"... posted a video in which he accused the police department of a conspiracy and lambasted the current media organization landscape. In the video (which, in bizarro world, is shown every hour on Fox News), Meade gets in the face of the police and demands entry, claiming he isn't media: 'I'm private media.'"
Writes The Awl. I think he said "new media." And no one calls him "Larry." You'd get a better response with "Lore." Which I don't call him either. Frankly, I'm not sure what to call him. Except "Meade" — "New Media Meade."
The irony of denying Althouse's husband access to the capitol without official media credentials is that the credentialed media has done a pathetic job of covering the events. Outside Wisconsin's own official news organs, the nationals' approach to covering the protests borders on malpractice. When Paul Krugman is bothered to get into the Times CMS to post "a blog" comparing the job you've done in Wisconsin to the one you did in the buildup to the Iraq War, well, you've done a pretty bad job.
If the events in Wisconsin prove one thing, it is that the mainstream media has become journalistically irrelevant when it comes to national issues and coverage. Broadcast media is incapable of explaining anything outside a macropatriotic framework and has proven allergic to anything that puts off even the slightest whiff of the class warfare that scares away big-market advertorial. Meanwhile, the other side is cable news' partisan echo chamber of regurgitated self-assurance, where no blow is too low and no fact needs sourcing before being leveraged to make a prearranged point.
But, hey, guess what? Governor Scott Walker is about to give his budget address, and Meade is there, seated in the chamber as I write this. I could have been there too, but I've got a class at 4:30, and we need to talk about the Commerce Clause.
ADDED: Here's the video referred to above. And in the comments, JAL says, "Woo hoo! Reminds me of a book some guy from Knoxville wrote ... uummm ... It had a militaristic tone to it ... (you know those "conservative" right wing blogger gun nuts ...) ... uhmmm ... An Army of Meades!" Oh, yes. They'd look like this. You know they came from a place called Media.
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?
That's Tina Brown trying to babble her way to saying something that makes sense. Watch the video at the link. I think she realizes in the middle — at the "you know, very much, uh, uh, you know" — that after invoking the big idea "feminism," she doesn't know how to say the right thing about feminism. It's not right to say according to feminism, women aren't supposed to be Republicans, so she can't say that. What then can she say? She goes with the weak, mealy-mouthed "against so many of things that women have fought for such a long time." So many of the things, eh? What? And fought for such a long time — as if women are supposed to — what? — adhere to traditional values and not make waves?
And what about the idea that there is variety within feminism and vivid debate about what is good for women? George Stephanopoulos pushes Brown with "Well, you could argue they're different kinds of feminists...." And Brown settles in to the routine partisanship that is easy to spit out clearly: "Women, too, can be wing nuts, is the point." Yeah, that's cogent and clear. Funny too. Brown's attempt at a point about feminism was flabby blather because it was dishonest. "Women, too, can be wing nuts" — she's telling it straight now and shows it with the kicker that it's "the point." Thanks for abandoning your pretense of intellectual analysis for some plain politics. We get it, Tina. You're a liberal. You don't like when strong candidates emerge on the other side. And you have nothing interesting or insightful to say about feminism. Noted.
And speaking of the poverty of feminist analysis on "Good Morning America," the discussion turns immediately to Carly Fiorini's comment about Barbara Boxer's hair:
STEPHANOPOULOS: ...Carly Fiorina after the election, getting caught on tape....
CARLY FIORINI: Laura saw Barbara Boxer briefly on television this morning. And said what everyone says. God, what is that hair? So yesterday....
BROWN: You know what I love about it so much? It's like, as we were saying... it was great that it was gender-neutral. Then, all of a sudden, you've suddenly switched to absolute claws come out. And it's like — the women. What really killed? It was so yesterday. It wasn't just women. It was rich women. That's the point.
Oh! Brown is declaring something else to be "the point." I'm not sure what, though. Rich women. Stephanopoulos cuts her off and crashes headlong into what will be the next underdeveloped topic (that Fiorini and Meg Whitman were CEOs). Presumably, if given a little room, Brown would have spouted some class politics about hair. Think of all the middle aged women who heard the rich lady's catty remark and looked at themselves in the mirror and saw a overgrown, undercolored, Boxeresque mops of hair and wondered if they could squeeze enough dollars out of the family budget to make a trip to the salon. Boxer's floppy, grizzled tresses will get knotted up with the heartstrings of California working women.
