching Zimmerman “MMA style.”

This is also what Zimmerman said.

This evidence makes it seem somewhat odd when Reich determines that Zimmerman “seemed to have the upper hand” in the last 45 seconds. Meanwhile, how did Reich manage to figure this out? In one especially worrisome graphic, McCrummen explains his expert procedures:

MCCRUMMEN: Reich relies heavily on critical listening when examining evidence tapes. Reich amplified this 394-millisecond portion of the audio using computer software. After listening to the segment several hundred times, he perceived the ‘a’ phoneme—a linguistic part of a spoken word—pronounced by the ‘o’ vowel (which sounds like the ‘a’ in father.)

Reich writes, “When interactively scaled up or amplified by a 10x factor, the word appears to be “stop,” not “help” as previously perceived by listeners.

Reich could be right in his judgments, of course. He could be right that someone was yelling “stop,” not “help.”

That said, would you be willing to send someone to jail based on phonemes that can only be perceived “after listening to the segment several hundred times?” Given the way other “audio experts” have failed, we would be disinclined to base a judgment on such tortured deductions.

But beyond that: On a journalistic basis, we wouldn’t build a sprawling front-page Sunday report around such tortured technical claims—a Sunday report in which Reich was allowed to say that Zimmerman was in command at the moment Martin was shot.

In fairness, McCrummen balances Reich’s presentation with the views of another expert—James J. Ryan, “retired head of the FBI forensic audio, video and image analysis unit.” But uh-oh! Ryan says Reich’s claims are bunk—that you simply can’t tell what’s going on from this degraded tape!

Having heard this, a sensible newspaper wouldn’t publish a sprawling report which points the finger of blame at someone in an ongoing murder case. But the Washington Post isn’t such a newspaper. It published Reich’s claims anyhoo.

Reich could be right in his judgments, of course. But what if his “expert judgment” is wrong, as all those other “experts” were?

What if that FBI expert is right? What is Reich is just hearing things?

Finally, how thoroughly is McCrummen wed to anti-Zimmerman narratives? Consider the ridiculous speculation she offers near the end of her piece. As you read the highlighted passage, please note the dog that wasn’t allowed to bark:

MCCRUMMEN: All of which leaves the question of how you hear the 45 seconds [of the 911 tape] when you can't hear the 45 seconds, when the context is conflicting and subjective and emotionally charged, when there is an expert such as Reich arguing with certainty about what can be discerned and another such as Ryan claiming that little can be discerned at all.

Ultimately, the only answer to that question that will really matter, if the case goes to trial, is the jury's. How it hears the 45 seconds, said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University, will depend partly on the machinations and strategies deployed during the trial.

If the prosecution can convince jurors that Martin is screaming for help on the recording, it could become "enormously powerful," Saltzburg said.

If the defense can convince them that the recording is ambiguous, it will help Zimmerman.

In either case, Saltzburg said, what the jurors hear will depend on human nature.

Truly, that is astounding. McCrummen imagines two possibilities. The jury might decide that Martin was screaming for help. Or they might decide that they can’t tell—that the tape is ambiguous.

McCrummen doesn’t list the third possibility. Obviously, a jury might decide that Zimmerman was screaming for help, as he said. This is an obvious third possibility, one that fits a good deal of the evidence. But McCrummen can’t bring herself to type this third possibility!

Especially given the earlier failures of “audio experts,” we think the Post showed very poor judgment when it built a sprawling front-page report around these “expert” speculations. But could that be Zimmerman screaming for help?

We don’t know who was screaming that night. But McCrummen couldn’t bring herself to type an unwelcome idea.

World’s most horrible cable discussion!

TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012

Darling Rachel jumps the shark in service to Darling Cory: To understand last evening’s awful discussion, you have to know a fact that didn’t get mentioned:

Rachel Maddow and Cory Booker have been friends ever since they went to Stanford together. When Booker appears on her show in better times, Maddow often mentions this fact.

It helps us learn to adore her.

Last night, she didn’t do so. But she staged a truly gruesome cable segment in defense of her horrible, scam-heavy friend.

We’re not sure which was worse: Booker’s disingenuous filibusters, or the fact that Maddow kept letting him stage them. Or was it the ludicrous way Maddow opened the segment, pretending that the GOP has been fooling us about what Booker actually said?

Maddow was totally full of shit, as she so frequently is. But her horrible friend may have been even worse. Truly, these two are a pair.

Go ahead—watch last evening’s performance. (Strongly recommended; just click here.) If you can’t see Maddow's scamminess this time around, trust us—you never will.

The American people saw this one coming: To see Mike Seeger sing Darling Cory, go ahead—just click this.

Why did Booker run his scam: We'll let Kornacki explain.

APPRAISING THE RUBES: What happened at Bain!

TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012

Part 2—Sharpton explains private equity: In today’s column, David Brooks does a very rare thing—he pretends to explain what “private equity” means.

In the course of discussing Mitt Romney’s career, every pundit uses the term—and very few voters haveany idea what the puzzling term means. So it goes as the liberal world connects, or fails to connect, with average American voters.

In the past few weeks, this problem has come to a head. Barack Obama has been running ads attacking Mitt Romney’s conduct at Bain Capital, a so-called “private equity” firm. These ads resemble ads from 1994, when Ted Kennedy used this approach to beat Romney for the Senate.

As he closes his column, Brooks raises a fairly dumb question about the reprise of such ads:
ht

BROOKS (5/22/12): In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign [in 2008] that embodied and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.

Brooks seems to be very clueless. Why is Obama running those ads? Duh! Because they worked in the past! But this does raise a genuine question—will the ads, and the theme they present, work again this year? Will they work outside Massachusetts, on a national basis?

We have our doubts. This raises the question we’ll look at all week—do we liberals understand the way the world looks to the average voter? Do we really understand the great unwashed, the yokels, the yahoos, the rubes?

Just yesterday, Obama said, “This is what this campaign is going to be about,” referring to Romney’s record at Bain. How well are liberals explaining this topic to voters?

In our view, not very well! Let’s start with the way Brooks describes Bain’s conduct in today’s column.

In this passage, Brooks discusses Bain’s conduct with respect to GST, a Kansas City steel mill the company has been accused of “looting” (though only by us). Very few voters will turn against Romney based on Brooks’ account:

BROOKS: Last week, the Obama administration unveiled an attack ad against Mitt Romney’s old private equity firm, Bain Capital, portraying it as a vampire that sucks the blood from American companies...

The Obama attack ad accused Bain Capital of looting a steel company called GST in the 1990s and then throwing its workers out on the street. The ad itself barely survived a minute of scrutiny. As Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal, the depiction is wildly misleading.

The company was in terminal decline before Bain entered the picture, seeing its work force fall from 4,500 to less than 1,000. It faced closure when Romney and Bain, for some reason, saw hope for it in 1993. Bain acquired it, induced banks to loan it money and poured $100 million into modernization, according to Strassel. Bain held onto the company for eight years, hardly the pattern of a looter. Finally, after all the effort, the company, like many other old-line steel companies, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, two years after Romney had left Bain.

This is the story of a failed rescue, not vampire capitalism.

Yikes! If voters accept that account, it’s hard to believe that they’ll turn against Romney. Indeed, this account almost makes it sound like Bain lost money trying to help GST. Bain “poured $100 million into modernization,” Brooks reports (citing Strassel), the admiration clear in his voice. But despite “all the effort” by Romney and Bain, GST eventually failed.

Based on this account, why would any sensible person think GST had been “looted?” Indeed, Brooks makes it sound like Bain was involved in some sort of charity scheme!

Of course, when Reuters described this same episode at the start of the year, it told a different story. According to Reuters, Bain was taking large profits and fees from GST even as the company limped toward its eventual death. Most strikingly, Bain was looting GST’s pension fund, according to the Reuters report.

“The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp...determined in 2002 that GS [Bain] had underfunded its pension by $44 million,” Reuters reported, four months ago. Reuters noted that the PBGC, a federal entity, had to bail out the underfunded pensions, though workers still lost large chunks of their pensions due to Romney’s looting.

