Why good men and women inadvertently hurt each other

My first attempt at liveblogging:

Today on Dennis Prager's "Male/Female Hour", he is having a terrific conversation with Alison Armstrong, who normally concentrates on helping typical good women understand typical good men. She is very easy to listen to.

Today, she also explains to men things like the centrality of feelings to women, the "misdemeanor file" and the "rage monster".

When hurt, women often say they are "hurt" or that their feelings are hurt, while men are "crushed". Alison explains why.

Dennis: Men say "What did I do?"
Alison: And women say, "As if you didn't know". Because if he were a woman, he WOULD know.

Alison discusses the differences between men and women in terms of the "human animal" and the "spiritual animal". For example "women are not built to focus" (they CAN focus, but most of the time they don't walk around in a "focused" state). They typically have "diffuse awareness" unless they are in a situation where they need to focus. Women are aware of many things which are going on at the same time (which comes in especially handy when caring for small children). Men often don't understand this. They expect women to habitually focus like they do.

Dennis on all the things women think about at one time: "That's my theory, that if we got your brain for a day, we'd all kill ourselves". UPDATE: Listen here, starting at about 3:55. for a little back and forth on this topic.

Aside: I believe that I often think more like a man than does the typical woman - in some ways. But much of what Dennis and Alison are saying seems so obvious once it's pointed out. And I know that my awareness is "diffuse" much of the time. So I guess I still have a "girl brain".

Dennis: Some of the differences between men and women which are so pronounced today may be culturally enhanced. Whereas males are raised to control themselves and to fight their natures, females are often not expected to fight their natures at this time in American history. Alison agrees: "Women need to learn to control their inner cavewoman, just as men must control the inner caveman".

The only call taken this hour was listener "Bobby": "My God, Thank you that I am gay."

Dennis: I don't feel depressed when I talk about these differences with Alison. There are solutions to the problems caused by differences between men and women.

You can see a list of major topics and guests for Dennis' upcoming radio broadcast near the top of the page here, or listen to Dennis online here. You can order podcasts of specific shows (without commercials) here. Free audio highllights are here.

Other regular features each week (besides the Male/Female Hour) are the "Happiness Hour" and the "Ultimate Issues Hour". If you don't like the topic he's talking about during other hours he broadcasts, wait half an hour and tune in again. He discusses a wide range of issues with a wide variety of people.

I generally prefer to listen to Dennis talk with someone else on the radio rather than to read what he has written. I have the opposite reaction with some other people. I don't get too excited about him on TV, either, usually. Though if he and a conversation partner were allowed to talk freely without interference from a moderator, I think I would feel differently.

Hollywood displays its high regard for itself

Roman Polanski was arrested, surprisingly, in Switzerland on an old charge that he had fled from justice after having admitted to statutory rape - which his victim characterized as forcible rape. His hubris after attorneys recently attempted to get the old charges dropped probably led to his arrest. And it wasn't like the hubris was of recent origin. From a 1979 interview:

If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… [having sex], you see, and the young girls. Judges want to [have sex with] young girls. Juries want to [have sex with] young girls. Everyone wants to [have sex with] young girls!

The resulting brouhaha says something about the mindset of the denizens of Hollywood, and other well-known media elites. Including those with apparent conflicts of interest. And those with sophisticated elite European outlooks. Some seem to think that art and artists deserve special status.

Meanwhile, even the French Public has started to re-think their support for Polanski. A few non-supporters from the arts and film industries have appeared, and many feminist bloggers on the Left have not jumped on the "release Polansky" bandwagon. This is the second time in recent months some of them have shown some independence from the larger elite Left on feminist issues. Maybe the "no enemies on the Left" juggernaut is starting to break down a little. Though at least one of these feminists still can't refrain from attacking conservatives (this time, for muscling in on the territory she believes belongs to "her side" by being against rape). The more prominent, more in-touch-with-reality feminist Susan Estrich has also refused to go along with the crowd.

Ace on how the public may view supporters of Polanski:

Among the signatories of the petition demanding the freeing of a rapist is Wes Anderson, director of Rushmore.

Why is that significant?

He just completed a children's film called The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

So, when you're deciding whether or not to bring your kids to see that movie, bear in mind, Wes Anderson wouldn't mind if one of his director-buddies raped your kids. Maybe that will take some of the magic out of the film.

The Anchoress on Polanski and the Pope

Art and a Philosopher's Support for Roman Polanski

Ann Althouse challenges Bernard-Henri Lévy to defend his call for the release of Roman Polanski on philosophical grounds:

Do you assert that an artist ought to receive special treatment? Would an ingenious Nazi deserve to live out his life in peace? What does the special treatment of artists have to do with democracy? Explain what ingeniousness, filmmaking, and democracy have to do with your proposed rule.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, you present yourself as a philosopher. I would like to honor philosophy. Back up your petition with a philosophical argument that we can understand and critique.

IN THE COMMENTS: Peter Hoh said:

So in Bernard-Henri Lévy's world, there are common terrorists. One must presume that some other terrorists are uncommon. Perhaps some are extraordinary. I wonder how one can tell the difference?

Surely, the 9/11 attacks were uncommon. In fact, they were ingenious.

Let's not forget what the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen said on September 17, 2001:

... Stockhausen... called the attack on the World Trade Center ''the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.'' Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving ''something in one act'' that ''we couldn't even dream of in music,'' in which ''people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.'' Just imagine, he added: ''You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In comparison with that, we're nothing as composers.''

So, Bernard-Henri Lévy, by your standard, we should leave Osama Bin Laden alone?

Read the whole thing. Just for the sake of clarity.

Glenn Reynolds:

. . . the real argument is that as one of the creative elite, Polanski is supposed to enjoy a sort of droit du seigneur — but if you come right out and say that, the peasants will get angry.

The Moral Imperative for Art

The Roman Polanski arrest has reminded Glenn reynolds of some issues concerning elite views on the special status which should be afforded to art and artists.

Reynolds on "pure language" in poetry:

It’s easy to understand why poets might like to think that poesy confers high moral stature — just as beekeepers may think that the apiary arts do the same. But the evidence, frankly, is stronger for the beekeepers’ position than for the poets’. In fact, what’s interesting, or perhaps revealing, is that genocidal thuggish dictators so often have artistic aspirations. As has been noted here before, there’s often a lot of overlap between mediocre artistry and murderous tyranny:

Joseph Bottum on Poets Against War and related activists from the academic left:

. . . there's something peculiar echoing in even the mildest of these anti-American tropes, as there is, for that matter, in the anti-religious, anti-business, and anti-imperialist rhetoric of the protesting American poets. Christianity, capitalism, and colonialism, with the United States their flagship: all the old whipping boys of the Soviet-era Communists--except that the Soviet Union is no more. Lenin and Stalin may be gone, but their stalking horses go galloping on.

In one way, the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe snatched even the pretense of coherence from much of the hard leftist complaint. There no longer exists the horizon--the eschaton of a socialist workers' paradise--at which to gesture as the positive alternative to the evils of the West. But in another way, the end of the Soviet Union set protest free to be, well, protest: not for anything, not pinned down by having to defend the indefensibility of the gulag, but a pure and absolute againstness.

Bottum again, on more mature reflections concerning the morality of war:

. . . responsibility must be taken in this world for both the use of force and the refusal to use it. All violence is crucifixion: The cross of the cold north is the pattern . . . of the acts of earth. But how are we, by that fact, relieved of either the necessity to act or the commandment to love?

