I notice that Robert Gibbs hasn’t done the full mea culpa for his criticism of the “professional left” the other day. In his latest encounter with the press, he lets us know why:
“[Q]What do you say to progressives who, on reading your comments yesterday, say, ‘Well, if that’s their attitude, I’m staying home in November’?”
[A]”I don’t think they will,” Gibbs said.
I beg to differ; I think that quite a few are angry enough to stay home.
Gibbs goes on to offend them further by stating he meant what he said when he made his original remarks: given the opportunity to claim he had his foot in his mouth and didn’t mean them, he instead says, “I think I have both my feet firmly planted on the floor.”
This is unequivocal: like Horton, Gibbs meant what he said and he said what he meant (although he’s not exactly faithful, 100%—except perhaps to Obama). If Obama cares about what happens in 2010, though, he ought to nip this message in the bud and tell Gibbs to eat crow.
But he’s not doing that. Perhaps Obama really does believe that the left has no place else to go and will still come out in droves for him, this November and then again in 2012.
Or perhaps he doesn’t care anymore; perhaps he’s tired of this whole president gig.
Or perhaps he has another electoral plan, as the more conspiratorial among us keep insisting.
Of one thing I’m pretty sure, however, which is that Gibbs was lying during the following exchange:
“Have you talked to the president about it?” Reid persisted.
“We haven’t.”
And if he’s telling the truth and they actually haven’t discussed it, this is incompetence on the part of Obama. He needs the left, and insulting them makes no sense at all.
But my strong suspicion is that not only have they discussed it, but they discussed it ahead of time. Gibbs is hardly a rogue operator. Perhaps behind the scenes there are now communications being sent to the left of a wink-wink strategy, an explanation that this is happening because Obama must appear to disassociate himself from them in order to woo the middle.
But if so, I doubt the left will buy it anymore, because he’s alienated them fairly deeply, even before the Gibbs remark (after all, Gibbs was responding to the fact that they were critical of Obama in the first place). And as for Obama wooing the middle, I believe (and continue to hope) that it’s too little, too late.
The bottom line is that almost nobody really trusts Obama any more—not the right (which never did), not the middle (which used to but has learned not to), and now a not-insignificant number on the left.
And by the way, nobody who dislikes Gibbs (and that’s just about everybody except Obama) should sit on a hot stove till Gibbs is fired. Gibbs and Obama are very close, and Gibbs is his surrogate and one of his alter egos.
I’d like to tackle this question raised by a commenter at the law blog Volokh:
…[H]ow is opposing legalization of same-sex marriage today different from opposing the legalization of interracial marriage back [in the 1960s in the Loving vs Virginia case]?
For one thing, Proposition 8 didn’t establish criminal penalties for same-sex marriage, like the miscegenation laws did. It merely affirmed the virtually universal definition in this country of marriage as being between one man one woman.
The anti-miscegenation laws in this country, on the other hand, were spotty and not at all universal, although they were very prevalent in the Southern states and also were in some northern ones (seven of the thirteen colonies had them). They also established criminal penalties for their violation. But many states in the north that originally did have such laws repealed them fairly early (for example, Pennsylvania in 1780, Massachusetts in 1843), and Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the federal District of Columbia never passed miscegenation laws at all.
The ban against interracial marriage was never universally accepted—not anywhere near it (look at Othello and Desdemona, for example—although come to think of it, that came to a bad end). And even in the states where anti-miscegenation laws existed until the modern era, enforcement was intermittent and episodic, indicating a back-and-forth tendency:
Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina and Alabama legalized interracial marriage for some years during the Reconstruction period. Anti-miscegenation laws rested unenforced, were overturned by courts or repealed by the state government (in Arkansas and Louisiana). However, after conservative white Democrats took power in the South during Redemption, anti-miscegenation laws were once more enforced…
So there is a very different sort of social and cultural record for anti-miscegenation laws as compared to same sex marriage, which until recently didn’t even require a law against it, so widely accepted and universal was the idea that marriage was only possible between opposite sexes.
