Very little time today, so I must make it short.
According to InsideHigherEd.com, a civil liberties group is lobbying the University of California to expel John Yoo, a tenured law professor who, while working in the Bush administration, wrote memos justifying the use of torture against suspected terrorists. The American Freedom Campaign argues that "Yoo should not only be disqualified from ever serving in government again, but he should also be prohibited from spreading his distorted view of the law and the role of lawyers to young law students. He must be fired."
This is, quite simply, a terrible idea. I say this not to defend Yoo, who, in a just world, would at least be investigated by a war crimes tribunal, if not shipped off to The Hague for trial before the World Court. But his actions did not take place in his capacity as a Berkeley law professor, nor is there any evidence of related misconduct occurring on the job.
Firing John Yoo would set a terrible precedent. If university administrators, absent conviction in a criminal court, are able to decide that someone's off-the-job conduct merits revocation of tenure, then the entire professoriate is at risk. The academic right-wing, already hostile to the tenure process, would almost certainly swoop in and pressure administrators and governing boards to release liberal and radical educators who say something considered out of bounds based on whatever standards they decide to apply.
In short, if it can happen to Yoo, it can happen to you.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Parsing Obama's Words
Let's leave aside for this morning the political fallout from Barack Obama's comments on the bitterness of working class Pennsylvanians. Instead, let's approach it from a different angle. To what extent is Senator Obama speaking the truth?
You could scroll town to read his words, but I'll go ahead and re-post them here. Referring to the residents of small towns where "jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama says:
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Taken as a whole, it's not exactly a shocking statement. The historical record is littered with stories of cultures that resorted to violence and xenophobia in reaction to economic deprivation and hopelessness. The (perhaps too pat) story that every American schoolchild learns about the rise of Adolf Hitler begins with the sacking of Germany after World War I, the failure of the Weimar government to produce prosperity, and the need for a wheelbarrow to carry all the Deutsche Marks necessary to purchase a loaf of bread. Seizing on the anger and bitterness of his countrymen, Hitler was, according to this narrative, able to produce a scapegoat and enlist the German nation to perform unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Senator Obama, of course, is not suggesting that Pennsylvania in 2008 bears any direct resemblance to the latter stages of the Weimar Republic. The first mistake he makes, however, is his selection of the subjective personal pronoun. By saying that "they" become embittered, gun-toting bigots, Obama seems to be suggesting that the majority, or even all, of the people concerned fall into this category. Much of the trouble in which he now finds himself might have been reduced had the senator simply replaced both instances of the word "they" with a less inclusive term like "some".
Obama's second mistake, and perhaps his biggest, was to include religiosity in his list of qualities that describe the embittered. While people may "cling" to religious faith during difficult economic times, that's hardly something to decry. Indeed, the degree of religious devotion in the United States is high enough that it makes no sense to suggest that it is some unique quality of the dispossessed.
I presume that Senator Obama meant to say that some frustrated working class Americans find themselves attracted to particularly intolerant religious orders. Certainly, there is an abundance from which to choose, if one is so inclined. Depending on one's anger, bigotry, and work ethic, the menu can range from Pat Robertson's occasional conspiratorial musings to that awful church in Kansas that sends devotees across the country to picket the funerals of those who have died of AIDS. Still, it is unclear if even these sorry individuals are motivated by bitterness at external economic conditions or, rather, by deeper, far more personal struggles.
That same point holds for two of Obama's other claims: that economic deprivation encourages fierce support for gun rights and equally fierce opposition to immigration, both legal and illegal. Again, there's probably a grain of truth here. The militia movements, the Minutemen, and perhaps even people like Timothy McVeigh may have been driven to their extremism by a sense that the rules of the modern world were stacked against them. A whole generation of American men witnessed the dismantling of the assembly line and other factory jobs that allowed those without college degrees to enjoy upward mobility. This created the sort of smoldering frustration that Billy Joel captured two decades ago in his song "Allentown" (a song, fittingly enough, about recession in Pennsylvania):
"Every child had a pretty good shot/
To get at least as far as their old man got/
But something happened on the way to that place/
They threw an American flag in our face"
But xenophobia and bigotry (not to mention gun worship) do not exist exclusively among the downwardly mobile in the old steel towns. There are plenty of gun nuts and racists to be found among the ranks of the middle and upper classes. The current anti-immigrant movement spawned in the boomtowns of the Southwest during the relatively prosperous 1990s. I realize, of course, that the Clinton-era recovery did not always reach down to the lower rungs of the economic ladder, but certainly cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Diego provided ample opportunities for people across the class spectrum.
Indeed, there is, perhaps ironically, a strong measure of optimism hidden in Barack Obama's damning ruminations about working class Americans. There is the implied suggestion that if we can find a way to bring upward mobility and hope back to the people of Allentown and elsewhere, we can solve the problems of violence and hatred that plague our society. We might even persuade them to crash Lou Dobbs' ratings and send him back to CNBC, the business channel that nobody watches.
Unfortunately, this is only partly true. There is little doubt that a return to prosperity coupled with a restoration of upward mobility for working class Americans would do wonders for the country's crime rate. On the other hand, anyone who has spent time in the Southwest understands that the anger directed at Latino immigrants knows few class boundaries. Rather, it speaks to the primitive centers of the brain that instinctively reject the outsider and the "alien".
In the end, then, Obama's statement was, especially for a man so famously careful in his crafting of phrases, stunningly careless. It unnecessarily indicted entire swaths of the population. It was unacceptably vague in its treatment of religious faith. And it seemed to assume that xenophobia was entirely economic in its origin. It was the sort of loose talk one would expect from a 1970s limousine liberal, and not a 21st Century presidential candidate promising to unite a nation.
You could scroll town to read his words, but I'll go ahead and re-post them here. Referring to the residents of small towns where "jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama says:
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Taken as a whole, it's not exactly a shocking statement. The historical record is littered with stories of cultures that resorted to violence and xenophobia in reaction to economic deprivation and hopelessness. The (perhaps too pat) story that every American schoolchild learns about the rise of Adolf Hitler begins with the sacking of Germany after World War I, the failure of the Weimar government to produce prosperity, and the need for a wheelbarrow to carry all the Deutsche Marks necessary to purchase a loaf of bread. Seizing on the anger and bitterness of his countrymen, Hitler was, according to this narrative, able to produce a scapegoat and enlist the German nation to perform unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Senator Obama, of course, is not suggesting that Pennsylvania in 2008 bears any direct resemblance to the latter stages of the Weimar Republic. The first mistake he makes, however, is his selection of the subjective personal pronoun. By saying that "they" become embittered, gun-toting bigots, Obama seems to be suggesting that the majority, or even all, of the people concerned fall into this category. Much of the trouble in which he now finds himself might have been reduced had the senator simply replaced both instances of the word "they" with a less inclusive term like "some".