$44 million! This morning, Brooks doesn’t mention the pension fund when he tells his stirring tale, debunking the claims of looting. He doesn’t say that this is why some folk have used the term “looting” to describe Romney’s conduct. But then, we liberals rarely raise such concerns as we stumble and fumble along, pretending to analyze Romney’s conduct.

Consider the utterly discussion conducted last night by Al Sharpton. (To watch the whole segment, click here.)

Let’s be fair! For the bulk of the past two months, Sharpton has been running a journalistic scam, spreading reams of disinformation about the killing of Trayvon Martin. Perhaps he was so busy making shit up that he hasn’t had time to arrange his thoughts concerning Romney and Bain.

But Ed Rendell wasn’t so involved, and he joined Sharpton last night in the type of useless discussion we liberals tend to present about Bain. The analysts screamed and covered their ears as these used-up old fellows argued with Republican Michael Steele about Romney’s conduct at Bain.

Remember those apocryphal angels, the ones who dance of the heads of pins? Even they screamed in protest last night at the tedium of the discussion. Romney’s looting wasn’t mentioned—except when Rendell seemed to defend it. Instead, these worthless old burnouts argued with Steele about the precise number of jobs Bain may or may not have produced.

We apologize for the length of the excerpt which follows. But the angels danced till they dropped as Sharpton and Rendell helped pave Romney’s road to the White House:

RENDELL (5/21/12): Can I ask a question, Michael? Do we know, and I think this is an honest and fair question, what the net [job gain] was? You say that Governor Romney did in fact produce some jobs in those 78 percent [of companies that didn’t go bankrupt]. But, do you know what the net is? Because Governor Romney said during his campaign against Ted Kennedy the net was 10,000. And now he’s saying the net was 100,000. Do we know what the net is?

STEELE: That is something that the campaign has put out and the campaign has updated that information and they’ve been very clear about the specifics on that, and they’re saying, they’re standing behind their number.

SHARPTON: The campaign is saying “thousands” now. They started with 100,000. And we—Governor Rendell is asking what I’m asking. I gave a chart of facts. If you have a chart of facts where he created jobs, then we would have a chart of facts. Then fine. But let’s not say we have something we don’t have.

STEELE: Well no, Reverend. I don’t have a chart of facts with me. But I think—

(CROSSTALK)

RENDELL: But Michael, don’t you think that’s an obligation of the Romney campaign to put out each deal, how many jobs were created, how many jobs were lost?

STEELE: No. My view is, no. I don’t think that’s an obligation to put out each deal and to get into specifics—

(CROSSTALK)

RENDELL: Go ahead. Go ahead.

STEELE: Thank you. I don’t think that that is necessarily, you can maybe cite one or two jobs, just like the reverend had four companies up there, yes, cite two, three, four companies as an example. The facts are already out there that a vast majority of the companies that Bain helped and assisted over the years that, during Romney’s tenure, 78 percent or more survived, went on, were very prosperous and productive, and jobs were created and people kept their jobs.

(CROSSTALK)

SHARPTON: We can agree with that, Michael, that he should give examples, if he’s going to call himself a job creator? Let’s not get away from the fact the president, Mr. Rendell, me—he called himself a job creator. All we ask—

(CROSSTALK)

STEELE: So let me ask you this. Is the president a job destroyer because of the fact that we still have 23 million Americans who don’t have their jobs? About 3.5 million of whom lost their jobs during his tenure? Yes, three million have got their jobs back, but—

SHARPTON: The answer is the president—

(CROSSTALK)

STEELE: You want to play with the facts, let’s play with the acts.

SHARPTON: Let me answer you. The specifics is, for 26 consecutive months jobs have been created.

STEELE: Yeah. For some, not all.

SHARPTON: I ask you to show me where Romney created jobs.

STEELE: For some, not all. And I said yes he did, for a lot of folks out there he has created jobs.

SHARPTON: Where? Where?

RENDELL: In fairness—and Rev, let me make this point. In fairness, you say 78 percent of those companies survived, and they did, and I’m sure that’s true.

SHARPTON: But we don’t know if they did more jobs, less jobs. We don’t know what that means.

RENDELL: They may have survived taking them down from 380 jobs to 175 jobs. So we need to know the facts.

Good God. On and on these burnouts went, arguing on the narrowest possible terms about the number of jobs which were lost versus the number of jobs which were gained. At some places, Bain may have survived by going from 380 jobs to 175, Rendell finally noted.

At this point, angels threw themselves off the heads of those pins, hoping to kill themselves in the fall. Question: Do you think voters will be moved this way?

Sorry. We do not.

Can we talk? Everyone knows that companies sometimes go out of business. In the standard example, very few people are still employed by buggy-whip manufacturers. To our ear, it’s unlikely that voters will be moved by the claim that some of the companies Bain took over may have lost 205 jobs. They may have started with 380 jobs, ended with 175!

Especially in the wake of our recent disasters, voters know that companies sometimes lose jobs. They know that companies sometimes go under. By way of contrast:

How about the fact that Bain was underfunding (“looting”) those pension funds, even as it was taking large profits and fees from those looted companies? How about the fact that Bain made the federal government bail them out, restoring part of these looted pensions? Just a guess: Knowing the yokels as we do, we would guess that the average voter would be surprised and very displeased to hear something like that.

But good God! The one time Rendell mentioned the looting, he said it was legal and proper!

RENDELL: When you look at the deals, the deals where the two that have been described in these commercials were companies were eventually put into bankruptcy, workers lost a substantial portion of their pension and health care. And investors took out millions of dollars, in some cases tens of millions of dollars in some cases.

We have to try to determine if that is an ethical way for businesses to proceed. I know it’s legal, it’s proper, and nobody is knocking private equity. We need private equity. But private equity has got one goal and that is to make the greatest return for your investors.

Really? It’s “legal and proper” to underfund pensions? We have to “try to determine” if that is an "ethical" way to proceed? Four months after the Reuters report, Rendell still seems to be in the weeds concerning this part of the tale.

He and Sharpton spent the whole segment arguing in very narrow terms about jobs lost versus against jobs gained. But they still had no clue how to proceed about this apparent “looting.”

By the way, everyone knows where Romney got that large, and increasing, jobs number. Whatever one may think of his claims, he is counting jobs produced at companies like Staples (89,000 jobs right there)—and the number of jobs at Staples has grown in the years since he fought his losing battle with Kennedy. Is something gained when players like Sharpton and Rendell build a whole segment around this non-mystery? Or maybe the Rev has been so busy spreading bogus facts that he doesn’t know the real facts about this.

For ourselves, we will only say this:

We think it’s unlikely that voters will be moved by narrow debates about numbers of jobs. Voters don’t have any idea what “private equity” is—and they assume that some companies fail. Last night’s discussion may have felt good to us liberals, safely ensconced in our tribal cocoon. But we don’t think it got the overall project real far.

For ourselves, we’d like to see someone fully explain the apparent looting of those pensions. To us, that sounds like very bad conduct—and we think it would sound the same way to the average voter. Will liberals get off the heads of those pins and start to meet average folk where they live? This leads to a larger question:

Do liberals understand the rubes, the yokels, the yahoos, the crackers, the great unwashed? It’s clear that some of us enjoy mocking this lesser breed.

But do we understand the voters? And how hard do we try?

Tomorrow: Dionne does (somewhat) better on Bain

Just saying: Norm Ornstein’s final hurrah!

MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012

With big love from the Washington Post: This will be the last time we report that Norman Ornstein is dead to the Sunday “news” programs. (For our previous reporet on thois topic, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/14/12.)

Yesterday, Ornstein and Mann were ignored again; they’re dead to the Sunday bookers. In their widely-noted new book, they argue that our current political paralysis is almost wholly the fault of the Republican Party. And omigod! They argue that the mainstream “press corps” is mired in false equivalence—in the type of equivalence widely seen on yesterday’s Sunday programs.

(Obama should stop discussing Bain! The GOP should drop Reverend Wright!)

People! According to tenets of Hard Pundit Law, Ornstein’s theses can’t be voiced on Sunday morning "news" shows! Indeed, it’s very hard to imagine the way a Sunday host would respond to such verboten claims.

In the face of this dilemma-of-script, the boys have simply been banned from such venues. But good lord! They are getting extremely Big Love from the Washington Post's Outlook section.