The court in Loving v. Virginia found miscegenation laws unconstitutional because they banned a basic right (marriage) on the basis of the race of the spouses. Should that right be extended to same-sex marriage? I am in agreement with the decision of the NY Court of Appeals in Hernandez v. Robles (2006), in which that court:
…rejected any reliance upon the Loving case as controlling upon the issue of same-sex marriage, holding that:
“[T]he historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. […] But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind. The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude.”
In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, however, that’s exactly what Judge Walker did.
I am, however in favor of leaving the issue of same-sex marriage to the states and taking it out of the hands of the federal government. The Constitution is silent on the subject of sexual orientation. But if the American people ultimately decide, state by state, to allow same sex marriage, then so be it.
August 6th was the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and I recycled this piece for the occasion. It ended with these words:
It’s much harder to convince a WWII vet that Hiroshima was an unnecessary war crime than it is to convince a young person of same; the former not only has the context, he has own personal memories of the context. But propagandists are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in history and the future.
Well, it just so happens that the latest Rasmussen poll asked some questions that reflect on whether the America-blaming revisionists have finally managed to convince the majority of the American public that we were the villains. The answer is still “no.” Here are the relevant results:
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans continue to believe that the 1945 decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a good one. Sixty-eight percent (68%) believe it saved a lot of American lives and just 20% think the U.S. should apologize for the bombing.
[NOTE: Oh, and Obama? The percentage of respondents who “strongly approve” of his presidential performance is now at 24%, while his “strongly disapprove” tally is 46%.]
In this recent post, I highlighted some WaPo comments from a guy who calls himself “sayoung809132001,” who claims to be a former Democrat union man from Michigan who got laid off and is currently unemployed. The whole experience has led him to have a road to Damascus moment in which his lifelong allegiance to the Democratic Party has ended, and he’s looking to vote for candidates with practical suggestions and business experience.
That summary of mine doesn’t even begin to do justice to the fervor and eloquence of the man; I suggest you go to the original post and read it if you haven’t already (and for those who had trouble with the paragraphing and syntax, here’s a revised and more readable version).
However, some of the commenters on my post were very critical of “sayoung.” For example, commenter “Ilion” wrote:
Unfortunatly, it’s clear that he doesn’t really understand ”¦ and he’ll fall for the Hero on a White Horse who rides into town.
Other commenters join the discussion with various defenses of sayoung (see this and this, for example).
I come down on the side of the defenders. Rage at people like the guy I’ve spotlighted in that post may feel good, but is counterproductive and verges on the vengeful.
As a changer myself, I view it quite differently. Every person who sees more clearly than he/she did the day before is a good thing, and to be welcomed. Reasoned argument will persuade some of further things that seem reasonable to them””not spitting at them for former crimes, or making assumptions about what they think and feel now, and how far they still are from agreeing with you. These people are not the enemy.
Sayoung’s change is relatively recent. So don’t expect it to be complete, or to perfectly toe the conservative line in terms of a well-thought-out theoretical conservative basis for his viewpoints.
In addition—although it’s true that some of the statements he made in this particular excerpt (not featured in my original post) sound as though his vote can be bought by Obama with promises of jobs, that’s not the main thrust of the bulk of his comments at all.
Most of the time, he is speaking of voting for the people most likely to effect reasonable, non-pie-in-the-sky, practical changes that will help improve the business climate in general in the hard-hit state of Michigan, not just for himself or his relatives in particular (although of course the latter would be nice, too). The guy is not looking for a handout, but instead for business-friendly policies from someone running for election who knows something about business.
If you care to read more by sayoung see this, which includes a couple of his other comments at the WaPo. One of them details some of the work he’s done to earn some spare change in the meantime, while he waits for things to improve. His efforts also included re-locating to another state for another job, which then folded as well. Sayoung is interested in getting relief for systemic unemployment in his area, due to policies (including union activism, which he says is part of the problem) that have blighted economic opportunities in the region as a whole.
But this really isn’t about sayoung himself—who he is, what he’s saying, or whether he’s on the up and up. It’s about an attitude I’ve seen over and over among some conservatives about how big or how small their tent will be.
