posted 2010/01/22 at 15:53
Longtime readers know that I have almost always been a fan on Keith Olbermann, dating far back to the pre-.org days when Olbermann was on ESPN, when he and Dan Patrick truly revolutionized the art of the sports recap. The two of them could make watching highlights of any sport, no matter what sport or who was playing, an enjoyable experience, and their reunification on Football Night in America made the show must-see viewing for me. I must admit, though, that I have to ask of them the same question I ask of the Beastie Boys: Does the high quality of their original, pioneering work make up for the wave of poor imitators that followed in their stead? I have been a fan of Olbermann's work on MSNBC as well, even though my politics are firmly to the left of his, and I think Countdown does a good job of balancing serious journalism with opinion and comedy. Even when I get tired of Olbermann shilling for Democrats instead of standing up for the liberal positions he espouses, I still feel compelled to watch his show, for both its informative and entertainment values.
His Special Comment last night on the Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend freely on elections, however, went far beyond the pale. I certainly agree with him that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was not only poor jurisprudence, but sets a dangerous standard for the future of this country. The notion of equating the spending of money with free speech is inherently ludicrous, particularly given our country's notion of corporate personhood. Money, like speech, is a tool that can be used for great good or great evil, but find me one person in this economic downturn who lost his or her house not due to lack of money, but due to lack of words. The only people who could look at our current political system and think that the cure for ails it is more corporate money are people who stand to benefit from the infusion of nearly unlimited amounts of corporate cash into our elections. Unfortunately for we Americans, five of those people are on the Supreme Court right now.
That the court decision paves the way for corporations to tighten their strangleholds on American politics and American people should go without saying. However, for Olbermann to claim on his show last night that the decision was worse than Dred Scott v. Sandford was so hyperbolic as to be just as ludicrous as the decision he was deriding. That Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has the potential to do great, irreparable harm to this country cannot be denied, but to compare it to the most discriminatory decision in the court's history, one that led to this country's bloodiest war and the deaths of over 600,000 Americans, is at best highly paranoid, and at worst an insult to all those in this country whose ancestors toiled in the most inhumane institution this country even enacted, slavery. Olbermann was on the money when he said that American news outlets needed to spend much more time covering this decision and its ramifications, but his rhetoric in his Special Comment last night actually did our common cause a disservice.
It has been painful this past year to see Olbermann descend to a form of self-parody. His repeated setting aside of his principles to defend Democrats started in the aftermath of the 2006 elections, but became legion following Obama's inauguration. Even on those occasions when he does go after Democrats for abandoning progressive beliefs, he does so in a withering tone, giving the camera puppy-dog eyes as if to say, "Please don't stop your party officials from appearing on my show." Perhaps the most galling example of this was the unabashed name-calling he engaged in leading up to Scott Brown's election this past Tuesday, which Jon Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show. Again, Olbermann was correct in principle to address many of the concerns he brought up about Brown, but he did so in a manner which was, in a word, juvenile. The worst part is that Olbermann should know better; he has pointed out in the past that Bill O'Reilly is wise to ignore Olbermann's barbs because you never want to be seen as "punching down," trying to hit those underneath you, as Olbermann so clearly is in television ratings and national stature. Olbermann has been punching down at Republicans for some time now, and while this can be effective for right-wing pundits and talking heads -- we all need to laugh at their pompousness, and Olbermann can still be very funny -- when he does it to Republicans, he only reinforces the ludicrous Republican notion that they are the dominant political party in America right now.
I will admit to being very distressed by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the potential it has, but for Olbermann to act like Chicken Little because of it was unintentionally hilarious, and requires me to do something I never thought I would do: Go to Olbermann's right and defend capitalism. As much as the spectre of complete corporate domination was made substantive by the decision, the idea that it will lead to a One World Nation is remote at best. Despite its many disadvantages and how they've been repeatedly demonstrated in my adult lifetime, American capitalism has shown that it does have a capacity, perhaps even a natural instinct, to make sure that people of different tastes are catered to. If that were not the case, then right now there would be either Coke or Pepsi on my local grocer's shelves, but not both. There would be no Big Three automakers because one of them would have bought out the other two ages ago. Even if liberals are, sadly, a minority in this country, the idea that corporations would homogenize everything and squelch liberalism, or even criminalize it, is unlikely. That this country's laws will become more favourable to big business as a result of this court decision is inevitable, but to declare it the death of the country is absurd.