Obama's second mistake, and perhaps his biggest, was to include religiosity in his list of qualities that describe the embittered. While people may "cling" to religious faith during difficult economic times, that's hardly something to decry. Indeed, the degree of religious devotion in the United States is high enough that it makes no sense to suggest that it is some unique quality of the dispossessed.
I presume that Senator Obama meant to say that some frustrated working class Americans find themselves attracted to particularly intolerant religious orders. Certainly, there is an abundance from which to choose, if one is so inclined. Depending on one's anger, bigotry, and work ethic, the menu can range from Pat Robertson's occasional conspiratorial musings to that awful church in Kansas that sends devotees across the country to picket the funerals of those who have died of AIDS. Still, it is unclear if even these sorry individuals are motivated by bitterness at external economic conditions or, rather, by deeper, far more personal struggles.
That same point holds for two of Obama's other claims: that economic deprivation encourages fierce support for gun rights and equally fierce opposition to immigration, both legal and illegal. Again, there's probably a grain of truth here. The militia movements, the Minutemen, and perhaps even people like Timothy McVeigh may have been driven to their extremism by a sense that the rules of the modern world were stacked against them. A whole generation of American men witnessed the dismantling of the assembly line and other factory jobs that allowed those without college degrees to enjoy upward mobility. This created the sort of smoldering frustration that Billy Joel captured two decades ago in his song "Allentown" (a song, fittingly enough, about recession in Pennsylvania):
"Every child had a pretty good shot/
To get at least as far as their old man got/
But something happened on the way to that place/
They threw an American flag in our face"
But xenophobia and bigotry (not to mention gun worship) do not exist exclusively among the downwardly mobile in the old steel towns. There are plenty of gun nuts and racists to be found among the ranks of the middle and upper classes. The current anti-immigrant movement spawned in the boomtowns of the Southwest during the relatively prosperous 1990s. I realize, of course, that the Clinton-era recovery did not always reach down to the lower rungs of the economic ladder, but certainly cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Diego provided ample opportunities for people across the class spectrum.
Indeed, there is, perhaps ironically, a strong measure of optimism hidden in Barack Obama's damning ruminations about working class Americans. There is the implied suggestion that if we can find a way to bring upward mobility and hope back to the people of Allentown and elsewhere, we can solve the problems of violence and hatred that plague our society. We might even persuade them to crash Lou Dobbs' ratings and send him back to CNBC, the business channel that nobody watches.
Unfortunately, this is only partly true. There is little doubt that a return to prosperity coupled with a restoration of upward mobility for working class Americans would do wonders for the country's crime rate. On the other hand, anyone who has spent time in the Southwest understands that the anger directed at Latino immigrants knows few class boundaries. Rather, it speaks to the primitive centers of the brain that instinctively reject the outsider and the "alien".
In the end, then, Obama's statement was, especially for a man so famously careful in his crafting of phrases, stunningly careless. It unnecessarily indicted entire swaths of the population. It was unacceptably vague in its treatment of religious faith. And it seemed to assume that xenophobia was entirely economic in its origin. It was the sort of loose talk one would expect from a 1970s limousine liberal, and not a 21st Century presidential candidate promising to unite a nation.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Playing to Your Weakness: Barack Obama's Turn
I have a theory. Well, it's not my theory exactly; others have said more or less the same thing. Also, I may have mentioned it previously on this blog. Anyway, here it is: politicians develop certain images, exaggerated summaries of their strong and weak points. They tend to get themselves into trouble when they say or do something that plays into—and emphasizes—the fears and concerns that voters already have about them. Thus, what might be a mild distraction for one candidate could become a devastating blow for another.
Throughout history, presidential debates have provided a wealth of such moments. In the very first televised debate between Democratic and Republican nominees, John F. Kennedy triumphed over Richard Nixon more on style than substance. Even today, people remember that radio listeners thought Nixon had won, while TV viewers gave the victory to Kennedy. This, it turns out, is an exaggeration, but it is clear that Kennedy won the battle of images. Smartly dressed in a dark suit, legs comfortably crossed, JFK benefited from the contrast with the pasty-faced, sweaty, nervous-looking Nixon, whose light suit blended into the backdrop and whose own legs seemed fidgety.
Why would any of that matter? Well, back then people were given to thinking that television was a window to the soul and Nixon's soul had already been the subject of some controversy, going all the way back to his 1952 Checkers speech, the first—but hardly the last—time Tricky Dick had to explain that he was not a crook. And there he was on yet another national broadcast looking like nothing so much as a criminal defendant undergoing police interrogation. Even his eyes were shifty. It's not as though these same characteristics would have helped another candidate, but in 1960 they were especially damaging because they played into everyone's fears that Nixon might just be, as Harry Truman once said, "a shifty-eyed goddamn liar".
Sixteen years later, Gerald Ford was the recipient of the next memorable debating "moment". Responding to a question about the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, Ford stated that he did not believe that Poland, Romania, and the rest were under Soviet control. He almost certainly meant that he would never concede the legitimacy of Russia's domination of its neighbors, but that's not what he said. The next day's newspapers were filled with devastating speculation about the inability of the President of the United States to comprehend even the most basic realities of Cold War geopolitics.
Again, no candidate would be helped by such a gaffe, but it hit Ford especially hard. The rap on Jerry Ford was that he was a nice man of great integrity who, as Lyndon Johnson once remarked, couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. The comedian Chevy Chase portrayed Ford on "Saturday Night Live" as a clueless bumbler, and speculation abounded that the new Commander-in-Chief was not the sharpest blade in the Ginzu collection. As a result, an honest misstatement during a single debate was perceived by millions as further evidence of President Ford's lack of intellectual qualification for his high office.
And it's not just presidential debates. Think back to Howard Dean's infamous scream in Iowa back in 2004. How could anything so trivial end up dominating the electorate's view of a bright and dedicated public servant? Even today, if you ask the average American to tell you one thing about Governor Dean, you will likely hear something resembling "Yeeeowww!!!!" The problem, of course, was that The Scream corresponded perfectly with the negative side of Dean's image, the notion that he was amateurish, radical, and slightly out of control.
OK, I think you get the point. Here we are in 2008, with fifty—if not 250—years of evidence that candidates need to avoid playing into their most negative stereotypes, and yet they still do it. Hillary Clinton's tall tale about taking sniper fire in Bosnia obviously hurt her a great deal. Her poll numbers have not been the same since her story was discredited. Once again, no presidential contender wants to get caught in a lie, but the damage to Senator Clinton may have been particularly strong because many voters and pundits already thought of her as someone who would do or say anything to acquire political power. When she was caught doing precisely that, the impact was likely greater than it would have been on any of her opponents.
This week, it is Barack Obama's turn. Talking to supporters in San Francisco, of all places, Obama discussed the plight of small town Americans in the grip of economic recession:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."
So far, so good. Nice empathy. A shot at both the Clintons and the Bushes. But then he added:
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Yikes! That's gonna cost him some votes in Altoona. But worse yet, it's going to fit nicely within the developing Republican (and Clinton) narrative that Senator Obama is an urban intellectual elitist who thinks he's better than the working men and women who didn't edit the Harvard Law Review. They cling to guns or religion or bigotry. They wear mullets and spit tobacky juice and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. They'd probably tell you that Merlot was a French impressionist, except that they all think that "French impressionist" is just another name for a mime.
