Cheerleader Journalist vs. Analysts: Inane vs. Sane

Here's the picture, via tpm, students: Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb had a 3-hour long line to get into their talk at Davos.  Who was waiting to get in?  Folks like Bill Gates.

Roubini is "famous" now, so CNBC invites him and Tasseb on to the channel.  The problem is that either these journalists are too isolated, stupid or brainwashed to understand what Roubbini and Taleb had to say, or they are selling a product (unlimited growth, DOW 50,000!) that just doesn't exist right now.  They seem to think there is some sector that will give their portfolios a miracle cure, which is silly.  Our problems are systemic.*  It's not just banking or insurance or production or demand.  It's all entangled and until the finance sector clears its bad assets and can clearly put value on real, physical production (as opposed to circulating mathematical-model hedge funds that relate to no real-world products) then the system will not work.  It's really fascinating to watch these clueless people who seem to think that a little cheerleading is going to get everybody through this.  (Oh, and they also think that all bankers are geniuses and deserve high salaries for crashing the system.)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1027496846

Video link 

*Of course, there will always be some stock somewhere that makes money.  The point is, Roubini and Tasseb are not talking about isolated stocks, but about a whole (screwed up) system.

McSame McCain

McSame McCain:

John McCain Votes to Filibuster Minimum Wage Hike.

McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion

Obama: Fight Mediocrity and Mediatocracy

Here's, IMHO, the most important part of Obama's victory speech from last night:

This primary season may not be over, but when it is, we will have to remember who we are as Democrats . . . This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country. Because we all agree that at this defining moment in history – a moment when we're facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril – we can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term. We need change in America. [...]

Yes, we know what's coming. We've seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain – to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.

This is what they will do – no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run, it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. I didn't get into [this] race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it. . . .

This is all about media, voice and democracy. It's about the FCC, the FEC; it's about pundits and CEOs. Obama knows this and this is the subtext of his campaign. The media know this too--and they've been fighting back.

The last three weeks have been a virtual blackout of positive Obama news, a blackout of Obama himself. Indeed, Obama was presented only through the filters of the Kristols and the Crowleys, while smiling pictures of Hillary giving motivational speeches were aired.

This period seems to be over and the media has seen the momentum shift for the final time. They saw it on Bill's face last night.

Does this mean the fight against Obama is over? Hardly--the long hard slog is beginning. We will see more of the same: Wright, few excerpts from speeches and first-person Obama, little talk of Obama's incredible and populist fundraising. The media narrative will "stay the course" in that Obama will be portrayed as elitist, disconnected, different, radical and strident, while McCain will be fluffed beyond belief.

Can they keep him off the air? Can they keep him on the defensive? I don't think so, but they will try.

The goal now, short of preventing Obama's election, is to limit his mandate and define what he can talk about.

Bush at 69% DISapproval

Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.
Bush At 69% Disapproval.

Sarkozy Judged Harshly..

Le Monde has a new poll out that shows Sarkozy's popularity flagging. I don't see this as anything surprising. Sarkozy's cozy relationship with the press brought him into power on his law-and-order populist campaign. Now that the people are seing what he is actually like, they begin to have second thoughts. That will sound familiar to most Americans.

Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, les Français portent un regard critique sur son bilan. L'action du président et de son gouvernement n'a pas permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français, estiment 79 % des personnes interrogées par l'Ifop pour le Journal du Dimanche. Ils n'étaient encore que 59 % à le penser en novembre 2007.

Selon ce sondage publié dimanche 20 avril, 49% des Français estiment même que l'action du chef de l'Etat et du gouvernement n'a "pas du tout" amélioré la situation. Même chez les sympathisants de l'UMP, l'action du gouvernement n'obtient pas plus de 50 % d'approbation.

Une certaine impatience se lit également dans ce sondage, puisque parmi les réponses suggérées à la question posée - " Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, diriez-vous que l'action du président et de son gouvernement a permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français ?" -, aucun sondé (ou trop peu pour être comptabilisé) n'a répondu qu'il était "trop tôt pour juger".

