Busy with out-of-town guests, so I took the day off. See you tomorrow!
Not an operetta, not by a long shot
When I read the first paragraph or two of this article (via Norm Geras), I thought perhaps it was from the Onion. The King of Swaziland, banning sex thoughout the realm? A ceremony of dancing girls, burning the tassels that signified their chastity?
It also brought to mind a certain comic operetta, “The Mikado,” the Gilbert and Sullivan masterpiece featuring a mythical Japan in which flirting was a capital crime; and a musical comedy from my youth, “Once Upon a Mattress,” a retelling of “The Princess and the Pea,” set in a fairy tale kingdom where no one could marry until the crown prince was wed.
But as I read on, I discovered that it’s not a joke. It’s real, and it’s no operetta, despite the following:
As [the girls] arrived at the Queen Mother’s palace on Monday, before taking off their tassels, they sang in jest: “At last, we can now have sex.”
But after the strangeness–as well as the musical comedy overtones–of the story recede, we are left with a horrific human tragedy, that of AIDS in Africa and what to do about it. And the truth is that no one really seems to have all that much more of a clue than the King of Swaziland, a country in which 40% of the population is HIV positive.
Think about that for a moment: 40% of the people HIV-positive, and the mechanism of spread is heterosexual sexual contact. This is a prescription for the death of a country, and a region, unless something happens soon. But what is that something?
I’ve read many articles on the subject of AIDS in Africa, and there’s no shortage of earnest proposals to help the situation. But most of the people who work in the field express a deep despair about the nature and scope of the problem.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on this, and I’m most definitely not knocking those who are. But at the moment the problem seems virtually insurmountable. The AIDS situation in sub-Saharan Africa is so complex and terrible because the disease intersects with myriad other problems that have long plagued the area–poverty, malnutrition, other diseases, political and institutional corruption on a widespread scale, and the breakdown of tribal societies–particularly ancient marriage customs–with the coming of urbanization.
Although it may be un-PC to admit it, part of the picture are sexual mores (some of them connected with the exploitation of women) that have helped the AIDS epidemic run rampant in sub-Saharan Africa, along with official denial of the enormous extent of the problem. The King of Swaziland may indeed be a hypocrite, and he may be utterly unrealistic about human nature, but at least he’s not in denial of the magnitude of the AIDS epidemic in his country.
Here’s an article that offers a good summary of the AIDS problem in sub-Saharan Africa. It contained the following list of the elements that need to be in place to effectively prevent the spread of AIDS there. See how likely you think it is that most of the items on this list could be instituted any time soon, especially the final entry:
Widespread knowledge about HIV/AIDS and HIV prevention measures, such as safe sex practices and the use of condoms
Adequate networks and personnel for HIV/AIDS testing, counseling, education and care
Adequate funding for HIV prevention/treatment
Massive campaigns to remove the stigma of HIV/AIDS
Stable networks for education and health care
Strong political and public health leadership to address HIV prevention efforts
Empowerment of women
Enforced prohibitions against rape
Strong infrastructure (roads, telecommunications)
Strong and stable economies and governments that are not engaged in war or civil unrest
The article goes on to state that cultural customs around sexuality impede the fight against AIDS. If you have the stomach for it (and I warn you, it requires a very strong one) you could also take a look at this Village Voice article, which offers a great many depressing details about these customs and how they further the spread of the disease.
The following is an example (from the Voice article) of how certain cultural practices that once made sense in pre-AIDS tribal cultures have become part of the problem, post-AIDS:
Like many cultures in East and southern Africa, the Luo practice what is variously translated as home guardianship or, more commonly, widow inheritance. When a husband dies, one of his brothers or cousins marries the widow. This tradition guaranteed that the children would remain in the late husband’s clan””after all, they had paid a dowry for the woman””and it also ensured that the widow and her children were provided for. When the guardian takes the widow, sexual intercourse is believed to “cleanse” her of the devils of death. A woman who refuses to take a guardian brings down chira””ill fortune””on the entire clan. Of course, if her husband died of AIDS, she might very well pass on the virus to her guardian. Millicent Obaso, a Luo public-health worker with the Red Cross, says: “We have homes where all the males have died because of this widow inheritance.”
There is little doubt that underlying social change on a vast scale is necessary–as well as economic and political change. But how to effect changes in sexual practices in the absence of these deeper changes? Most attempts to accomplish this by legislation would be as doomed to failure as King Mswati’s, even if they were more sophisticated than his.
