If only there were a lefty version of the Tea Party...

... The Nation would love it so.

"History tells us" something that history doesn't tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.

Here's the expression of "outrage" by the officers of the American Sociological Association:

Scholars of her caliber, intellectuals of her stature, and especially those who tackle social conflicts and contradictions, mass movements and political action, should stimulate equal levels of serious challenge and creative dialogue. Being called by Glenn Beck one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world,” and an “enemy of the Constitution” is not a credible challenge; it is plain demagoguery.

So vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one.

Despite its lack of substance, Beck’s attacks have resulted in a flood of hate mail and internet postings attacking Professor Piven, including a series of death threats. While it is true that death threats are generally only a form of extremist rhetoric, they indicate an overheated emotional atmosphere that researchers on collective violence call “the hysteria zone.” It is a zone in which deranged individuals can be motivated to real violence against those targeted by demagoguery. History tells us that such things as the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords that resulted in six deaths in Tucson, Arizona can be examples of how abundant, polarizing rhetoric by political leaders and commentators can spur mass murder.

Does lofty, serious, intellectual sociology involve looking at evidence and analyzing it rationally? Linking the Tucson massacre to hot political rhetoric was a rash mistake made by demagogues — you want to talk about demagogues?! — demagogues who were slavering over the prospect of a right-wing massacre that would prove politically useful.

We call on Fox News to take steps to control the encouragement of violence that has run rampant in recent months. 

Fox News? And do you also call on The Nation, which published "Mobilizing the Jobless," by Frances Fox Piven, the article Glenn Beck brought to the attention of his large audience? Piven called for riots. She wrote:

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees....

When did Glenn Beck call for violence?  Back to the sociologists' letter of outrage:

Serious and honest, undistorted disagreement and public debate on unemployment, economic crisis, the rights and tactics of welfare recipients, government intervention and the erosion of the American way of life should be supported. 

Undistorted? Okay, let's see you do it first. The "American way of life"? By that term, do you mean — in an undistorted sort of way — like Greece?

We in no way advocate restricting the freedom of speech of political commentators.... Where we all should draw the line is at name-calling and invective rising to the level of inciting others to violence.

So Piven should not have called for "something like" Greek-style riots, and it was good of Glenn Beck to point out that Piven crossed the line, right? I mean, we're dedicating ourselves to serious, undistorted analysis here. That's what you said you wanted, didn't you?

Does Katrina vanden Heuvel have a Joe Biden sock-puppet?

Memeorandum — a fabulously useful starting point for blog-reading — automatically aggregates items based on a secret algorithm.


At the top, right now, is this:



Look closer:



I clicked, because I wanted to see what Joe Biden had to say under the snazzy headline "Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?" The link goes to a Washington Post column with that headline — but it's by Katrina vanden Heuvel ("editor and publisher of the Nation" who "writes a weekly online column for The Post").

Can anyone explain why the automatic aggregator Memeorandum would have picked up that column and attached Biden's name to it? I'm guessing the answer is pretty boring: "Joe Biden" appears in a line above the column, near the top of the page, that begins "Hot Topics." That does give rise to a new puzzle: What's hot about Biden? Clicking on his name, I see that he "heads to the Hill to talk taxes" today.  Sizzling!

"Unfortunately, most Americans know little of this progressive history. It isn't taught in most high schools."

Asserts The Nation:

You can't find it on the major television networks or even on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege. In popular media, the most persistent interpreter of America's radical past is Glenn Beck, who teaches viewers a wildly inaccurate history of unions, civil rights and the American left. Beck argues, for example, that the civil rights movement "has been perverted and distorted" by people claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. supported "redistribution of wealth." In fact, King did call for a "radical redistribution of economic power." Using his famous chalkboard, Beck draws connections between various people and organizations, and defines them as radicals, Marxists, socialists, revolutionaries, leftists, progressives or social justice activists—all of which leads inexorably to Barack Obama.

A proffered remedy in the form of a list: "The 50 Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century."

Roy Edroso imagines that Leslie Savan had the courage to "dispute Muslim articles of faith."

He's presenting something I wrote to his readers, who follow his direction and call me an idiot, but he's got it wrong. I blogged (and agreed with much of) Savan's piece in The Nation and tweaked her by asking if she was "paying enough attention the the way she is expressing contempt for Muslim beliefs?" I also snarked that "I didn't know you could do that in The Nation."

Roy Edroso pretends to laugh at my joke ("Tee hee") and lobs the sarcasm: "Because libs are so cowardly they cannot dispute Muslim articles of faith. Which Savan proves by just having done so."