Par ailleurs, la cote de popularité de Nicolas Sarkozy a encore fléchi, pour atteindre son niveau le plus bas depuis son élection en mai 2007. Elle se situe désormais à 36% (- 1 point), loin derrière celle du premier ministre, François Fillon, 52% (- 6 points).

I don't think Sarkozy will be remembered fondly by the French, but that has nothing to do with his power. The thing to remember is this: the press will continue to fluff him up for he is one of them, a creature of sound bites and photo-ops. That said, at least in France oppositional politics function in their dysfunctionality, that is, they allow for some stasis comparatively.

As much as I jump on the MSM for what they write, occasionally they provide an article that allows the average citizen to cut through the crap. The lates revelation from the Times is this piece on the cozy relationship of our teevee and our military:

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, by David Barstow, Message machine, NY Times: In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. ... [...continue reading...]

Telling the truth because of fears of loosing access. Secrecy has many powers, not the least of which is that it creates a group mentality of those who are "in the know," even when that content is dubious. Is it unpatriotic to call these people whores?

I don't think so.

If You Don't Read Greg Mitchell...

You should. Editor and Publisher has been a mainstay of my blog reads and rss feeds for the last 4-5 years. I can only say "You haven't read the news until you've read about the newsroom." The public (which booed Charlie Gibson after the debate--betcha won't see that on teevee), knows better, but only some of the time thanks to Greg Mitchell, Media Matters and the inimitable, groundbreaking Daily Howler.

Here's Greg Mitchell on last night's debate:

NEW YORK In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

Yet neither candidate had the courage to ask the moderators to turn to those far more important issues. But some in the crowd did -- booing Gibson near the end.

Yet David Brooks' review at The New York Times concluded: "I thought the questions were excellent." He gave ABC an "A."

But Tom Shales of The Washington Post had an opposite view: "Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

Calitics has a nice round up:

"The debate is over, and I feel like I need a shower. [...] The crowd here is starting to boo Gibson. Like, a lot. Hilarious and well-deserved."
-Chris Bowers

"No Charlie. It hasn't been a "fascinating debate." It's been genuinely awful."
-Josh Marshall

"What matters to this network is money, and that is where we need to go. Starting tomorrow, my spare time, meager as it is, will be dedicated to revealing the advertisers of this network, for the purpose of organized boycotts."
-Dartagnan (top Recommended Diary on Dailykos)

"Light'Em Up
Complain about this atrocity.
Main ABC switchboard: 212-456-7777
...complain here."
-Atrios

"My friend Dan McQuade calls this the lowest moment in American history -- I think he's giving it too much credit, frankly."
-Will Bunch

"George and Charlie were just rumor-mongering right wingers. Charlie thought it was "fascinating." Wrong. It was just very pathetic and disturbing. If you ever question the sad state of affairs in the American political dialogue, tonight's debate was Exhibit A."
-Joe Sudbay

"This debate was just horrible. Too much time wasted on useless nonsense. From a media perspective, I am not sure why Stephanopoulos was in the mix at all. He didn't add much, and if anything, his history with the Clintons had the potential to take something away. I thought Gibson was especially rough on Obama, and I think ABC did not do themselves any good with this debate. If I weren't liveblogging, I would have switched to AI."
-Jacki Schechner

"This is the most disgraceful and dispiriting debate of all time."
-BooMan

"In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia."
-Editor and Publisher

"Reflecting what seemed to be the main consensus of the night - that ABC botched this debate, big time - Charlie Gibson tells the crowd there will be one more, superfluous commercial break of the night and is subsequently jeered. "OH..." he declares, hands raised in defense. "The crowd is turning on me, the crowd is turning on me.""
-Huffington Post

So much for the information age? (A Follow up)

Maybe you didn't read my critique of the Chronicle's "So much for the information age." In it I found some faults with Prof. Gup's complaint about his students' ignorance, a complaint in which he said that blogs and new media were not reshaping the landscape for the better since obviously his students weren't any more informed. Well, I had some problems with that.

On a not unrelated topic, Dave Niewert has a new post up on the media reaction to the president's admission that he condoned torture. In any normal world this would be a scandal of tremendous proportions. Instead, our mainstream media has let it slide into oblivion. I'll past the whole posting since it addresses several of the issues I was getting at in my critique of Gup and outlines the whole MSM problem as well.