Barack Obama will very likely be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. His famous eloquence could easily turn to dust if millions of American start to view it as the pretty words of a man who enjoys showing off to his wealthy coastal friends. At this point, Obama is perhaps one additional slip away from becoming John Kerry. The Republicans have prospered for years by convincing Middle American voters that the Democratic candidate du jour looks down on their simple expressions of religious devotion, their insistence on the right to bear arms, and their heartfelt patriotism. And now Obama has all but told them that it is their weakness that compels them to "cling" to Jesus and Remington.
I suspect that we will not hear the last of this until sometime in mid-November.
Throughout history, presidential debates have provided a wealth of such moments. In the very first televised debate between Democratic and Republican nominees, John F. Kennedy triumphed over Richard Nixon more on style than substance. Even today, people remember that radio listeners thought Nixon had won, while TV viewers gave the victory to Kennedy. This, it turns out, is an exaggeration, but it is clear that Kennedy won the battle of images. Smartly dressed in a dark suit, legs comfortably crossed, JFK benefited from the contrast with the pasty-faced, sweaty, nervous-looking Nixon, whose light suit blended into the backdrop and whose own legs seemed fidgety.
Why would any of that matter? Well, back then people were given to thinking that television was a window to the soul and Nixon's soul had already been the subject of some controversy, going all the way back to his 1952 Checkers speech, the first—but hardly the last—time Tricky Dick had to explain that he was not a crook. And there he was on yet another national broadcast looking like nothing so much as a criminal defendant undergoing police interrogation. Even his eyes were shifty. It's not as though these same characteristics would have helped another candidate, but in 1960 they were especially damaging because they played into everyone's fears that Nixon might just be, as Harry Truman once said, "a shifty-eyed goddamn liar".
Sixteen years later, Gerald Ford was the recipient of the next memorable debating "moment". Responding to a question about the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, Ford stated that he did not believe that Poland, Romania, and the rest were under Soviet control. He almost certainly meant that he would never concede the legitimacy of Russia's domination of its neighbors, but that's not what he said. The next day's newspapers were filled with devastating speculation about the inability of the President of the United States to comprehend even the most basic realities of Cold War geopolitics.
Again, no candidate would be helped by such a gaffe, but it hit Ford especially hard. The rap on Jerry Ford was that he was a nice man of great integrity who, as Lyndon Johnson once remarked, couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. The comedian Chevy Chase portrayed Ford on "Saturday Night Live" as a clueless bumbler, and speculation abounded that the new Commander-in-Chief was not the sharpest blade in the Ginzu collection. As a result, an honest misstatement during a single debate was perceived by millions as further evidence of President Ford's lack of intellectual qualification for his high office.
And it's not just presidential debates. Think back to Howard Dean's infamous scream in Iowa back in 2004. How could anything so trivial end up dominating the electorate's view of a bright and dedicated public servant? Even today, if you ask the average American to tell you one thing about Governor Dean, you will likely hear something resembling "Yeeeowww!!!!" The problem, of course, was that The Scream corresponded perfectly with the negative side of Dean's image, the notion that he was amateurish, radical, and slightly out of control.
OK, I think you get the point. Here we are in 2008, with fifty—if not 250—years of evidence that candidates need to avoid playing into their most negative stereotypes, and yet they still do it. Hillary Clinton's tall tale about taking sniper fire in Bosnia obviously hurt her a great deal. Her poll numbers have not been the same since her story was discredited. Once again, no presidential contender wants to get caught in a lie, but the damage to Senator Clinton may have been particularly strong because many voters and pundits already thought of her as someone who would do or say anything to acquire political power. When she was caught doing precisely that, the impact was likely greater than it would have been on any of her opponents.
This week, it is Barack Obama's turn. Talking to supporters in San Francisco, of all places, Obama discussed the plight of small town Americans in the grip of economic recession:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."
So far, so good. Nice empathy. A shot at both the Clintons and the Bushes. But then he added:
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Yikes! That's gonna cost him some votes in Altoona. But worse yet, it's going to fit nicely within the developing Republican (and Clinton) narrative that Senator Obama is an urban intellectual elitist who thinks he's better than the working men and women who didn't edit the Harvard Law Review. They cling to guns or religion or bigotry. They wear mullets and spit tobacky juice and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. They'd probably tell you that Merlot was a French impressionist, except that they all think that "French impressionist" is just another name for a mime.
Barack Obama will very likely be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. His famous eloquence could easily turn to dust if millions of American start to view it as the pretty words of a man who enjoys showing off to his wealthy coastal friends. At this point, Obama is perhaps one additional slip away from becoming John Kerry. The Republicans have prospered for years by convincing Middle American voters that the Democratic candidate du jour looks down on their simple expressions of religious devotion, their insistence on the right to bear arms, and their heartfelt patriotism. And now Obama has all but told them that it is their weakness that compels them to "cling" to Jesus and Remington.
I suspect that we will not hear the last of this until sometime in mid-November.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Moral Equivalence
Their country was under attack. On one quiet morning in the late summer, men flew airplanes into their cities and thousands died. These men came from a faraway land and the dead had done nothing to invite their wrath. Most of those who perished were apolitical, simply average people carrying out the daily rituals of their lives, unaware that this morning would be their last.
The country's leaders were desperate. They had no idea where the next attack was coming from or how bad it would be. They viewed the men in the airplanes as vicious enemies, unworthy of humane consideration. They wanted to save their people from further fear and agony.
In one of their prisons sat a young man who had worked with the attackers, helping them to plan and execute their assault. Maybe he knew something. Maybe he could provide some detail that would help them ward off the next attack. Maybe if they could break him, they could save hundreds or even thousands of their fellow citizens. Maybe they were simply consumed with rage at what had happened to their country. Whatever the motivation, they decided that they knew what they had to do.
And so they tortured John McCain.
Don’t you dare assume that I am suggesting a moral equivalence between the hijackers of 9/11 and the bomber pilots of the Vietnam War. I am doing nothing of the sort. The former were unqualified brutes whose sole motivation was to bring misery to the innocent. The latter were honorable men who believed that their actions were helping provide freedom to the Vietnamese and ultimately protecting their own homeland from the threat of a rapacious empire and its cruel totalitarian philosophy. John McCain is, whatever his faults, a decent and courageous human being; Mohammed Atta was scum.
Instead, my point is that the use of torture can always be rationalized. The same arguments that pass the lips of our current political leadership have been rehearsed throughout history by those who dehumanize and then brutalize. If you contort logic and principle carefully enough, any end can be made to justify any means. But nobody back in the 1960s argued that the Communists' use of torture was wrong because we were the good guys. They insisted that it was wrong because, at some deeper level that transcends strategy and philosophy, it was simply barbaric and unworthy of civilized people.
