Gotta Love Okrent, But He Concedes Too Much

Critics of the NYT’s supposed liberal bias have a new ally, the paper’s own bold and independent-minded Public Editor, Daniel Okrent. Signed to a one-year contract in the wake of the Times Blair-Raines-Tiger-Augusta fiasco(s), Okrent has distinguished himself as a keen observer and (mostly) fair-minded evaluator of deceptive and questionable journalistic practices – such as partial quotes, reliance on unnamed sources, and misleading headlines – which, apparently, creep in even to America’s most esteemed newspaper.
 
In his latest piece, Okrent bluntly discusses an issue that conservatives have been hyperventilating about for years.

“Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” asks the headline. “Of course it is,” answers Okrent.

And later: “…if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of [the social issues, like gay rights, gun control, abortion, etc.]…you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed.” 

And still more:  "it's one thing to make the paper's pages a congenial home for editorial polemicists, conceptual artists, the fashion-forward or other like-minded souls…and quite another to tell only the side of the story your co-religionists wish to hear."

[Okrent, it should be noted, limited his discussion in this column to social issues; he says he will “get to the politics-and-policy issues this fall.” Looking forward, though I suspect conservatives will be somewhat disappointed with his conclusions.]

All of this is well and good. Excellent, even. And credit is due to Okrent for writing the piece – and even to the Times itself, for allowing such a self-critique to appear in its pages.

However, in his discussion of the Times treatment of gay marriage – the issue that he uses as the paradigmatic example of problematic Times coverage – Okrent unduly concedes a crucial premise to the Times' liberal ideology and, inadvertently, destroys his own case against the paper's coverage of social issues.

Okrent says that he doesn’t mind the laudatory editorials or the magazine article “that compared the lawyers who won the Massachusetts same-sex marriage lawsuit to Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King.” He even admits, seemingly, that he agrees with this comparison. “That's all fine, especially for those of us who believe that homosexual couples should have precisely the same civil rights as heterosexuals.”

However, cautions Okrent, the Times hasn’t given its audience the complete picture. A credible newspaper must make certain that “all aspects of an issue are subject to robust examination,” and the Times – with “a tone that approaches cheerleading” – has not done so in the case of gay marriage. In fact, articles on the “potentially nettlesome effects of gay marriage have been virtually absent from The Times since the issue exploded last winter.” Among the stories the Times has ignored: “Congressional testimony from a Stanford scholar [Stanley Kurtz] making the case that gay marriage in the Netherlands has had a deleterious effect on heterosexual marriage…potential impact of same-sex marriage on tax revenues, and the paucity of reliable research on child-rearing in gay families.”

Okrent’s criticism is exactly on target, but he doesn’t realize that he has already invalidated his own argument – with his admission that the advocates for same-sex marriage are the modern-day equivalent of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King. For, if today’s gay marriage movement really is the equivalent of the 1960s civil rights movement, then who cares what the effects of gay marriage might be? It’s a civil right!? Think about it. At the height of the civil rights movement, when the overriding concern was (or should have been) abolishing discrimination against America’s black citizens, was that the time for newspapers to publish studies about the deleterious effects of integrating America’s population? Not unless the newspaper represented the KKK. The point is: when a civil right is truly at stake, when there is a gross societal injustice that demands immediate redress, academic arguments (except for national security-type emergencies) against granting the civil right are irrelevant and inappropriate.

And that, I’m guessing, is exactly what the Times would respond to Okrent’s critique; in the fight against "discrimination," there's simply no time to stop to consider the consequences of ending the discrimination. And Okrent has painted himself into the corner of accepting the Times’ liberal premise. Unfortunately, the apt response to the liberal claim – that the gay marriage issue is in no way meaningfully equivalent to the civil rights movement of the 1960s – will need a champion other than the Times Public Editor. 

 

 

Chait Obscures Senate Situation

In an article entitled "Power From the People," Jonathan Chait of TNR  raises some legitimate questions about the Bush administration’s policy decisions and priorities. However, he muddies the waters with a vague and ill-informed complaint about the lack of “balance” in the U.S. Senate.