You may have noticed that the blogosphere is abuzz with the ABC reportage revealing, as Marcy puts it, "what we already knew: the torture was approved--in excruciating detail--by the most senior members of the Bush Administration." And as Eli points out, this flies in the face of everything the Bush administration was telling the public at the time.

They were lying to us. And it tells us just how degraded our public discourse has become both at the hands of the conservative movement, embodied in the Bush administration, and of the mainstream media -- particularly the Village Idiots -- that this apparently is no big deal.

As usual, Digby puts it best:

There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.

The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.

And most of all, as she later points out:

This news was buried in a Friday news dump, but even so you would think news organizations would highlight this amazing story on the front page of their web site and mention it in their newscasts. Who would have ever thought you'd have a president casually say something like this?

He was willing to say it because he knows full well by now that the Washington press corps, fearful of being accused of insufficient patriotism, won't call him on it -- won't make it what, in a world in which traditional news judgment held sway, should be the one of the most pressing and discussed issues on the lips of the Beltway poobahs. Instead we get phony controversies, whipped up by right-wing talkers but fully embraced by every mainstream media outlet, like the Obama "pastor problem" and -- oooh! look! -- this week we'll all talk about how Obama dissed the rural folk!

Pfheh. Pardon me while I fwow up.

This is has been an increasing problem with the mainstream media for the past decade and more, and it's been acute since 9/11 -- the abject willingness to play propaganda organ for the right-wing Wurlitzer is not only one of the main reasons we invaded Iraq in the first damned place, it's also a large part of the reason we're enmeshed in such a quagmire there even today. It was obvious to a handful of dirty hippie bloggers back in 2003 that the Bush administration had neither any occupation strategy nor any exit strategy in place when we invaded, but you would be hard-pressed to find any mainstream pundits who thought that such shortsighted planning might be a long-term problem.

And of course, it's why we now stand alone in the world as the one supposedly "First World" nation that condones, and sponsors, the use of torture on detainees. The likelihood in fact that the Bush administration was in the process of committing war crimes was raised as early as March 2003, before the invasion of Iraq. It came front and center briefly during the uproar over Abu Ghraib -- at which time, as we noted here, there was plenty of evidence that the support for torture came from high up the chain of command.

Recall that at the time, Human Rights Watch insisted:

The promised U.S. investigation into the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners should not stop with the lower-level soldiers who were immediately involved, Human Rights Watch said today. The United States should also investigate the superiors of these soldiers to see whether they ordered or knowingly tolerated these abuses.

Yet in fact, what happened was that the media largely swallowed the administration's line:

U.S. President George W. Bush claimed the acts were in no way indicative of normal or acceptable practices in the United States Army.

The public denunciation of torture of prisoners by the president and other US officials contradicted the fact that Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, created a distinction between forbidden "torture" and the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning which they advanced as permissible. The vice president's office played a central role in eliminating limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration later described as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials. The Geneva Convention, which has been ratified by the U.S. and is therefore the law of the land, is explicit and categorical in banning torture, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony.

Initially, the media responded with some vigor -- several major outlets, notably the New York Times, called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld remained -- in no small part because the rest of the media, particularly the broadcast crowd, stayed largely mum or "neutral."

Of course, then there was Rush Limbaugh:

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of emotional release?"

In the end, no one beyond the low-level soldiers involved in the actual abuse suffered any kind of serious consequences. So much for going up the chain of command.

So much for the information age?

The Chronicle has an article up (that I rather like but have some major problems with) about a professor's discussion regarding rendition. It's called "So Much for the Information Age."

I teach a seminar called "Secrecy: Forbidden Knowledge." I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word "rendition."

Not one hand went up.

This is after four years of the word appearing on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, on network and cable news, and online. This is after years of highly publicized lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and international controversy and condemnation. This is after the release of a Hollywood film of that title, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.

I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, and the student sheepishly asked if rendition had anything to do with a version of a movie or a play.

I nodded charitably, then attempted to define the word in its more public context. I described specific accounts of U.S. abductions of foreign citizens, of the likely treatment accorded such prisoners when placed in the hands of countries like Syria and Egypt, of the months and years of detention. I spoke of the lack of formal charges, of some prisoners' eventual release and how their subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. government were stymied in the name of national security and secrecy.