The Vietnam War was a hopelessly flawed mission, commissioned by arrogant intellectuals, justified by duplicitious politicians, commanded by delusional generals, and fought by brave, good, and self-sacrificing young Americans who deserved better from their superiors. But even Lyndon Johnson and William Westmoreland had a core of humanity that could not be breached. Even as the losses mounted and the humiliation grew, they refused to resort to torture.
No, if there is a moral equivalence between the thugs who abused John McCain and the actions that have taken place during the Iraq War, it is the responsibility of those leaders who, out of shock or fear or anger, decided that the United States of America would join the list of regimes that torture their enemies. And never forget that they knew it was wrong. When Lynndie England and her colleagues at Abu Ghraib were exposed visiting inhuman brutality on their captives, nobody in the Bush administration came to their defense. Nobody spoke then about the need for enhanced interrogation techniques to save American lives. Instead, they kept silent, denounced the atrocities, and insisted that "we don't torture". We now know that they were lying, but it was the fact that they understood the need to lie that remains the most incriminating piece of evidence against them.
And now, finally, comes word of just how organized the effort was and just how high up it reached. They actually sat in a room, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Don Rumsfeld and (God help us) Colin Powell, and they personally directed who would be tortured and to what degree. Perhaps they did not all consent to the actions that took place, but they all sat there without leaving the room, phoning their secretaries, and dictating a letter of resignation. Leave it to John Ashcroft—poor, overmatched, overwhelmed John Ashcroft—to provide the single, inadequate cautionary voice, speculating out loud that the activities taking place inside that room would be judged harshly by history. But he didn’t quit either.
The question is not whether the need for information was acute. Of course it was. They truly did have no idea when, where, or how devastating the next attack would be. Most of them probably did fear for the safety of the American people and they were surely motivated by a desire to prevent the next terrorist atrocity. None of them, I'm sure, took any pleasure in what they were doing (though I suppose I shouldn't necessarily speak for Cheney).
But that's the point, really. Torture can always be justified, if that's what we set out to do. Indeed, that is why we make it illegal and why we make that illegality unequivocal. History tells us that the temptation to torture can be enormous and that people consumed by a focus on ends often find themselves becoming increasingly permissive about the means. That's the reason we say no ahead of time.
The country's leaders were desperate. They had no idea where the next attack was coming from or how bad it would be. They viewed the men in the airplanes as vicious enemies, unworthy of humane consideration. They wanted to save their people from further fear and agony.
In one of their prisons sat a young man who had worked with the attackers, helping them to plan and execute their assault. Maybe he knew something. Maybe he could provide some detail that would help them ward off the next attack. Maybe if they could break him, they could save hundreds or even thousands of their fellow citizens. Maybe they were simply consumed with rage at what had happened to their country. Whatever the motivation, they decided that they knew what they had to do.
And so they tortured John McCain.
Don’t you dare assume that I am suggesting a moral equivalence between the hijackers of 9/11 and the bomber pilots of the Vietnam War. I am doing nothing of the sort. The former were unqualified brutes whose sole motivation was to bring misery to the innocent. The latter were honorable men who believed that their actions were helping provide freedom to the Vietnamese and ultimately protecting their own homeland from the threat of a rapacious empire and its cruel totalitarian philosophy. John McCain is, whatever his faults, a decent and courageous human being; Mohammed Atta was scum.
Instead, my point is that the use of torture can always be rationalized. The same arguments that pass the lips of our current political leadership have been rehearsed throughout history by those who dehumanize and then brutalize. If you contort logic and principle carefully enough, any end can be made to justify any means. But nobody back in the 1960s argued that the Communists' use of torture was wrong because we were the good guys. They insisted that it was wrong because, at some deeper level that transcends strategy and philosophy, it was simply barbaric and unworthy of civilized people.
The Vietnam War was a hopelessly flawed mission, commissioned by arrogant intellectuals, justified by duplicitious politicians, commanded by delusional generals, and fought by brave, good, and self-sacrificing young Americans who deserved better from their superiors. But even Lyndon Johnson and William Westmoreland had a core of humanity that could not be breached. Even as the losses mounted and the humiliation grew, they refused to resort to torture.
No, if there is a moral equivalence between the thugs who abused John McCain and the actions that have taken place during the Iraq War, it is the responsibility of those leaders who, out of shock or fear or anger, decided that the United States of America would join the list of regimes that torture their enemies. And never forget that they knew it was wrong. When Lynndie England and her colleagues at Abu Ghraib were exposed visiting inhuman brutality on their captives, nobody in the Bush administration came to their defense. Nobody spoke then about the need for enhanced interrogation techniques to save American lives. Instead, they kept silent, denounced the atrocities, and insisted that "we don't torture". We now know that they were lying, but it was the fact that they understood the need to lie that remains the most incriminating piece of evidence against them.
And now, finally, comes word of just how organized the effort was and just how high up it reached. They actually sat in a room, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Don Rumsfeld and (God help us) Colin Powell, and they personally directed who would be tortured and to what degree. Perhaps they did not all consent to the actions that took place, but they all sat there without leaving the room, phoning their secretaries, and dictating a letter of resignation. Leave it to John Ashcroft—poor, overmatched, overwhelmed John Ashcroft—to provide the single, inadequate cautionary voice, speculating out loud that the activities taking place inside that room would be judged harshly by history. But he didn’t quit either.
The question is not whether the need for information was acute. Of course it was. They truly did have no idea when, where, or how devastating the next attack would be. Most of them probably did fear for the safety of the American people and they were surely motivated by a desire to prevent the next terrorist atrocity. None of them, I'm sure, took any pleasure in what they were doing (though I suppose I shouldn't necessarily speak for Cheney).
But that's the point, really. Torture can always be justified, if that's what we set out to do. Indeed, that is why we make it illegal and why we make that illegality unequivocal. History tells us that the temptation to torture can be enormous and that people consumed by a focus on ends often find themselves becoming increasingly permissive about the means. That's the reason we say no ahead of time.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Office Doors and Free Speech
There are two types of college professors: those who post cartoons and slogans on their office doors, and those who do not. I fall into the latter category, though I generally have no problem with my colleagues who decorate their academic portals with pithy observations from "Dilbert" or "Ziggy" or even some hack editorial cartoonist. I simply prefer not to have my students know too much about me, other than what I choose to present in class. More important, I don’t want to have crowds milling around my office chattering and otherwise interrupting my deep intellectual reveries ("Why did I draft Pedro MartÃnez when Daisuke was still on the board?").
For the most part, office decorations fall safely into First Amendment territory. I say this guardedly, however, since I believe that a college campus is not the equivalent of the public square and that office doors are state property (we're assuming non-private institutions here, since the argument is constitutional). I think it is possible, for example, to argue that the walls inside the office are more protected than a doorway visible from the hall, or even that one's office merits more scrutiny than the bumper of one's personal vehicle. But generally I don't think we should be looking for reasons to restrict anyone's free expression.