In a 1932 debate in Christian Century over the possibility of American intervention against the Japanese in Manchuria . . . the theological ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr wrote of what he called "the grace of doing nothing." In the next issue, his brother Reinhold Niebuhr replied, "I realize quite well that my brother's position both in its ethical perfectionism and its apocalyptic note is closer to the gospel." But, he added, "I find it impossible to envisage a society of pure love as long as man remains man. . . . The hope of attaining an ethical goal . . . without coercion . . . is an illusion which was spread chiefly among the comfortable classes."

Civility - Ours versus Theirs

John at Powerline on allowing the Left to set the rules: "In my opinion, every single member of the Democratic Party should hang his or her head in shame and take a vow of silence and repentance. It will be at least a generation before any Democrat can mention the word "civility" without being the most craven hypocrite imaginable."

Read the whole thing. Follow the links. Mark Steyn:

. . . Why have "civility" drones like Joe Klein so eagerly adopted Anderson Cooper's scrotal "teabagging" slur and characterized as "racists" and "terrorists" what are (certainly by comparison with the anti-G20 crowd) the best behaved and tidiest street agitators in modern history?

They're telling you who they really fear. Whom the media gods would destroy they first make into "mad men". Liz Cheney should be due for the treatment any day now. Emphasis mine.

The liberal tactic of refraining from criticism of uncivil behavior from the Left while magnifying any uncivil behavior from the Right may come naturally to most liberal elites. It's they way they learned to react to the world at the university.

How to make conservatives less angry

A while ago, Frank J wrote about why liberals are still angry. Now he gives some advice to liberals (like Rachel Maddow, for example) about how to make conservatives less angry:

Liberals finally have a chance to block conservatives from government forever, but we can’t accomplish that if they’re always angry and keep trying to stop us. That’s why it’s important that we all do everything we can to stop conservative anger. I know many of you are already doing some of the items I outlined, but we need further efforts to stop this dangerous anger from crazy conservatives — anger which stems from them talking about the issues.

See if you don't find some handy tips at the link.

How did Cash for Clunkers Subsidies work out?

The Cash for Clunkder program was more popular than Congress imagined it would be: Who would want free money during a recession? Aside from the basic unfairness of giving taxpayer money to a select group of consumers, increasing environmental degradation by encouraging mining, etc. to produce new vehicles and the bureacratic mess for car dealers who weren't reimbursed as promised, how did Cash for Clunkers work out in stimulating the economy?

Orders for durable goods and housing sales plunged in August. Style over substance. Congress Cares.

Blogging and a Balanced Life

It's easy to get carried away with a cause. To become consumed by it. Many people have a sense that this is not really healthy. Some political bloggers have "burned out" and quit blogging because they feel a compulsion to post frequently. Others have quit when their circumstances have changed.

A few years ago, when political blogging was relatively new and entirely an amateur activity, someone came up with the idea of taking a break from politics and other "macro" issues for Friday Cat Blogging. It caught on with political bloggers of all ideological persuasions. Non-political bloggers joined in. This idea has now expanded to include photos of other animals, too. Friday dogblogging, birdblogging, lizardblogging, etc. Kind of a nice idea. Sort of a truce period in the war of ideas. It allows people who are normally at odds with each other to visit concerning topics which are not particularly tense or contentious.

Now the liberal blog site Crooked Timber (generally thoughtful and profanity-free, linked at my sidebar) has started a Sunday Photo feature. Another nice idea. Wonder if it will catch on elsewhere?

Of course, many other bloggers who are deeply concerned about political matters also post on more "micro" topics. Here, a post on what Kristi Yamaguchi overcame to become a gold medalist in the Olympics, and her charitable work now.

The Anchoress has decided to devote blogging on Fridays to issues of faith.
I decided a long time ago to avoid reading or blogging about politics, etc. on Sunday. It's a good idea to keep some balance in life, I think. To remember what's important at a basic, person-to-person level.

Good versus Immoral and Inefficient Profits

Meg McArdle's thoughts on the nature of profits and government. Government regulation often favors some companies over others (usually large ones over small ones) even without backroom deals like the one described in Meg's post.

Of course, "profits" which come from government subsidies (not just favorable regulations) are even more corrupting, distorted and problematic.

The Power of Art - even in sand

On Ukraine's Got Talent, a woman tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine with sand.

Are you a racist? What would a celebrity say?

Andrew Klavan explores racism, American culture and the current form of dominant liberalism.

Liberals have not been the same since the sixties, a decade of profound social changes. And putting aside the sad story linked, have you ever wondered why there is so much nepotism in Hollywood today? Don't they believe in Equal Opportunity in Hollywood?

On a more somber note, VDH laments the fact that the word "racism" has been devalued by frequent misapplication. And he believes that, ironically, President Obama's election has increased racial polarization:

As I wrote often, the election of the “healer” Barack Obama, I felt, would make racial relations worse, despite the bipartisan appreciation of his historical candidacy. Why? Obama had, by his voting record, proven the most partisan Senator in Congress. His career in Chicago was predicated on racial-identity politics. His 20-year membership in the racist Rev. Wright’s pulpit was predicated on the need for establishing street credibility and racialist credentials. I was not convinced by Michelle Obama’s campaign rhetoric that I was in error.

And his offhand remarks on race—more calls for victimization studies in the schools, calls for reparation (withdrawn when the media publicized them), and unfortunate slips, from the Pennsylvania stereotyping to “the typical white person” flippant, second-nature remark—did not disabuse me of that initial impression. Nor did Chris Matthews’ tingle or Newsweek’s “A god.”

In other words, I thought it would be very difficult for a candidate who had seen problems in terms of racial identity to transcend his past, however elegant and moving the rhetoric. In contrast, there are dozens of major black political figures, and, I believe, the vast majority of Americans of all races, who see race as incidental rather than essential to their personas.

Again, nothing these past nine months have persuaded me that my fears were misplaced. And now we witness a new development in which the serious and once legitimate word “racist/racism” tragically has lost all currency (despite the continual presence of racists and racism). In political discourse, it means nothing other than a tactical move to obtain political or careerist advantage. (By the same token, “Nazi” means nothing now either. It too has devolved from a descriptive term of a nightmarish philosophy that engineered the murder of 6 million and started a war that led to 50 million dead to a debating tool to end debate entirely).

And they say right-wingers are bigoted

Where does MSNBC get these people? Rachel Maddow and guest go into full elite liberal meltdown mode over conservative and libertarian demonstrators occasionally adopting some of the long-time tactics of the Left. Absolutely astounding. Matt Welch predicted correctly! Still, Maddow and guest are not quite in the same league with Keith Olberman.

Update: Getting into Olberman territory here, with less style. Good Grief.

Glenn Beck may be embarrassing to those on the Right sometimes. But Beck calls himself a "rodeo clown". Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman take themselves extremely seriously by all appearances.

The "no enemies on the Left" rule still seems to have a lot of currency on the other side of the political spectrum. Conservatives are far more likely to criticize and publicly disagree with those on their own side than are liberals. It's a power tactic adopted decades ago by liberals and leftists in academia.

The "Teaching Little Kids to Praise the President" video linked above by Tim Blair also puts the concerns about the controversial lesson plans (dropped before the President's scrubbed, bland speech to schoolkids) in a little different light. Maybe some of those parents weren't so far off the mark in worrying about politics entering the classroom. This school apparently brought in the author of the song/chant, who has a PR firm. And it's not like the Democrats didn't protest when GHW Bush spoke to school children.