Ornstein and Mann may be dead to TV, but Outlook just keeps promoting their book. Yesterday, Outlook gave them big sprawling coverage for the third time in four weeks! This big sprawling piece by Ornstein and Mann was the featured piece on Outlook’s first page.

But then, the boys had authored this big sprawling piece on Outlook’s front page three weeks earlier, on Sunday, April 29. And sure enough! One week later, on May 6, the Post’s Robert Kaiser had authored this rave review of the Mann-Ornstein book. It also appeared in Outlook.

Ornstein and Mann were insider gods—until they came up with these crazy ideas. Outlook continues to play by old rules. But on the Sunday morning shows, the gods have been disappeared.

Nine words you can’t just say on TV: This was the headline on the boys' April 29 Outlook piece:

“Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

Where do experts get such ideas? Those are nine words you can’t "just say" on TV, much as Carlin said.

The doctor was IN: Horwitz doctors a quote!

MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen this: Last Friday night, the Washington Post’s Sari Horwitz appeared on the PBS NewsHour.

Margaret Warner asked Horwitz to explain the “treasure trove of documents and tapes” which were released last Thursday by prosecutor Angela Corey. Asked to discuss the police reports of eyewitness accounts, Horwitz somewhat oddly said this:

HORWITZ (5/18/12): You know, Margaret, as in many of these criminal cases, eyewitnesses see different things, they hear different things.

So in this case, you have one man that says he saw a black man on top of a white man, beating him up. And he describes the white man, what he’s wearing, a red jacket, which would be George Zimmerman. But then you have a woman who is standing in her house and looks out her window and hears, she says, a boy screaming. So you know, two different accounts.

The eyewitness “looked out her window and heard a boy screaming?” Somewhat comically, that’s what Horwitz said.

Was Martin on top of Zimmerman, beating him up? We can’t exactly tell you. But in this instance, the male eyewitness Horwitz cites seems to have been a true eyewitness; he says he stepped outside and spoke to the combatants as they fought, he had repeatedly said. (The police reports say he would have been thirty feet from the combatants.) Horwitz balanced this person’s account with an “eyewitness” who looked out the window, then explained what she says she heard.

So it has gone when the Washington Post attempts to report the facts of this case. As she continued, Horwitz gave a rather selective account of the newly-released documents:

HORWITZ (continuing directly): One person saw one man chasing another, so different accounts. It was dark, it was raining. The other thing you have is a 911 recording that recorded the screams outside. A woman called during the fight and you get the screams on tape.

Trayvon’s mother says that is definitely Trayvon screaming for his life. George Zimmerman’s parents say, no, that’s absolutely George Zimmerman.

The state prosecutor, special prosecutor Angela Corey, brought in the FBI. They did an analysis which was inconclusive. They said the tape isn’t good enough for them to make a, come to a conclusion. So what this leaves us with, it really sums up the case, is a lot of uncertainty. It shows the difficulty in bringing closure and certainty to this very highly charged case.

Odd! Everyone has known all along that Trayvon’s mother and Zimmerman’s father each say the voice belongs to their own son. That was very old news. But Horwitz skipped something which really was new in those documents—the police report which said that Trayvon Martin’s father initially said it wasn’t the voice of his son.

Martin’s father may have been wrong—but that was new in the “treasure trove.” Why did Horwitz skip it?

We have no idea. But earlier, Horwitz had skipped past another new fact:

HORWITZ: There are a lot of details in the medical reports that show us that this was sort of an intimate hand-to-hand struggle. There was—from DNA, we can see Trayvon’s blood on George Zimmerman’s shirt, George Zimmerman’s blood on Trayvon’s sweatshirt, blood under Trayvon’s fingernails, all kinds of material that shows us that this was a real struggle and a fight.

And there were—there is video and there's photos that show that George Zimmerman was, indeed, injured. There are lacerations to the back of his head. He had a bloody nose. And Trayvon, we know from the autopsy report, has an injury on one of his fingers.

In that treasure trove, there are also several reports which note that Zimmernan’s nose was actually broken. Why did Horwitz settle for a “bloody” nose? We have no idea—but basic information was being withheld from NewsHour viewers.

That morning, Horwitz had reported on the new documents on the front page of the Post. In the Post, she did report what Martin’s father had said—but she stuck with the “bloody” nose construction. Adopting a requisite narrative, she said “the documents include information that points to what some have characterized as a sloppy and incomplete police investigation,” offering rather selective evidence in support of that mandatory claim.

She and her editors also authored a very strange piece of reporting. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a quotation doctored as strangely as this:

HORWITZ (5/18/12, The Washington Post): The documents include new details about what witnesses said they heard and saw that dark, rainy night outside their townhouse windows. One witness told police that he heard someone saying, "I've got a gun. I've got a gun."

Another said she heard "arguing" coming from the walkway behind her residence.

Wow! From the quoted statement as Horwitz reports it, a reader might get the impression that someone threatened someone with a gun that night! Since Zimmerman had the only gun, it’s clear who that would have been!

But Horwitz gave a remarkably misleading account of the full quotation. Here’s the fuller text of the police report from which she took that partial “quotation.” In the report, Officer Chris Serino is reporting what one ear-witness said:

SERINO (3/13/12): [The witness] articulated the sounds he heard as “ah, ah, ah,” and then he heard the same voice yelling, “help! help!” approximately twenty (20) times. He then heard a “pop,” ran upstairs, and then heard someone saying “I’ve got a gun, I’ve got a gun,” “take my gun from me.”

“I’ve got a gun, I’ve got a gun,” “take my gun from me.” Within the full context of these reports, it’s clear that this ear-witness was describing statements by Zimmerman after the “pop” of the shooting, as he informed the police that he had a gun. (Adding to the tragedy of these events, police arrived on the scene almost instantly. Zimmerman surrendered his gun.)

For unknown reasons, Horwitz reported the part of the quotation where Zimmerman said, “I’ve got a gun, I’ve got a gun.” But she omitted the part which came next, where he said, “Take my gun from me.” In the process, she made no attempt to explain the obvious context of the quoted statement—and she may have lodged a highly bogus impression in many readers’ minds.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a major “journalist” truncate a quote so strangely. But then, it’s important to understand how badly our journalists often function, especially when they’re reporting a story which comes with some Clear Preferred Narratives.

Did Zimmerman commit a crime that night? We have no idea, in large part because the facts of this case are emerging very slowly, often in the face of disinformation campaigns. And uh-oh! As the facts of this case become available, the journalists of the Washington press corps will often obscure them—sometimes through mere incompetence, sometimes through devotion to script.

Why would a journalist truncate that quote? We don’t have the slightest idea. But whatever may emerge about Zimmerman’s conduct, the journalistic treatment of this case has already been an astonishing scandal.

The rest of “the press” will ignore that, of course. We will offer several more posts on this topic this week.

APPRAISING THE RUBES: Nauseation nation!

MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012

Part 1—What the first Booker said: Does Cory Booker know what he’s talking about? The first Cory Booker, that is?

Yesterday morning, on Meet the Press, the first Cory Booker sounded off good. It’s time to drop all this “crap” about Bain, the Newark mayor said:

BOOKER (5/20/12): Well, two points I want to make real quick. First of all, I think it's a race for President Obama to remind the American public the kind of things he's been doing and stop letting the other side steal his narrative. He's a guy that's cut taxes on small business, the lowest discretionary spending we've had in decades in the United States. Start telling the truth about the Obama record to let people know that not only is he doing the kind of things, cutting taxes on the majority of Americans, but he's also doing things to stimulate the economy, the economy's getting better.

As far as that stuff, I have to just say, from a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity. It's to me, it's just—we're getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, it ain't—they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, And this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with.

[...]

I talk to the White House quite often. I'm a surrogate for the Obama campaign. The messages that they're sending me out to do, out to talk about, is nothing about this.

They're talking about very clearly, the average American, middle-class Americans. In fact, over 90 percent of Americans have seen tax cuts under this president. Small businesses, like the ones that are in my city, have benefited tremendously from incentives for investment, rewards for creating jobs, rewards for hiring, hiring veterans. So on the issues that matter in the communities, I see the Obama administration having stepped up and just needing to get their voice out more. Even Obama, Obamacare, as people talk about, when people start—when you poll Obamacare, it doesn't do well. But when you start polling the aspects of it, people in this country support that legislation.