I bring this up because InsideHigherEd.com features a story this morning about one Richard Crandall, a social sciences professor at Lake Superior State University in Michigan. It seems that Professor Crandall is a political conservative who posts provocative comic strips and other materials on his office door. Here's how IHE describes it:
"Items included a photo of Ronald Reagan, pictures mocking Hillary Clinton, a sign posting a 'Notice of the Weekly Meeting of the White, Male, Heterosexual Faculty and Staff Association (WMHFSA),' and various cartoons about abortion, Islamic terrorism and other topics. One depicts two hooded women looking over a photo album. One says, 'And that’s my youngest son, Hakim. He’ll be martyring in the fall.' The other replies, 'They blow up so fast.'"
The university has evidently demanded the removal of at least some of this material, claiming that it may cause a hostile environment for, presumably, gay and Muslim students. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has now entered the fray with the predictable argument that Lake Superior's actions constitute viewpoint discrimination, pointing out that liberal professors who wallpaper their doors have not been similarly sanctioned. According to the article in IHE, left-wing faculty members have displayed an "'Exxpose Exxon' slogan and an 'Honor Veterans: No More War' bumper sticker, while another door bears a sign asking if the Bush administration works for 'Big Oil and Gas'."
My first thought is that if FIRE scoured the campus and those were the most offensive liberal paraphernalia they could find, either they weren't trying very hard or Lake Superior State University is a pretty mild-mannered place. It would be hard for even the most hyper-sensitive conservative to feel personally intimidated or otherwise abused by those rather mainstream sentiments. I guess maybe if someone's mom worked for Exxon he might be a little out of sorts, but really, if that's the best FIRE can do, maybe they ought to mount a less hackneyed argument.
Regardless, the real question here is not whether liberals are getting away with murder while conservatives are being ticketed for jaywalking. Rather, the issue is the degree to which the First Amendment protects speech that creates a hostile environment and expresses sentiments that undermine a university's mission. The other point, of course, is whether Professor Crandall's entryway offerings actually crossed that line, but let's leave that to the side for a moment.
The judicial system has already made clear that speech and expression which would otherwise be protected may, in fact, be prohibited in the workplace. I once saw a highly offensive bumper sticker on a car that read, "No More Mr. Nice Guy. Down on Your Knees, Bitch". I believe that the unqualified jackass who chose to adorn his vehicle in such a manner is protected by the First Amendment. I also believe that if he were a college professor (little chance of that, I suspect) and attached the sticker to his office door, the administration would have every right to order him to remove it and sanction him if he did not. This would be true not only because it would likely fall afoul of sexual harassment law, but because it would undermine the university's mission to provide a learning environment free of personal ridicule based on sex, race, ethnicity, etc.
Obviously, this doesn't mean we set the standard around our most easily offended students and employees. But we are not, as the right-wing keeps reminding us, in the self-expression business; we are in the education business. And those things that make students feel unwelcome on the basis of who they are may, in fact, interfere with a college's ability to perform its primary function. I think, for instance, we would all agree that no professor should be allowed to feature a Confederate or Nazi flag anywhere in the officeplace. I would feel the same way about any colleague who adorned his or her door with a slogan such as "White People are Pigs".
So we've already dismantled much of the usual argument made by groups such as FIRE. The remaining question, then, is whether Professor Crandall went too far in his hallway postings. The short answer is, I'm not sure. Clearly, Ronald Reagan's portrait is acceptable, as is a cartoon ridiculing Hillary Clinton, so long as the attack is primarily based on her politics and doesn't, say, use the B-word. The anti-abortion pieces are also likely protected, as are any other conservative equivalents of "Exxpose Exxon" and "No More War". I'd probably even give Professor Crandall a pass on the "White, Male, Heterosexual Faculty and Staff Association" so long as it did not specifically attack gay and lesbian students.
The anti-Muslim cartoon, however, troubles me. On the one hand, it is clearly a statement against terrorism. On the other hand, I might want to know how Muslim students react to it. Do they regard it as primarily political or primarily racial? Do they feel singled out for ridicule and do they consider the cartoon to be part of a broader hostile environment in Professor Crandall's classroom or on the Lake Superior campus?
The typical right-wing response to all this is to tell the offended students to grow a tougher skin. But that sort of argument gets us nowhere. We all agree—at least I think we do—that some forms of expression (the swastika, for one) have no place in the halls of academia. Therefore, it is no longer a question of unfettered free expression, but rather where and when to draw the line.
For the most part, office decorations fall safely into First Amendment territory. I say this guardedly, however, since I believe that a college campus is not the equivalent of the public square and that office doors are state property (we're assuming non-private institutions here, since the argument is constitutional). I think it is possible, for example, to argue that the walls inside the office are more protected than a doorway visible from the hall, or even that one's office merits more scrutiny than the bumper of one's personal vehicle. But generally I don't think we should be looking for reasons to restrict anyone's free expression.
I bring this up because InsideHigherEd.com features a story this morning about one Richard Crandall, a social sciences professor at Lake Superior State University in Michigan. It seems that Professor Crandall is a political conservative who posts provocative comic strips and other materials on his office door. Here's how IHE describes it:
"Items included a photo of Ronald Reagan, pictures mocking Hillary Clinton, a sign posting a 'Notice of the Weekly Meeting of the White, Male, Heterosexual Faculty and Staff Association (WMHFSA),' and various cartoons about abortion, Islamic terrorism and other topics. One depicts two hooded women looking over a photo album. One says, 'And that’s my youngest son, Hakim. He’ll be martyring in the fall.' The other replies, 'They blow up so fast.'"
The university has evidently demanded the removal of at least some of this material, claiming that it may cause a hostile environment for, presumably, gay and Muslim students. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has now entered the fray with the predictable argument that Lake Superior's actions constitute viewpoint discrimination, pointing out that liberal professors who wallpaper their doors have not been similarly sanctioned. According to the article in IHE, left-wing faculty members have displayed an "'Exxpose Exxon' slogan and an 'Honor Veterans: No More War' bumper sticker, while another door bears a sign asking if the Bush administration works for 'Big Oil and Gas'."
My first thought is that if FIRE scoured the campus and those were the most offensive liberal paraphernalia they could find, either they weren't trying very hard or Lake Superior State University is a pretty mild-mannered place. It would be hard for even the most hyper-sensitive conservative to feel personally intimidated or otherwise abused by those rather mainstream sentiments. I guess maybe if someone's mom worked for Exxon he might be a little out of sorts, but really, if that's the best FIRE can do, maybe they ought to mount a less hackneyed argument.
Regardless, the real question here is not whether liberals are getting away with murder while conservatives are being ticketed for jaywalking. Rather, the issue is the degree to which the First Amendment protects speech that creates a hostile environment and expresses sentiments that undermine a university's mission. The other point, of course, is whether Professor Crandall's entryway offerings actually crossed that line, but let's leave that to the side for a moment.