Remember, John Harwood on MSNBC even said that most of the people who objected to the President's speech to their kids were a danger to their children because they were too stupid to raise them well. Makes you wonder how often he gets out into the real world.

UPDATE: Another chant of praise for Obama at a public school. Imagine the reaction from liberals if a public school taught kids to chant praises to a new conservative president, like "Change has come, Change has come, Hope . . Hope . . . Hope . . . etc.

You don't think Rachel Maddow would be all over the story?

Mark Levin: Liberty and Tyranny

Mark Levin talks about his book, Liberty and Tyranny, with Glenn Reynolds. One of his main goals in writing the book was to explain the principles behind conservatism to conservatives who have always "felt" conservative, but weren't sure of the reasons why.

Levin is clearly highly intelligent, but uncomfortable for me to listen to on the radio because of the rather prickly "east coast" style which comes out when he loses patience with someone. I prefer to listen to him in conversation with someone else about an interesting topic (as with Reynolds here). It sounds from reviews like his book is well-written. He went against type to write another popular book - about rescuing a dog from the pound: Rescuing Sprite. HE gets amazingly choked up about that dog on the radio. And earlier, he wrote Men in Black, about the growing power of the Supreme Court.

He talks in this video about his early days in the Reagan Administration, when he encountered boxes of Saul Alinsky's books being distributed through tax dollars. He and Glenn then move to current affairs.

It's an interesting bit of video involving one of the "right-wing radicals" on talk radio. Might change your perceptions a little. Reynolds apologizes for thinking that guys like Levin were too "extreme" in their views of Obama during the election.

Related: Glenn Reynolds worries about the new administration's desire to control the media.

ACORN: Advocates for "Social Justice" in Real Life

ACORN has been around for a long time. Serious problems have been reported in this organization for a long time. An idealistic cause does not guarantee ideal results. But good intentions, at this time in American history, are often viewed more favorably than good results, especially in the press.

Partly because its charter is so idealistic, ACORN has often successfully deflected legal challenges and serious scandals. Especially in its earlier years, it employed Alinsky tactics to coerce organizations (such as banks) to institute policies it promoted as furthering Social Justice. It posed a serious public relations threat to many organizations. No one wanted to be seen as persecuting advocates for Social Justice (as opposed to justice before the law). Few wanted to take on the powerful friends of ACORN in government and the unions. So the government grants kept coming despite serial scandals which came and went quickly in the news. ACORN developed a strategy of blaming its disadvantaged workforce for most of its ethical breaches.

ACORN's problems have long run much deeper than the "helping child sex slavers avoid taxes on a brothel" videos and multiple charges of voter registration fraud. But long-standing problems are getting new scrutiny now. Why are these champions of social justice covering up embezzlement, trying to get around minimum wage laws, mistreating disadvantaged employees, persecuting whistleblowers and failing to pay for employee health care? Etc. Since the prostitution videos, people are suddenly interested. Sad that it took something like that to generate interest. No wonder President Obama is taking the stance now that he has barely heard of the organization.

The IRS is finally breaking ties with ACORN.

Satire alert:

Frank J. Fleming writes political humor at IMAO.us and has always looked for an excuse to dress as a pimp, but never thought of "sting operation."

Jay Leno runs an ad for ACORN.

Lessons for College Activists: Why did the sting work?

Corrupting Artists

There have been rumors of ties between the National Endowment for the Art and members of the Obama campaign for some time. Now, audio hits the internet, showing direction of artists to work on the political goals of the Obama Administration in return for NEA grants. Andrew Klavan comments on how this corrupts artists. Is the NEA like ACORN for eggheads?

Iowahawk proves that President Bush did it, too. Heh.

UPDATE: You, too, can make big money through the NEA's easy Federal Art Instruction Institute course.

Why liberals are still angry

Frank J. explains it all:

The liberals were crazy angry while George W. Bush was president. Part of it was that for a time after 9/11, they were made completely irrelevant — when people are dying, who is going to listen to a liberal?

But another part of it is that it’s much easier to hate a person than to hate a concept — like conservatism. So they were able to channel all their hate into President Bush. And they were jumping-around-pooh-flinging-biting-each-other angry. I think a number of conservatives were secretly looking forward to the Obama presidency in hopes that liberals might just calm down a little. . .

Big miscalculation.

Now conservatives have more reason to be angry these days, with liberals in charge and all the spending and government takeovers. But with Democrats having complete control of the government, you’d think liberals could be dismissive of conservatives and be calm themselves. But no, they’re still crazy angry. Maybe even angrier than before. Biting-fingers-off angry. They’re screeching about how all the people opposed to Obama are racists and neo-Nazis and stupid, and they’re using sexual slurs against protesters and boycotting everyone who disagrees with them. They’re still nuts, but why?

See things from their point of view. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Update on President Obama's Innocuous Speech to Students

A little insight into the disconnect between the President's "conservative" speech to kids and the lesson plans for the speech released in advance:

When critics lashed out at President Obama for scheduling a speech to public school students this month, accusing him of wanting to indoctrinate children to his politics, his advisers quickly scrubbed his planned comments for potentially problematic wording. They then reached out to progressive Web sites such as the Huffington Post, liberal bloggers and Democratic pundits to make their case to a friendly audience.

The Anchoress: “That’s one thing that struck me about Obama’s speech to the school children: how nothing he said seemed to bear any direct relation to the problematic teaching materials which had been released in anticipation of the event. I suspected, then, that the speech had been re-written into utter banality in order to make the conservatives who objected to the speech seem like paranoid nutters. This seems to confirm that. And it’s a brilliant tactic; were I in the WH, I’d have done the same thing.”

It worked. John Harwood at MSNBC even said that most of the people who objected to the President's speech to their kids were a danger to their children because they were too stupid to raise them well. Bringing America together.

Interestingly, NPR did a more balanced report on this issue. Maybe they're starting to come around. Interesting also that the Washington Post also published the new information above. Maybe they're trying to increase the trust level of their readers. They're losing money.

Rise of the Uncouth: Joe Wilson, Van Jones, Kanye West

Victor Davis Hanson comments on the increasing coarseness of public discourse in America. Lots of conservatives were embarrassed by Joe Wilson's outburst during the President's speech, for which he has been censured. But lots of people also expressed some emotions of which they were not particularly proud: This was a little bit of payback. And in the short term, it was successful for Mr. Wilson. The Democrats were forced to change their bill (because what the President said was not exactly true), and Wilson raised a lot of money for his next campaign. Still, the Republican members of Congress displayed more respect during this speech (in which there were also other inaccuracies) than Democrats showed to Bush during similar speeches.

Interestingly, the public is also now turning against some of the hate tactics of the Left like reflexive charges or (in the case of Maureen Dowd) fantasies of racism.

Back in the spring, there was a big debate on the PajamasMedia site about whether conservatives should use the liberals' dirty tactics against them now that the liberals had all the power. There were many persuasive arguments in both directions.

I tend to agreed with VDH's position:

The solution, of course, is for the majority to simply say enough is enough, and declare a personal code of decency: “I will not stoop to smear and slur, won’t interrupt a speaker, won’t call anyone a Nazi, won’t do to others what they’ve done to me.” Only that sort of code will end the craziness.