Well, Bush is pretty clear about it
Yesterday there was a lot of back and forth, both here and elsewhere, about what Secretary Rice may or may not have said and may or may not have meant about whether the Palestinians need to take the next step (or a next step) in response to the unilateral Israeli move of leaving Gaza.
As I wrote in one of my comments, reasonable people can certainly differ on what Ms. Rice said or meant. The question of whether the Times “Dowdified” her quote (and I continue to think there was a bit of that going on) is a side issue to the more pressing question of what it was that Rice actually meant.
But today President Bush has been quite clear on the subject. Reuter’s reports (via LGF), that Bush, in his radio address:
…put pressure on the Palestinians on Saturday to respond to the Israeli pullout from Gaza and portions of the West Bank by cracking down on terrorism…”Now that Israel has withdrawn, the way forward is clear. The Palestinians must show the world that they will fight terrorism and govern in a peaceful way,” Bush said.
So it seems that Bush–at least for today–is placing the ball in the Palestinian court. He seems to be demanding the quid pro quo about which Rice was somewhat equivocal.
As for Rice’s previous remarks, and their correct interpretation? It’s a bit like reading tea leaves, and there are quite a few possibilities. Either Judith of Kesher Talk is correct, and Rice is playing “bad cop” to Bush’s “good cop,” or Rice and Bush are not in agreement on this, or Rice is on the same page as Bush and has been misinterpreted by the NY Times, or the whole thing is in a state of flux and even Bush and Rice don’t quite know what her position is.
Whatever Bush or Rice say, I would be extremely surprised if the Palestinians actually followed through with positive action. And if that doesn’t happen, it’s all “mere rhetoric.” But rhetoric still matters somewhat, because it sets the tone of the policy expectations for the region.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. The US can’t force the Palestinians to abandon terrorism and hatred as a way of life. But we can stop rewarding it or ignoring it, and this type of statement from Bush (if he keeps at it), is at least the equivalent of “leading the horse to water.” The rest is up to the horse.
I can only hope that the administration gets clear and remains clear on this score. And even if its a game of “good cop, bad cop,” each cop should aim to be consistent about his/her message.
[ADDENDUM: By the way, I was pretty careful about this one. I didn’t take Reuters’ word for it; I went to the actual text of Bush’s radio address to check up on them. They passsed with flying colors; he said what they said he said. Congratulations, Reuters!]
Okay, NY Times, so what have you got to say about this?
In yesterday’s piece on press bias, I mentioned that one of the things that bother people who are sick of press distortions (the word I favor instead of “bias”) is the use of the truncated quote. Quotes are often cut off prematurely, manipulated, and/or offered out-of-context, in ways that change their meaning.
And so today I read (via LGF) this post, which makes it crystal clear that the Times did exactly that with the recent Condi Rice quote for which she received so much criticism, “It cannot be Gaza only.” Read the whole Rich Richman post and decide for yourself.
The wonderful thing about communications today is that it is easier than ever before to view transcripts of the actual interviews from which newspapers get the information which they summarize for those of us who have neither the time nor the inclination to “read the whole thing.” Many of us (myself included) used to trust the MSM to get it right–after all, reading comprehension (or listening comprehension) ought to be one of the basic skills of any reporter, and not so very difficult to achieve. How hard can it be to summarize what a person has said?
Apparently, very very hard, if not impossible, at least for many reporters–oops, “journalists.” I can think of only three explanations: either reporters are actually less intelligent than the average person, or they are negligently careless in writing their stories, or they are purposely shaping the quotes to make a propaganda point and relying on the fact that their reading public will never know the difference (actually, some combination of these three factors is also possible).
But none of these, as Martha Stewart would say, is “a good thing.” Take your pick on which is actually operating here. Whatever it is that is behind it, thank goodness the internet is affording us the opportunity to see the process in action, and to adjust our beliefs accordingly.
[ADDENDUM: The Unknown Blogger makes an interesting point here, which is that, during a conference on June 20 at the American University in Cairo, Ms. Rice made a similar statement. See this. The quote in question is the following:
I think we have much work to do in the Middle East. We have the work of reform. You have much work to do in the Middle East, the work of reform. We have the work, of course, to do with the Palestinians and Israelis. The day that there is a democratic Palestine living side by side in peace with a democratic Israel is going to be a day that this region clearly has a new sense of hope and a new sense of unity. And so, of course, we need to work each and every day toward the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
I can just say I was just in Israel and in the Palestinian territories and I found that the leaders there are very conscious of the special nature of this moment, that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza can be a first step. And I want to say very clearly, Gaza — it cannot be Gaza only. And we have said this to the Israelis and I think you heard Prime Minister Sharon say yesterday that this can reenergize the roadmap. And so we look for the Gaza withdrawal to be successful. We’re working very hard with the parties on that. That means peaceful and orderly. And then to use the momentum and the trust and the confidence that will have been built over that period to possibly even accelerate our progress on the roadmap, which is, after all, the reliable guide to an independent Palestinian state. And President Bush, who was the first American President to make it policy that there should be a Palestinian state, and a democratic Palestinian state, is very personally devoted to using this moment of opportunity.