But Savan did NOT do so in the paragraph that precedes my joke. Savan savaged Americans. First, she said:

Regardless of what the Muslim world may or may not believe, this whole seed fixation is profoundly un-American. 

In other words: Put the beliefs of Muslims to the side; I want to talk about American values. Then:

It says that genealogy is destiny, that a man is Muslim regardless of what he espouses or believes. It’s all about descent—and nauseatingly close to the “one drop rule” of the post-Reconstruction South. That rule held that if a person had any African or Indian ancestry whatsoever, he or she was classified as “colored” and subject to anti-miscegenation laws, voter disenfranchisement, and segregation at large. At least eighteen states adopted some form of the rule; Virginia’s 1924 law, for instance, was called the Racial Integrity Act.

Having purported to limit herself to American values (as opposed to universal truths), she goes through a litany of historical wrongs, committed by Americans, a comfortable and familiar place for readers of The Nation. This is the point at which I asked my question whether she's "paying enough attention the the way she is expressing contempt for Muslim beliefs."

I think she thought that she'd limited her inquiry at that point to American values and American racism. Although some Muslims are Americans and could presumably be swept up into an inquiry about American values, Savan has specifically set aside what Muslims believe. Plus, she's switched to talking about race. What interested me is something I don't think she meant to do but only unwittingly implied.

Did Edroso even understand my point? I deliberately write in an elliptical style sometimes. You have to think a minute to get it, and I don't think Edroso did. The writing may look simple, but there is a challenge in that simplicity that you'd better be sure you see and meet before you decide you've done the easy reading and are now in a fine position to call me stupid.

I'll be heavy-handed so he can rethink his insolent attitude toward me. I think that Savan didn't mean to say that the Muslims are repellent if they believe that a person is a Muslim because his father is a Muslim. She only meant that Americans violate American values if they perceive someone — such as Obama — as Muslim because his father is a Muslim. I would guess that she subscribes to the cultural relativism that accepts Muslims (even American Muslims) viewing their religion as a genetic matter. I don't think she wanted to deal in higher level philosophy about individual freedom and autonomy (which is the subject that I went on to talk about, quoting James Madison).

So, Roy, imagine that an editor at The Nation had responded to Savan's draft with these direct questions: Did you mean to imply that you are disgusted by a Muslim's belief that religion is inborn? Did you mean to say that that Muslim belief is like racism, because it looks like you may have implied that? I think you probably meant to say that Muslims should be judged by Muslim values and that you are leaving that judgment for other Muslims, and that you only mean to say that Americans are judged by American values and that you are all about being very critical of Americans who say that Obama was a Muslim — right?

Do you think Savan would have answered yes or no to those questions? If she answered yes, don't you think the editor would be likely to say: Could you rewrite this to make that really clear? And if she said no and wanted to make that absolutely clear, don't you think that the editor would have killed the piece?

"The False and 'Seedy' Claim That Obama Is Muslim."

Get it? "Seedy"? The Nation quotes Franklin Graham:

“I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim. His father gave him an Islamic name. Now it's obvious that the president has renounced the Prophet Muhammad and he has renounced Islam and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That's what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn't. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said.”

When religionists talk about semen...

Personally, I’m stuck on the word seed. Graham meant it in the Biblical (or Koranical) sense, but when I hear about a “seed passing through” in the context of an American president, I can’t help but see Monica Lewinsky and her “semen-stained blue dress.”

Regardless of what the Muslim world may or may not believe, this whole seed fixation is profoundly un-American. It says that genealogy is destiny, that a man is Muslim regardless of what he espouses or believes. It’s all about descent—and nauseatingly close to the “one drop rule” of the post-Reconstruction South. That rule held that if a person had any African or Indian ancestry whatsoever, he or she was classified as “colored” and subject to anti-miscegenation laws, voter disenfranchisement, and segregation at large. At least eighteen states adopted some form of the rule; Virginia’s 1924 law, for instance, was called the Racial Integrity Act.

Is the author of this piece — Leslie Savan —paying enough attention the the way she is expressing contempt for Muslim beliefs? I didn't know you could do that in The Nation. I mean, I agree that religion originates within the mind of a human being (and not in some guy's testicles!). I agree with James Madison:

... "... religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction..." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man...

This is one of several arguments for freedom of religion and the separation of church and state that were influential in the development of rights in America.  It isn't the way everyone in the world thinks about religion, but it is presented by Madison as "a fundamental and undeniable truth." Of course, under that truth, you are free to believe that religion arrived via semen. And we're also free to laugh at such a ridiculous belief.