In the short-term it is a losing political formula for conservatives, but in the long term it is the only way to restore sanity and a winning strategy. The New York Times is moribund for reasons other than the Internet. Most (I have not bought a copy in 5 years) won’t read it because of the vitriol of a Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich, and the crass editorials disguised as news accounts on the front page. Obama’s ratings have dived because of the Gates mess, Van Jones, and the Chicago political style. Even Oprah is having problems, once America’s sweetheart went out in a fury on the campaign trail, and used her stature to play on identity politics.

No one needs to become Pollyanna or shocked at occasional tough hits (I’ve been booed and shouted down at a few public lectures by mostly middle-class students parading as “the people” on the barricades), but instead simply refrain from calling your enemy a Nazi or screaming at an official in the middle of a speech, or, like Maureen Dowd, dreaming of kicking Dick Cheney at a reception. The point is not to ostracize or point fingers at others in moralistic fashion, but just simply say, “That’s not my way.”

Otherwise?

Otherwise, we won’t have a tennis match, an awards ceremony, a Presidential speech, a congressional debate—much of anything without some hysterical rant from the unhinged. (emphasis mine).

Lots of interesting viewpoints in the comments.

Editor, NYT Book Review, thinks conservatism is dead

Ed Driscoll interviews James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute. An interesting post and video concerning the Left's view of conservatism. Sam Tanenahaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, had bad timing with the publication of his book on the death of conservatism just before the Sept. 12 Tea Parties. But Tanenhaus uses a European definition of conservatism.

Tanenhaus is not altogether certain as to the causes of this collapse, at times suggesting that conservatives undid themselves because they were corrupt and unprincipled in their pursuit of power and at others suggesting that they lost the support of the American people because of their devotion to right-wing “orthodoxy.” The one thing about which he is certain is that he dislikes conservatives—intensely and unremittingly so, judging by the rhetoric deployed in this book. Tanenhaus says at various points that conservatives are out to destroy the country, that they are driven by revenge and resentment, that they dislike America, and that they behave more like extremists and revolutionaries (“Jacobins”) than as genuine conservatives. In this sense, he has resurrected the liberal literature about Sen. McCarthy and “the radical right,” and sought to apply it to contemporary conservatism as if nothing of importance had happened in the meantime. All of this is nonsense, of course, and given some of the author’s previous writings, particularly his biography of Chambers, one had reason to hope that he would have produced something more elevated than the partisan assault against conservatives that he has packaged in this book.

There have been predictions of the death of conservatism before. There have also been predictions of the death of liberalism. But liberalism keeps conservatism going when liberals are in power, and vice versa. Partly because power corrupts.

ACORN and the decline of the Mainstream Media

Andrew Breitbart speaks at a Tea Party in Quincy, Illinois on September 12 concerning the first blockbuster ACORN/child sex slave video:

"When is the mainstream media going to start covering this? They're never going to start covering it."

"You're the media now. The American People are the Fourth Estate. . . You don't have to trust Hollywood or Manhattan anymore, because the game is up".

James O'Keefe is pretty serious about using the Left's Saul Alinsky tactics against them. To a CNN producer: "Now that ACORN lied to you, Jonathan Klein, what are you going to do?" Concerning the recent scoops by the Conservative Media:

"By ignoring important stories, the Legacy Media are creating new competition whose presence they’ll regret. They could have forestalled that by simply doing their jobs.

Plus this: “ABC ‘World News’ anchor Charles Gibson seemed caught off guard by the ACORN tapes on Tuesday when he told Chicago radio hosts Don Wade and Roma that he hadn’t heard of them.” Now if Sarah Palin had said something similarly ignorant . . . .

ACORN threatened legal action and Big Government published a rebuttal piece which charged racism. Then Big Government put out a new video, featuring a white ACORN employee in San Bernardino. "Alinsky Rule #8: Keep the pressure on. Never let up." First Baltimore, then D.C., then New York, then San Bernardino. In each case, employees told the actor/investigators how to commit tax fraud, how to launder money into a political campaign and gave tips on running a successful brothel utilizing underage girls. The first video, from Baltimore, was shocking. The second and third were highly disturbing. The one from San Bernardino is - - - Amazing. (And, as it turns out, exaggerated*). Your tax dollars at work, helping others not to pay taxes on a high-profit prostitution business using child sex slaves.

Many in the Mainstream Media scoff at and are offended by the "Sixty Minutes" style investigations (with a "Borat" edge - and nuttiness) directed at an organization funded by liberals - mostly unions and government. ACORN executives had apparently thought that they would be protected from the effects of any bad publicity (such as the voter registration fraud scandals) because people would come to their defense. ACORN is changing their name, while trying to take legal action against a group of whistleblowers from within the organization who are using the name, "ACORN 8". The whistleblowers talk about a million-dollar embezzlement by the founder's brother which was hidden from board members by the founder. This is the kind of stuff that happens when an organization feels like it has a great deal of security - that no one can effectively challenge the leaders of that organization. They have been right up to this point. Opposition just made them stronger. One of ACORN's founding principles:

ACORN’s lifeblood is conflicts with targets outside the organization.

As a young community organizer, President Obama helped train ACORN personnel in how to do community organizing in Chicago. He served as their attorney when they sued Citibank over home loans for people who could not afford home loans. Obama later rejected the Alinsky principle of pushing power down, which he found to be ineffective. He came to believe that effective community organizing required a strong, charismatic leader. It seems that the people who made the ACORN/child sex slave videos stayed with the original Alinsky concepts, pretty much.

Recent investigations for voter registration fraud in 14 or 15 states (plus a slew of earlier complaints and other reports of serious malfeasance) were not enough to keep the Census Bureau from using ACORN to collect census data. But one child sex slavery video was enough.

WHY WAS ACORN IN THE BUSINESS OF GIVING TAX ADVICE, ANYWAY? Because they had a "partnership" with the IRS. Too bad for the IRS that they were giving tax fraud advice to prostitutes and pimps talking about making money that would put them well into President Obama's "rich" category.

Government is way too big and too corrupt when the federal government has "partnerships" with community groups with strong partisan connections. Connections so strong that they feel immune from criticism.

UPDATE: MSM finally covers the story in order to explain Congressional action against ACORN. They make a few excuses for the ACORN employees and/or attack the investigators' ethics:

Concerning the NPR coverage:

It’s true that the neglect of school children in the inner cities and elsewhere is morally wrong and possibly criminal. It is arguably the systemic root of much of what ails America. And it’s true that liberal government policies dating back three generations have served to warehouse the poor while creating perverse financial incentives to underachieve, i.e. welfare policies that encouraged the poorest to forgo savings, to ignore career and college ambitions and to have multiple children outside of marriage. Even so, it is sick and condescending to assume that the poor and disenfranchised lack any moral compass. The aforementioned behavior, financially speaking, is perfectly rational — thanks to our government. The implicit suggestion that these people “don’t know better” than to abet child prostitution is the height of racism and arrogance.

Such lack of expectations born of liberal guilt is tragic, but telling.

This isn’t The Wire, Mr. James. These aren’t street level drug dealers at the mercy of a politically confused Drug War. These are employees of a government funded organization who blithely conspire to rape little girls. And I do thank you for pointing out who trained these people. Yes, ACORN did. But why fail to mention that this organization has yet to apologize, or to thank James and Hannah for bringing this horror to their attention?

New York Times finally weighs in. Quote of the day from Mike Gonzales of the Heritage Foundation: “It should have been ‘60 Minutes’ doing this stuff — not two people whose combined ages are 45.” What was missing from the NYT coverage.