I think in all fairness that this quote does cast some doubt on exactly what Ms. Rice was getting at in the first interview, the one the Times was referring to, in which her remarks were more ambiguous. So, the Unknown Blogger does make a point that needs to be taken into consideration.
However, I still have a problem with the Times, although it is a problem of far lesser magnitude than before. In the interview on which they were relying–the one in which the full Rice quote seems to be saying something ambiguous–and also in the June 20th speech in which she seems to be clearer, the context is all-important. And it is that context which the Times has failed to properly emphasize.
Looking at the original NY Times article, available here, I think the failing is not as bad as Richman stated, although it does exist. It is twofold: the quote is truncated in a way that somewhat distorts it, and it is highlighted more than it should have been in the context of Rice’s actual remarks, which focused a great deal on the reciprocal obligations of the Palestinians (to its credit, however, the Times certainly does mention these obligations.).
The all-important context is this: Ms. Rice is speaking of a future in which the Palestinians have performed some act (or acts) indicating a quid pro quo on the way to becoming a reformed, democratic, Palestinian state as part of Bush’s “roadmap.” She is not demanding a further move of unilateral withdrawal by Israel. I believe she makes this fairly clear in other statements she makes on both occasions.
Right now, Israel’s Gaza withdrawal is unilateral. It is akin to the opening move of a chess game, a match played with real people, real lives, and real territory. The Bush administration has never backed the idea of Greater Israel, at least as far as I know. But ever since it drew up its new roadmap, it has insisted that moves by Israel must be met with countermoves by Palestine before any new moves would be expected of Israel.
At the beginning of this piece, I wrote that distorted quotes are ones that are “cut off prematurely, manipulated, and/or offered out-of-context, in ways that change their meaning.” I agree with the Unknown Blogger that the June 20th interview is certainly relevant here. It also now seems that the Times article in question is not one of the truly blatant examples of distortion that it appeared at first to be, although I think it is nevertheless an example of the problems inherent in truncated quotes. But it is an even better example of some much more subtle aspects of the problem of distortion: the effects of emphasis, placement, and context.
For an example of a different type of emphasis and context that might have, and should have, been provided, Richman suggests the following:
…the Times might have informed its readers that Rice emphasized the dismantlement of Palestinian terrorism four times — in response to questions from the Times that sought to emphasize next steps by Israel…”So the answer to the question, what comes next, is . . . the Palestinian Authority is going to have to deal with the infrastructure of terrorism, that’s one of its obligations””…That would have been news that was fit to print.
The key phrase of Rice’s here is “what comes next.” “What comes next” will fall to the Palestinians, not the Israelis, according to Rice. What happens beyond that–including “It cannot be Gaza only”–is a projection into an imaginary future in which the Palestinians have gone a long way towards dismantling its terror apparatus.]
UPDATE: The plot thickens. See this by Omri Ceren. He seems to have followed the matter a great deal more closely for quite some time than most of us have, including myself, and he makes some good points. I am busy tonight with guests, so I can’t give this a lot of attention, but I suggest you read his post and the links and decide.
My quick take on the matter, however, is that the Bush administration, and Rice, have long given such mixed signals about the “roadmap” and what it means that I hereby give the Times a pass on this one.
He’s baaaaack!
I’ve just noticed (via Gates of Vienna) that one of my favorite bloggers, the Religious Policeman (the title is ironic), is back after a long hiatus.
Part of the beauty of blogging is in its diversity of voices (there, don’t I sound like the liberal I used to be?), and the Religious Policeman presents a point of view so rare in the blogosphere that I believe it’s unique. He’s an outspoken Saudi who used to blog from his home country. Now he resides in the UK, where, as he writes, “the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment.” A fascinating read.
Sorry to inconvenience you, but I’m afraid it’s the only way
I’ve analyzed them, humored them, charted their development, and tried to understand them, all to no avail.
So now, no more Ms. Nice Guy. It’s war.
Unfortunately, in war there is always sacrifice. And so, all commenters here will be ever-so-slightly inconvenienced in the war against spambots by having to copy a word that will automatically be generated by our helpful host Blogger each time you comment.