But the last point I'll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It's a distraction from the real issues. It's either going to be a small campaign about this crap or it's going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares about.

Later in the day, a second Booker appeared on YouTube. He said he wanted to make his earlier statements clear.

“Let me be clear,” this new Booker said, creating massive confusion. “Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign, he’s talked about himself as a job creator. And therefore, it is reasonable, and in fact I encourage it, for the Obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it. I have no problem with that.”

In fairness, it’s hard to argue with that—and this second Booker said more. “I believe that Mitt Romney in many ways is not being completely honest with his role and his record, even while a businessperson, and is shaping it to serve his political interest, not necessarily including all the facts of his time there,” the new Booker said. To watch his full statement, click here.

Booker seemed to be of two minds about Bain as a campaign issue. For ourselves, we wondered about his statement on Meet the Press, especially the part in which he alleged voter nauseation.

For the record, Booker’s statement on Meet the Press didn’t quite make sense. “I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity,” he said. “...Stop attacking private equity.” But people! An indictment of Romney’s conduct at Bain isn’t necessarily an indictment of private equity as a whole. It’s an indictment of Romney’s behavior and values, not those of anyone else.

It’s also worth noting that Booker advanced a rather “austerian” view of Obama’s achievements. According to Booker, Obama has been cutting taxes, and he has produced “the lowest discretionary spending we've had in decades.” This sounds like the defense of a Republican president’s record.

That said, is it possible that Booker I was right in his overall message? Should the Obama campaign focus more on a positive message, less on attacks against Romney?

We don’t have a firm view about that; political strategy isn’t our focus. But we think it’s worth asking if Booker could be right in his diagnosis of the nausea he sees sweeping the land.

Years ago, Sartre wrote La Nausee (“The Nausea”), a novel about a dejected historian who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself. French writer Simone de Beauvoir claimed that "The Nausea" grants consciousness a remarkable independence and gives reality the full weight of its sense.

And no, we really aren’t making that up. Though Wikipedia may be—click here.

Sartre described the nausea of the late 1930s in his famously thoughtful novel. Presumably, this isn’t the type of nauseation Booker I had in mind.

But as we watch an uncomfortably close race shape up between Obama and Romney, we often wonder if liberals and Dems understand the public’s perspective on an array of issues. With that in mind, is it possible that Booker I was right to some extent? Is it possible that voters are “nauseated,” or at least unmoved, by the unfolding attacks on Romney’s conduct at Bain?

For ourselves, we think the liberal world has done a very poor job explaining the problem with Romney’s conduct at Bain. But then, if it weren’t for bungled reactions to issues, would we liberals ever react to any issues at all?

All week long, we’ll look at liberal reaction to current issues and pseudo-issues. Question: Do we liberals understand the rubes at whom we often direct our derision?

Unwashed as they are, these yokels do vote! Do we understand the ways these hayseeds see the world?

Back in the day, Sartre nailed it, explaining the way inanimate objects were getting under historians’ skin. But do we liberals understand the shape of modern nauseation? Would Beauvoir say that we are giving current reality “the full weight of its sense?”

How clearly do we understand our political world? Do inquiring minds want to know?

Tomorrow: Explaining Bain

THE WAY WE ARE: Romney rescues the drowning dog!

SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2012

Epilogue—Disfavored stories: We liberals have been drawn to the story of Mitt Romney’s dog on the roof of the car.

We liberals enjoy this story so much that we have even invented a set of bogus facts about it. Just last week, Gail Collins wrote that Seamus, the mistreated Irish setter, was stuck “in a cage” on the roof of that speeding car!

Collins knows no “cage” was involved—but her claim made the story work better! Liberal commenters thanked her, as always, for pleasuring them in such ways. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/18/02.)

For reasons she has never quite explained, Collins is drawn to Romney’s dog as Ahab was once drawn to that whale. She has been retelling this tale since 2007, when Hector was a pup.

Needless to say, we liberals aren't alone in the practice Collins has perfected. Conservatives love reciting embellished tales about Democrats’ troubling character problems. That said, few writers have told an embellished tale as many times as Collins.

This brings us to a stirring story Collins’ readers will never be asked to read. We refer to the time Mitt Romney rescued a dog! Along with six adult humans!

It happened in 2003. A Scottish terrier was drowning, in a very large, very deep lake. The facts of the case were widely reported, but the sociopathic Boston Globe tended to overlook the rescue of the dog.

The Boston Herald’s Elisabeth Beardsley told that part of the story best:

BEARDSLEY (7/6/03): Gov. Mitt Romney rode to the rescue over the weekend during a vacation trip—using his Jet Ski to help pluck a New Jersey family and their dog out of Lake Winnipesaukee after their boat sank.

The drama began at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, as Romney and his family were relaxing at their lakeside summer home in Wolfeboro, N.H.

Gubernatorial son Josh Romney told the Herald yesterday that he and brother Craig were cleaning the beach while their father puttered in the garage when the quiet night air was pierced with screams.

"We heard a whole bunch of screaming," said Josh Romney, who immediately hopped onto his Jet Ski. "We tore out of there and my dad hopped on the other Jet Ski and came out right after us."

Roughly 300 yards out onto the lake, six adult family members and their dog were floundering in the water, after their boat suddenly sprung a huge leak—sinking in less than 90 seconds, Josh said.

A Scottish terrier was in the water, along with six humans. As she continued, Beardsley described the rescue of McKenzie, the "waterlogged pooch:"

BEARDSLEY (continuing directly): While water temperatures were a balmy 75 degrees, the deepening darkness obscured other boaters' vision—prompting the victims' terrified howls as they were buzzed by other vessels cruising in the entrance to Wolfeboro Bay.

Chasing fleeting glimpses of "bobbling heads" in the water, the Romney trio arrived on their two Jet Skis to find three women and three men, wearing lifejackets they hadn't even had time to buckle.

The governor pulled the two younger women aboard his three-seater jet ski and zoomed back to shore, while his sons helped the mother of the family onto their vehicle.

In the middle of the rescue, the governor actually took a dunking himself—thrown off the Jet Ski as one anxious boater scrambled aboard and tipped the craft off-balance.

The rescuing Romneys also managed to snatch the family dog, McKenzie, from a watery grave—grabbing the Scottish terrier first because it was the only passenger without a lifejacket.

"It looked like it wasn't going to last much longer," said Josh, who held the waterlogged pooch on the ride back to shore.

With Josh and Craig hovering nearby, the three men treaded water until the governor returned and made two more trips to ferry them back.

You’re right—it was one of his sons, not Romney himself, who went to the trouble of saving McKenzie. As such, we liberals get to retain our belief in Romney’s sociopathic attitudes toward dogs.

But here’s the good news! Over the years, many of Collins’ suggestible readers have wondered if the treatment of Seamus scarred the Romney sons for life. Good news! Dad is a socio, but at least one son isn’t, this overlooked story suggests.

That said, you will never read this story in Collins’ waste-of-time column. Yes, it would be a good way to kill time. But lazy tribal pundits aren’t like that.

Also this! President Kennedy scores with the teen: Then too, there's the recent story about the president we liberals tend to adore.

A few weeks ago, we finally read Mimi Alford’s account of the way she was procured, then “deflowered,” by our much-beloved liberal president. The story is told in Alford’s recent book, Once Upon A Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath.

We strongly recommend Alford’s book. For our money, her account of the events in question is one of the most interesting narrations we’ve ever read. No, she isn’t especially accusatory in what she writes. The emotional balance of her narration is what makes her story so novel.

But make no mistake. According to Alford, she was scoped, then procured by Kennedy’s top aide. After a noon-time audition in the pool, she was racked up that night by the president. The conduct described is truly astounding—and no one really doubts that it happened.

For the record, it was Alford’s fourth day on the job! Also: Kennedy wasn’t in high school at the time, though Alford was just 19. She had been kissed by only one boy by the end of high school, she says.

In the past week, we liberals have enjoyed ourselves, wondering if Romney’s a sociopath based on some unpleasant things he did when he was in high school.