Concerning LA Times coverage:

But what’s the sniffing about how hidden-camera videos are “distasteful”? I’ll bet they wouldn’t be saying that if a hidden-camera reporter had turned up Boy Scout leaders speaking well of child prostitution . .

UPDATE 2: Jon Stewart to the Mainstream Media: "I'm a fake journalist and I'm upset these people scooped me. Let's get to work, people!"

* UPDATE 3: Well, it looks like the ACORN worker made up the story about killing her husband. Also about her meetings with top Democrats, although she apparently had a meeting with at least one State representative.

Hannah Giles talks about her time alone with the ACORN representative, and presents more video. You decide if the ACORN representative seemed scared. Or if she was "playing with" James and Hannah, as reported elsewhere.

James also posts Part III of the San Bernardino sting: unedited tapes. Note the "bumper music" at the end of the second video - the chick was ridiculous - same music that was used in the first San Bernardino video. I think they knew that she was exaggerating before she claimed that she was either (a) playing with them or (b) scared of them.

UPDATE 4: The Mainstream Media did manage to keep one person uninformed about ACORN: Nancy Pelosi.

Union/Government Complex, Pensions the Chicago Way

Chicago Sun-Times:

City Hall's biggest pension doesn't go to a police superintendent, fire commissioner or even an alderman.

It's paid to a former steamroller operator named Dennis J. Gannon.

But Gannon's City Hall pension — $153,649 a year — isn't based on what he was paid as a steamroller operator and foreman for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Instead, Gannon took advantage of a little-known state law that allowed him to base his taxpayer-supported pension on his much-larger salary as president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, a private organization that represents more than 300 unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

And he didn't even have to retire as the federation president. He's still in that job, which paid him $215,484 in 2007, the most recent figures available.

Thanks to that law, Gannon now collects a city pension that's nearly three times what he made at City Hall. He began collecting that pension five years ago, when he was 50. By the time he turns 70, that city pension will have paid him a total of more than $3 million.

Gannon is perhaps the city's most prominent labor leader. When Mayor Daley was seeking cost-cutting concessions from city workers this summer, he turned to Gannon — and largely got them.

Dates back to 1957

Gannon defends his city pension deal.

"I'm probably not the only labor guy taking advantage of that state law,'' Gannon said.

He's right. A Chicago Sun-Times examination of the state's 17 largest government retirement plans found more than five dozen retired government workers whose pensions are based not on their public salaries but, instead, on what they were paid by labor unions, lobbying groups and other non-governmental organizations. (Emphasis mine)

And now the Democratic Congress wants to promote unionization of medical professionals via pending Health Reform Legislation. Because they believe in fairness. To their big supporters. Because everyone wants to see union bosses and big attorneys make more than surgeons, cardiologists and oncologists, who after all, are just technicians.

Incidentally, one reason the unions need help from Congress and the Administration is that they need big boosts in membership to cover their unfunded pensions. These unfunded pensions will be a huge problem for unions in the near future, unless they can turn around their flagging membership through such measures as elimination of the secret ballot in union elections.

TRUE STORY: As noted in the link above, Boeing employees in one plant have just voted to disband their union. One of my brothers-in-law once got a job with Boeing in Washington State. His supervisors were very happy with him, because he did high-quality work and got more done than the other workers. However, his unionized co-workers harassed him and he quit. He left behind a lot of security and an easy future. Because he did not feel good about pretending to work. Must run in David's family.

My brother quit working for the State in his first job out of college for similar reasons. He gave up security for integrity and independence.

General Principles: As Lawrence M. Miller noted, the establishment of unions in an industry is often a sign that management has become alienated from workers. If management pays attention to its employees, unions are generally not too attractive to those employees. And unions are just as susceptible to arrogance and corruption as are business leaders. Sometimes more so, as in the old-fashioned involvement of organized crime in Big Labor.

Management and unions can become so bound in rigid rules that they become involved in a death-spiral as they become unable to respond to changing circumstances. Witness GM and Chrysler.

Norman Borlaug, the man who fed the world

"The man who defused the population bomb".

“Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America’s Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.”

American media culture, anyway.

I don't remember learning about Norman Borlaug in school. This 2000 interview gives you an idea what Borlaug did. Pej picks out an interesting segment. Jeff Jacoby calls him "the man who hated hunger".

I do remember learning a lot about Rachel Carson, whose theories turned out to be way off the mark. The application of those theories killed millions of poor people, notably pregnant women and children, in Africa and other third world countries. But she had good intentions and wrote well. Good intentions and effective persuasion are what count today, apparently.

Norman Borlaug "doesn't fit the narrative". A lot of people with good ideas today "don't fit the narrative". A lot of people who are actually taking action to do good "don't fit the narrative", either. We need to look beyond the news to see some of them. You may know a few right in your own neighborhood, or even in your own family.


p.s.: Rachel Carson wasn't the only ground-breaking environmentalist around during the same time period (and before). Another environmentalist who wrote well, and more temperately (at least in the essays I've read).

How the Government Created the Credit Crisis

John Taylor, Stanford University economist, discusses the government's mistakes which led to the credit crisis. Greenspan doesn't seem like such a genius anymore.

Related: What did the government do right?

Why won't today's regulators define who's too big to fail?

Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives

Maybe some of today's progressives aren't as innovative that they thought. An episode in history that's not covered in detail in most high school history textbooks:

During his post-presidency presidential campaign, Teddy Roosevelt campaigned for more federal power and more direct democracy. (Wonder where Ross Perot came up with his "vote on the issues from home" ideas?) Power is attractive to politicians. Especially to those who are good on the bully pulpit.

September 12 Protests

Democrats expected 2 million people? Double the crowd at the inauguration? (Congress flubbed up the logistics at the inauguration, though, and not everyone who wanted to be there made it).

It turned out to be a surprisingly large protest in Washington. There were some other teaparties elsewhere in the country, too. Like Quincy, Illinois. The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

A pretty big peaceable assembly. Glenn Reynolds on the quality of community organizing at the smaller Quincy Tea Party:

I’ve been involved with a lot of events over my life, from civil rights protests to rock concerts to science fiction conventions, and I’ve never been involved with an event that ran with such well-oiled efficiency. . . .

One interesting note: I’ve said this before, but those in the GOP who think that the Tea Party movement is for their benefit need to think again. Roger Stone spoke, and while nobody had anything against him in particular, several people told me that they thought the GOP was trying to co-opt the Tea Party Movement, and they weren’t happy about that. My advice to the GOP — and, for that matter, to those Democrats who care — is to try to find a way to address the Tea Party crowd’s interests, bearing in mind that if you don’t they’re just as happy to throw Republicans out of office as Democrats.

But it probably doesn’t matter. Based on the level of organization, commitment, and sheer likability I saw this weekend, the folks from Quincy are going to wind up ruling the world anyway . . . .

The Libertarian magazine Reason's editor Matt Welch gives his first take on the Washinton, D.C. rally:

This is all, obviously, a partial and unscientific take, and not an attempt to encapsulate a huge event, but rather a faithful rendering of what I saw. With that caveat, I had a very hard time reconciling the human beings I talked to and observed with the caricatures described in pre-writes by the New York Times' Gail Collins ("The tea party movement activists range from geeky Ron Paulists who obsess about the money supply to conspiracy theorists who believe that Barack Obama is a noncitizen brought here by people who hate this country"), the L.A. Times' Tim Rutten ("the talk-show/tea-party right...if it has its way–will convert the GOP into an almost exclusively white, zealously religious, mostly Southern party"), and Gawker's Alex Pareene ("Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America").