The students were visibly disturbed. They expressed astonishment, then revulsion. They asked how such practices could go on.

I told them to look around the room at one another's faces; they were seated next to the answer. I suggested that they were, in part, the reason that rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamo detention, warrantless searches and intercepts, and a host of other such practices have not been more roundly discredited. I admit it was harsh.

[...]

Still, it is hard to reconcile the students' lack of knowledge with the notion that they are a part of the celebrated information age, creatures of the Internet who arguably have at their disposal more information than all the preceding generations combined. Despite their BlackBerrys, cellphones, and Wi-Fi, they are, in their own way, as isolated as the remote tribes of New Guinea. They disprove the notion that technology fosters engagement, that connectivity and community are synonymous. I despair to think that this is the generation brought up under the banner of "No Child Left Behind." What I see is the specter of an entire generation left behind and left out.

It is not easy to explain how we got into this sad state, or to separate symptoms from causes. Newspaper readership is in steep decline. My students simply do not read newspapers, online or otherwise, and many grew up in households that did not subscribe to a paper. Those who tune in to television "news" are subjected to a barrage of opinions from talking heads like CNN's demagogic Lou Dobbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his dizzying "No Spin Zone." In today's journalistic world, opinion trumps fact (the former being cheaper to produce), and rank partisanship and virulent culture wars make the middle ground uninhabitable. Small wonder, then, that my students shrink from it.

Then, too, there is the explosion of citizen journalism. An army of average Joes, equipped with cellphones, laptops, and video cameras, has commandeered our news media. The mantra of "We want to hear from you!" is all the rage, from CNN to NPR; but, although invigorating and democratizing, it has failed to supplant the provision of essential facts, generating more heat than light. Many of my students can report on the latest travails of celebrities or the sexual follies of politicos, and can be forgiven for thinking that such matters dominate the news — they do. Even those students whose home pages open onto news sites have tailored them to parochial interests — sports, entertainment, weather — that are a pale substitute for the scope and sweep of a good front page or the PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer (which many students seem ready to pickle in formaldehyde).

I sympathize with professor Gup. As one of the teachers of the Introduction to Global Studies course here at Whittier, I have felt first hand this frustration with students' apparent ignorance of current events, and all too often their apathy. That said, I cannot completely agree. First of all, students today actually seem quite engaged in issues regarding the environment, they are far more anti-war than most students I can remember in the early 80's (or, said another way, they can see first hand some of lies and contradictions of our government), and students sense on some level that things are really changing, for better and/or worse, in the wake of globalization. (Note to self: There are people who study this. I should find out who and see if students are more engaged or less. Maybe those researchers even have a blog!)

Prof Gup's premise seems quite problematic to me as well. He is assuming that reading newspapers and watching CNN is the portal to being informed. I'm not so sure. The last century during which major newspapers and television channels dominated local markets did NOT lead our citizenry to become better citizens. Participation in our system of government was declining and a whole political party (Republicans) sought office for 40 years on the basis that government was in general a bad thing, that they should, to paraphrase Grover Norquist, "starve the beast." (Except for the military, of course). Political blogging and the internet have become a viable and informative way to engage in the political process, and that power is being courted by the big players--key evidence that, in spite of his "uninformed" students, something is afoot.

His premise also assumes that these major news factories are really informing the public. The record here is mixed too. Are people who watch Fox News more or less informed than someone who does not? Some interesting studies have shown that viewers of ol' Rupert's news outlet are somewhat likely to be ill-informed rather than well-informed. And CNN? What do Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs inspire in their viewers other than fear and loathing? I'm sorry, Dr. Gup, you're letting these news outlets off far too easily and you are not considering the ground-breaking work done by Talking Points Memo or Media Matters (and any other number of groups). Do I need to bring up Judith Miller or the Washington Times (Go Moonies!!!)?

