A few more thoughts on the Williamson firing

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not going to write another book on this—yesterday’s tome was enough. But here’s a bit more on the subject of the Williamson firing and its fallout.

First, let’s get this straight: of course Williamson was hired in the first place as the resident conservative Never-Trumper. If he had been pro-Trump, I can’t imagine that he would have been hired. He was also hired as click-bait, for the very reason that he was later fired: his hard-hitting provocative style and controversial views. The particular view that got him into trouble—that women who get abortions should be treated exactly as murderers in the legal sense, not just the moral one—was a bridge too far for the Atlantic’s readers and editor.

Or so they say.

Second, let’s not pretend that Williamson’s views are not extremely—and I mean extremely—unusual and severe, even on the right. He was not fired for some sort of ordinary or common viewpoint. It is also extreme historically; even during the time that abortion was illegal in this country (roughly mid-19th to mid-20th century) the woman herself was not always penalized, and it was never the case in the US that the woman was treated and penalized by the law as a murderer (nor was it the case in almost every other country on earth).

Third, Williamson has stated that he is serious about that point of view. Whether he believes in capital punishment or not (he’s not sure if he does), he does believe that women should face the same penalties murderers face. So even without execution that would ordinarily be life imprisonment, for example. Anyone who says he was just joking has likely not listened carefully and objectively to that audio I presented in my previous post, in which he makes it quite clear that he is serious (and whether or not he believes in capital punishment is mostly irrelevant, as I just indicated).

Roger Kimball has written:

Like nearly 50 percent of the American public, Kevin believes that abortion is a form of homicide, i.e., murder (“homicide” somehow sounds more antiseptic), and noted he was “absolutely willing to see abortion treated like regular homicide under the criminal code.”

I ordinarily admire Kimball’s work, but that is misleading. It is not only a possible point of view but a commonplace one to believe abortion is a form of murder in the moral sense but not in the legal sense and that it should not be criminalized at all (or only in a very minor way). That is the position held by about 50 percent of the American public, and it is a far cry from the position Williamson advocates.

Kimball says, later in the essay:

If you listen to the exchange, it is clear””or so I think””that the bit about hanging was a flip provocation. It was a provocation that Kevin apparently liked, however, for he repeated it in a tweet (since deleted).

I listened, and I see nothing flip about it. Kimball is correct that the hanging part was somewhat flip, but that’s not the point; that’s just the hook that got a lot of attention. Williamson’s point was that women who abort should be treated as murderers under the law, and he was not flip about that. I’m amazed at the excuses made around this by so many pundits. In that clip, Williamson makes it clear that he means what he says, and there is no reason not to take him at his word. You can agree or disagree with him, think he should have been fired or not, but don’t whitewash what he actually said (as so many seem to be doing).

I happen to think—as I wrote before—that the Atlantic wanted Williamson to make provocative comments in the periodical. Why else hire a provocateur? Their motive most likely was to get lots of traffic while making the magazine’s readers hate conservatives even more and to consider Williamson’s extreme views typical of conservatives in general (and maybe to generate more business for fiction like The Handmaid’s Tale). They got more than they bargained for, and let him go.

Or maybe they got just what they bargained for. After all, they’re getting a lot of attention, aren’t they? And so is Williamson. And the impression has been fostered that a lot of conservatives want to execute women who have abortions.

Weighing in on the Kevin Williamson firing

The New Neo Posted on by

The Atlantic‘s firing of conservative columnist Kevin Williamson about a week and a half after hiring him has been a huge story lately. Talk about revolving doors! The sides have lined up as one might expect: the left in favor of the firing, the right against it.

I’ll start by saying that Williamson has the right to say anything he wants short of defamation and a few other exceptions, the Atlantic has the right to hire him and fire him, and everyone else has the right to approve or disapprove of, agree or disagree with, either Williamson or the magazine.

The controversial statements Williamson made (in 2014, by the way) that apparently got him fired went like this:

KEVIN WILLIAMSON (CO-HOST): And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, “If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.” And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging….

Later in the same episode of the podcast, Williamson continued that when it came to punishment for those who had abortions, he “would totally go with treating it like any other crime up to and including hanging” — going so far as to say that he had “a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment” because “if the state is going to do violence, let’s make it violence. Let’s not pretend like we’re doing something else.”