Political rallies are no place to seek the subtle truth, nor feel particularly glowing about your countrymen, and today was no different in that regard for me. But the meta-fact about a huge anti-Obamanomics protest eight months into his term is certainly significant, and very little of what I saw made me fear that Alex Pareene will be blown to smithereens by a suicide hijacker from Arkansas. I am confident, however, that I will soon be made to fear what I utterly failed to detect.

Bomb Threat.
New York Times "post-reporting"
CNN

Samplie images:

Protesting the media. And taxes.

Impeach Everybody.

Astroturf? "Take a moment to sympathize with the "special interest" accountants who have to cut all these checks"

Protesting the government pushing debt into the future.

Worried about the Constitution.

Instapundit:

“Many protesters said they paid their own way to the event – an ethic they believe should be applied to the government.” Why is the British press more honest in its reporting on this stuff than the American press?

Meanwhile, a reader emails: “I’ll tell you what I find impressive. I’m watching the Fox news video about 15 minutes after the end of the event. The crowd has thinned out enough that you can see the ground and there is not a speck of trash on the grass. Absolutely clean.* To contrast, google ‘pictures of litter on the mall after the inauguration.’”

What does this mean for David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel?

* Some big generalizations in this piece and in the comments. Still, it does seem sort of like the Sept 12 protesters had mothers who taught them to clean up after themselves. Not much evidence of incipient terrorism there.

Psychology, Politics, History and Personality Disorders

Dr. Helen, a psychologist, in a fascinating interview with the author of "Evil Genes", Barbara Oakley, who is not a psychologist but who had a sister with personality disorder. She's an original thinker. Dr. Helen has a special professional interest in violent children, so this topic is right up her alley.

Ignore the provocative title to the video and listen to the author as she discusses how she came to be interested in the influence of borderline personality disorders on families and in history. She is also interested in the differences between the conclusions of psychologists and neurobiologists. Information on liberal influences in the American Psychological Association is in the last part of the interview.

Interesting side issue: why very intelligent people often resist criticism.

Borderline Personality Disorder and Clinical Narcissism

Dr. Helen talks with author Randi Kreger about Borderline Personality Disorder, which may be related to clinical narcissism in some cases. Lots of good information and advice for people who know someone with this condition. Men with this disorder may end up in the prison system more often than women, while women may be over-diagnosed. One can imagine how it might sometimes be confused with bipolar disorder. Dr. Joy Bliss on clinical characteristics of these disorders.

Additional information: Welcome to Oz - online communities for people who know or are related to someone with borderline personality disorder or clinical narcissism - a partner, child, parent, sibling, etc. Comments on Dr. Helen's blog from people who have experience with this disorder.

Another 9/11: The one 2000 years ago

A battle that changed history.

Remembering 9/11: a round-up

Instapundit's blogging on that day. Scroll up. People were confused.

From Allahpundit's Twitter feed: memories of his day in Manhattan 8 years ago.

Tribute from just after the attacks.

The grim future imagined for New York (New York Times)

Heroes' Creed

Tough New Yorkers

"Make History" site for 9/11

Reaching out to the survivors

From the NYT: individual portraits of grief

The Anchoress has a hard time writing anything new about 9/11 today, but still writes about remembering and about kids. She includes lots of links. Some of them sound interesting.

Search engine remembrances. Bing.com Ask.com, Dogpile. Google - nothing.

John McWhorter: What 9/11 taught me about human nature.

VDH: Our national schizophrenia over 9/11

Ralph Peters: Forgetting.

Mark Steyn, core civilizational values.

Claudia Rosett: Failure of imagination or failure of cognition? Complacency?

The Anniversary of 9/11 and the power of Ideas

Video: Andrew Klavan on the Power of ideas. Worth your time. The text is here, ready for printing.

Big Government - New Breitbart Site

Andrew Brietbart launched a new website today called Big Government. Here's the first blog post. Big Government joins a family of Breitbart websites: Breitbart.com, Breitbart TV and Big Hollywood. Big Hollywood and Big Government are sort of like group blogs with a few add-on features. Both are a little edgier, more personal and more emotional that the cultural/political blogs I typically read. Could be a generational thing, partly.

TODAY'S BIG STORY at BIG GOVERNMENT

Today, Big Government got off with a bang, with Breitbart TV (seeing is believing) and Big Government teaming up to provide the full videos, audio feeds and transcripts of the "ACORN gives tax fraud advice and help with a home loan to a pimp and prostitute who want to set up a brothel using underage girls smuggled into the country" story. In exchange for a requested $120 membership to ACORN. They sell out little girls cheap at ACORN. It's all for a higher good, of course. POWER TO THE PEOPLE. You have to look beyond the repressive rules of society if you're going to make progress.*

The young undercover investigators tell their own stories. The "pimp" and "candidate for political office" explains why he uses Saul Alinsky tactics against one of the biggest Saul Alinsky-type Community Organizations. The "prostitute" explains a little about how Alinsky's ideology can be used against the typical practitioners of his methods. The more traditional and unflappable John Fund has called for a cutoff of government funds to ACORN, which is also famous for voter fraud and other malfeasance in several states. And for using tactics some would call extortion to pressure banks to give home loans to people who couldn't pay back the loans. Doing their part to contribute to the current financial crisis.

Remember that President Obama wants to use ACORN and similar community organizations extensively in gathering census data. The White House took over control of the census for 2010. I'm confident that ACORN would be very effective at increasing the census count in Democratic districts in order to increase the number of Democratic congressional districts.

The tactics used to uncover this latest scandal are unconventional, but the ACORN story is a very important one. The Big Government site promises to be very useful in publicizing corruption and other problems which are inherent to big government with its accompanying "public-private partnerships" with community organizations, unions, non-profit organizations and for-profit corporations. Because most of the mainstream media doesn't seem too interested in issues like this.

Beautiful liberal idealism doesn't always work out so well in real life. That's why conservatives and libertarians like "Separation of Powers" and other constitutional limits on the power of government.

* I got a little snarky there. The 'new left' ideology characterized by the Frankfurt School and its ideological descendants favors breaking down societal rules for sexual behavior. The ultimate goal of the hard-core 'new left' is the destruction of traditional Western civilization. The ACORN workers would be affected by the ideological "climate" of the organization in which they worked. But they don't exactly seem like hard-core ideologues. There may be a less-ideological factor which contributed to the helpfulness of the ACORN workers toward the young couple posing as a pimp and prostitute. The compassion of liberals is often based in emotions rather than in ideas or standards. The ACORN workers wanted to be helpful and compassionate toward the people right in front of their faces.

They may not have thought much about the well-being of the 13- and 14-year old girls from El Salvador the couple said they wanted to set up in a brothel. They couldn't see the girls. Their emotions were focused on the couple they were talking to. This couple needed help. And compassion for a large, amorphous group of people like "taxpayers" would be out of the question when the people right in front of them needed help.

Or maybe it's about increasing ACORN's base. The progressive equivalent of a single-minded profit motive.

UPDATE: ACORN fired the two "rogue employees" and claimed that the investigative pair had tried the same thing at other ACORN offices and had been angrily turned away. Then more video was released. Different ACORN office, similar results. Just astounding.

Why liberals and conservatives talk past each other

A Basic Conflict of Visions

Glenn Reynolds recommends sending New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman a link to this dynamite video by Bill Whittle. The video starts out with a discussion of A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell.