The judicial system has already made clear that speech and expression which would otherwise be protected may, in fact, be prohibited in the workplace. I once saw a highly offensive bumper sticker on a car that read, "No More Mr. Nice Guy. Down on Your Knees, Bitch". I believe that the unqualified jackass who chose to adorn his vehicle in such a manner is protected by the First Amendment. I also believe that if he were a college professor (little chance of that, I suspect) and attached the sticker to his office door, the administration would have every right to order him to remove it and sanction him if he did not. This would be true not only because it would likely fall afoul of sexual harassment law, but because it would undermine the university's mission to provide a learning environment free of personal ridicule based on sex, race, ethnicity, etc.
Obviously, this doesn't mean we set the standard around our most easily offended students and employees. But we are not, as the right-wing keeps reminding us, in the self-expression business; we are in the education business. And those things that make students feel unwelcome on the basis of who they are may, in fact, interfere with a college's ability to perform its primary function. I think, for instance, we would all agree that no professor should be allowed to feature a Confederate or Nazi flag anywhere in the officeplace. I would feel the same way about any colleague who adorned his or her door with a slogan such as "White People are Pigs".
So we've already dismantled much of the usual argument made by groups such as FIRE. The remaining question, then, is whether Professor Crandall went too far in his hallway postings. The short answer is, I'm not sure. Clearly, Ronald Reagan's portrait is acceptable, as is a cartoon ridiculing Hillary Clinton, so long as the attack is primarily based on her politics and doesn't, say, use the B-word. The anti-abortion pieces are also likely protected, as are any other conservative equivalents of "Exxpose Exxon" and "No More War". I'd probably even give Professor Crandall a pass on the "White, Male, Heterosexual Faculty and Staff Association" so long as it did not specifically attack gay and lesbian students.
The anti-Muslim cartoon, however, troubles me. On the one hand, it is clearly a statement against terrorism. On the other hand, I might want to know how Muslim students react to it. Do they regard it as primarily political or primarily racial? Do they feel singled out for ridicule and do they consider the cartoon to be part of a broader hostile environment in Professor Crandall's classroom or on the Lake Superior campus?
The typical right-wing response to all this is to tell the offended students to grow a tougher skin. But that sort of argument gets us nowhere. We all agree—at least I think we do—that some forms of expression (the swastika, for one) have no place in the halls of academia. Therefore, it is no longer a question of unfettered free expression, but rather where and when to draw the line.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Blast From the Past
My day job has the best of me at the moment, so I've reached into the archives (i.e., stuff I wrote before I had a blog) to see what I can post. The following is from 2002. In its defense, the ACLU finally found its voice a year or two after this was written, but its unwillingness to launch a full-throated protest during the sensitive period immediately post-9/11 was costly to them and to the nation. They--and we--have been playing catch-up ever since.
The more depressing thing about re-reading what I wrote six years ago is how many of the outrages I mention are now essentially facts of life in Bush's America. And even I didn't anticipate back then that my country would add its name to the roster of those who torture. I wonder how many more years it will be before we right ourselves.
Anyway, here are my thoughts from the summer of '02:
I love the American Civil Liberties Union. I have been a member of the ACLU, on and off, for a quarter century. No organization in the United States has been more vigilant in patrolling the frontier between freedom and tyranny. And while I wish that they would at least reluctantly acknowledge that the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights (innocent gun owners deserve protection, too), only the deliberately dishonest would accuse the ACLU of being a mere tool of the left. When the despicable, ignorant, malicious, and constitutionally-protected Nazis needed a permit to march through a heavily Jewish Chicago suburb in the late 1970s, the ACLU was there, fingers clamped tightly over noses, to insist that they receive it.
Yet here we are, ten months after September 11, and I don’t know if maybe I’ve spent too much time watching trailers for that new Scooby-Doo movie, but all I can say is: ACLU, where are you?
Foreigners are languishing in prison without being charged with a crime. The government is planning to listen in on confidential attorney-client conversations. Wiretaps are as easy for cops to obtain as jelly donuts. Government agents have access to your computer records whenever it strikes their fancy. And now, American citizens are being detained indefinitely because the Attorney General believes that they might—might!—be planning to do something nasty.
Hel-looooooo?
I presume that the ACLU opposes each of these assaults on civil liberties. On their website (www.aclu.org), they opine that President Bush’s proposed Department of Homeland Security is “long on secrecy, short on needed accountability”. That less-than-forceful condemnation can be found just below a link to a story entitled, “Appeals Court Rejects School Teacher's Attempt to Keep Transgender Employees from Bathrooms”.
Now I don’t want to denigrate the need of the transgendered for lavatory liberation, but what in the name of Clarence Darrow is going on here? It’s as if your doctor, as you staggered into the emergency room bleeding from the ears, immediately started tending to the hangnail on your big toe.
There will be time to struggle for restroom equality. There will be time for battling rural southern judges who want to plaster the Ten Commandments on every public facility from the crick to the holler. There will be time for safeguarding the rights of high school students to wear vulgar t-shirts celebrating the latest talentless shock band.
But that time is not now.
This, my friends, is the civil liberties Super Bowl. The Bush Administration isn’t flicking specks of paint off the fenders of the Constitution any more; they are under the hood pulling out the wires and dislodging the hoses. Habeas corpus. Attorney-client privilege. Speedy and public trial. The right to face your accuser. The protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The presumption of innocence. These are the foundations of what it means to be a free people, and those foundations are currently being toppled to the overwhelming delight of a terrified nation. This is no time for position papers and a couple of timid lawsuits. This is time for a loud, indignant, and sustained campaign to preserve our birthright.
Maybe an organized, vocal, and relentless ACLU presence wouldn’t matter. Maybe people are so angry and vengeful that they are willing to barter our national heritage for a pound of Osama bin Laden’s flesh. Or maybe after nearly a year of red alerts and ceaseless government warnings about anthrax and smallpox and water-, air-, and food-borne contaminants, Americans are willing to torch every sheet of yellowed parchment in the National Archives just to make it all go away. But right now we don’t know, because only one side of the argument is being heard, unless you count the occasional hapless law professor who wanders into Bill O’Reilly’s intellectual slaughterhouse to face some smug Heritage Foundation type who invariably tut-tuts about the naiveté of overage flower children.
Only the ACLU has the record, the credibility, and the gravitas to lead this fight, to present the American people with the other side of the debate. Only the ACLU can rally the troops, forge the battle plan, and provide courage to the millions of Americans who fiercely oppose the Administration’s actions, but currently feel isolated and vulnerable. Only the ACLU can bring the intellectual firepower to the table that can match wits with cable television’s dreary procession of former prosecutors, terrorism “experts”, retired soldiers, and war-loving think tank geeks.
The stakes could not be higher. ACLU, where are you?
The more depressing thing about re-reading what I wrote six years ago is how many of the outrages I mention are now essentially facts of life in Bush's America. And even I didn't anticipate back then that my country would add its name to the roster of those who torture. I wonder how many more years it will be before we right ourselves.