That it is a possibility is without question, and if there is a company that could rise to become this nation's Shinra, it is certainly Walmart. They already have a record of using their money to curry lawmakers into helping them become more dominant in America, and that is likely to get even worse in the months and years ahead. However, even Walmart's resources are not always enough to counteract the ability of the American people to realize a bad deal when they see one. I teach in a county where, despite Walmart's best efforts, the people there resoundingly voted against the ability for Walmart to build one of its big box stores there, right next to the very building in which I teach. As much as I worry about how ill-informed Americans are about the forces at work to manipulate them into doing things against their own interest, they have shown that sometimes they can still recognize when to take a stand against corporations and the blight they would inflict upon the land.
That Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission could, potentially, turn America into a country uninhabitable by free-thinking liberals and progressives is, sad to say, real, and it is something that I will be guarding against, and I hope that others will join me in seeking whatever legal means are possible to overturn this unfortunate, uninformed, and undemocratic decision. To declare it worse than a decision sanctifying and legalizing the enslavement of a race of people, however, is not only incorrect, but it is insulting, and Keith Olbermann should know better.
Labels: politics, rhetoric, television
posted 2010/01/08 at 16:04
I had thought that nothing could happen that would make me blog about, or even give much conscious thought to, the whole Tiger Woods brouhaha. Once again, I underestimated the ability of Fox News to take any situation and turn it into an opportunity to force their beliefs and morals down our throats. If I were to post a picture of the fingernail I broke earlier today and how I clipped it off, someone at Fox News could find some way to turn it into an example of how Obama's socialist policies are destroying America, or write some paean about how the religious right's version of Christianity means I'd never have to deal with another broken nail for the rest of my life.
I've come to expect Fox News personalities to say things so out of place with both reality and rational thought that more civilized countries would institutionalize them. I'm still a staunch believer in the First Amendment, and I still believe that the best defence against lunatic ideas is to allow the lunatics who espouse them to state them loudly, and at every possible opportunity, so people can judge for themselves how crazy they are. Granted, I think this would work a lot better if we could take a pair of scissors to this country and cut off the Deep South (they sound like they'd like that right now, anyway), but all Americans, now matter how misguided or misinformed, deserve a right to have their voices heard and votes counted.
That being said, the presence of Fox News in our culture, particularly when it is so dominant in some areas, complicates this matter a great deal. Fox News has always been a partisan tool for the right-wingers of this country to use to influence public discourse, obfuscating opinion and cherry-picked facts with actual journalism, and anyone in denial of this fact is in need of an intensive course of deprogramming. In the past, though, Fox News would at least put on a thicker veneer of objectivity with its Alan Colmeses and oh-so-rare shows that were actually "fair and balanced," although those shows usually came on weeknights at three in the morning. They still pull good ratings, though, because Fox News' demographic skews so old that at any time in this country, there are probably hundreds of thousands of televisions tuned into Fox News because their owners just died of old age.
That veneer has been steadily thinning since the election of Obama, though. Openly promoting Tea Party protests this past year was a textbook crossing of the line between journalism and advocacy, and although some on the left called Fox News out on this, such protests were nowhere near as vociferous as they should have been. Brit Hume's comments about Buddhism and Christianity were equally outrageous, and in the past even Fox News knew when to apologize when its personalities said something so out of line to defy description. Instead, Fox News has stood behind Hume's comments, even going so far as to have him basically reiterate them word-for-word on Bill O'Reilly's show.