Sorry to have to do it, but I don’t think it will be too big a deal, and it should eliminate the wretched spambot infestation. If I get too many complaints that people are having trouble with it, I can always change my settings again and eliminate it.
Press bias: having the conversation
Okay, back to Jay Rosen. And for those who think the whole thing to be a tempest in a teapot, I respectfully disagree; because it really comes down to some larger issues about the role bias might play in the press, whether that subject is even worth discussing, and, if so, what might be done about the phenomenon.
In Rosen’s new thread on the subject–the opening of which, as I’ve said before, was a good idea–he provides some links to previous posts of his. I have not read them all, but I have just read the two essays on press bias.
In Rosen’s original Austin Bay/Rollback post, he most definitely should have linked to these two essays of his if he didn’t want the “bias” argument to dominate the comments, especially since he should have foreseen that his Austin Bay post would attract people who are not ordinarily readers of Pressthink and hadn’t read his previous discourses on the subject of press bias. If somehow he failed to see this coming at the beginning, he certainly should have understood what was going on by the time of his first comment. The professor was trying to give a seminar with required reading first, and he didn’t supply the reading assignments and then got angry at the class.
The tone of his remarks was both impenetrable and profoundly condescending. Neither furthers the aim of having a productive conversation, nor does cutting off comments do so–it ends it.
So I’d request that he abandon the use of the word “dumb” in this context as being needlessly inflammatory and insulting hyperbole. It’s not dumb to have what Rosen calls “the bias discourse,” although in some ways he is very correct in the point I believe he is actually trying to make, which is that it is often unproductive or even counterproductive. But there’s nothing dumb about those who are annoyed at what they see as evidence of press bias in a press that so often claims to be objective, and who want to talk about this–even if such arguments (like most in politics, or perhaps even in life!) don’t tend to change many hearts and minds, or to lead to solutions, at least right away.
I have always been upfront about my position on the press–at least, I’ve tried to be. But I’ll attempt to clarify it here and expand on it, and in the process make a stab at responding to some of the questions Rosen’s poses in his two “bias” articles.
Keeping in mind that “you can’t always get what you want”:
I want an objective press, but since I recognize it’s an impossible dream, humans being what they are, I accept that the press will always be biased.
If that be so, then I want that bias to be represented by reporters from both sides (using here, for the sake of simplicity, the somewhat misleading dichotomy of left/right) who are roughly equal in number; but I recognize that this will never happen without some sort of crazy unenforceable and undesirable quota system for reporters.
If that be so, then I want journalists and the papers they write for to drop their obviously false claim of objectivity and to be upfront about their general political affiliations, much as many bloggers are.
And I also want journalists on all sides to labor mightily to achieve far more accuracy than many of them display at the moment in their reporting–specifically, perhaps most especially, that they strive to quote people correctly and to fact-check more rigorously.
I also want members of the press to respond more vigorously when they are found to be in error, printing retractions and corrections that are prominently featured and highlighted.
I don’t think I tend to use the word “bias” much anyway when critiquing the press–although I certainly haven’t gone back and reread my pieces on the subject to make sure, so I could be incorrect on that. My impression is that I tend to use the word “distortions” to describe those things I see in the press that I dislike. I believe that the vast majority of what is usually called press “bias” constitutes such distortions, and that they are an unconscious result of the political viewpoint of the journalist skewing his/her selection of the facts, a process that is inevitable and can occur on both sides. I think, however, that the more scrupulously a journalist is aware of this phenomenon and tries to be as evenhanded as possible (knowing of course that complete evenhandedness is impossible), the better. I think that the journalists who succeed the best in this endeavor (IMHO, of course) are the ones I most admire. This success would include the ability to admit when one is wrong, and not to defensively cling to the original distortions and try to justify them.
I think most people who are angry at what they call press bias (and I believe it is still the best shorthand term around for the phenomenon; I would submit “press distortion” to replace it, but somehow I don’t think it will catch on) are especially angry at the uses the press makes of techniques such as truncated quotes that misrepresent the actual point of the speaker, mistakes of fact, subtly shaded shaping of opinion in the choice of “unbiased” [sic] words such as “militant” instead of “terrorist” when the latter would seem more appropriate in many cases, neglecting to provide background and context, the overuse of the anonymous source (see this for my take on solutions to this problem), and opinions stated as fact without backup or documentation (that is, editorializing presented as news). I don’t like either side using these techniques, and their use is a big part of whatever “bias” does exist in the press, and it’s the thing that makes most people who criticize the press hopping mad.