Is Romney a sociopath? He certainly could be! But even as we go after Mitt, we tend to venerate our own liberal president. Go ahead! We would suggest that you read Alford’s account of something he did at age 45!

We liberals like to mock The Others for the ridiculous ways they reason. But this is the way our tribe sometimes reasons:

Despite his conduct at age 45, Kennedy was one of our greatest presidents. But because of his conduct at age 18, Romney’s unfit for the office!

Final point: Despite her love for this sort of tale, Collins hasn’t mentioned Alford’s book. She may have forgotten to read it.

And there's more!

Despite her long-running journalistic amour tour, Maureen Dowd hasn’t mentioned Alford either! And she lives in one of Dear Jack’s former homes!

Even among our brightest leaders, the ways of the world can be strange.

David Brooks, never worse!

FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012

The undisguised soul of class preference: This morning’s column by David Brooks is truly one for the ages.

Looking down from the heights of Olympus, Brooks starts by explaining how human life works. It isn’t that what he’s saying is “wrong.”

But who is he talking about?

BROOKS (5/18/12): The people who pioneered democracy in Europe and the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a series of checks to make sure their nations wouldn’t be ruined by their own frailties.

The American founders did this by decentralizing power. They built checks and balances to frustrate and detain the popular will. They also dispersed power to encourage active citizenship, hoping that as people became more involved in local government, they would develop a sense of restraint and responsibility.

[...]

Though the forms were different, the democracies in Europe and the United States were based on a similar carefully balanced view of human nature: People are naturally selfish and need watching. But democratic self-government is possible because we’re smart enough to design structures to police that selfishness.

It isn’t that what he’s saying is “wrong.” But when he talks about all that selfishness which needs all that watching, who is he talking about?

Is he talking about average people—average people who might want help getting their (over-priced) health insurance? Or is he talking about Masters of the Universe, the billionaires, hustlers, gamblers and swells who have destroyed the American system?

As he continues, it’s stunningly clear who Brooks means. This is the shape of the “depravity” which has our high lord so upset:

BROOKS: James Madison put it well: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind, which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.”

But, over the years, this balanced wisdom was lost. Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it. A gigantic polling apparatus has developed to help leaders anticipate and respond to popular whims. Democratic politicians adopt the mind-set of marketing executives. Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.

Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay.

Rather clearly, it’s the average Joe and Josephine against whom we need protection. Brooks isn’t discussing our billionaire masters. He’s discussing “many voters,” “the popular will.”

According to Brooks, “many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements.” In his various constructions, no billionaires can be found!

Are we "voters" sometimes selfish? Yes, of course we are! But it’s astounding to review events of the past twenty years and think that we average shlubs are at fault. And yet, that’s the way Lord Brooks paints the picture all through this remarkable column.

Only once in his long diatribe does he pretend to cover his keister. In our view, this just makes it worse:

BROOKS: The American decentralized system of checks and balances has transmogrified into a fragmented system that scatters responsibility. Congress is capable of passing laws that give people benefits with borrowed money, but it gridlocks when it tries to impose self-restraint.

The Obama campaign issues its famous “Julia” ad, which perfectly embodies the vision of government as a national Sugar Daddy, delivering free money and goodies up and down the life cycle. The Citizens United case gives well-financed interests tremendous power to preserve or acquire tax breaks and regulatory deals. American senior citizens receive health benefits that cost many times more than the contributions they put into the system.

In Europe, workers across the Continent want great lifestyles without long work hours. They want dynamic capitalism but also personal security. European welfare states go broke trying to deliver these impossibilities.

Can you spot the one little sentence which acknowledges the fact that billionaires (“well-financed interests”) can sometimes be grasping too? Just in case you missed that needle, we highlighted it there in the haystack.

Brooks just bought a $4 million house. As he prepares to move in and up, he’s troubled by the little people. So grasping! So greedy! So unrestrained in their appetites, whims and desires!

Meanwhile, what did Brooks do to receive his four million? People! Other journos won’t ask!

Same general idea: On Wednesday evening’s Hardball, Chris Matthews was pretending to be very upset. How did Mitt Romney make all that money, the world’s biggest phony asked:

MATTHEWS (5/16/12): Why is Romney ducking the press? He’s on the plane being cute about it, but he’s saying he doesn’t have to answer your questions. He’s laughing about it in that sort of phony laugh of his. Is he afraid of questions this time? What’s he going to do when he’s president? No more press conferences, no more answering?

By the way, Bain Capital. That’s where you worked. That’s how you got rich. Explain the money! Show us how you made the money!

This is Hardball, the place for politics.

How quaint. No one whored for his millions any more than Matthews did. First he slimed the Clintons for Jack Welch, then he spent two solid years sliming Candidate Gore.

Reward: $5 million per year! Eight years of Bush in the White House!

Watching Mathews ask questions like this is a study in the way our "press corps" works. The pseudo-liberals of the corps have always tolerated Chris. They want the fame and the money too—and his show was a route to “success.”

He made up shit about Gore for two years. (By now, of course, he has been repurposed.) Everybody kept their traps shut tight.

Today, Joan and David adore him.

The New York Times in Sanford, Day 2!

FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012

Thanks to MSNBC, everyone knows except us: This morning, for the second straight day, the New York Times reports on the legal case involving the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Yesterday, prosecutor Angela Corey released “a trove of new documents and photographs,” Serge Kovaleski reports. Some of this material adds a great deal to the public knowledge of the facts of this case.

But good God! At the end of his news report, Kovaleski authors a truly stunning piece of “journalism.” Even from the New York Times, this is stunningly bad news judgment:

KOVALESKI (5/18/12): The reports may give rise to other mysteries as well, including the identity of a woman who called another investigator, less than two full days after the shooting.

The woman refused to identify herself or give any callback numbers, but told the investigator that Mr. Zimmerman “has racist ideologies and that he is fully capable of instigating a confrontation that could have escalated to the point of Zimmerman having to use deadly force.”

The police were never able to track her down.

Truly, that is hard to believe, even from the Times:

An anonymous person called the police, making a lurid anonymous claim. Incredibly, the New York Times has now reported this anonymous person’s lurid claim, describing it as one of the “mysteries” of the case.

Anonymous claims of every description have been made in this case. But then, lurid and/or crackpot claims are made by anonymous people in every high-profile case. And guess what?

By the norms of journalism, newspapers don’t report them! But this morning, the New York Times does.

The Times is truly astounding. On Monday, an important new fact became known; George Zimmerman did sustain a broken nose in his confrontation with Martin. Anyone who has followed this case will know that this has been a key point of contention, with hustlers on MSNBC insisting that this couldn’t have happened.

This week, the truth emerged—and the New York Times slipped this fact by its readers in a parenthetical remark in paragraph 27 of yesterday’s lengthy report (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/17/12). By way of contrast, it devotes three paragraphs today to a lurid anonymous claim.

Your lizard brain will urge you to defend this conduct. Your lizard brain will be wrong.

Several other points stand out in this morning’s report. Incredibly, Kovaleski includes a fact which cuts in Zimmerman’s favor. According to police reports, Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, said the voice crying for help on the audiotapes wasn’t the voice of his son.

(This doesn't mean he was right, of course. But the Martin camp has repeatedly said that Trayvon's mother said it was her son's voice. The father's apparent reaction went down the memory hole.)

On the other hand, Kovaleski offers the following account of the confrontation which resulted in Trayvon Martin’s death. As journalism, this is almost as bad as his report of that lurid anonymous claim:

KOVALESKI: [Trayvon] Martin had been visiting other residents of the complex and had been out that rainy evening to go to a nearby store. He was returning with some iced tea and a bag of Skittles when Mr. Zimmerman saw him and considered him suspicious.

Mr. Zimmerman called the police before leaving his vehicle and pursuing Mr. Martin. The confrontation then occurred.

As everyone knows, the events leading up to that confrontation lie at the heart of this case. In the highlighted passage, Kovaleski ignores Zimmerman’s account of these events. (Zimmerman says he was returning to his car when Martin confronted him. We have no idea if that’s true.)