But Brown didn't get to say that, because it was time — fast-moving "Good Morning America" time — to opine about whether America could admire a corporate CEO these days. As if Hewlett Packard and eBay were spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Socrates says that those in the constant press of business, like lawyers, policy-makers, mortgage brokers and hedge fund managers, become ”bent and stunted” and they are compelled “to do crooked things.” The pettifogger is undoubtedly successful, wealthy and extraordinarily honey-tongued, but, Socrates adds, “small in his soul and shrewd and a shyster.” The philosopher, by contrast, is free by virtue of his or her otherworldliness, by their capacity to fall into wells and appear silly.
The title of the post is "What Is a Philosopher?" and I'm thinking somebody who pretends to be self-deprecating while running down people who make more money than he does.
How bad is it to say "one of our students suggested that black people are genetically inferior to white people" when what the student wrote was "I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent"? There is a difference between "suggesting" something is true and conceding that you don't have a basis for excluding the possibility that something is true.
The language in the email places itself in the context of a continuing conversation, and any attempt to interpret it should acknowledge that we have it out of context — and that it seems to have been leaked by someone who was privy to the whole conversation. The phrase "I absolutely do not rule out the possibility...," implies that that during the conversation, the student was criticized by someone else for ruling out the possibility. What does that... suggest... about the full context of the email and the motives for leaking it?
AND: In the comments, Jon said: "[T]he student didn't say 'genetically inferior,' she said 'less intelligent.' Does Dean Minnow think that everyone less intelligent than her, is genetically inferior?"
It's possible — possible! — that Minow thinks that everyone less intelligent than her is inferior, but for reasons having only to do with nurture. This must be an interesting subject for her, because she's the daughter of a highly successful man, Newton Minow (the FCC chairman who called TV a "vast wasteland"). Does she trace her high intelligence only to environmental factors? Most likely, it's a subject about which she chooses not to speak. Not in public anyway. Perhaps she once emailed someone about that.
But consider Minow's other interpretive leap — that to be less intelligent is to be inferior. Why isn't that an even more outrageous statement than what the student (Stephanie Grace) said?
Are less intelligent individuals inferior? It's time for our lesson in Elementary Class Consciousness. From Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (PDF, page 20-21):
“Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let’s have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.”
At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.
“. all wear green,” said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, “and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.”
There was a pause; then the voice began again.
“Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able .”
Are the Alphas superior? They have to work so hard and wear grey... I’m so glad I’m a Beta. Betas don't think they're inferior! They are less intelligent though.
I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts. Maybe we are resentful clods gawking with bitter incomprehension at the intellectual magnificence of our betters. If so, why are our betters spending so much time nervously insisting that they’re smarter than Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement?...
The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews. The input-worshipping universe of the New York Times is like New York itself—thousands of restaurant reviews and no place we can afford to eat.
Let us allow that some intelligence is involved in screwing up Wall Street, Washington, and the world. A students and Type-A politicians do discover an occasional new element—Obscurantium—or pass an occasional piece of landmark legislation (of which the health care reform bill is not one). Smart people have their uses, but our country doesn’t belong to them. As the not-too-smart Woody Guthrie said, “This land was made for you and me.” The smart set stayed in fashionable Europe, where everything was nice and neat and people were clever about looking after their own interests and didn’t need to come to America. The Mayflower was full of C students. Their idea was that, given freedom, responsibility, rule of law and some elbow room, the average, the middling, and the mediocre could create the richest, most powerful country ever.
He didn’t become a community organizer after graduating from Harvard Law School, but after graduating from Columbia. He left community organizing to attend Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he joined a prestigious Chicago law firm with offices just off Michigan Avenue. In 1991, he began teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He was chair of a Chicago branch of the Annenberg Foundation.