I believe that most journalists believe themselves to be honest brokers who are striving for objectivity. But most of them need to be made far more aware of the ways in which the above (and other) tools creep into their work and cause the charges of bias to stick. Bias is very rarely conscious in a journalist (although on occasion it is). That’s what often makes the protestations of most journalists that they are not biased, and their anger at the charge, take on so much strength. Journalists need to look longer and harder at what is going on here–even if they think they’ve already looked at it long and hard–and try to correct it as best they can, knowing that the corrections will always be flawed and inadequate. But at least improvement is possible, if the will is there and the effort is made.
So I don’t believe–to try to answer Jay’s question couched in his own words–that “wanting from journalists what is also impossible for journalists” (i.e. objectivity) is unfair, although it may indeed seem to be a confused and oxymoronic request when stated that way. I would rephrase the request, however, in the following way: wanting what is impossible doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for the closest approximation to it, as long as we realize the ideal is not achievable in absolute terms. We humans always strive for things that are impossible: truth, justice, fair play, perfect love, etc. But the impossibility of their achievement has nothing to do with the fact that these goals are always worth pursuing, and that in fact the effort towards those goals may help us come closer and closer to them. That they recede forever from our grasp is actually true and worthy of stating and acknowledging, but it is largely irrelevant to the fact that they must be pursued nevertheless, and that every millimeter closer we can get to them is still an achievement.
(ADDENDUM: A question Rosen posed in the comments section of the new thread goes as follows:
If you had the opportunity to advise Jim Lehrer just before he moderated and asked questions at a make or break Presidential debate, in addition to telling him to be careful not to take sides, would you say something like, “and remember this, Jim, you are not an actor in this event.” And if you did say something like that, would it be true?
My answer? I would say to Lehrer, “Remember, Jim, you are an actor in this event whether you like it or not and whether you intend it or not. But the performance for which you should be striving is to be as evenhanded as possible in your manner and your questions, in order to try to prevent, to the best of your ability, your actions tilting the results in either direction.”]
Update on the update: Rosen redux
I noticed that Jay Rosen has opened up shop on comments again, which is, IMHO, a good thing.
I am going to be very busy (with non-computer things) until fairly late tonight, and won’t have a chance till then to take a good look and do some thinking about what he’s actually saying. Maybe I’ll respond later, if I have more to say on the subject. But I just wanted to direct the attention of those who are still interested in this subject to the new thread at Jay Rosen’s Pressthink.
Grieving parents, revisited
Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has posted a very personal and utterly heartrending essay on the loss of her daughter. It’s couched as a letter to Cindy Sheehan from one child-bereaved mother to another, and demonstrates great compassion. I urge you to read it as a testament to Dymphna’s much-loved daughter Shelagh, and as a description of the profound grief that flows from such a terrible loss.
I’ve recently written on grieving parents in wartime, but of course parents can lose their children in other ways. Every time a child dies and a parent survives it seems as though the natural order of the world has been upended. As Dymphna writes to Ms. Sheehan:
But the condition you and I share is unnamed because since time immemorial parents have dreaded this loss. It is the worst. There is nothing else that can be done to us. A motherless child is a pitiful creature and carries a life-long emptiness he or she tries to fill with other grown-ups. A childless mother is a crazy person and nothing can fill the hole, not if she had a baby a year for the rest of her life.
“Time heals all wounds.” Facile words, and sometimes incorrect. I quote Kathe Kollwitz once again, the artist featured in my previous post on the subject: There is in our lives a wound which will never heal. Nor should it.
Time may not heal, but something happen over time to most parents to allow them to live with their grief. I don’t know what name to give this thing; perhaps it’s wisdom. It comes slowly, if at all, and I don’t think it ever feels like recompense for the loss.
Kollwitz’s art expressed some of her grief–expressed it, not extinguished it–and in that process I believe there was some small bit of healing. Likewise, bereaved poets turn to their art, as Cindy at Chicagoboyz discusses in this post concerning one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost, and his wonderful poem “Home Burial.”
The poem deals with a couple’s reaction to the death of a child (the post contains the full text of the poem). It is no accident that Frost himself suffered the loss of a child, an event from which it is said that his marriage never recovered. The poem describes the same sort of phenomenon that Dymphna touches on, the contrasting forms grieving sometimes takes between men and women, and the anger and rift that difference can engender. (You can also discern a subtle contrast between the mother and father in Kollwitz’s statues of the bereaved parents, featured in my first “Grieving” post; the father is more stoic and rigidly controlled, although he still grieves.)