***

Another point. Graham didn't "claim that Obama is a Muslim." So ironically, it's false to say that he did. If you want to write an article lambasting people for making false claims, be careful that you don't make any false claims. (Savan has a grievance against whoever wrote that headline.)

And I'm wondering who did say Obama's a Muslim? But no one has to say it for people to come to think it. So it's fair to say that statements like Graham's have a causal relation to what people will answer when a pollster asks them "What is Obama's religion?"

So... is anyone doing anything bad? I think so, but you talk now. I'll come back to this discussion later.

The Nation promotes the anti-choice liberal meme.

A couple weeks ago, I pointed to "that trendy liberal theme: Choice won't make you happy."  Here it is again in "The Trouble with Amazon":

Many would argue that the efflorescence of new publishing that Amazon has encouraged can only be a good thing, that it enriches cultural diversity and expands choice. But that picture is not so clear: a number of studies have shown that when people are offered a narrower range of options, their selections are likely to be more diverse than if they are presented with a number of choices so vast as to be overwhelming. In this situation people often respond by retreating into the security of what they already know.

As Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, explains, "When the choice set is larger, people tend to make worse choices. They choose on the basis of what's easiest to evaluate, rather than what's important to evaluate...the safe, highly marketed option usually comes out on top."



This apparent anomaly of greater choice resulting in a narrower selection finds a corollary in Amazon's use of metrics to recommend titles based on previous purchases. The algorithms at work here are highly sophisticated and are widely credited with expanding consumer choice. Yet such metric-based systems can simultaneously increase the variety of books purchased by individual customers while decreasing the overall variety of books bought by everyone. This is because, as blogger Whimsley explains, "In Internet World the customers see further, but they are all looking out from the same tall hilltop. In Offline World individual customers are standing on different, lower hilltops. They may not see as far individually, but more of the ground is visible to someone."

The loss of serendipity that comes with not knowing exactly what one is looking for is lamented by ex-Amazon editor James Marcus: "Personalization strikes me as a mixed blessing. While it gives people what they want—or what they think they want—it also engineers spontaneity out of the picture. The happy accident, the freakish discovery, ceases to exist. And that's a problem."

The Nation: "Elena Kagan should be borked."

In the special Kagan meaning of "bork":

In what is by now an oft-quoted snippet from one of her law review articles, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan castigated the confirmation hearings of Justices Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg and Breyer as a "vapid and hollow charade."...

What is less remarked upon is that in her article Kagan proposed a model for a more vigorous and candid confirmation hearing—that of Judge Robert Bork. The process worked in that instance, she argued, not because of the particular result but because the hearings "presented to the public a serious discussion of the meaning of the Constitution, the role of the Court, and the views of the nominee; that discussion at once educated the public and allowed it to determine whether the nominee would move the Court in the proper direction." In both popular and right-wing parlance, "borking" now means to vilify and defame a nominee in order to block his appointment, but Kagan's description is in fact a far more accurate account of what happened—senators rigorously probed and considered Bork's legal opinions and voted accordingly. So it is with this understanding that we propose, in the spirit of democratic deliberation of which she so eloquently wrote, that Elena Kagan should be borked.

But this kind of borking is impossible unless the nominee wants it. It doesn't matter what questions the Senators come up with or how pushy and repetitive they are about asking them, the "vapid and hollow charade" can be kept up by the nominee until the clock runs out. The only reason the Bork hearings proceeded the way they did was because Bork chose to engage in legal debate with the Senators. He obviously believed in his ability to explain his ideas in a superior fashion, but he wasn't quite as smart as he needed to be about how it all looked to the people watching it on television, and he gave his enemies the ammunition they needed to bring him down.

Since Bork, all the nominees have adopted the same self-protective stance that Kagan criticized in her article. What would motivate Kagan to do anything other than that? I have 3 thoughts.

1. Kagan wrote a law review article criticizing the vapid self-protective approach to the hearings. She has a little incentive to avoid hypocrisy. A little.

2. She might really care about the criticism she once penned and want to set a new example of how a nominee can be forthright and expressive without losing, like Bork.

3. Unlike the nominees who adopted the self-protective strategy to deprive the President's opponents of the ammunition to shoot them down, Kagan could be pushed by Democratic Senators. That's what The Nation wants to see. It will be interesting if Democrats try to extract assurances of liberalism from Kagan, but why would Kagan want to give them that. Whatever might work for her with them will work against her with others — and with the American people who are consuming tidbits on TV and on line. I, for one, will review every word of the transcripts looking for interesting things to highlight. It's risky to give out any good material, but I hope she does. I don't think she will.

Bottom line: Expect another vapid and hollow charade.