Now, I will admit to not being as well-informed about the intricacies of Christianity as I'd like, but I think it reasonably safe to say that I know more about Buddhism than Brit Hume does. Setting aside the sheer offenciveness of Hume's comments for the moment, the notion that Christianity is somehow "better" at dealing with forgiveness than Buddhism is just patently and demonstrably false. Hume was speaking of what Tiger Woods would have to do to be forgived not by any actual higher power, but by the "higher power" of the religious right. Nothing short of beocming a card-carrying dittohead would redeem Tiger in their eyes, and for many of us, that would be a far greater sin than his affairs.
Worse yet, right-wingers continue to use the co-opt the language of victimization -- something which, in all seriousness, makes me physically ill -- and claim that criticism of Hume's comments are what are intolerant and misinformed, not Hume's comments themselves. Pretending for a moment that I held any actual cultural or political sway (a huge stretch, I know), imagine what would have happened if I'd written about any of the Republican politicians who got caught in affairs and sex scandals these past two years (I've lost count too), and said that what that politician needed to do was embrace Wicca, because Christianity was inadequate when it came to polyamory. My piece would probably be the lead story on The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck's radio shows for at least five days. Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin would be writing columns calling for my assassination. Brent Bozell would be shouting that my claim showed exactly how Christians are discriminated against in America. This controversy isn't about Tiger Woods or Buddhism or anything like that; it's about the religious right and their continuing efforts to make their warped religion the norm against which everything else should be compared.
I've come to accept Fox News and the Bill O'Reillys and Sean Hannitys and Brit Humes of this world the same way I've come to accept the scar I have on my right calf from when I sliced it open trying to climb a chain-link fence when I was younger: A reminder that stupidity exists in this world, and that it usually leads to painful, lifelong consequences. Even in the context of Fox News' laughable definition of "fair and balanced," though, Brit Hume's comments went way over the line, and not just liberals, but moderates and journalists as well should be screaming bloody murder until Hume apologizes and retracts his ill-informed statements about Buddhism and Christianity. If we don't, then we can expect similar comments from other right-wingers every time anyone not of their ilk gets in the news for anything.
Labels: politics, rhetoric, sports, television
posted 2009/08/03 at 21:55
I suppose I should count my blessings that my long vacation from teaching coincides with the congressional recesses, as it means that I can give myself a bit of a break from politics at the same time as I take a break from my primary employment. However, as has been made clear from today's developments at town hall meetings across the nation, politics isn't exactly taking a total holiday this month. (After all, August is the month without any holidays, at least by most Americans' standards.) The disruptions at town halls, particularly those related to health care, provided what would have been a wonderful teaching moment if I had a class to teach. As it is, I have to file today's events in my brain, and hope that at least some of my students for fall term were paying attention to the coverage of town halls as well.
In all the coverage of the disruptions at these town halls, only a few have bothered to mention that this is another Republican "astroturf" phony-grassroots movement, being bankrolled and coordinated by big business interests that also ran the teabagging movement earlier this year. None have pointed out, as I do in all of my classes, how American political discourse continues to degenerate to a point where most participants and observers believe that the winner of an argument isn't the person who makes the most logical points, or engenders the most sympathy from the crowd, but who can shout the loudest. (I guess you could call it the Jerry Springer-ization of our culture.) Neither have any broadcasts I've seen compared this to the days of the Bush 43 presidency, when Bush's "town halls" featured nothing but carefully-screened, pro-Bush audience members, and protestors at Bush events were forced into distant, screened-off "free speech zones," out of sight and out of mind of the news media and the general public.
This just underscores to me the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans; they're playing with two entirely different playbooks when it comes to influencing public debate. Republicans have been able to use these guerilla-style tactics to take advantage of the comparative openness of Democratic-hosted town halls and similar events, while they close off their own similar events to opposition voices, to hardly a whisper of protest from Democrats. Being a fierce First Amendment advocate, of course I want to keep the public debate open to as many viewpoints as possible and to let those viewpoints have an equal chance of being heard, but at the same time I think there's something to be said for engaging in civil behaviour whenever possible, and the obstructionists who have been disrupting these recent town hall meetings have hardly been civil. Worse yet, their agenda seems to be to prevent intelligent discourse, not add to it, and I find that kind of galling. At the very least, I think there should be a single playbook for all participants to follow, and Democrats' reluctance or inability to engage these obstructionists at their own level once again speaks to the inherent spinelessness of the Democratic party. The health care debate is too important to be lost because Democrats don't want to dirty the cuffs of their trousers by getting down in the mud with these obstructionists.