In “Home Burial,” the man takes refuge in action, the woman in feelings. This causes estrangement:
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’
‘You can’t because you don’t know how.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand–how could you?–his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
There’s another famous poem by a bereaved parent, one I discovered as a teenaged high school student when I was assigned to write a paper on it. I remember that experience as being one of the first times–perhaps, in fact, the very first time–I truly understood that famous people of long ago had not just been statues or icons or entries in the encyclopedia, but had actually once been living, breathing people, just like us.
Until I read this particular poem, written on the occasion of the death of his first son, I’d thought of Ben Johnson as a fusty old guy who had written some fusty old play that I’d been forced reluctantly to read. This poem made Ben Jonson seem almost alive himself. Despite the poem’s archaic language, I instantly recognized the voice of a real person, an anguished cri de coeur:
Ben Jonson – On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ‘scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
In this poem, Jonson struggles mightily to take the high road and accept his son’s death with grace and equanimity. He struggles, but he fails–and in this futility of effort lies his tremendous humanity. “Oh, could I lose all father now!” cries Jonson, overwhelmed by the almost unbearable weight of the burden he carries and the hopelessness of ever shedding it. All he can do is to say of his son’s grave, “Here doth lie/Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.” The laurels of fame, everything Ben the Elder had written and had given him pride, were as nothing compared to the son and namesake who now lay buried in the earth, along with Jonson’s joy.
But Jonson still had his next-best piece of poetry, the poem itself, and the transforming task of writing it. As did Frost. Kollwitz had her art. And in that written and plastic art we all are reached–and some are comforted, if only briefly.
Others turn to different efforts. John Walsh dedicated the rest of his life to finding criminals. MADD founder Candy Lightner fought to reduce drunk driving. And Cindy Sheehan wants President Bush to pay.
What do most people think about and feel in such circumstances? Memories, love, faith, despair, guilt, anger. Sometimes they turn to drink, sometimes to divorce, sometimes to both. Sometimes they try therapy; there are therapists who specialize in dealing with grief and loss, and groups for the bereaved, including special ones for grieving parents. Sometimes faith gets them through; sometimes they lose their faith. But it’s a rough journey for all.
I will close with another poem, a sonnet by a lesser-known contemporary poet named William John Watkins. The poem appeared in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of the poetry journal Hellas, and is dedicated to his son Wade. It’s about the weariness of such loss, and the carrying on despite that weariness.
We Used to Take Long Walks, My Son and I
for Wade 1963-1993
Footsore on this road of sour surprises
whose sole consistency is going down,
this road of dips and sharp but lower rises
that lead like stairs back up toward the crown
I did not know for summit when we crested,
as far behind as now it is above
the strength I had when I was young and rested
and thought all mountains flattened out by love
that now I know makes mountains only higher
and fills the road with rock-bruised barefoot hurt
and sun that sets the shuffled dust on fire
and hides the sharp shard buried in the dirt.
I’d lay me down and join the roadside dead,
but that I see you walking on ahead.
Spambots: the next generation
I just spent several minutes of my life that I’ll never get back again cleaning up after the spambots. They come in clusters and apparently are only able to hit the top thread of the day (in a few minutes, therefore, I may have to tidy up this post).
There were six of them this time, arriving in the span of approximately one hour.
Why mention them–other than to vent my spleen? Well, I noticed that they seem to be evolving even as we speak, becoming ever more creative, chatty, and conversational.
I subtitled my previous post on the topic “the invasion of the comments snatchers,” after the movie in which the aliens looked so much like humans that it was difficult for mere humans to tell the difference. At the time I was joking, but now I wonder if this isn’t the way spambots are going–trying to sound so much like a real live human that they will end up fooling us stupid bloggers into thinking that’s what they actually are.
Here, for example, are portions of the text of two of the spambot comments I just deleted. I’m eliminating the links, of course, because I don’t want to do their nefarious work for them. As you will see, they are now making political comments and other observations about the world (it appears, by the way, that even spambots aren’t too keen on CBS):
Black Rock Discovers Blogging
You have to hand it to those little troopers at CBS News. After a year filled with what we’ll delicately call, uh, crap, they’re doing their best to make a precious little bounce back towards respectibility.
Great input, you have a great blog here! I’m definitely going to bookmark you! [Link follows]
This one is less political, but it has a rather pleasant personality, don’t you think?:
10 Years That Changed The World
A decade ago, Netscape went public, blasting the Web into everyday life. Now, Wired talks to the inside players – from Marc Andreessen to Shawn Fanning to Steve Jobs – about 10 years of boom, bust, and sock …
It’s nice to read blogs and learn about other people. I’m just discovering all this – guess I should bookmark your blog, eh? I have a rose gardening site. You wouldn’t guess that by the title, would you? LOL – lots of rose gardening related things. Come and check it out if you get time 🙂
Notice the clever “and learn about other people” [italics mine]. Wants us to think it’s “people.” Well, spambot, you didn’t fool me–yet.