Here’s the audio (it’s in two segments). Note that his statements were part of a lengthier discussion that had to do with capital punishment and murder. But Williamson unequivocally states that he believes that abortion is murder and should be penalized like other murders, and if capital punishment is in force then capital punishment it should be, preferably hanging (the first video is the more important one). Many people have defended him by saying he was not being serious about this, but on listening to him I have to say that he sounds pretty serious to me:

So, did the Atlantic know about these views before Williamson was hired, and did they just cave to the mob? The magazine apparently already knew something about this view of Williamson’s even before they hired him, because he’d expressed it briefly in a tweet back in 2014. But a tweet—a rush job, written in the spur of the moment—is not the same as this podcast, which re-surfaced last Wednesday, although it had also occurred in 2014.

The magazine’s position is that they didn’t realize how deeply-held these views of Williamson’s were and originally had not been aware of the podcast. Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote this about it: “The language he used in this podcast ”” and in my conversations with him in recent days ”” made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views.” So Goldberg’s argument is a version of “every dog is allowed one free bite”—meaning they shrugged off the tweet but they couldn’t (or wouldn’t, anyway) shrug off the statements made (in cold blood, as it were) in the podcast.

One argument against what Goldberg did in firing Williamson is that if you want diversity of opinion and you want to publish conservative opinion, you shouldn’t fire someone for expressing such an opinion. But is a magazine (or any publication) required to give its op-ed writers free reign to say anything publicly without facing the possibility of firing if what they say goes beyond the pale in the opinion of the editors? Is the writer not the representative of the magazine, in a way, and if a viewpoint publicly stated seems not just wrong but beyond the pale to them, wouldn’t it make sense to fire the writer?

There is little question that Williamson’s opinion on this is logically consistent: if a person believes that abortion is first-degree murder, and that person also believes that people who commit murder should be executed, then it would be quite consistent to believe that women should be executed (either by hanging or otherwise) for having abortions. Williamson is actually a bit iffy on whether he does believe in capital punishment in general, but that’s not really the issue here—it’s that he believes that women who abort should be subject to the full penalties for murder, whatever those penalties are.

However, this is not a mainstream conservative position. In fact, it’s so extreme a position that even Vox—which seems to have searched very hard to find someone in politics or punditry on the right who concurs with Williamson on this—could only unearth a few who did (and one was a state senator from Idaho who reversed his position one day after stating it). The title of that Vox article is “Plenty of conservatives really do believe women should be executed for having abortions: Atlantic writer Kevin Williamson may have been fired for suggesting the death penalty for abortion, but he’s not alone.” But the article itself indicates that “plenty of conservatives” believe no such thing. Although some (not the majority) do believe that there should be some sort of penalty for women who have abortions, only a few (very very few) are willing to characterize the act as murder and apply the same penalties to it.

In fact, not only are Williamson’s views on the proper penalties for abortion not at all mainstream, even among people who believe abortion is murder, only rarely has any society enacted into law the idea that abortion is murder and should be treated with the penalties for murder (see this).

So what should the editor of the Atlantic have done about Williamson? Well, if the magazine didn’t want extremist points of view, it shouldn’t have hired Williamson in the first place. Williamson is a columnist who was already well known for being edgy and way out there (in addition to having a colorful and fluent writing style), and the editors had to have known that’s what they were buying.

They couldn’t handle the details of what that meant, but they certainly must have known he was capable of something like this, and that they might expect it. As explained in September of 2016 in the pages of the Atlantic, of all places, Williamson isn’t just a conservative, he’s a provocateur. That article quoted a 2016 National Review column of his that had sparked enormous controversy, in which Williamson (not a Trump fan) wrote:

Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence””and the incomprehensible malice””of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs ”¦ The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.

You want to hire the guy who wrote that, surely you know you’re not going to get politeness and a tentative touch. You’re going to get someone who will write hard-hitting articles that will offend a lot of people (probably on both right and left), although those same people will be talking about those articles a lot. The Atlantic wanted an entree into that kitchen, but they couldn’t take the heat.

[NOTE: Jonah Goldberg makes the point—and I think it’s a good one—that Williamson was fired for what he thought rather than what he wrote for the magazine, and that therefore he was fired for thoughtcrime. But I don’t think it matters in this case quite as much as it might in others. After all, Williamson was hired as an opinion writer, a columnist, and this was an opinion that Williamson had publicly expressed two times, once on Twitter and once in a National Review podcast, rather than in a private exchange.]

The rats of New York

The New Neo Posted on by

No, that’s not a metaphor. This is about the actual rats that live in New York City—in particular, uptown vs. downtown.