When sayoung talks about Republicans reaching out to the union people in Michigan, it’s because Republicans campaigning in Michigan must reach out to the union people, who constitute a huge number of the voters in that state. Those Republicans would be idiots not to do so. These are the people whose flip from a Democrat to a Republican vote will be necessary to effect a win in that state.
Purist and punitive sentiments towards those people are unhelpful and impractical. If that’s the attitude conservatives and/or Republicans have, they will continue to lose elections. And although perhaps some day a conservative third party may take hold, we are talking about an election that is going to be happening in less than three months—one of the most important in our lifetimes, if not the most important—and it’s going to be between Democrats and Republicans. The race does not go to the purest.
And not just the left, either: the “professional left,” which is not too happy with Gibbs’s statement. Gibbs has tried to staunch the bleating on the left in reaction what he now calls his “inartful” comments, which he now explains were merely a call for unity:
Democrats, [Gibbs said], “me included,” need to “stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies, and instead work together to make sure everyone knows what is at stake because we’ve come too far to turn back now.”
And if Democrats continue to hold Congress in 2010, you can be sure they’ll go farther. Quite a bit farther. And there may be no turning back.
Ezra Klein has quite a few liberal/left journalistic credits to his name. He’s written for the Washington Post for over a year, for example. He was the founder, head honcho, and gatekeeper of the now-ill-fated listserve JournoList, controlling who among the hundreds of members would be in and who out. He was an associate editor at the American Prospect, and has been a columnist at Newsweek.
And just think, virtually all of these accomplishments occurred before Klein was 25 years old. In fact, he’s only twenty-six right now.
And the previous credentials of this wunderkind? Klein graduated from UCLA in 2005 with a degree in political science. He’d been a blogger as an undergrad, starting in 2003, and then moved his blog to the leftist American Prospect in December of 2007, close to a year after he’d begun JournoList (which occurred in February of 2007, at the venerable age of 23).
So my question is: how did this kid get such a great reputation and rise to a position of influence on the left and in MSM journalistic circles? I’m not just wondering because I disagree with his viewpoints. I’m wondering because I’ve noticed this trend towards extreme youth in journalism for quite some time, and consider it a very bad development.
It’s not that young people can’t write; they can. But their knowledge base is ordinarily composed of a roughly equal mix of youthful zeal, hubris, and ignorance, along with the book learning they’ve picked up in college. Except for some very rare cases (and I have no reason to believe that Klein is among them), their real-life experience—their hard-gained wisdom, you might say—is virtually nil.
Again, this is generally true on left or right. I’m picking on Klein because I only recently discovered his age, and it surprised me. It’s not really about Klein himself, either; he’s just an especially egregious and prominent example of the trend towards ever-younger journalists getting ever more influential positions, before they’ve had a chance to be seasoned by experience.
Why? I’m not sure whether this trend is mainly on the left, either, or whether it’s more generally true. But since the vast majority of journalists are liberals and/or leftists, the pool of young ones is certainly larger on that end.
I asked a good friend of mine who knows a bit about the business of reportage to tell me why so many journalists today seem to be youngsters, and he answered in two words, “They’re cheaper.” This claim is backed up in this piece, which describes it as a world-wide phenomenon:
It appears commercial pressures, falling wages and other factors are driving the age of journalists down in all parts of the world, at the expense of long-term collective memory, specialist knowledge and the wisdom that comes from experience.
The first reference came from a newspaper editor in Myanmar who noted that as his country heads toward its first election in 20 years, its newsrooms are populated with young journalists who don’t remember anything of the 1990 election and have no experience in political or electoral coverage. That lack of experience is worrying, he said…
The same thing is true here, unfortunately, although older journalists are hardly immune to the charges of ignorance and/or distortion of history. But younger ones have even more reason to be unaware of history, and less wisdom and experience to draw on in order to interpret it and relate it to events of the present.