Maybe by thinking about the video and doing some related reading, we will better understand the basic differences in world view which often cause liberals and conservatives to talk past each other.

Case Study: Thomas Friedman

Well, do I think I'd be able to "connect" with Thomas Friedman if I really understood his underlying "vision"? ? ? There's some fascinating information at the links below:

The reason that Glen Reynolds recommends the video above to Thomas Friedman is that the latter has just written a piece extolling the advantages of an enlightened autocracy. The current regime in China in particular.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

Some conservatives and libertarians are alarmed. Uncle Jimbo fisks Friedman's piece.

Others think that the piece confirms the soft, benevolent "despotic impulse" lurking in current climate change and health care legislation. Jonah Goldberg:

I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. . . . This is the argument for an "economic dictatorship" pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It's the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

I have no idea why I still have the capacity to be shocked by such things. A few years ago, during the worst part of the Iraq war, I wrote a column saying that Iraq needed a Pinochet type to bring order to Iraq and help develop democratic and liberal institutions. To this day, I get vicious hate mail from liberal and leftist readers for my "pro-dictator" stance. Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman, golden boy of the NYT op-ed page, is writing love-letters to dictatorships because they have the foresight to invest in electric batteries and waterless toilets or something. It looks like there's reason to hope I was wrong about Iraq (I certainly hope I was). But at least I favored a dictatorship of sorts — for another country! — because I thought it would lead to a liberal democracy. Here, Friedman lives in a liberal democracy but has his nose pressed up against the candy store window of a cruel, undemocratic, regime and all he can do is drool over the prospect of having the same power here. . .

Also, read Goldberg's update from a friend concerning India.

To tell the truth, I haven't really had the heart to look around to see if there are liberal voices out there congratulating Friedman for stating what is obvious to them, too. So far, I have not developed a desire to modify my views in order to compromise with anyone who agrees with Friedman about the advantages of an enlightened autocracy over a constitutional democracy (or republic). Though I can at least accept the idea that they have good intentions.

To repeat Andrew Klavan: "Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end."

Update: The King of Parody finds Mr. Friedman's first draft.

Why the over-reaction to President Obama's Speech to Schoolkids?

Fascinating to see the intense reaction to President Obama's plan to speak to schoolkids today. When GHW Bush spoke to school kids in a similar address, only the Democratic leadership, National Education Association and the mainstream media complained. No big reports of parents planning to keep their kids out of school. No big fears that the President would try to "indoctrinate" children. The controversy (including a GAO investigation and a congressional hearing) came after the speech, not before.

The controversy about President Obama's plan grew even more when a school showed this video to kids, triggering widespread commentary on the religious nature of devotion to President Obama shown during the campaign and his early presidency. Some schools decided not to broadcast President Obama's speech, prompting this presidential reaction. Heh. Some schools are re-scheduling the speech for later, to fit in with other lesson plans (which parents seemed to like). Some schools haven't even started yet.

Actor Adam Baldwin notes that most of the controversy stems from the creepy "cult-of-personality" lesson plans which were issued before the speech was released. Once these plans were dropped or modified, much of the opposition to the speech disappeared. Some parents planned to keep their kids out of school even after these lesson plans were dropped or modified.

President Obama has now taken the unusual step of releasing the text of the speech in advance. Lots of conservatives really like it. Other conservatives and libertarians had alternative ideas. Tigerhawk thinks outside the box. Pej points out some more outside-the-box thinking. And Dr. Helen has another interesting point of view. Michelle Malkin asks why D.C. kids should listen to President Obama - he didn't listen to them.

I think Jim Treacher hit the nail on the head concerning most of the residual resistance to kids listening to the President speak:

If you spend the summer calling people terrorists for disagreeing with you, they might not want to give you any alone time with their kids.

PRESS REACTION
And then there is paranoia about paranoia. As is typical nowadays, the New York Times tried to make the more mainstream critics of the plans seem really, really loony. And it wasn't even Maureen Dowd writing. Of course, this brazen misrepresentation of Mark Steyn's words was re-worked from the "Newspaper of Record" and reported in other papers. The Times has finally corrected their misquote. Corrections probably won't happen in a lot of the papers which relied on the Times instead of an original source for their information. And the MSM says you can't trust the Internet? Somehow, the layers of fact-checkers in the mainstream media don't seem to be doing as good a job of fact-checking as the scary blogging denizens of the internet are doing concerning issues like this.

UPDATE: Here's MSNBC at its superficial and inflammatory best, with John Harwood telling parents that if they objected to Obama's speech (no mention of the creepy lesson plans) they're too stupid to raise their children. I think Althouse's phrase "paranoia about paranoia" also fits nicely some of the other comments made about the Right in these clips. What do you think?

E.J. Dione blogged immediately after the speech:

Upon Barack Obama’s election, even my most conservative friends who supported John McCain said Obama could do a world of good for poor children in the country by stressing the importance of education, hard work, staying in school and taking responsibility. Yes, those are often thought of as conservative values.

But when Obama proposed to do just that on the first day of school, the far right — without asking any questions or seeking any information — decided to pounce, on the theory that everything Obama did should be attacked relentlessly as part of some secret and dangerous ideological agenda.

Captain Ed's response:

That’s simply not true, and it undermines the entirety of Dionne’s argument. The basis for the eruption of criticism came from the study guide provided to school districts a week ago, which contained a curious instruction to teachers:

“Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the President. These would get collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”

First, there’s a question of incompetence in this study guide. Who produces a study guide for a document or lesson that has yet to be created? Had the White House included the speech with the study guide, a lot of the criticism could have been avoided right from the beginning. It took six days for the White House to produce the speech after releasing the study guide and creating the firestorm of criticism. Help the President do what, exactly? Without the speech, who knew?

That set the stage for the speculation that ran wild, especially regarding how teachers would hold their children accountable for “help[ing] the President.” In the US, students do not help individual politicians, nor do they pledge allegiance to them. Had the study guide suggested ways to help the school, or the community, as Obama’s speech to them did, it would have been completely uncontroversial. Instead, the White House left the definite impression that they wanted teachers enforcing service to Obama himself, which understandably gave parents the creeps — as it should everyone.

Far from pouncing without information or evidence and going off half-cocked, as Dionne accuses, it was the White House that went off half-cocked and created its own problems. In the absence of the speech and the appearance of the study guide advisory to enforce service to Obama, it’s difficult to see how else parents would have reacted. Parents should question whether schools are indoctrinating children with political messages rather than educating them, and when a proposed syllabus advises teachers to make a homework assignment of working for a particular politician, no one should be surprised at the controversy that will inevitably erupt.

Update: I heard a report on NPR about the controversy about this issue. They mentioned some of the controversy after the speech by GHW Bush. Their coverage was far more balanced than that of CNN and the biggest newspapers, let alone MSNBC. This radio network may be responding faster that some of the commercial media to the national distrust of the mainstream media. A pleasant surprise. They keep this up and I may have to move them out of the "Left" designation in my sidebar.

Van Jones quits, Media finds lessons for all of us

President Obama's special advisor on Green Jobs (popularly called the "Green Jobs Czar" by liberal groups) resigned on Saturday and the resignation was announced by the White House just after midnight Sunday morning. The somewhat predictable media response is instructive:

What's the astounding lesson the Two Toms on Meet the Press thinks we should take from this resignation (since the print media and major networks failed to report the developing story)? You can’t trust the Internet. Watch the video. And remember that the information from the internet which led to the resignation consisted of (1) a petition Jones signed but said he did not understand, (2) YouTube videos of Jones speaking in public and (3) excerpts from friendly interviews in the print media plus excerpts of published material Jones had written himself.