The information age will never be a panacea for the problems of our world until we accept that the media that we do have do not really represent us. Millionaire "reporters" and pundits by definition and constitution will not serve the public's interest well because they are simply too far removed from those concerns. The electoral process, as imperfect as it is, is still less forgiving than the clubby major newspapers and networks. I mean, the average income of the fictive families on television during the 50's was about 35K (adjusted for inflation). The average family in sitcoms now earns approximately 200k per year. I say this just for comparison's sake. Our media has become more elitist and less engaged with the public all while pandering more. I think that our mainstream media--those who bear the biggest responsibility for informing the public over the public airwaves and with their publicly chartered corporations--are much more to blame for the state of things than any other single thing. If we are going to begin casting blame, let's start with news corporations that have been thinking a lot more about their shareholders than about their public responsibilities. Indeed, we have decades of interesting data, so let's look there and let blogging reach its second decade before we start casting stones about technology.

But I will agree with Prof. Gup on this:

The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchins said, decades ago: "The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens." He warned that "the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." I fear he was right.

So do I. It's just that I fear that this apathy will come to us via our media outlets determined to tell us everything about Britney Spears and nothing (or something on A22) about that little thing called rendition.

Expelled: The Lies!!!

Scientific American now has a whole series dedicated to the misrepresentations and pandering of Expelled.

No one could have been more surprised than I when the producers called, unbidden, offering Scientific American's editors a private screening. Given that our magazine's positions on evolution and intelligent design (ID) creationism reflect those of the scientific mainstream (that is, evolution: good science; ID: not science), you have to wonder why they would bother. It's not as though anything in Expelled would have been likely to change our views. And they can't have been looking for a critique of the science in the movie, because there isn't much to speak of.

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, "You can't handle the truth!") Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie—which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film's attacks—all recycled from previous pro-ID works—would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.

Expelled wears its ambitions to be a creationist Fahrenheit 911 openly, in that it apes many of Michael Moore's comic tricks: emphasizing the narrator's hapless everyman qualities by showing him meandering his way to interviews; riposting interviewees' words with ironic old footage and so on. Director Nathan Frankowski is reasonably adept at the techniques, although he is not half the filmmaker Michael Moore is (and yes, I do mean in both senses of the phrase).

The film begins with the triumphant entry of financial columnist, media figure and former Nixon White House speechwriter Ben Stein to a filled college lecture hall. (If this review were styled after the movie, I'd be intercutting clips of Nixon flashing a victory sign with Stein's scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and his eyedrop commercials, but you get the idea.) Stein explains that he is speaking out because he has "lately noticed a dire trend" that threatens the state of our nation: the ascendance of godless, materialist, evolutionary science and an unwillingness among academics to consider more theistic alternatives. A montage of short clips then shows Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and other scientists scorning religion or ID without context. "Freedom is the essence of America!" Stein insists, and he frets that scientists who like their empiricism with a dash of deus ex machina are oppressed. He and Expelled charge that scientists, in their rejection of religious explanations, have become as intolerant as Nazis. Or maybe Stalinists—the film clips were ambiguous on that point.

(The newsreel footage from the old Soviet days kept confusing me. Stein does know that the Stalinists rejected the theory of evolution as a biological rendition of capitalism, doesn't he? And that they replaced it with their own ideologically driven, disastrous theory of Lysenkoism? Does Stein think that moviegoers won't know this?)

That last paragraph is my favorite! Isn't it funny how every authoritarian political movement wants to change history and science for political expediency (think: GB)?

There's plenty more.

Obama's Speech

h/t Obeygiant

It is rare that I link to the speeches of politicians in a positive way, but I think the rare occasion has arisen with Obama's discourse yesterday on race. Of course the media think he did not distance himself enough from Wright, and, of course, the media are wrong on at least two counts: 1) They cannot acknowledge the existence and need for resistance within poor and oppressed communities (because the media is blind to institutional oppression); and 2) because they do not hold other candidates to the same standard. Think: McCain and Haggee, Bush and any number of racist kooks. Anyway, read the words:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend
Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. (Link)

Lou Dobbs and Cancer

Since spurious correlations have been on my mind this week, I thought I would bring up another one.

Lou Dobbs has made himself more popular these last two or three years by consistently bashing immigrants and telling people (while quoting only part of the statistical evidence) how much they are hurting the American worker. While most people don't see the wool being pulled over their eyes as this neo-liberal journalist diverts our eyes from real global trade issues, there can be no doubt that he is putting on a populist show that in the end always promotes an increased security apparatus for poor folk and increased liberty for the flow of goods and capital.