Whatever happened to the idea of the cub reporter who must learn from his/her elders before being entrusted with the big stories? Gone the way of this:
[NOTE: This piece of Klein’s is typical, a pro-Obama pro-Democrat article purporting to use statistics to say that the recovery is going just fine, taking time but right on schedule. Note also the comments, almost all of which ridicule what he’s saying and point out his callow youth and ignorance—and remember, this is the Washington Post, not some conservative publication. The vast majority of the comments there are so pointed and so wickedly critical of Klein that I almost started to feel sorry for him—but I managed to stop myself in the nick of time.
I swear I had read neither the piece by Klein nor the comments section when I wrote my post above, although many of them expand on the theme I’ve sketched here. Here’s one, from commenter “jimmyjohns,” posted on 8/7/2010 at 8:10:23 PM:
why the HELL is ezra klein making these pronouncements from on high to all of us little nobodies among the masses? what has he done with his life aside from being a shill for “progressive” policies and citing highly dubious studies that promote his own policy preference (omg, no universal health insurance kills 50,000 people in the US each year… a liberal outfit that demands universal health insurance says so!)? why does the washington post subject us to this ridiculousness? the nyt is even more liberal than the post but at least they have people with some qualifications doing the shilling for the dems. and they usually cite them appropriately as being opinions/blogs and dont present them as nonpartisan news analyses.
This one, from “invention13” on 8/7/2010 at 7:10:29 PM is pretty fine, as well:
I would suggest that [Klein] get out more often, or at least turn on the local news. He would see loads of people losing their homes, who have been jobless so long all their benefits have run out. He would see that practically noone is hiring and that if corporate profits are up, it is simply because payrolls are down. All of our senses tell us “this is not a recovery”.
I’m not knocking him, this is the kind of thing young people say when they want to seem profound and get noticed. My suggestion to Ezra is that he put away the column for a few years, go out in the world and do something useful: start a business, learn a trade, etc.. and then come back when he has a bit more experience under his belt.
And the next one, by “MrRealistic,” is in the same vein:
Klein has no qualifications to write this article. The Post surely knows this but doesn’t care. They advocate a certain point of view and believe Klein is the perfect shill for them. The only way to get the Post’s attention it for everyone who thinks it’s an outrage that someone with no business experience is writing business columns should drop their Post subscription and explain why. Money talks and that is the only way the Post will care about the views of folks who don’t worship Obama.
Then there’s “TocquevilleDemocracy” on 8/7/2010 at 1:36:06 PM, who writes:
The Washington Post editors have jumped the shark allowing anything this ridiculous to be published by a Poli-Sci major 4 years out of UCLA, UNDERGRADUATE.
Having lived his 26 years knowing nothing but prosperity, we can forgive Klein for being so insensitive to the unemployed and so clueless on how they arrived there. What excuse can we make for the WaPo editors who hired this JournoLIST and keep publishing him anyway?
I could go on—and on and on and on—showing similar comments, but why bother? You get the idea.]
Please read this cri de coeur, found on a comments page at the WaPo, written by commenter “sayoung809132001” and posted on August 7, 2010 at 1:07:14 PM,:
I urge the new republicans who are now running to reach out to the unions, we are weary,we know we are a big part of the problem and we are ready to compromise and work together. Hell, I used to buy all of the spin,I am guilty of doing too little research and just toeing the party line because I was too busy. I’ve got plenty of time now, I’ve got plenty of will now, to say I regret all of the above doesn’t do it justice. However, as a penance for the error of my ways, I am willing to take any kind of pay cut,benefit cut,furlough, whatever to just be able to feed my family and not have to worry about the bills and the roof over our heads. I am willing to cut whatever corners are necessary,learn whatever new skill is required to just get people working again.If I never have to hear the words GREEN JOBS from my governor’s mouth again I would fall on my knees in gratitude. Fancy ideas, cotton candy spun dreams do not materialize into real paying jobs. Our entire state of Michigan was sacrificed to to the green job pie in the sky promise. It now resembles a third world country. Whatever it takes, with whatever party,candidate, etc who has a realistic, adult answer will get our votes. The rose colored glasses are gone, I am turning accusing eyes at my so called “advocates” and I am bringing a hell of a lot of people with me. I am an adult,speak to me as an adult, do not whine and point a finger of blame at a minority party for your own failure. ADULTS admit when they have made a mistake, it is becoming clear to me who the irresponsible children are who go on a crazy,who cares spending spree and then become irritated when the people aren’t appreciative of their irresponsibility, and it is apparent who the adults are who are standing up screaming NO! STOP!YOU IDIOTS. We will soon see which side the majority of the electorate is on. I only regret I have one vote to cast. It is a dog eat dog world out there, the democrat party wrote their own obituary with their utter foolishness , I played a part in that foolishness, I regret it utterly, but thankfully a tragic and deep lesson has been learned. If nothing else, I am grateful to be awake,thinking on my own, and seeing the light for the first time- a miniscule silver lining to a very dark cloud.