Update on Rosen’s rollback: be careful what you wish for
[Note: the following is an update to this post from yesterday.]
Reader Rick Ballard has kindly let me know that Jay Rosen has pulled the plug and closed comments on the Bay/Rollback thread. Rosen’s reasons for doing so remain somewhat murky to me. But there is no doubt that he had an unusually intense reaction to the discussion there–a discussion that I have to say seemed rather mild and decorous to me compared to some I’ve seen in the blogosphere.
Although I am somewhat at a loss to know exactly what is going on with Mr. Rosen, it is clear that he is embarrassed. Very very embarrassed.
He tells us so himself, in the final comment he lodged before closing the thread down:
I’m embarrassed that this thread appeared at my weblog. I’m embarrassed that something I wrote and edited was the occasion for it. I embarrassed that the letters “edu” appear in the Web address at the top of this page, since most of this is the opposite of education. I’m embarrassed for having entertained, even for a second, the notion that Austin Bay, a Bush supporter and war veteran, might get a hearing for some of his warnings from those who agree with him on most things.
And I’ve had enough of anonymous tough guys with their victim’s mentality raging at their own abstractions…
Those who wish to continue can head over to Austin’s thread, where the story is pretty much the same. But four days of this pathetic spectacle is enough for me. Thread closed. My advice: Go home to your wives and children, and breathe some truth.
The entire thread plus its comments section is so long that I hesitate to ask you to go over to Rosen’s blog and read it, but without doing so it’s hard to get the full flavor of the discussion that so angered Mr. Rosen. But fortunately blogger Neuro-Con has done us all the service of summarizing it extremely well in this post. Neuro-Con’s analysis of the back-and-forth exchange is very much in accord with my own, so rather than reinvent the wheel, I gratefully direct you to his post.
The entire situation becomes increasingly puzzling once one learns more about Mr. Rosen. On the face of it one might think his reaction is that of an elitist ivory-tower academic, resistant to hearing from readers, and interested only in controlling the discussion. His behavior on the thread in question certainly points in that direction.
But that has hardly been Rosen’s profile in the past. In fact, for more than a decade, Rosen has been a vocal champion of “people-first, bottom-up ‘public journalism’.”
And that’s not all. Just two short months ago Rosen won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog award for “outstanding defense of free expression” (see here).
And then there’s this October 2003 interview with Christopher Lydon. Here is Rosen speaking:
The terms of authority are changing in American journalism…Blogs are undoing the system for generating authority and therefore credibility of news providers…And the one-to-many broadcasting model of communications–where I have the news and I send it out to everybody out there who’s just waiting to get it–doesn’t describe the world anymore. And so people who have a better description of the world are picking up the tools of journalism and doing it. It’s small. Its significance is not clear. But it’s a potentially transforming development…I like [it] when things get shaken up, and when people don’t know what journalism is and they have to rediscover it.
Is this the same Jay Rosen who shut down the comments section with the stern and vaguely archaic (not to mention sexist–which is actually the least of its problems) “Go home to your wives and children, and breathe some truth”? (By the way, the expression had such an odd tone that I Googled it, thinking Rosen was quoting some famous saying of which I wasn’t aware. But I couldn’t find a source. Does the phrase ring a bell with anyone?)
Here’s another conversation in which the Jay of old was a participant. He was actually the interviewer in this one, speaking about a year ago with Dan Gillmor, a syndicated technology columnist who does most of the talking. Note the extreme relevance of the following passage, and Rosen’s responses:
Gillmor: The first thing we’d need to do is listen, pay attention to what is being said. To really get out of the lecture mode that we’ve been in and to recognize that something new is going on that will benefit not just our journalism–which of course we want to do–but benefit the people who are reading or listening to or viewing our journalism. Those are the people who we say we want to serve. So, the conversation part of it–the listening part, the responding part–is not just for journalists. It’s for all of us, it’s for everybody. And it comes back to what I’ve made a kind of a cliche in my own world, which is that my readers know more than I do.
Rosen: I want to ask about that cliche, because I don’t think it’s a cliche. I think it’s a major insight. First of all, tell me what happened to make you realize “My readers know more than I do.” And why didn’t it just freak you out?