Specifically, Chait laments the fact that “the Senate…gives the citizens in the 30 states Bush won in 2000, which comprise slightly less than half of the U.S. population, 60 seats. [While] The 20 states Gore won comprise a narrow majority of the population, but they get only 40 seats in the Senate.” In Chait’s view, if we were to “balance the scales…[then] the Senate would have a solid Democratic majority.”

There are a few factual problems with Chait’s claims. First, Chait implies that the states won by Gore in 2000 are reliably Democratic in their Senate representation and that the states won by Bush are (somewhat less) reliably Republican in their own Senate representation. But that picture is not really accurate.

Of the 20 states held by Gore in the 2000 general election, 12 (60%) have two Democratic senators. Of the 30 states held by Bush, 18 (60%) have two Republican senators. In other words, in a full 40% of all states, Senate representation does not correlate directly with the state’s choice for President.

Furthermore, an analysis of the population of states with “stolen” senators – i.e., Gore states with at least one Republican senator, and Bush states with at least one Democratic Senator – shows that, on average, Republican senators have infiltrated Democratic population centers more than Democratic senators have returned the favor. Republicans have elected senators in Pennsylvania and Illinois, two of the Democrats’ four most valuable electoral states. Democrats, in contrast, have elected senators in only one of Bush’s most valuable states – Florida.

The general statistics concerning "stolen senators" also indicate the GOP’s edge: the average Bush state with a Democratic senator has a population of 4.62 million, while the average Gore state with a Republican senator has a population of about 5.01 million. In other words, the states that the Republicans have "stolen" (with at least one Senator) are more populous than those "stolen" by the Democrats.

And so, Chait’s argument about the Senate fails on two fronts. First, since a state’s Presidential selection is not an accurate indicator of its Senate representation, it is not at all clear that a population-based Senate would result in “a solid Democratic majority” (as Chait argues).  Moreover, given the Republicans’ comparative advantage in electing senators in populous Democratic (i.e. “Gore-voting”) states, it is quite likely that a population-based Senate would tilt more Republican than does the current Senate roster.

Belated Welcome

Hey Everybody (anybody?),

Thanks for stopping by. Some of you may be familiar with my (limited) work on a site called Protocols. That site is dominated now by a dude who, well, he's kinda hard to describe. Check him out, if you are so inclined; he's occasionally interesting.

Ok, but what is this site? Good question. I'm not exactly sure yet, but I can say the following:

a) It's not supposed to be a "Jewish" site. Meaning, contributors are encouraged to post on topics of interest or funny items, most of which - I'm hoping - will not have to do with Judaism or Israel. (Some will). There are plenty of Jewish blogs. If that's what you want, go find them.

b) The roster of contributors will grow in the next couple of months, and - I am assured - current contributors will actually have something to say. Every contributor is smart. All are either funny or interesting,  and some are both. It should be a provocative and somewhat volatile mix, if we ever get our act together. (Big if).

c) Funny. Interesting.

That's all. Good to have you here.

[And I'm sorry that comments on previous posts were lost. I switched to a new comment format, and they got erased. I'll try to recreate them if I can.]

 

911 Report Exposes NYT Hypocrisy

I’ve been glancing through the 585-page report just drafted by the 911 Commission. My first reaction is a feeling of tremendous respect for the Commissioners and the Herculean, uncomfortable, but necessary task they have undertaken and now concluded.

A second positive is that the Report is written in plain English. The text steers clear of the bureaucratic jargon that typifies government reports; as a result, factual accounts and the conclusions derived therefrom are presented clearly and can be easily considered.

And third – though I admit that a closer reading of the entire document is necessary before this assertion can be wholly accepted – the Commissioners were aware of and attempted to avoid the pitfall of wallowing in “20/20 hindsight,” a pastime enjoyed by the media in the post-911 era. In a remarkably candid passage on page 339, the Commission spells out this concern in detail: 

In composing this narrative, we have tried to remember that we write with the benefit and the handicap of hindsight. Hindsight can sometimes see the past clearly—with 20/20 vision. But the path of what happened is so brightly lit that it places everything else more deeply into shadow. Commenting on Pearl Harbor, Roberta Wohlstetter found it “much easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals. After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings.”