And here the same commenter is again, a bit earlier (at 11:53:50 AM on the same day, addressing the author of the article where he’s commenting, Ezra Klein):
…PLEASE be sure to head over to Michigan’s ghost towns, boarded up shops, empty parking lots,see the lines teeming at the unemployment offices,people lined up for food stamps and tell all of those people that the “slow recovery is right on schedule.” What a complete and out of touch idiot,one of many of the tone deaf, over confident fools that seem to make up our media nowadays—the same media who will be stunned speechless when the auto workers of this country turn on the democratic party and either vote republican as a protest or don’t even show up to vote at all. We are everywhere in this country, but mostly we are in the blue states. We are beyond fed up with promises, we are beyond fed up with being taken for granted by our non-representing representatives, and we are determined to make a deafening exclamation point at the ballot box on Nov.2.After being unemployed for nearly two years, I am over the blame game of GOP versus DEM, who in the heck cares? It is clearly obvious that NEITHER party has the answer so I am game to vote in someone who has EXPERIENCE RUNNING A BUSINESS, has never served in congress,isn’t reading a speech off of a teleprompter that someone else wrote, and doesn’t REEK of the stench of corruption. Maybe that person will rise above the pettiness” they are the party of no-wah- we only have a supermajority” and for a change do something that WORKS! I have been a democrat all of my life. I am a union worker in a generation of union workers, my entire family are union workers- we are all democrats. Not a one of us has even the slightest problem voting against the democratic party- the democratic party doesn’t exist anymore. We don’t recognize it, we don’t like it, we don’t buy what they’re selling and very soon WE will be giving THEM a pink slip.
Amen, brother (or sister), amen.
[ADDENDUM: For those who’ve complained that the comments from “sayoung” are too difficult to read because of the huge paragraphs, Gerard Vanderleun has edited and re-formatted them to increase their readability. Take a look.]
I would say “read the whole thing.” But I’ll amend that a bit and say instead, “you owe it to yourself, and to history and the future, to read the whole thing.”
And then read Haffner’s book, too—as I plan to—because the excerpts Foster offers seem more relevant now than ever before.
Decoy Jews are now being used by police departments in the Netherlands—that is, cops disguised as Jews—a response to increasing reports that Jews wearing skullcaps cannot travel the streets of some European cities such as Amsterdam without being harassed:
Since 1999, Jewish organizations in the Netherlands have been complaining that Jews who walk the Dutch streets wearing skullcaps risk verbal and physical attacks by young Muslims. Being insulted, spat at or attacked are some of the risks associated with being recognizable as a Jew in contemporary Western Europe.
Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes. “Dirty Jew, go back to your own country,” a group of Moroccan youths shouted at a young indigenous Dutch Jew. “It is rather ironic,” the young man commented, adding that if one goes out in a burka one encounters less hostility than if one wears a skullcap.
Rather ironic, indeed. Ironic, also, that in Amsterdam, the city where Anne Frank’s family took refuge, this sort of behavior is still happening—mainly at the hands of other newcomers and their children, not the Germans this time but the Muslims from various countries.
And ironic, also, that the left is up in arms about police entrapment of those same Muslims:
The deployment of “decoy Jews”, however, is being criticized by leftist parties such as the Dutch Greens. Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime, which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.
If the laws about provoking a crime are at all similar to the entrapment laws here, the Greens have no case at all. But if merely walking about while looking Jewish is considered a provocation to violence, then Europe (and the world) is in even worse trouble than I thought.