As Judis shows, Obama belongs squarely in the professional class:
Obama’s parents were professionals—his mother was an anthropology PhD and his father was a Harvard-trained economist. How much money they made was immaterial. His grandmother, who raised him in Hawaii, was a bank vice-president. He went to a fancy private school and to prestigious colleges (Occidental and Columbia) that turn out professionals and managers. He clearly was not obsessed with making money, but with performing a public service—yet that doesn’t distinguish him from other professionals or other Columbia graduates. It does distinguish him from a working- or middle-class American for whom being a civil rights lawyer or professor or politician is at best a passing fantasy.
It is admirable that Obama spent three years after graduating as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, but many graduates of elite colleges spend several years after college doing something unusual, before returning to graduate school or settling into a profession. Some travel around the world; some join the Peace Corps; some try to write novels.... Afterwards, they usually return to more sober and sedate occupations appropriate to their social background and education. That’s what Obama did....
Once out of law school, Obama lived and worked over the next decade in a grey area between the very upper reaches of professional America and the country’s managers, owners, and rulers. He didn’t just have access to more money and live differently from ordinary Americans; he possessed power and authority that they didn’t have....
Judis really embarrasses the WaPo here, but I've got to give credit to the WaPo for picking out some hilarious quotes that show Obama trying — tryin' — to sound like a working class guy:
"I just like gettin' out of the White House, and then I like tooling around companies that are actually making stuff."
Is he driving a car inside these factories? I think he was searching for the right word and rejected "puttering around" because it was too golf-y, and golf is not the sport of the working class.
Campus leadership has proposed cutting before- and after-school labs -- decreasing science instruction by 20% to 40% -- and using that money to fund "equity" programs for struggling students in an effort to close one of the widest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the state....
"There's a big fear of taking away from high-end achievers," said Linda Gonzalez, co-chair of the school governance council, which crafted the controversial proposal. But "why are we having science classes with two or three labs when there are kids in science classes with no labs?" wondered Gonzalez, a parent who supports the shift....
"This became a race issue, because just about everything that happens in Berkeley is fundamentally viewed through that lens," said [studentteacher Aaron] Glimme, who acknowledged that "there's a very clear difference by race as to who shows up to the lab classes."
It seems terrible to pit the hard-working, high-achieving students against the struggling students. You might think all the students are making their choices and getting what they've earned, but consider:
[Teacher Philip] Halpern said. "A public school like Berkeley High has an equal obligation to students who have struggled. We shouldn't be continuing to allocate resources to students who have had them all along."
As Halpern notes, "Berkeley High is the only high school in town. You get the professors' kids, the dot-commers' kids and the kids of the working class."
It's Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, where, in the words of one Village Board member, "People who live here are in for the long haul... This project increases the voting rolls by 20 percent with people who have different values - I'm not saying bad values - but different values from what we have here...."
Charles Lane argues that unions are now a "significant" impediment to "sensible health care reform" because of their tooth-and-nail fight against taxing "Cadillac" health plans. ... Even if you think (as I do) that the unions have a point when they argue they gave up wage increases in order to get lavish health benefits, isn't the answer to give them five years (or until their next contract negotiation) to rebalance the mix to what it would be in a world in which employer health benefits didn't go untaxed? ... If the problem for powerful unions is they no longer have quite the clout they used to have to extract wage increases in exchange for giving up "luxury" health benefits ... well, that's their problem. ...
But if we with the "Cadillac" health plans have to start paying taxes on our benefits, that's a huge middle class tax increase, and we were promised that wouldn't happen. Rebalancing the pay package doesn't save us from that tax hit — even assuming our employers would reshuffle things. Plus we love our great health benefits, and we were told if we liked them, we'd get to keep them. How is it fair to change the rules on us after we worked so hard to get what we have? The Democrats, including Obama, got elected by saying "middle class" over and over again. They never said they were going to provide for the less fortunate at our expense, and I don't see how they would have gotten elected if they had.
IN THE COMMENTS: Ari Tai said:
They could go the other direction, a 100% tax deduction for all medical expenses (including insurance payments).
Yes, that would be appropriate. In fact, why not just do that and forget all the other chaotic changes? See how that works out.