I hate having to openly advocate for left-leaning peoples to break codes of civility to deal with this astroturf movement that seeks to derail health care reform. Given what is at stake, though, and given the effectiveness of this movement so far, I don't know that there is any other conscionable choice.
Labels: freespeech, politics, rhetoric
posted 2009/05/08 at 13:36
Ohio Christian school tells student to skip prom (AP via Yahoo! News)
Just when I thought this part of the country couldn't get more bad press after dealing with "Joe the Plumber" for the past six months, something like this has to pop up. In all seriousness, this is a news story I would expect to see in a newspaper from forty or fifty years ago, not in 2009. I'm not trying to be disrespectful of religious beliefs here, but at the same time, there is no doubt in my mind that, in this instance, Heritage Christian School is severely overstepping its bounds here by threatening to suspend Tyler Frost for engaging in legal activities on his own time. If the school wants to ban dancing or rock music on its own property, as much as I may disagree with their reasons for doing so, I can respect that as their right. When they threaten to punish a student for things he does off of campus grounds on his own time -- again, this is rock music and dancing we're talking about, not illegal drug use or drunk driving -- and even withhold him from his class' graduation procession, then I get angry and nauseated.
This was kind of a big issue for me growing up. I began having political leanings around the time I was in my junior high years, and some of my classmates from those years stopped going to the private school I went to after junior high, transfering to the various religious high schools around here. In almost every instance, when I saw the students later, they had become severely withdrawn, and their willpower and self-identity had nearly vanished. (One of the schools some students transfered to, Notre Dame Academy, was the same school Katie Holmes went to, to give you a reference point.) Children's rights became a big issue for me then, as these episodes cemented in my mind that children should have the right to practice their own religions, irrespective of their parents' beliefs. I was lucky enough to live in a household where my parents never pushed religion on me, except to learn about what was out there and make my own determination about what would work best for me. I think that's a right every young person should have, and this news story just reinforces, to me, the reasons for that.
Although I haven't thought too much recently about the episodes from my own youth, this is a topic I definitely deal with as a teacher. I try not to talk about my own beliefs -- religious, political, or otehrwise -- when I teach, and I always make a point to say on the first day of class that I grade based on the strength of an argument, irrespective of its position. I've assigned countless As to papers whose positions I wholeheartedly disagree with, because even though I disagree with the positions, the papers were written very persuasively, and deserved As. I often argue against my own beliefs in class when the need arises, because I want to encourage my students to think through opposing viewpoints, the whole Socratic Method thing. What I've noticed, though, is that for many students who come from these religious schools, who have had religion pounded into their heads from such an early age, when confronted with beliefs that are contrary to their own, not only do they show the same refusal to accept that people can hold different views that so nauseates me about modern conservative discourse, but some of them are even blown away by that fact, and get a glazed-over look in their eyes as I or other students explain the rationales behind the opposing viewpoints.
This just makes me worry all the more about our future as a country, because right now our education system is failing on all levels. No Child Left Behind and the rash of state proficiency exams that started twenty years ago have taken education out of the hands of the teachers, with education's goals and the methods taken to get there being put in the hands of people who have no training in education at all, no concept of how young people learn and what they need to know to function in our society. The financial "race to the bottom" has not only destroyed the arts programmes of countless schools to give students no creative outlets (because, after all, creativity encourages free thinking), but to cut costs students are often evaluated only by Scantron tests; you don't want to know how many students I've had who literally were never expected to write anything in high school. Corporate America has already trampled public schools with its sponsorships, further taking control away from teachers and further indoctrinating young people into consumer culture, and the charter schools that some (including President Obama) promote are about a thousand times worse in that regard.