Kovaleski finds time to mention the (irrelevant) iced tea and Skittles, but he fails to explain the various accounts of the key confrontation. In his account, the blame for the confrontation seems to rest quite directly with Zimmerman. At some point, someone at the Times may have seen this problem. This account, from our hard-copy Times, has been improved on-line—has been made more impartial.

What actually happened that night? Slowly, some facts are emerging. But at our greatest American newspaper, Kovaleski included a lurid anonymous claim in this morning's report—and he still hasn’t gotten around to describing Zimmerman’s injuries, which have now been documented.

Just a guess: There isn’t another news org in America which will report that lurid anonymous claim. No one plays games like the New York Times does. They’ve been like this for some time now.

MSNBC clams once again: Last night, this new information was all over cable—except at MSNBC.

Night after night, week after week, MSNBC spread reams of disinformation about this tragic case. They toyed and played with race; they toyed and played with life and death itself. One small example, of many: The disgraceful hustlers at this channel kept insisting that Zimmerman couldn’t have sustained a broken nose that night. Now, when the actual fact emerges, this horrible channel keeps quiet.

If you get your news from MSNBC, you still haven’t heard about the broken nose. Last night, you didn’t hear about the “trove of new documents” at all! You haven’t been shown the various photos showing the injuries to the back of Zimmerman’s head. For weeks, MSNBC kept telling you there were none!

MSNBC has disgraced itself with respect to this case. Right from its hustler Rhodes Scholar on down, this channel should be made to explain its ridiculous conduct. Who knows? Maybe Howard Kurtz can get off his big fat ascot this Sunday and discuss this rolling disgrace.

Don't hold your breath!

This week, MSNBC has continued its horrible conduct. We liberals! Everyone gets to learn the facts! Everyone except us!

THE WAY WE ARE: Irish setters over tea-baggers!

FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012

Part 4—As the liberal world slept: According to Jason Horowitz’s reporting, some of which is thoroughly documented, Mitt Romney behaved quite badly at several times during his high school career.

In response, Gail Collins behaved rather badly herself. But Collins is not in high school.

Horowitz’s novella-length piece appeared in last Thursday’s Washington Post. Two days later, Collins and her colleague, Charles Blow, devoted their New York Times columns to the latest proof of Romney’s bad character.

Speaking of faulty moral performance, Blow had just spent a month spreading disinformation about a possible murder case. But so what! On this day, he expounded in detail about Romney’s bad character flaws.

In her own column, Lady Collins rewarded herself with a doggie treat.

Her overall reasoning was a bit hard to follow; this produced complaints from commenters. But at one point, Collins treated herself! Again, she told her favorite tale. But this time, she employed a new image: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/opinion/collins-the-anatomy-of-a-jokester.html?

COLLINS (5/12/12): He is incapable, really, of admitting past errors. Perhaps you may remember that Romney once drove to Canada with the family Irish setter stuck in a cage on the station wagon roof. When he was originally asked about it, he claimed the dog “loves fresh air.”

Really? Was Seamus on the roof of the car “in a cage” that day?

In fairness, Collins had placed Seamus in a “cage” once before, in a column from December 2010. (Incredibly, she has been repeating this tale for five years.) Last Saturday, she cited Romney's quip about the “fresh air,” creating an image she must have known would mislead some of her readers.

Surely, Collins understands that Seamus wasn’t “in a cage.” But darlings! As Chekhov wrote about Gurov, the semi-crazy columnist “wanted to enjoy life so badly and it all seemed so simple and amusing!”

Semi-crazy—and dishonest? Whatever! Blow and Collins were happy this day, helping readers understand that Romney is a bad person.

(Which he may be, of course!)

Tomorrow, we’ll post the story you won’t hear from Collins; we’ll post the news report about the time Romney rescued the drowning dog. (It happened in 2003.) For now, let’s consider the reactions of Collins’ liberal readers when she wrote the semi-confusing but pleasing piece about Mitt’s high school conduct.

We liberals! As we pleasured ourselves last week with tales about Romney’s behavior in high school, Romney crept ahead of Obama in the New York Times national poll! Can it be that this is happening because of The Way We Are—because of our vast limitations?

Alas! Scanning the comments from Collins’ readers, we saw the standard assembly of pseudo-liberal nonsense and incomprehension. Question: If these comments define the way we are, might we liberals be too daft to keep Romney out of the White House?

COMMENT FROM FLORIDA: You don't remember the incident, but you DO remember you didn't know the boy was gay?

COMMENT FROM WISCONSIN: I believe I read that Mr. Romney stated that the kennel was airtight so no problem. How does that work? Dogs don't need air to live?

COMMENT FROM DC: And remember when Mitt said "I'm not concerned with the very poor, they've got the safety net." Yeah, right! From his vantage point, the lives of poor people might seem like something he read about in a school book rather than something he was curious enough to study first hand. And we know he likes to "fire people"—ha ha, what a fun and crazy guy!

COMMENT FROM FLORIDA: I saw the real Romney on a news clip of him on the campaign trail. When asked a question by a citizen (potential voter/employer), Romney simply said, "You're wrong and I'm right" and turned his back. Why the press didn't pick up on this totally insulting behavior is beyond me. Arrogance personified. Really, if elected, I'm afraid we will hear from him over and over and over that he's right and we're wrong.

COMMENT FROM NEW YORK: I will never get tired of your Seamus-on-the-roof references. It just highlights how absurd this all is. Maybe SNL is behind this whole thing and the real Republican candidate will appear any day. Oh, wait, there are no other options. Seth Meyers for President.

COMMENT FROM NEW JERSEY: Actually, the most frightening aspect of the Romney/Lauber incident is that, you can be sure, many of his supporters have no problem with Mitt's behavior and—indeed—probably applaud it.

COMMENT FROM NEW JERSEY: What do expect from a person named Mitt? I think naming a child Mitt probably dooms that person forever to try to be "one of the guys." Romney reminds me of that kid in high school everyone liked because he had the best car and paid for gas. Maybe the last kid chosen for dodgeball? Whatever it is, I do not think someone as shallow and insecure as he looks to be should be president. Actually, I can name twenty-five other policies he has put out there that lead me to think of Romney as a poor choice but the name Mitt stands out. Does this make me shallow? Probably.

Gaze on the way we are:

The commenter from New York “will never get tired of [Collins’] Seamus-on-the-roof references.” Collins gets that a lot.

The first commenter from Florida saw a contradiction where no contradiction exists. The commenter from Wisconsin is still puzzled by the “airtight” comment.

The commenter from DC rattled a few of our tribe’s favorite lines. (We once agreed that these favorite lines had been taken “wildly out of context.” Now, we pseudos love these lines as we love life itself.)

The commenter from Florida had been convinced by a brief news clip. And the first commenter from New Jersey was pretty sure that “many” of Romney's supporters probably applaud the way he behaved—the way he behaved in high school.

That said, the second commenter from New Jersey showed us part of The Way We Are. He said he could name twenty-five policies which show that Romney would be a poor choice. But what stands out in this reader’s mind?

Of course! Mitt Romney’s weird name!

Is it fair to go through comments this way? Actually, yes—it is. When Collins writes one of her columns, her comment threads are full of such comments—the type of comments we liberals used to mock.

For decades, pseudo-conservatives called talk radio programs, announcing themselves as ditto-heads. On the air, for all to hear, these callers would affirm every damn fool thing in the world.

We liberals would laugh at the foolishness of these highly scripted callers. And then we invented comment threads—and we got to see the way we are!

The way we are is not super-bright, as we telegraphed again in the wake of the bullying story. And omigod! As we pleasured ourselves with comments about Mitt Romney’s high school days, Romney crept ahead of Obama in the New York Times national poll.

Could it be that voters don't care about our tribe's twaddle? Again, we offer a question:

Romney did behave quite badly in the bullying of John Lauber. Several other unflattering incidents were described in the Horowitz piece—incidents from his high school career.

We liberals swung into action. Our “intellectual leaders” treated themselves in familiar ways, failing to offer us actual leadership. But here’s our question, once again:

Why didn’t we react to the Reuters report at the start of the year about the way Romney looted those pension funds?

Romney behaved this way as a full-grown adult. A very large number of people got looted.