Anyway, here are my thoughts from the summer of '02:
I love the American Civil Liberties Union. I have been a member of the ACLU, on and off, for a quarter century. No organization in the United States has been more vigilant in patrolling the frontier between freedom and tyranny. And while I wish that they would at least reluctantly acknowledge that the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights (innocent gun owners deserve protection, too), only the deliberately dishonest would accuse the ACLU of being a mere tool of the left. When the despicable, ignorant, malicious, and constitutionally-protected Nazis needed a permit to march through a heavily Jewish Chicago suburb in the late 1970s, the ACLU was there, fingers clamped tightly over noses, to insist that they receive it.
Yet here we are, ten months after September 11, and I don’t know if maybe I’ve spent too much time watching trailers for that new Scooby-Doo movie, but all I can say is: ACLU, where are you?
Foreigners are languishing in prison without being charged with a crime. The government is planning to listen in on confidential attorney-client conversations. Wiretaps are as easy for cops to obtain as jelly donuts. Government agents have access to your computer records whenever it strikes their fancy. And now, American citizens are being detained indefinitely because the Attorney General believes that they might—might!—be planning to do something nasty.
Hel-looooooo?
I presume that the ACLU opposes each of these assaults on civil liberties. On their website (www.aclu.org), they opine that President Bush’s proposed Department of Homeland Security is “long on secrecy, short on needed accountability”. That less-than-forceful condemnation can be found just below a link to a story entitled, “Appeals Court Rejects School Teacher's Attempt to Keep Transgender Employees from Bathrooms”.
Now I don’t want to denigrate the need of the transgendered for lavatory liberation, but what in the name of Clarence Darrow is going on here? It’s as if your doctor, as you staggered into the emergency room bleeding from the ears, immediately started tending to the hangnail on your big toe.
There will be time to struggle for restroom equality. There will be time for battling rural southern judges who want to plaster the Ten Commandments on every public facility from the crick to the holler. There will be time for safeguarding the rights of high school students to wear vulgar t-shirts celebrating the latest talentless shock band.
But that time is not now.
This, my friends, is the civil liberties Super Bowl. The Bush Administration isn’t flicking specks of paint off the fenders of the Constitution any more; they are under the hood pulling out the wires and dislodging the hoses. Habeas corpus. Attorney-client privilege. Speedy and public trial. The right to face your accuser. The protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The presumption of innocence. These are the foundations of what it means to be a free people, and those foundations are currently being toppled to the overwhelming delight of a terrified nation. This is no time for position papers and a couple of timid lawsuits. This is time for a loud, indignant, and sustained campaign to preserve our birthright.
Maybe an organized, vocal, and relentless ACLU presence wouldn’t matter. Maybe people are so angry and vengeful that they are willing to barter our national heritage for a pound of Osama bin Laden’s flesh. Or maybe after nearly a year of red alerts and ceaseless government warnings about anthrax and smallpox and water-, air-, and food-borne contaminants, Americans are willing to torch every sheet of yellowed parchment in the National Archives just to make it all go away. But right now we don’t know, because only one side of the argument is being heard, unless you count the occasional hapless law professor who wanders into Bill O’Reilly’s intellectual slaughterhouse to face some smug Heritage Foundation type who invariably tut-tuts about the naiveté of overage flower children.
Only the ACLU has the record, the credibility, and the gravitas to lead this fight, to present the American people with the other side of the debate. Only the ACLU can rally the troops, forge the battle plan, and provide courage to the millions of Americans who fiercely oppose the Administration’s actions, but currently feel isolated and vulnerable. Only the ACLU can bring the intellectual firepower to the table that can match wits with cable television’s dreary procession of former prosecutors, terrorism “experts”, retired soldiers, and war-loving think tank geeks.
The stakes could not be higher. ACLU, where are you?
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Absolut Stupidity
If you're over 30, you can probably remember a time when CNN was a legitimate news organization. Even in its heyday, of course, it could be soft: Larry King has held down a position there since the 1980s. But first and foremost, Ted Turner's Atlanta franchise took news gathering and reporting seriously. When the first Gulf War broke out in 1991, the network had reporters on the ground in Baghdad providing first-hand accounts, with pictures, of the initial U.S. bombing of the city. In just fifteen years, CNN became the go-to station whenever a national crisis occurred.
During this period, Turner Broadcasting created a companion station, CNN Headline News, meant to provide a television version of the news radio outlets that had become so popular in many of the nation's largest cities. Every half hour, the station would update the top stories, and follow that with sports, entertainment, and human interest features. It was not a channel you'd care to watch for more than an hour or so, but it did keep the promise of the old radio broadcasters: "You give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you the world."
Eventually, the Fox News Channel signed on the air, with its format of conservative propaganda dressed up as news reporting. If CNN modeled itself after news radio, FOX patterned itself after right-wing talk radio, emphasizing controversy, heated (and usually one-sided) debate, and trivial local stories intended to outrage the sensibilities of the average rube. In addition, since journalism was secondary, FOX did not need to worry about the credentials of its on-air talent. Thus, they hired a roster of attractive blonde newsreaders along with some pretty boys for the ladies. To the country's everlasting disgrace, this format was hugely successful and FOX soon became the cable TV news ratings king.
Around the time this was happening, I happened to meet a well-known CNN reporter who spoke darkly of the changes that were already taking place in Atlanta. Overreacting to the loss of a chunk of their audience, he said, the network was revamping itself to become more like FOX. Hard news gave way to even more opinion shows. Human interest stories presided. The new faces coming to the screen looked more and more as though they were recruited from modeling—rather than journalism—school.
The Headline News Network has obviously taken the biggest hit. No longer primarily an outlet for straight news coverage, HNN is now anchored by Nancy Grace's "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" broadcast and Glenn Beck's moronic thuggishness. And on those occasions when some attractive young female teacher beds an eighth grade boy, the station will often go with the sort of wall-to-wall coverage that used to characterize a major political assassination.
The flagship network, CNN, still covers the major news stories, but far more superficially than before. Their analysis of the current presidential campaign, for example, has been especially useless, emphasizing point-counterpoint talking heads and pundits who obsess over the latest trivial gaffe or two-percent fluctuation in the public opinion polls. To be fair, CNN has never been entirely innocent in this regard—they first brought political food fighting to television with the late, unlamented "Crossfire", a full decade before FOX took to the air, where friendly, ineffectual, septuagenarian Tom Braden would play Colmes to Pat Buchanan's Hannity.
In keeping with its initial commitment to comprehensive news coverage, CNN hired a young Seattle news reporter with a Harvard economics degree to anchor its business reporting. With Lou Dobbs at its helm, "Moneyline" became one of the network's most successful programs. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, Dobbs was a straight-laced cheerleader for the financial markets, speaking the same language as his Wall Street audience.