Anyway, right now he is quoting a completely debunked study about how Mexicans are bringing leprosy to the U.S. Just add it to the list of items he uses to manipulate the public into thinking he is a man of the people.

My own spurious but funny correlation, you ask. Well, last year my mother died of a brain tumor. She was a wonderful, generous person, generous to a fault, almost, and to say that she had more than a few friends would be an understatement. The number of people that she helped in her life cannot be counted, really. What's more, she was a Democrat and proud of it. That said, as she grew sicker and the cancer spread, she also gained an intense, cult-like interest in Lou Dobbs. His word became gold. For a while, I would quote statistics and argue with her. Eventually, I realized I was being silly: she was sick. I decided to just let her be and enjoy the last part of her life as she struggled to survive.

Now I would like to go on to say that maybe brain tumors cause you to put undue belief in jingoistic, unsubstantiated and hate-mongering punditry. Statistics would not bear me out here, though, as that would mean that nearly every Republican in America has a brain tumor. What I will say, metaphorically, is that we all suffer from the cancer that is 90% of CNN and 99.9% of Fox.

Friedman: Liar, war-monger... respected.

Friedman takes a lot of flack... and it is all deserved. That he is one of the leading opinion-makers is both travesty and tragedy.

I should have linked to Greenwald earlier:

But tragically, there is nothing unique about Tom Friedman. What drives him is the same mentality that enabled the administration's invasion of Iraq and, so much worse, it is the mentality that is keeping us there and will keep us there for the indefinite future. We stay in Iraq in pursuit of goals we know are fantasies, because to do otherwise requires the geniuses and serious establishment analysts to accept responsibility for what they have done -- and that is, by far, the most feared and despised outcome.

Cafferty puts Blacks in their place...

I hope everyone caught the Situation Room yesterday. Cafferty really let into Black people.

Let's go to New York, Jack Cafferty with the Cafferty File.

CAFFERTY: NAACP president Bruce Gordon says that despite his objections to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he would listen to calls for help from Washington. The question we asked is how can African Americans help the United States end the war in Iraq?

Richard, "Blacks could confront the administration with the need to face reality and confront them and confront them and confront them. It may not make an impact on the Alice-In-Wonderland leaders of our government, but it would be nice to see some backbone, some consistent standing up to them, unlike most of our Congress.

Ger in Seaside, California, "They can't. This is our problem. I don't see how they can do anything but make it worse for themselves and I'm sure Black people will let their government know that they disprove of the idea." Paul writes, "Every warm body in the trench will help stabilize the situation. This is a good opportunity for George Bush to end the era of unilateralism and cowboy diplomacy. He should ask for and accept the assistance. Every non-U.S. soldier over there decreases the odds of our family members getting killed."

Eric in Chicago, "No thanks NAACP. We must look at this from their perspective. What's their incentive? Obviously it's more than just a peaceful world as they have passed on promoting peace on multiple occasions. Blacks being such a self-serving people, maybe we should dig a bit deeper before we decide to accept the offer."

James in Fresno writes my favorite, "What say we send a few busloads of Blacks to Baghdad? I can't think of a better way to help the Iraqis realize that there are indeed things less tolerable than the presence of American troops."

And John in Madison, Wisconsin, "It's about time. Blacks could teach al Qaeda how to surrender.:

If you didn't see your e-mail here you can go to CNN.com/CaffertyFile and read more of these online, Wolf.

BLITZER: See you in New York tomorrow, Jack. Thanks very much, Jack Cafferty. Let's find out what's coming up at the top of the top of the hour. Paula's standing by. Hi Paula.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi Wolf, Jack didn't enjoy those last two e-mails at all, did he?

BLITZER: No, not at all.

ZAHN: His laughter said it all. Thank you...

If Cafferty says it, it must be true, right? I mean he's a straight-shooter, an everyman, and an insightful journalist who can cut through the newspeak.

I should mention that I adapted the above transcript and replaced the word "France" with "NAACP" and French with "Black." Sorry, Jack, it was just so easy to do, sort of like your form of commentary.