But how weird! Lady Collins didn’t say boo about this bit of bad conduct! Could it be that this lady doesn’t care when tea-baggers might be involved?

Could it be that she cares about Irish setters but not about working-class folk?

In the New York Times poll, Romney moved past Obama last week as we liberals pleasured ourselves with our tribe’s favorite stories. For years, we got to laugh at the other tribe’s ditto-heads—but they at least had highly effective political leadership.

Today, the clueless players must include us. The real fault lies with our intellectual leaders, of course. But look at the way we are!

We get upset about Irish setters—so upset that we invent and select our facts, as Collins has done from the start of this breakdown. We get upset about high school bullying, which is of course a bad thing.

But we don’t seem to care about looted workers—can’t seem to rouse ourselves about that! To us, this seems to be part of an unfortunate package, a point we’ll explore more next week.

The main fault lies with our worthless “leaders,” of course. But then too, there’s the way we are.

Tomorrow: Romney rescues a dog. Plus, JFK as a grown-up!

Nose for news: The Times has never been stranger!

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2012

MSNBC won’t tell you the truth: Our view:

Given the way denial works, it’s hard for people to understand how dumb and fake the New York Times is. That said, we’re not sure we’ve ever seen the Times as dumb or as strange as it is today.

For starters, what’s the featured story at the top of the Sports Thursday section? Manny Pacquiao, a boxer from the Philippines, doesn’t agree with Barack Obama’s new position on same sex marriage! At one point in a multiply-puzzling report, Greg Bishop weirdly writes this:

BISHOP (5/17/12): It was this revived interest in biblical study, [boxing promoter Bob] Arum said, that led Pacquiao to express his views on same-sex marriage, which Arum said he does not share. Arum noted that Pacquiao is Catholic and conservative and from a country where most people hold similar beliefs. Pacquiao is also an elected official [in the Philippines], Arum said, and thus should be allowed to take a stance on social issues, even an unpopular one.

Go ahead—enjoy a good laugh! According to Arum, elected officials are allowed to state a position on social issues! But we really chuckled at the highlighted statement, in which Arum notes that the Philippines is a country “where most people hold similar beliefs.” There is no sign that Bishop knows that the same is true of the U.S. In his newspaper’s brand-new public survey, 42 percent said they favor same-sex marriage, 51 percent said they do not!

Bishop’s report was strange and jumbled throughout. But then, we were struck by the weird reporting all through today’s Times, culminating with this lengthy front-page report about the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Truly, the Times is astounding. In Serge Kovaleski’s report, the paper clings to a favorite script, in which the Sanford police bungled the investigation on the night of the killing.

The headline speaks of “police missteps.” This is Kovaleski’s nugget:

KOVALESKI (5/17/12): An examination of the Sanford Police Department’s handling of the case shows a series of missteps—including sloppy work—and circumstances beyond its control that impeded the investigation and may make it harder to pursue a case that is already difficult enough.

According to Kovaleski, the department engaged in “a series of missteps, including sloppy work.” He ends us listing four examples.

(We're ignoring the third item on his five-item list, in which we’re told that “the police were not able to cover the crime scene to shield evidence from the rain.” As it turns out, there was no dome on that gated community! So some of the blood washed away!)

How absurd are the four remaining alleged missteps? Kovaleski is so desperate for examples that he even writes this:

KOVALESKI: The police did not test Mr. Zimmerman for alcohol or drug use that night, and one witness said the lead investigator quickly jumped to a conclusion that it was Mr. Zimmerman, and not Mr. Martin, who cried for help during the struggle.

One witness said that the lead investigator jumped to a conclusion? Yes, he actually wrote that! For the record, it has repeatedly been said that this same lead investigator wanted Zimmerman arrested that night. Kovaleski doesn’t address this widely-stated point.

Kovaleski struggles mightily to come up with complaints. “On the night of the shooting, door-to-door canvassing was not exhaustive enough,” he says—then notes that this is the opinion of “a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.” (Note: On its face, that means this is the opinion of only one such official.) And not only that! “The police took only one photo at the scene of any of Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries...before paramedics tended to him.” Much later, Kovaleski notes that many such injury photos were taken when Zimmerman reached the police station.

This is remarkably worthless reporting. (Does the Times do any other kind?) And uh-oh! Very late in his lengthy report, Kovaleski slips a piece of new information past unsuspecting readers:

KOVALESKI: As for the officer at the scene who took the single full-face photo of Mr. Zimmerman—he suffered a nose fracture and other injuries during the struggle—he called an investigator “in a panic” over his failure to download it sooner, according to a person familiar with the case. Other photos of Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries were later shot at police headquarters, although he had been cleaned up by paramedics by then.

Say what? Zimmerman suffered a broken nose? This is a key piece of information; it was revealed just this week. But if you read the New York Times, you'll see it hustled past you in an aside in paragraph 27, as you read ridiculous pap designed to maintain a preferred script.

The New York Times buried that key piece of news—but the Times has done better than MSNBC, The One True Liberal Channel. This cable “news” channel worked hard, for weeks, to convince mistreated viewers that Zimmerman couldn’t have suffered a broken nose. For weeks, Lawrence O’Donnell and a quack named Charles Blow engaged in medical malpractice, pretending there was no possible way Zimmerman broke his news. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/6/12. Other players on this quack-laden channel advanced this same bogus theme.)

They played their liberal viewers for fools, engaging in truly repulsive behavior about a possible murder case. This week, the truth has emerged—and according to Nexis, George Zimmerman's nose hasn’t been mentioned on this horrible channel all week. (Nexis covers MSNBC programs from 5 PM on.)

Zimmerman did get a broken nose. This fact has been widely reported on CNN and Fox; last night, it was even reported on NBC Nightly News. But if you watch MSNBC, you still haven’t heard this fact—after weeks of being told that it couldn’t be true! We liberals finally have a way to enjoy epistemic closure!

Everybody knows about this new information but us!

From its scammy former Rhodes Scholar on down, MSNBC is a rolling disgrace. O’Donnell and Blow are considerably worse. Fox has engaged in such conduct for years. At last, we liberals have a corporate disgrace—one we can call our own!

THE WAY WE ARE: We enjoy posing as shrinks!

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2012

Part 3—Dr. Noah knows all: Candidate Romney sometimes engaged in bad conduct during his high school career.

It wasn’t just the bullying attack on fellow student John Lauber, in which Romney and a group of friends held Lauber down and cut his hair.

(This attack was described by the Washington Post in the world’s longest front-page report—a lengthy report which seemed to involve a bit of a journalistic scam. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/16/12.)

It wasn’t just the attack on Lauber. At Salon, Joan Walsh described more of Romney’s misconduct, then engaged in some of her own:

WALSH (5/10/12): Lauber wasn’t the only gay student bullied by Romney. Gary Hummel, who was closeted, recalled that Romney mocked his efforts to speak out in class by shouting, “Atta girl!” He pulled several pranks on a teacher with seriously compromised eyesight, once “escorting” him into a closed set of doors and “giggling hysterically” when he ran into them. Another time he propped up the back axle of the teacher’s VW bug and laughed as the man hit the gas pedal “with his wheels spinning in the air.” Hilarious!

In fact, Horowitz doesn’t link Romney to the VW incident, whether as a participant or as an observer. After Walsh’s piece appeared, an early commenter quickly noted this error in her report. Twenty-three minutes later, Walsh commented on another point from the early comments, but her mistaken claim about the VW bug remains uncorrected.

You're right! This VW mistake doesn’t hugely matter—except for what it suggests about the way our modern “journalists” enjoy playing school-boy games. And by the way, Walsh was playing the shrink this day, as so many “journalists” do. Her headline said this: “Mitt, the prep school sadist.”

Romney’s behavior was sometimes bad—but then again, he was in high school. (With regard to the “Atta girl” comment, Horowitz reports that teachers at Romney’s school sometimes said similar things.) Many people might tend to discount the conduct of people at such an age—but increasingly, America’s pseudo-journalists enjoy frisking the early deeds of pols whom they disfavor. In 1999, this tendency reached a comical peak in a profile of Candidate Gore penned by the Post’s David Maraniss, one of the corps’ brightest members.