Surprisingly—well, to me, anyway—they are quite genetically similar and strongly resemble their European counterparts of the eighteenth century, having coming over (like so many of our own ancestors) by boat. To be more exact, they resemble those from Great Britain and France.

But there’s been some divergence here in the present-day populations:

Manhattan has two genetically distinguishable groups of rats: the uptown rats and the downtown rats, separated by the geographic barrier that is midtown. It’s not that midtown is rat-free””such a notion is inconceivable””but the commercial district lacks the household trash (aka food) and backyards (aka shelter) that rats like. Since rats tend to move only a few blocks in their lifetimes, the uptown rats and downtown rats don’t mix much.

When the researchers drilled down even deeper, they found that different neighborhoods have their own distinct rats. “If you gave us a rat, we could tell whether it came from the West Village or the East Village,” says Combs. “They’re actually unique little rat neighborhoods.” And the boundaries of rat neighborhoods can fit surprisingly well with human ones.

Who knew that rats were such homebodies?

I’ve certainly seen rats in New York, mostly in the subways. Big fat ones, bold as brass. But I’ve only seen them recently; despite my riding a lot of subways in my youth, I never saw a single one back then.

For that matter, years ago my ex-husband (then my husband) told me he’d once found a dead rat floating in his parents’ swimming pool while we were there for a visit. He’d disposed of it (rat, not pool) without telling me anything about it until decades later. He knew that I might have found the pool off-limits had he told me at the time.

Free speech on campus: Shepherd, Peterson, and sticks and stones

The New Neo Posted on by

Canada, like most other countries, does not have as robust a free speech tradition as we do in the US. They also have hate speech laws, which we (so far) have not passed here, although many universities have codes against hate speech.

If you think I’m overstating the difference between the US and most other countries of the world on the rules about hate speech, just take a look. Many people around the world no doubt think that’s an example of our barbarity; I happen to think it’s an example of our historical devotion to liberty (part of American exceptionalism), and one that is increasingly under threat.

But liberty is always under threat, and that threat often arrives in the guise of “helping” people. In the case of hate speech, banning it is with the ostensible goal of smoothing ruffled feathers and comforting the distressed (or preventing their distress in the first place).

It always seemed to me that a few ruffled feathers—or many ruffled feathers—was the price we paid for liberty, and that we should (and must) willingly pay it to retain our liberty. I felt that way back when I was a liberal Democrat (see this post, from which the following excerpt comes; it describes an incident that happened to me in the early 1990s):

The [anti-free speech] trend was already quite highly developed and deeply entrenched at the time, much to my surprise, even though it had escaped my notice till I returned to campus life.

But I discovered it when the young women in an undergraduate class I was required to take for my Master’s””a class which, being in the social sciences, consisted almost entirely of women””were virtually all in favor of a definition of actionable offensive speech that went something like this: “speech that offends any person in the subjective sense, rather than speech that is in fact objectively offensive.” In vain I stood up in front of the 100-or-so students, most of them around twenty years younger than I, to ask what the limits of this might be, to suggest that it was wrong to allow the most sensitive among us to dictate what was unacceptable, and to speak up for free speech in general. I was met with uncomprehending stares and impatient dismissal, a fossil in my own time.

I realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Not one person appeared to agree with me, or if they did they weren’t saying so publicly or privately. And the professor, a woman just a couple of years younger than I, was clearly on their side. I have never forgotten it, and although at the time I didn’t put it in a political left/right context (that came later), I realized it was a frightening development and it made me feel very, very uneasy and quite alone.

It was a foretaste of things to come, both politically and personally. And even then (nearly thirty years ago) it was already quite well established at the university level.

Yesterday I put up a video of Lindsay Shepherd declaring goodbye to being on the left due to the anti-free-speech attacks on her. Shepherd is in her early twenties, so she wasn’t even conceived when I had that moment of truth in my class (appropriately enough, it was a class in Human Sexuality) so long ago. But she’s learning; she’s learning, and she’s teaching, too, by her example. It’s probably not the teaching she was expecting to be doing when she signed up as graduate student and teaching assistent at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.

If you don’t know Shepherd’s story, you can get up to speed on it here (the article is long, but fascinating). Suffice to say she got into a pack of trouble for merely showing a few minutes of a Jordan Peterson video (as one view among many that she showed) in which he took a stand for free speech and the right to not call transgendered people by their preferred pronouns. Since then, she has publicized her case and become quite famous.