One of my missions as a teacher is to open my students' minds to the realities and possibilities that are out there in this world. On the secular level, that's already being made painfully difficult by how high schools are turning into places where students are expected to do nothing but rote memorization of rules and nuggets of information deemed important by people who have no connection with the reality of today's youth, and hardly any connection at all with greater reality. Religious schools are even worse, as many students from those schools actively resist being exposed to beliefs and views that are in opposition to those they've been indoctrinated in for all of their lives. If we don't allow young people to vote until they turn eighteen because we don't think they have the capacity to make sound decisions until then, how can we say that they have the ability to choose their own religion? We need to take a serious look at the role religious schools play in this country, because it seems like a strong case could be made to banish those schools. How am I to be expected to open the mind of a young person whose parents, church, and teachers have been welding that mind shut for eighteen years?
Labels: rhetoric, teaching, toledo
posted 2007/11/25 at 21:53
Giuliani's "Kucinich-Size" Crowds Disappoint In New Hampshire (NBC News via huffingtonpost.com)
The Huffington Post, as usual, chose their own headline for the story, and much like the Drudge Report before them, they picked a headline that targeted the HuffPo base and framed the meat of the story in the best terms possible for their goals, mainly to assist the mainstream Democratic candidates towards next year's Presidential elections. (Also note the unflattering photo of Giuliani they use in the story; as much as I dislike Giuliani, I don't think it's fair of HuffPo to do that.) Mind you, in just the short excerpt of the story featured in the link above, HuffPo had another way to frame the story, comparing the size of Giuliani's crowd to the size of the crowd Ron Paul garnered. That comparison would have worked just as well to slam Giuliani, plus it would have stuck it to another Republican, but instead HuffPo went with the Kucinich slam.
I've written before about how upset I am that HuffPo has made itself a shout box for the centrists who continue to stink up the Democratic Party, paying a small amount of lip service to Obama but otherwise playing the same "Clinton doesn't represent us but don't you dare vote Green" game that the Democrats played last time with John Kerry. It simply boggles the mind that there are so many on the so-called left here in America who are pushing hard to make Ron Paul an alternative to Clinton simply because he opposes the war, given that he also opposes pretty much everything the Democratic Party has traditionally stood for. I'm not saying that the war isn't an important issue, but it's almost as if Democrats are willing to throw away their very identity in order to try to spite Clinton in some sick, twisted way.
What has made this situation all the more maddening for me in recent weeks has been the sudden surge of Mike Huckabee in polls, both in the early primary/caucus states and in the nation as a whole. Huckabee's rise in the polls doesn't particularly surprise me, because he represents the values that the religious right so desperately want to keep in the White House. We can argue Huckabee's electability later -- I think he's far more electable than anyone in the mainstream media has argued -- but the point I am trying to make is that Mike Huckabee is living proof that a party can play to its traditional values instead of running to the centre and create a viable candidate. Huckabee's example should have all true Democrats rushing to put their money into the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, and yet both of them continue to be treated as "joke" candidates, not only by the mainstream media but by the Democratic Party establishment itself.
I'm pretty much resigned to voting for the Green Party candidate next year and taking whatever abuse people want to give me for it. That's not my primary concern right now, though. Right now I want nothing more than to take Dennis Kucinich softly by the shoulders, give him a warm smile, and then shake the heck out of him and yell "Why on earth are you still a Democrat?" I understand Kucinich's historical ties to the party and his desire to work within the party to try to transform it, but I don't think at this point that any reasonable person can expect that the big money centrists that have so thoroughly ruined the Democratic Party will be taking off any time soon. More than ever, 2008 needs to be the year that the Green Party establishes itself as a viable alternative for true progressives, and we start to chip away at the two-party hegemony that is so clearly leading this nation right down the crapper.
Labels: greenparty, kucinich, politics, rhetoric
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