Alas! The doctor was IN as the scribe played shrink, reviewing the candidate’s troubling conduct—troubling conduct in which he’d engaged at the age of maybe 6:

MARANISS (10/10/99): For the most part, his water balloon caprice aside, Al adapted to this staid environment by behaving as a perfect little gentleman. He was invariably courteous to his elders and seemed uncommonly earnest, sometimes overly so and prone to tattling. His only sibling, Nancy, was a decade older and in some ways his opposite, radiant, easygoing and full of mischief. Nancy attended Holton Arms, a private girls school then located on S Street near Dupont Circle. On weekends, she often stayed home to look after her little brother while their parents were on the political circuit. Barbara Howar, a friend from school, sometimes joined her and they had the run of [the Gore family’s apartment].

Although Nancy by all accounts adored her brother, at times like this she wanted nothing to do with him. He was the sort of pest who would seek attention by popping out of nowhere, reciting in singsong voice the latest television commercial he had memorized ("Got a little ant . . . Got a little fly . . . Real-Kill! Real-Kill! . . . Watch them die!") Their efforts to evade the watchful eye of Little Al met with no apparent success. "Every time we tried to do something, Al would catch us and say, 'I'm telling! I'm telling! I'm telling Dad!' " Howar recalled recently. "He was an egregious little tattletale."

At or about the age of 6, Candidate Gore was “sometimes prone to tattling,” Maraniss disclosed, at the top of a lengthy profile. And as he continued, the doctor extended his psychological analysis. Gore’s “compulsion to adhere to the expected order extended beyond the common practice of snitching on an older sibling,” the good doctor wrote, typing in a thick German accent. Helping the public grasp the essentials, the analyst gave another example of young Gore’s alleged “compulsion:”

MARANISS (continuing directly): His compulsion to adhere to the expected order extended beyond the common practice of snitching on an older sibling. One day in May 1958, Al's lower-school class at St. Albans went on a field trip to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Their bus broke down outside the base entrance, and the boys and teachers walked the rest of the way in. When the tour was over, they waited in the sweltering afternoon heat for the arrival of a replacement bus, and many of the boys took advantage of this idle time by scampering around an open field. A young science teacher named Alexander Haslam was surveying his boisterous brood when young Al approached and politely inquired: "Sir, is this the time to be rowdy?”

“Perhaps no human beings, not even candidates for the American presidency, should be judged decades later by the way they were before they reached adulthood,” the good doctor thoughtfully wrote, “but it is true nonetheless that in seeking to understand why people think and act as they do, the early days often provide the richest veins in the biographical mine.” Speaking directly of Gore once again, the doctor continued to limn his great theory:

“In many ways the child remains the father of the man,” he wrote. “Many of the behavioral patterns of the figure running for president today are best explained by the boy he once was.”

Good God! Maraniss was one of the brightest members of the Washington “press corps.” But by 1999, even someone as bright as he was willing to say that a candidate’s “early days” may help us “understand why [candidates] think and act as they do”—indeed, that these early days may provide the best way to understand a major pol. By the way: Given the 31-year lapse in time, was Maraniss sure that the “rowdy-time” incident actually happened the way he described? What except the love of novels could have made him so sure?

Given the various types of mischief which can be churned from this type of “reporting,” only a fool would endorse such work. But this thinking is now deeply lodged in the DNA of the national “press corps.” In her piece about Romney’s high school career, Walsh started with this assessment:

WALSH: Last week we learned about President Obama’s first post-college romantic relationships. This week, we’re discovering details of Mitt Romney’s prep-school sadism. While I think we should tread carefully when examining the youthful experiences and mistakes of both presidential candidates, I thought Obama’s romantic past was fair game in Vanity Fair. I think the Washington Post’s well-reported feature on Young Mr. Romney’s entitled cruelty to gay classmates and a disabled teacher is even more revealing and important.

By inference, Walsh has said that Vanity Fair’s report about Obama’s “romantic past” was “revealing and important.” Who could really believe such a thing? In his own post, Kevin Drum did a much better job of noting the problems involved in this sort of review. Though we would say that even Drum is much too squishy here:

DRUM (5/10/12): I think mining the past for clues to people's character is basically okay as long as you don't engage in endless pretzel bending to draw absurd conclusions. Barack Obama's youthful drug use and his community activism say something about him, so they're fair game. Pretending he's a whitey-hating anti-colonialist because of imagined influences from his Kenyan father isn't. In Romney's case, describing how he treated both friends and non-friends while he was growing up is fair game. It's partly a window into Romney, and partly a window into the era and culture that he grew up in. But pretending that this makes him an anti-gay bully today isn't. He's got decades of adult experiences that tell us what kind of man he's become. That should be enough.

Given the invitations to mischief which lurk in this practice, we strongly agree with Drum’s highlighted judgment: politicians should be judged on their decades of conduct as adults. That said, is the earlier conduct “fair game?” We think Drum is much too squishy when he frames the matter that way. Letting journalists muck around in such conduct is an open invitation to clowning, deception and error. The term “more prejudicial than probative” was invented for matters like this.

We’re traipsing off into la-la land when we probe the adolescent conduct of major pols. And yet, our modern “journalists” simply love this practice. Just consider Timothy Noah’s reaction to the Horowitz story—especially to the suggestion that Romney was a homophobe during his high school career.

Drum warned readers away from such judgments; Noah jumped in feet first. Like Maraniss, Noah is one of the brighter modern journalists; in our view, we all owe him a debt of thanks for his recent work on income inequality. But good God! Noah was quick to react to the Horowitz tale—and as he did, the doctor was IN, although he was now an anthropologist. For the record, the good doctor completely failed to notice the obvious problem involved in Horowitz’s pseudo-reporting:

NOAH (5/11/12): The homophobia inherent in the incident is, sad to say, the least extraordinary thing about this story. Scapegoating young males perceived to be gay was, for heterosexual young males of that era, not the exception but the rule. What was unusual was that the scapegoating would take such active form that one passive observer would recall, even at the time, experiencing shame that he’d done nothing to stop it. Romney didn’t merely mock Lauber for the way he looked. He imposed his will on Lauber and changed the way he looked through physical force. That’s the weird (and, even in the context of 1965, exceptionally cruel) part.

Noah was 7 years old in 1965—but he writes with the assurance of Margaret Mead about the folkways of the era. He can’t really know what he’s talking about—yet talk about it he does. As he continued, he was soon discussing this incident in a psychiatric way which sounded a great deal like parody:

NOAH: One thing we know from Michael Kranish and Scott Helman’s biography, The Real Romney (and from a 2007 Boston Globe profile that preceded it) is that Romney is a guy who gives more thought to hair than most other people. In November the New York Times ran a Page One story about Romney’s hair, which brought the paper some grief. But as I argued at the time, Romney’s hair merits attention, because (apart from his Mormon faith) it’s Romney’s North Star, a rare instance of consistency over many decades…

To Romney, it would seem, hair had a lot to do with manhood, and with discipline, and with identity. And no doubt it also had a lot to do, consciously or not, with sexuality (see Pope, Alexander, “The Rape Of The Lock”). It wasn’t just this stuff that you cut and it grows back. It projected who you were. And apparently seeing Lauber project, with his peek-a-boo haircut, who he was really freaked Romney out.

“I’m not sure what larger meaning Romney’s hair thing...would have for a Romney presidency,” Noah actually writes. “But these tics are weird, and, in the case of Romney’s control-freakiness, annoying and occasionally disruptive.”

It’s hard to believe that anyone would write something that foolish—but Noah is one of our brightest journalists! By the way: Did you hear that Candidate Gore was “sometimes prone to tattling” when he was six years old?

Readers, do you have eyes to see? If so, you can learn a great deal about The Way We Are from the press corps’ reactions to the bullying story. One thing that was revealed is this: The truth is, we just aren’t very bright. Beyond that, we love to play the shrink. And we love to pen novelized stories.

We’re too dumb to notice the kind of scam which Horowitz seemed to play in his report. And one more thing about The Way We Are:

We don’t seem to give a flying fig about people who get their pensions looted by adult figures like Romney. How weird! At times, we don’t seem to care about the conduct in which pols engage as adults!

Tomorrow: The Way We Are in comments