In that article I just linked, I found some good demonstrations of the two basic opposing points of view on free speech. The first comes from Shepherd’s supervisor Nathan Rambukkana, during an interview with her that she recorded:

When Rambukkana brings up the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and suggests Shepherd created an unsafe learning environment, she starts to cry. “I’m sorry I’m crying,” she says. “I’m stressed out because this to me is so wrong, so wrong.”

Shepherd asks who she’s targeted in all this. Joel tells her “trans folks.”

“By telling them ideas that are really out there? Telling them that? By telling them? Really?” Shepherd asks.

“It’s not just telling them. In legitimizing this as a valid perspective…,” Rambukkana starts, before Shepherd cuts in, saying: “In a university, all perspectives are valid.”

Rambukkana replies: “That’s not necessarily true, Lindsay.”

Rambukkana talks about Peterson’s popularity among the alt-right community, and at one point says that playing a clip of the University of Toronto professor, without giving any context for the students, “is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler.”

To me, the heart of the matter is the phrase “unsafe learning environment.” Obviously, learning environments must be “safe” in the sense of “safe from physical harm” (or as safe as reasonably possible, knowing that absolute safety will never be achieved). To do this, we have building codes and the like, and campus security guards. These are all reasonable and customary standards, although even those are sometimes in dispute (for example, should students and/or teachers be allowed to carry guns on campus?).

But physical harm has now become conflated with “mere words”:

Matte [a historian teaching in the Sexual Diversity Studies program at the University of Toronto] responds [to Jordan Peterson]: “I don’t care about your language use. I care about the safety of people being harmed. [”¦] I want people to be aware that trans and gender diverse communities””and especially people of colour””are being targeted and threatened physically.

But if someone is being attacked physically, there is an enormous body of law that deals with those issues, and transgendered people are no different than anyone else in that respect and can avail themselves of the appropriate laws. Whatever happened to the old child’s adage: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”? The distinction had meaning in my childhood, and it should still have meaning now, but to the anti-free-speech forces there is hardly any difference between the two (although they want the freedom for themselves to call their opponents “Hitler”).

Note, also, that in that Matte quote he says he doesn’t care about Peterson’s “language use.” Ah, but it’s not “language use”—it’s freedom of speech. And in fact, it’s the Mattes of the world who care very much about “language use,” and who would limit freedom of speech in order to protect the feelings of protected groups.

This is the counter-argument, one I support:

…the so-called Chicago Principles of Free Speech, a guideline from the University of Chicago, that states “it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”

I’m pleased that any university in America still sees it that way. I would further state to students that if they want to silence or ban speech on campus that merely hurts or offends them, they’re not yet ready for college. If they want to be treated as adults they need to act as adults, and if they want to enter the marketplace of ideas they need to learn to marshal arguments to counter speech they don’t like rather than expecting the world to protect them from even hearing it.

Arabs turning on Hamas?

The New Neo Posted on by

Alas, I can’t get to the WSJ article entitled “Arab Leaders Abandon the Palestinians.”

But the report here is that the Saudi Crown Prince is saying some interesting things:

Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman said in an interview with The Atlantic magazine, that Israelis are entitled to their own land ”” the first time a Saudi leader endorsed the notion of a Jewish homeland. He also called for a peace agreement with Palestinians that would allow Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to pursue shared interests with the Jewish state. He never mentioned the violence in Gaza.

That seems like a change, and the change is most likely emanating from fear of the influence of its enemy Iran in the region. Many of the larger, more functional Arab states are realizing that Israel is somewhat of a natural ally in the fight against Iran.

Jordan got sick and tired of the Palestinians (at least, the PLO arm) a long, long time ago. Lebanon has had its own problems with them, too; the Palestinians’ (PLO) presence there was highly instrumental in the civil war that changed that country very much for the worse. And Egypt’s al-Sisi has been improving relations with Israel since his leadership of the country began.

Recently:

Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab nations with peace treaties with Israel, have also been silent about the Palestinian deaths, said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator for the Middle East and an adviser to past Republican and Democratic presidents.

Miller and other analysts said the silence reflects fundamental changes in the region…

“But in the past 10 years, many in the Arab world have shifted. … There’s a shared strategic threat regarding Iran,” a majority-Shiite nation that is the arch-enemy of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia.

Iran has expanded its influence with military support into conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Balance of power.

Arab rulers see Gaza and the West Bank ” as a money pit that they continue to support without much result,” Miller said.

While Hamas is seen as an obstacle to peace, “Palestinian leadership is directionless, dysfunctional and corrupt,” Miller said.