As time passes, more documents become available, and the bare facts of what happened become still clearer. Yet the picture of how those things happened becomes harder to reimagine, as that past world, with its preoccupations and uncertainty, recedes and the remaining memories of it become colored by what happened and what was written about it later. With that caution in mind, we asked ourselves, before we judged others, whether the insights that seem apparent now would really have been meaningful at the time, given the limits of what people then could reasonably have known or done.

Question

A number of Jewish businessmen were overheard this week asking for a halakhic ruling from the rosh yeshiva  of Chaim Berlin in brooklyn: Is it ok to launder money during the 9 days?

Wanted: Jewish Week Editor

Couldn't resist sharing a tidbit from this past Friday's Jewish Week. After commenting that Phil Rosenthal - creator of TV's Everybody Loves Raymond - bases ELR on experiences from his own life, Eric Schleier provides the following caveat:

"But, Rosenthal, 44, adds, the well is running dry."

Excellent, sentence, dude. In Schleier's defense, though, he might have been overcompensating for the ridiculous bunching of letters -four consecutive consonants, followed by three consecutive vowels - in his last name.

Fahrenheit 911 ("F9") - some notes

Many able and astute pundits have already dissected the broad claims – or, more accurately, innuendos – of Fahrenheit 911 and called attention to the glaring inconsistency, occasional dishonesty, and general incoherence of the film. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is Christopher Hitchens’s devastating review for Slate.com, which has become somthing of an instant-classic, due both to its trenchant analysis and the reviewer’s impeccable liberal credentials.

Indeed, Hitchens and a gaggle of others (who, by the way, seem more than a tad reliant on Hitchens) do an excellent job of unraveling, scrutinizing, and questioning/demolishing the foundations of the Moore’s thesis. Therefore, I see little point in sharing my thoughts – which generally parallel those of Hitchens and others – about the general effectiveness of the movie as an argument criticizing the decisions made by (and the character of) President Bush and his administration; in short, F9 is not a convincing argument, or even a very good one.

However, fortunately (sort of), F9 is a movie rich with material to be commented upon – a lot of bad arguments, but some genuinely entertaining and otherwise noteworthy parts, as well – and I am happy to share with you some of the discrete thoughts that occurred to me while I watched the movie. Indeed, I am half-tempted to see it again, with a proper notebook in hand rather than the napkins from Dougies upon which I scribbled mostly indecipherable notes, to record my impressions more completely and to mine some new nuggets that I undoubtedly missed during the first showing. I present some of my points here in no particular order (much like the scenes in the movie itself), with some discussion. They are my own, though I wouldn’t be surprised if others have had similar ideas. Also, I want to emphasize that my quotes are not exact, since I don’t have a recording or transcript of the movie.


1)Early in the movie, Moore (as narrator) calls the events of 9/11/01 “the worst attacks on US soil,” or something to that effect. He does not refer to them as “terror” attacks or as attacks perpetrated by “terrorists.” This would not be surprising, except that – a few minutes later – he brings up the attack on the WTC that took place in the 1990s, and he does refer to it as a “terror attack” (or to the perpetrators as “terrorists” – I don’t recall exactly).

He seems to be making some sort of distinction between the two, although I’m not at all sure what it is. Why would the attack in the 1990s be terrorism while 9/11 was not?

Perhaps Moore provides the answer when he tells us, in a pointedly gratuitous (and, therefore, suggestive) aside, that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated against the “financial and military” centers of the country. Is Moore suggesting that 9/11 was an act of war and therefore not terrorism? Maybe.

[The obvious objection is that the “financial center” of the country was attacked in the 1990s as well, so that should be an act of war, too (and, therefore, according to Moore, not be “terror”). The only (twisted) rationale that I can come up with for the distinction Moore makes is that the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon, specifically, sort of transformed the entire 9/11 enterprise into an act of war. And, as a result, the attacks on the WTC are subsumed under the general rubric of the “military action.”]


2)During a segment poking fun at the “terror alerts” disseminated by the administration following 9/11, Moore cuts to a number of still-frames, focusing on each image for no more than a fraction of a second. I’m guessing that it escaped the attention of most viewers, but one of these images struck me as hilariously funny: a picture of two cops on “terror alert,” standing right in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts.