Allahpundit:

You have to see it to believe it. The singular lesson of the past week, after big media failed to uncover Jones’s Truther past and then actively suppressed it when it broke online, is that they can’t be trusted to chase stories that are inconvenient to The One . . . And yet here they are . . . warning the public that only a fool would play in the “open sewer” that is the Internet, where lies and smears and video clips that the networks won’t show of Obama administration officials calling Republicans “assholes” flow insidiously onward. Plenty of viewers will believe them, too: Remember, for many, their first taste of the Van Jones story came this morning, and no sooner did they hear about it than a trusted figure like Tom Brokaw appeared to dismiss it as a smear campaign. You couldn’t script a more Orwellian ending. Friedman actually goes so far as to call this a cautionary tale about how everyone’s a potential target in the age of mass media. . . . Quoth Jonah Goldberg: “What a tragedy that fewer people will support cop-killers and anti-American conspiracy groups because of poor Van Jones' chilling effect on the culture.” (Emphasis mine)

Mickey Kaus: "Amazingly, many New York Times print readers still don't know why Van Jones resigned!"

Jennifer Rubin:

Unfortunately for the White House, this turn of events seems to confirm many of the criticisms, even those from sympathetic Democrats who want Obama to succeed with his liberal agenda. There are at least a couple of problems that we have seen before.

First, there is apparently no one outside the ultra-liberal bubble who can spot a mistake and understand how those not part of the netroot fan base might take offense. . . . Maybe there is a brave soul trying to save the White House from itself, but if there is, no one is listening. And that gets it into trouble again and again.

Second, because the mainstream media doesn’t report or underreports ”bad” news ( i.e., news that isn’t helpful to Obama), the administration operates under the misconception that bad news is just Glenn Beck ranting or a “fake” news story. The White House then goes to spin mode, attacks the messengers (e.g., conservative news outlets), imagines “real” Americans couldn’t possibly care, and allows the issue to fester. The result is to elevate the conservative outlets that did the reporting and to further erode the credibility of the “friendly” nonnews media. As Politico’s headline aptly put it: “Glenn Beck up, left down, Jones defiant.”

Jones isn’t the biggest story going on . . . But unless the White House deals with the judgment, personnel, and execution problems that the Jones fiasco highlights, the president will have a hard time regaining his footing and dealing with all these, and other, pressing issues.

Andrew Breitbart on the MSM Reaction:

Much of America has started to realize that not only was Mr. Obama not vetted before he became president, he and his fellow unvetted cohorts continue to be given a pass by the Fourth Estate.

Two more stories demonstrate how the Democrat-Media Complex, the natural alliance of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, is more concerned with trying to figure out how to destroy Glenn Beck - "he's nuts!" - than to follow his methodical, accurate reporting. This dynamic - used against all potent critics and off-the-reservation journalists - shows that not only is the media ignoring all the negative things coming out about the Obama administration, it is acting like President Richard Nixon's henchmen, making life difficult for its whistleblowers.

One of the stories is that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a massive radical organization, is poised to receive billions from the Obama "stimulus."

ACORN's voting division is currently under investigation in multiple states for fraud. And its housing division exists to fulfill an unclear mandate that has been accused of using funds to pay for political protests. If the alternative media digs further and finds out ACORN is guilty as charged, and as corrupt as its ample critics say it is, the onus is those who didn't question when the Obama team decided to allocate billions to expand the group's reach.

Brian Williams, the ball is in your court. . . .

Moving toward the Left - Marc Ambinder:

He was a classic policy entrepreneur, and arguably, the type of person that liberals and progressives want as a presidential adviser. But he was -- and can be -- more influential outside of government than inside of it.

For the same reasons, triumphalism over Jones's exit is misplaced. Jones was many things, but he wasn't the fascist that reactionaries insisted on calling him. And he was never terribly powerful. In fact, his departure makes it easier for the administration to press ahead with its Green Jobs initiative -- no longer do opponents have Van Jones to kick around anymore. That Jones was even the target of vitriol is more evidence of paranoia . . .

For Progressive Blogger Jane Hamsher, the Van Jones incident triggered exasperation both at the administration and at liberal institutions which allow the administration to control their messages:

I first met Van Jones when he was honored last year by the Campaign for America's Future at their gala dinner. He was being swarmed by all of the liberal institutional elite, who just could not be more full of praise for the impressive environmental leader and prison reform organizer. Everybody wanted Van Jones on their board. Everyone wanted him at their fundraisers. Everyone wanted a piece of his formidable limelight.

Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans "a--holes." I'm pretty sure that if you search through the histories of every single liberal leader at the CAF dinner that night, they have publicly said that and worse.

So where are all the statements defending Van Jones by those who were willing to exploit him when it served their purpose?

Wow.

Daily Kos takes their usual militant approach:

. . . Van Jones defeats Glenn Beck.

The big news of the night is that Van Jones, the President's advisor on green jobs and the economy, has resigned under pressure from far-right brownshirts. On the surface this disappointing, to say the least. . . But after weeks of battling rightist slander and disinformation, Jones has resigned.

This could be bad - for Glenn Beck his Holy Trollers.

The near-term downside to this is that the residents of the Beck Asylum for Paranoid Thumb Suckers are going to be celebrating triumphantly for a while. That will be annoying but bearable. Beck himself will feel emboldened and anxious to take aim at a new target. . .

But Beck and his ilk may rue the day they set Jones free. As a private citizen he will not be constrained by diplomacy and the political fear of controversy. He will be able to speak with conviction and take aim at the real villains in our midst. The organization he co-founded, Color of Change, was largely responsible for Beck losing 57 advertisers (so far). And, let's face, Beck's obsession with Jones was driven by vengeance for that association, even though Jones has not been affiliated with the group for over two years. Clearly Beck is afraid of Jones, hence the incessant coverage. But Beck has made a serious strategic error, because Jones is a far bigger threat to Beck outside of government than inside of it.

The effectiveness of the advertiser boycott can now be expanded upon by an unfettered Jones, who can bring his skill, experience, and passion to a new field of battle. . . .

If Glenn Beck is proud that he was able to demonize an honest and patriotic man like Van Jones, he may soon discover that he is not immune from the hardball tactics he employed to tarnish this man's reputation.

Ace: No, Glenn Beck Didn't Rape Anyone."
Jim Treacher: "Who invented the video camera? Who invented Youtube? Who developed the English language? Let's put the blame where it belongs."

Keith Olberman wants you to send him all the dirt you can find on Glenn Beck and his bosses.

The astounding disproportion between the facts -- who Van Jones is and what got him in trouble -- and the Left's perception tells you a lot about what's gone wrong in Hopeville. For all the recent uproar about Joseph Farah and "Birthers," it is the Democratic Party which suffers most from the influence of its extremist supporters.

Jane Hamsher, Alan Colmes, and Keith Olbermann apparently live inside an echo chamber where a man who was a leader of a Marxist outfit like STORM, and who subsequently signed a 9/11 Truther petition, is not legitimately controversial . . . . Does anyone seriously expect an avowed "Birther" to get a White House job in the next Republican administration?

Whoops. Olberman calls off the Kossacks.
Old-fashioned lefty David Corn on the value of the Truther movement.