This is nothing new, so it can’t be the real reason, although it contributes. But maybe, just maybe at year 70 (coming up this May) of Israel’s existence, they realize that as far as Hamas is concerned the conflict is never going to end, and it’s counterproductive for them.

Money is part of this equation, too:

Saudi’s Prince Mohammed has met with business groups that include a number of Jews during his U.S. tour that began last month to promote a massive project to diversify the Saudi economy. He referred in his Atlantic interview to Israel’s dynamic and technologically driven economy.

I consider this all to be be tentatively good news.

Another political changer

The New Neo Posted on by

Lindsay Shepherd has begun the process:

Incidentally, the title of that video—“Goodbye to the left”—makes me think of the title of Britisher Robert Graves’ marvelous memoir of WWI and much more: Goodbye to All That. I haven’t read it in decades, but I remember it as an entertaining and informative read, and a document of how the modern sensibility was shaped by the experience of World War I.

[NOTE: More on the subject of the transformative effect of WWI here and here.]

“Silencing” accusers

The New Neo Posted on by

I have no idea whether Bill O’Reilly’s accusers are telling the truth about him and what he did. But for the sake of argument, let’s say they are.

Are they being “silenced” by O’Reilly? That’s the premise of this headline in the NY Times: “How Bill O’Reilly Silenced His Accusers.”

Conjures up a mental image of something very underhanded and maybe even violent, doesn’t it? What’s actually being described, though, is an out-of-court settlement which involves the usual payment for the usual silence:

Settlement agreements between Bill O’Reilly and two of his accusers ”” made public for the first time on Wednesday ”” filled in previously unknown details about tactics employed by the former Fox News host to silence women who came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him.

The documents show that two women who reached settlements, Andrea Mackris and Rebecca Gomez Diamond, were required to turn over all evidence, including audio recordings and diaries, to Mr. O’Reilly. In addition, Ms. Mackris was required to disclaim the materials “as counterfeit and forgeries” if they ever became public…

Strict confidentiality was the goal of the settlements. If the women were found to breach the agreements, they would be forced to return all the money they had received, forfeit any future payments and pay Mr. O’Reilly’s legal fees.

This is news? This is a description of a legal settlement, apparently freely entered into by the parties. O’Reilly’s settlements number six (that are known) for a total of 45 million dollars. That’s a lot of money going out.

As for the “silencing”:

In a statement, Fredric S. Newman, a lawyer for Mr. O’Reilly, reiterated earlier statements that Mr. O’Reilly had settled the disputes to protect his children and said that the agreements were “fully negotiated by these plaintiffs who were ably advised by experienced counsel.”

“Confidentiality and arbitration were two critical terms for which Mr. O’Reilly bargained in good faith,” Mr. Newman said.

Confidentiality is usually a part of an out-of-court settlement. These women agreed to be “silenced,” and they were paid good money for their silence.

This may seem like quibbling on my part. After all, the women are silent, and it is as a result of the negotiations with O’Reilly. But “silenced” is a word used to create a certain impression in readers—many of whom don’t go on to read the article, as the Times is well aware—a perception involving bullying and coercion and something underhanded, a further victimization of women who are already alleging victimization.

But unless you think the entire system of out-of-court settlements is underhanded, the only sketchy thing about this agreement is that the lawyers for one of the women during the settlement phase later went on to work for O’Reilly, constituting a possible conflict of interest. That’s all I see, anyway.

Is the right to self-defense dead in England?

The New Neo Posted on by

Homeowner Richard Osborne-Brooks, 78, grappled with and then stabbed an intruder who entered his home in the middle of the night:

The pensioner, named locally as Richard Osborn-Brooks, was upstairs asleep with his wife when he was woken by the two men breaking into his suburban home in Hither Green, south-east London last night.

He was forced into his kitchen by one of the men, who was armed with a screwdriver, before a struggle ensued.

The intruder, a 38-year-old man, was left with wounds to his chest and local residents say he collapsed in a neighbouring road and died in hospital.

The homeowner was initially detained on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm but was later arrested on suspicion of murder.

Yes, you read that right: murder.

It seems the reporters who wrote the story couldn’t find any neighbor to interview who had an opinion other than that Osborn-Brooks should be allowed to have defended his home from threatening intruders, and should be let go. But this is England.

Here are the rules, and you can see that they’re very much open to interpretation:

British law allows homeowners to use ‘reasonable force’ against intruders to protect themselves or others in their home.

Guidelines introduced in 2005 allow people to protect themselves ‘in the heat of the moment’ ”“ including using an object as a weapon. They can also stop an intruder running off, for example by tackling them to the ground.