Somewhere around the turn of the century, however, Lou Dobbs metamorphosed into an anti-corporate populist, raging against outsourcing and downsizing. No longer a reporter, he has become something akin to the Peter Finch character in the movie "Network", mad as hell and no longer willing to take it. Since the CNN brass had, by that time, become as thoroughly cynical as the fictional executives from Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 masterpiece, the new Dobbs was soon allowed to restructure his show, and it became "Lou Dobbs Tonight". So rebranded, the subject matter was no longer simply economic news, but rather whatever happened to be sticking in the host's craw on any given evening.
This new format, of course, has become hugely successful, and Dobbs is now considered a galvanizing voice in American politics with his rants against corporate greed, the emergence of "Communist China", and, most notably, Mexican immigration. Almost single-handedly, Dobbs has returned the hoary and bigoted term "illegal alien" into popular discourse. While he claims to be unprejudiced against Mexico or its people, many of his reports not only address citizenship issues, but also concentrate on crime and corruption south of the border. The unmistakable message: there's something wrong with this government and these people, and we need to keep their inherent corruption from destroying our country. Dobbs also regularly features stories on crimes committed by undocumented workers, the more violent and grisly, the better.
But more than anything else, Lou Dobbs is an expert in awakening the inner bigot that evidently lives in millions of Americans. Playing off nativism and tribalism, he pits group against group and stokes outrage over the most trivial occurrences. If Mexican flags outnumber Old Glory at a Cinco de Mayo parade, count of Dobbs to point it out. On St. Patrick's Day, however, he somehow never manages to send one of his sycophant reporters to Fifth Avenue to count the prevalence of banners from the Irish Free State.
The latest stupidity, and the news that motivated this entry, is Dobbs' attempt to raise the national blood pressure over an ad placed by Sweden's Absolut vodka in a Mexican periodical. The ad shows a map of North America, with most of the Southwestern United States under Mexican control. The caption is, "In an Absolut World".
This would be easily recognized by any impartial observer as little more than some nationalist chest-thumping, the kind Americans do with regularity. To Dobbs, however, this provides still more proof of the Mexican desire to administer the reconquista, the takeover of land that was stolen by the United States during the Nineteenth Century. All that's needed now is a call to rename tacos, "freedom sandwiches".
Somewhere under a rock, Rupert Murdoch must be very proud.
During this period, Turner Broadcasting created a companion station, CNN Headline News, meant to provide a television version of the news radio outlets that had become so popular in many of the nation's largest cities. Every half hour, the station would update the top stories, and follow that with sports, entertainment, and human interest features. It was not a channel you'd care to watch for more than an hour or so, but it did keep the promise of the old radio broadcasters: "You give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you the world."
Eventually, the Fox News Channel signed on the air, with its format of conservative propaganda dressed up as news reporting. If CNN modeled itself after news radio, FOX patterned itself after right-wing talk radio, emphasizing controversy, heated (and usually one-sided) debate, and trivial local stories intended to outrage the sensibilities of the average rube. In addition, since journalism was secondary, FOX did not need to worry about the credentials of its on-air talent. Thus, they hired a roster of attractive blonde newsreaders along with some pretty boys for the ladies. To the country's everlasting disgrace, this format was hugely successful and FOX soon became the cable TV news ratings king.
Around the time this was happening, I happened to meet a well-known CNN reporter who spoke darkly of the changes that were already taking place in Atlanta. Overreacting to the loss of a chunk of their audience, he said, the network was revamping itself to become more like FOX. Hard news gave way to even more opinion shows. Human interest stories presided. The new faces coming to the screen looked more and more as though they were recruited from modeling—rather than journalism—school.
The Headline News Network has obviously taken the biggest hit. No longer primarily an outlet for straight news coverage, HNN is now anchored by Nancy Grace's "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" broadcast and Glenn Beck's moronic thuggishness. And on those occasions when some attractive young female teacher beds an eighth grade boy, the station will often go with the sort of wall-to-wall coverage that used to characterize a major political assassination.
The flagship network, CNN, still covers the major news stories, but far more superficially than before. Their analysis of the current presidential campaign, for example, has been especially useless, emphasizing point-counterpoint talking heads and pundits who obsess over the latest trivial gaffe or two-percent fluctuation in the public opinion polls. To be fair, CNN has never been entirely innocent in this regard—they first brought political food fighting to television with the late, unlamented "Crossfire", a full decade before FOX took to the air, where friendly, ineffectual, septuagenarian Tom Braden would play Colmes to Pat Buchanan's Hannity.
In keeping with its initial commitment to comprehensive news coverage, CNN hired a young Seattle news reporter with a Harvard economics degree to anchor its business reporting. With Lou Dobbs at its helm, "Moneyline" became one of the network's most successful programs. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, Dobbs was a straight-laced cheerleader for the financial markets, speaking the same language as his Wall Street audience.
Somewhere around the turn of the century, however, Lou Dobbs metamorphosed into an anti-corporate populist, raging against outsourcing and downsizing. No longer a reporter, he has become something akin to the Peter Finch character in the movie "Network", mad as hell and no longer willing to take it. Since the CNN brass had, by that time, become as thoroughly cynical as the fictional executives from Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 masterpiece, the new Dobbs was soon allowed to restructure his show, and it became "Lou Dobbs Tonight". So rebranded, the subject matter was no longer simply economic news, but rather whatever happened to be sticking in the host's craw on any given evening.
This new format, of course, has become hugely successful, and Dobbs is now considered a galvanizing voice in American politics with his rants against corporate greed, the emergence of "Communist China", and, most notably, Mexican immigration. Almost single-handedly, Dobbs has returned the hoary and bigoted term "illegal alien" into popular discourse. While he claims to be unprejudiced against Mexico or its people, many of his reports not only address citizenship issues, but also concentrate on crime and corruption south of the border. The unmistakable message: there's something wrong with this government and these people, and we need to keep their inherent corruption from destroying our country. Dobbs also regularly features stories on crimes committed by undocumented workers, the more violent and grisly, the better.
But more than anything else, Lou Dobbs is an expert in awakening the inner bigot that evidently lives in millions of Americans. Playing off nativism and tribalism, he pits group against group and stokes outrage over the most trivial occurrences. If Mexican flags outnumber Old Glory at a Cinco de Mayo parade, count of Dobbs to point it out. On St. Patrick's Day, however, he somehow never manages to send one of his sycophant reporters to Fifth Avenue to count the prevalence of banners from the Irish Free State.
The latest stupidity, and the news that motivated this entry, is Dobbs' attempt to raise the national blood pressure over an ad placed by Sweden's Absolut vodka in a Mexican periodical. The ad shows a map of North America, with most of the Southwestern United States under Mexican control. The caption is, "In an Absolut World".
This would be easily recognized by any impartial observer as little more than some nationalist chest-thumping, the kind Americans do with regularity. To Dobbs, however, this provides still more proof of the Mexican desire to administer the reconquista, the takeover of land that was stolen by the United States during the Nineteenth Century. All that's needed now is a call to rename tacos, "freedom sandwiches".
Somewhere under a rock, Rupert Murdoch must be very proud.
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