Gillmor: Well, it did freak me out at first. But what happened was, I went to Silicon Valley in 1994 to write about technology. And I wrote about it in a place where most of the people I was writing about were already on email. And invariably they knew collectively much more than I did. You know, you write about tech in Silicon Valley, by definition your readers know more than you do. And I saw that happening, and I thought, “Hmm, this is really different.” And then I thought about it and realized that it wasn’t different at all, that it had always been true. That whatever the subject I was writing about, the people who cared enough about it to read it knew more than I did–collectively. It was only now, however, that there was a quick-response mechanism –this feedback loop established through email at first and then later through other tools, that made it possible for them to let me know, in a hurry. And I can assure you that people in the Valley are never shy about letting you know when they think you’re wrong or when you’re missing something.
Rosen: So, it’s not just, “My readers know more than I do.” It’s, “My readers know more than I do and I can tap that because they will tell me.”
Gillmor: Exactly. The ability to find out things that you don’t already know and then to incorporate them into what you do in the future–it’s a great advantage for any journalist. I think all journalists on any beat need to understand that this is an opportunity. It’s not remotely a threat. And journalists have skills that the people writing to us may or may not have. And why don’t we, in the best sense of the expression, all take mutual advantage of this situation to do a better job?
Rosen: Well, let’s cut a little deeper into that. Because even though what you say is logical, and good advice, I can think of lots of reasons why “My readers know more than I do” might be resisted by journalists. For one thing, the basic transaction in mainstream journalism is understood to be–I’m the journalist. I know things because I’ve done my reporting. I’ve inquired, I’ve asked questions, and I’ve hunted down documents. And you don’t know. You weren’t there. You’re not a reporter. You don’t have the time. You’re off living your life. And so the whole idea of informing the public, informing the readers, assumes that the news organization knows and its customers–as it were–don’t.
And secondly, the authority of the journalist–the way it has evolved in the United States–is very much tied up with the journalist knowing things that others don’t. Having access that others don’t. Witnessing things that others can’t–a press conference, etc. And it’s almost like in the deep grammar of American journalism, the assumption is that knowledge moves from the news organization to a public that lacks it. So, it’s not surprising to me that “My readers know more than I do” is hard to grasp.
So strangely enough, in this interview of about a year ago, when Rosen described so well the thought process of journalists who try to exercise authority over their readers–a sort of intellectual snobbery on their part–he also ended up describing the tenor of his own response to the comments in that recent thread. His insight was both eerie and prescient–applied to himself. The very thing he noted in so many journalists seems to have worked its irresistible siren call on him.
So this is my question for Jay Rosen: have you forgotten this interview? If so, could you perhaps read it again, and review the idea of the new journalism as a conversation, a conversation that you cannot control by the force of your authority?
My guess is that Rosen is an idealist who truly does believe (or thinks he believes) in extending the principles of democracy to the institution of the press–what he calls “public journalism.” Ideally, that is; in his head. I’m not sure, though, that he has the stomach or the heart for the results–the sometimes messy and unwieldy reality of a truly public forum such as blog comments, in which the press is often accused of bias.
If Rosen wants a conversation, he certainly got one on his blog. It may be a demonstration of the old saying: be careful what you wish for.
[UPDATE: Dean disagrees.
Here’s a copy of my response to Dean, which I posted as a comment there:
I certainly agree that any blogger has the right to cut off comments for any reason, any time, on his/her blog. You have that right, I have that right, and Jay Rosen has that right, which he exercised.
However, to those who haven’t plowed through the comments section in question, I’ll say that that particular thread didn’t seem to feature a high volume of nasty attacks on Mr. Rosen himself. Nor was it even a particularly rabid group of comments in general, especially considering its great length. Comments threads sometimes degenerate into mindless name-calling, but this one had quite a bit of substance–and, in the main, I think people were trying to be relatively polite (especially for the blogosphere) and to discuss the issues. That’s why Rosen’s behavior seemed so puzzling to me.
What’s the significance of it all, and why bother talking about it? Is Rosen “just a guy?” Well, of course he is. But he is also a guy who is a champion of the idea that journalists need to engage in a conversation with readers, of “people-first, bottom-up ‘public journalism’ “. When in that thread he seemed to cut off such “conversation” in an especially testy and condescending manner, and seemed angry that people were accusing the press of bias, his behavior was arguably both hypocritical and a microcosm of the larger issue of whether the press is guilty of arrogance and one-sidedness (the subject matter of many of the comments). So, although certainly not of earth-shattering importance, his act took on a somewhat larger significance than the simple and rather unremarkable fact that Jay Rosen had closed down comments on a particular thread.]
Tidings to gladden a neocon’s heart
Can it be? Hearts and minds changing in the Moslem world?