This seems like a fitting point to note that, despite the movie’s ineffectiveness as an argument (see above), it is at times extremely entertaining.

In a similarly light moment – making fun, this time, of America’s coalition partners in Iraq, rather than of law enforcement officials – Moore mentions the Netherlands amidst the on-screen backdrop of a huge weed-filled pipe. Never thought I’d see a liberal making fun of marijuana users.


3)While we’re on the subject of the coalition…One of the tactics Moore uses (pointed out by virtually every reviewer) is providing only the information that serves to prove his point; but he takes this to extraordinary lengths, to the point that he will omit any information – no matter how vital to a real understanding of the situation – that undermines his point. A perfect, and fairly ridiculous, example of this is the roster he presents of America’s coalition partners. He mentions only the most insignificant countries in order to emphasize how alone America is in the war against Iraq. Of the 47 or so countries in the coalition, Moore mentions just a few: Palau, Costa Rico, Iceland, the Netherlands, Micronesia, Morocco (which offered monkeys to set off landmines, another humorous bit) and a couple of other countries. As Moore points out, these countries are of limited use, since they don’t have much, if any military capability.

Of course, this sort of argument is so stupid that it hurts. Arguing that we have no reliable military allies by simply not naming them?! Exactly. And the NY Yankees currently have a terrible team. I mean, just look at them – a pitching staff of Bret Prinz, Tanyon Sturtze, and Brad Halsey; and “sluggers” like Bubba Crosby, Miguel Cairo, and Enrique Wilson. They’ll be lucky to win 50 games. Unimpeachable logic, right?


4)Amidst a segment in which Moore attempts to show how convincingly the American people were duped by Bush, we discover that Britney Spears supports the President and, presumably, the war effort. As if we needed more proof that she’s hot.


5)One of Moore’s star witnesses is “Baghdad” James McDermott, the anti-war Democratic Congressman from the state of Washington who claimed earlier this year that the timing of Saddam’s capture was politically motivated – Saddam having been captured earlier and held, secretly, by the Bush administration. Anyway, I know this is gonna sound weird (and perhaps petty/irrelevant), and maybe it is, but check out this dude’s eyes; among the spookiest eyes I’ve ever seen. (Right up there with alleged shoe-bomber Richard Reid). Photographs don’t do them justice.


6)From the “facts that must be checked” department: Moore is incredibly enamored with making grandiose statements. The entire movie, in fact, is basically one long, grandiose statement. But are they accurate? Well, let’s start with this one. In the opening segment, detailing the election “stolen” by the Bush administration, Moore describes the protests on the day of the Bush inauguration as something “that had never been seen before in Washington.”

This would be meaningfully true, of course, if Moore had finished the sentence with the words, “since 1973,” 1973 being the year that Nixon’s inauguration drew between 25,000 and 100,000 protestors (according to conventional estimates cited by news reports and liberal organizations), as opposed to the perhaps 20,000 people who – organizers said – “would take part in the weekend demonstrations [at Bush's inauguration].”

See, but Moore is a slippery debater. He doesn’t actually say that the anti-Bush protest was the largest protest at a Presidential inauguration; such a statement could be shown to be false. He’s too clever for that. Instead, he makes a rather general statement that is true but actually doesn’t mean anything of substance, and which therefore cannot be proven false. “Washington had never seen anything like it.” What does he mean? That there had never previously been protests of a Presidential inauguration? Well, no. That it was the biggest protest? Well, no. That there had never been a protest of a Republican presidential inauguration in a year beginning with 2? The point is – if there’s anything unique about the 2001 protests, no matter how minor or trivial, then Moore’s statement is by definition true. But it doesn’t have any value, except – of course – the rhetorical value that Moore skillfully instills in it.

[By the way, a similarly tricky tactic is used in advertising: e.g. “Food X may reduce the threat of heart attack.” This is a true statement. But it doesn’t mean anything. Yeah, it may reduce the risk of heart attack, but it may not. It would be a strange commercial, but a clothing company would be equally justified in claiming that “Brand Y jeans may reduce the risk of heart attacks.” Whenever you hear a modal verb in a commercial – can, may, etc. – most likely a vacuously true statement will follow.]

Ok. That’s all I have patience for right now. I may add some more at some point.