There is no specific definition of ‘reasonable force’ and it is said to depend on the circumstances.

Government guidance states that if a person ‘only did what you honestly thought was necessary at the time, this would provide strong evidence that you acted within the law’.

People do risk prosecution however if they carry on attacking the intruder when they are no longer in danger, or pre-plan a trap for someone rather than involving the police.

The United States’ laws on the subject are done on a state-by-state basis, but there are general trends:

In the U.S., the general rule is that “[a] person is privileged to use such force as reasonably appears necessary to defend him or herself against an apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from another.” In cases involving non-deadly force, this means that the person must reasonably believe that their use of force was necessary to prevent imminent, unlawful physical harm. When the use of deadly force is involved in a self-defense claim, the person must also reasonably believe that their use of deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s infliction of great bodily harm or death. Most states no longer require a person to retreat before using deadly force. In the minority of jurisdictions which do require retreat, there is no obligation to retreat when it is unsafe to do so or when one is inside one’s own home.

There have been US cases in which a homeowner has killed an intruder and been charged with murder, but they tend to feature very unusual elements. For example, here a Washington homeowner found a man in his shower (apparently not threatening him in any way), and the homeowner left his house and came back with a firearm and killed him by shooting multiple rounds into the shower. His trial has yet to be completed, as far as I can tell.

Another case involved a Maryland man named Pinkerton who killed a known intruder at 2 AM when the man (who had a history of harassing Pinkerton’s wife) crashed a party and lunged towards the shooter. Pinkerton was acquitted, and not only acquitted but the judge did so after hearing only the prosecution and ruling that it had not presented a sufficient case.

I am not aware of every single case that’s ever occurred here, but I strongly doubt that a case with the same fact circumstances as that of Osborne-Brooks would have resulted in an arrest in the US. But give us time, give us time.

Dan Rather will teach you how to avoid fake news

The New Neo Posted on by

And who better to do it?

I initially thought that any advice Rather could give on the topic would be utterly ridiculous, given his history.

But actually, his advice isn’t half bad. Is it possible he’s learned something in the meantime?

I’ll believe that when he owns up to his own huge knave/fool role in the Killian memo fiasco.

Here’s some of Rather’s advice:

Number one, understand that trusting a news outlet does not mean they’re perfect. No one is perfect. It means they tell you when they screw up.

Number two, don’t rely on just one news outlet.

Number three: don’t rely on just the news to understand an issue. Read books. Find the experts. Find out how issues are discussed outside of news.

Number four, if you find yourself agreeing with everything your news outlet says, you’re doing it wrong. If your news doesn’t challenge you, challenge your news.

Number five, find a commentator whose politics differ from yours. Intellectually honest, even though their values differ from yours. If you can’t find such a person, maybe the media is not the problem.

Number six: remember that what the news tells you is far less important than what they decide to talk about in the first place. If they focus on personal, salacious and speculative stories, find a new outlet, one that drills in on issues that actually affect real lives, your wallet or pocketbook, health and education, schools, social justice, the environment.

It’s with a subsequent remark of Rather’s that I find myself in disagreement: “The true test of trustworthy journalism isn’t that they never make mistakes. It’s whether they’re willing to challenge the powers that be on behalf of those without power.”

Oh, really? That’s part of what got them into trouble in the first place. Powerful people are not necessarily doing bad, and powerless people are not necessarily out for good. And journalists—who used to be known as reporters—shouldn’t think they are crusaders righting the wrongs of the world. It’s not that they never should expose problems or abuses—of course they should—but their own biases (“powerful=bad; powerless=good”) often get in the way of their judgment.

In fact, journalists are themselves very powerful. At least, they used to be till they lost respect through so much biased, error-laden, and/or purposely misleading reporting. Does being powerful make them bad?

And to Rather: physician heal thyself, and take a look at your own suggestion number one and own up to your own screwup.

It would seem…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that this seat is ripe for Republican pickup. Trump won West Virginia in 2016 by over 40 points, and yet it has a Democrat-lite senator name of Joe Manchin, who is up for re-election this November.

Of course, nothing is a sure thing, especially with the GOP’s predilection for nominating weird and/or deeply flawed candidates, with or without a suspicious past.

Is it time for me to add an “Election 2018” section to my list of categories? Hope not.

Mud time

The New Neo Posted on by

Frost again:

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March…

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth…

Apparently, in Russia they call it rasputitsa. Same deal, though.