13 May 2008 @ 9:01AM >>
For years, universities have worked to increase diversity of appearance. Now, it seems like the one form of diversity most important in a marketplace of ideas—diversity of thought—is finally getting some attention. At least at one school:
How liberal is the University of Colorado at Boulder?
The campus hot-dog stand sells tofu wieners. A recent pro-marijuana rally drew a crowd of 10,000, roughly a third the size of the student body. And according to one professor’s analysis of voter registration, the 800-strong faculty includes just 32 Republicans.
Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson surveys this landscape with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in gay literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. “We should also talk about intellectual diversity,” he says. So over the next year, Mr. Peterson plans to raise $9 million to create an endowed chair for what is thought to be the nation’s first Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy.
Mr. Peterson’s quest has been greeted with protests from some faculty and students, who say the move is too — well, radical. “Why set aside money specifically for a conservative?” asks Curtis Bell, a teaching assistant in political science. “I’d rather see a quality academic than someone paid to have a particular perspective.”
Even some conservatives who have long pushed for balance in academia voice qualms. Among them is David Horowitz, a conservative agitator whose book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” includes two Boulder faculty members: an associate professor of ethnic studies who writes about the intersection of Chicano and lesbian issues, and a philosophy professor focused on feminist politics and “global gender justice.”
While he approves of efforts to bolster a conservative presence on campus, Mr. Horowitz fears that setting up a token right-winger as The Conservative at Boulder will brand the person as a curiosity, like “an animal in the zoo.” We “fully expect this person to be integrated into the fabric of life on campus,” replies Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
[...]
“That’s what a good university does — look for an area where they don’t have depth or diversity and start investing,” Mr. Gleeson says.
10 May 2008 @ 11:44AM >>
Politicians sometimes misspeak. George W. Bush is well-known for it. And if it had been the current president who claimed to have visited 57 states—with one more to go—you’d probably have heard a few dozen jokes about it by now.
Perhaps Obama is planning an imperialist presidency, and he accidentally let it slip that we’ll soon have a few more states. If so, then maybe he wouldn’t be the pushover president I worry he’d be.
I’m sure Barack Obama knows how many states there actually are. The coverage of this quote (or the lack thereof) is more telling about the media than anything else.
Update: Dale S. of Lewisville, Texas writes in to contest my math. Because Senator Obama cited Alaska and Hawaii separately in addition to the “one [state] left to go,” Dale contends his statement could be interpreted to mean we have 60 states. Fair enough. On the other hand, he could be saying that Alaska and Hawaii are not states at all. So confusing! Can’t we just go back to having 50 states?
5 May 2008 @ 9:20AM >>
While food costs continue rise, the role of government is getting more attention:
With high food prices prompting grocery-store apologies to customers and raising fears of starvation in impoverished countries, Congress suddenly faces renewed pressure to cut subsidies to the wealthiest farmers and incentives for ethanol production.
The American farmer, long an untouchable political icon, has even become something of a political embarrassment on Capitol Hill, with President Bush earlier this week demanding an end to crop subsidies for “multimillionaire farmers.”
Congress just last year required that more ethanol be added to the gasoline supply. The mandate is now blamed for inflating the price of corn and other staples.
[...]
In Congress, some lawmakers are calling for changes in the nation’s commitment to ethanol as the biofuel of choice to replace oil. “This is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. Congress surely did not intend to raise food prices by incentivizing ethanol, but that’s precisely what’s happened,” said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who introduced legislation this week that would end federal support for ethanol.
[...]
At the Santa Ana Food Market in Orange County, owner Ken Lau said he has had to raise his prices. Small tortillas that once sold for 69 cents for three dozen are now 99 cents. “We have lots of customers with low-paying jobs and they are struggling now just to make it,” he said. High food prices have inspired critics, including the president, to renew their attacks on subsidies for farmers. The nearly $300-billion, five-year farm bill, delayed for months, has become an easy target for opponents who cite a new outrage: Many farmers are making record incomes while consumers are shocked by dramatic price increases.
“They’re talking about continuing $25 billion in these subsidies over the next five years at a time of record commodity prices and food prices,” said Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin.
The Agriculture Department forecasts that the average farm household will earn more than $89,000 in 2008, up 6.3% from 2007. That’s a third higher than the average U.S. household income, which is projected to be $67,000.
Despite that, farm-bill negotiators are fighting to keep $5.2 billion in direct payments, which go to farmers regardless of how much they earn or whether they are growing a crop.
I wish I could get paid not to work. I guess I’m just in the wrong business.
1 May 2008 @ 9:11PM >>
Get ready to start surrendering more of your rights to government. You knew the Nannycrats wouldn’t stop at smoking, fast food and foie gras. Now they’ve got their crosshairs zeroed in on that modern-day horror, the thing most of us dread and fear... you guessed it...
[Baltimore City Councilman James Kraft] equated using plastic bags with Nazi extermination tactics at a City Council meeting earlier this week.
“We don’t want to be criticized by future generations for not doing enough now as were those who dealt with the Germans then,” Kraft said.
So what follows? Should those who use plastic bags be charged with murder? Genocide?
No one can claim plastic bags help the environment. But he hurts his cause by outsizing their danger by orders of magnitude - especially when similar plans have failed throughout the rest of [Maryland].
Bills in both Anne Arundel County and the state legislature failed to make it into law in the past year. And studies show plastic bags are cheaper and require less energy to make than paper bags.
They are also much less environmentally-unfriendly than people like Councilman Kraft believe, according to the London Times:
Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.
The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.
[...]
Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.
They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”
[...]
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.
The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”.
Oops.
Nevertheless, knowledge of this error will not quell the Nannies’ desires to meddle more.
Bored people seeking the tingle of power are drawn to becoming Nannies because they get to feel morally superior while also controlling the behavior of others. It’s a win-win.
So I predict, the campaign against plastic bags will continue.
27 April 2008 @ 11:49AM >>
Senator Barack Obama’s “spiritual advisor” and pastor of 20 years is the gift that keeps on giving... to the Senator’s opponents:
We cannot see how what we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag, calling on the name a different God to sanction and approve our murder and our mayhem.-Reverend Jeremiah Wright
23 April 2008 @ 8:44AM >>
Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago is famous for its political history in which the dead rise from the grave to show up on election day and cast votes for Democrats.
But, perhaps thanks to the messianic effect Senator Obama seems to have on some voters, his dead supporters go a step further. They actually open their checkbooks:
The [Los Angeles] Times’ campaign finance expert Dan Morain has found Obama campaign records reporting a $50 donation by Roy Scheider, who lists his occupation as actor and his home as Sag Harbor, N.Y. Remember him from many great movies including “The French Connection” and “Jaws” and the immortal line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”?
According to the campaign records, Scheider made the donation on March 10 last month.
Trouble is, Scheider died exactly one month before that, on Feb. 10 at the age of 75.
As the reporter notes, “Scheider was unavailable for comment.”
19 April 2008 @ 10:45AM >>
In the New York Sun, John McWhorter, the former Berkeley professor and current Manhattan Institute Scholar who appears in Indoctrinate U, has some thoughts on the type of groupthink documented in the film:
I’ve just attended a showing of Evan Coyne Maloney’s fine documentary about political correctness on college campuses, “Indoctrinate U.” Finally what we usually only read about: University of California Regent Ward Connerly shouted down by a near-violent audience, or an English professor whose department tried to blackball her when they found out she was a Republican.
The film got me thinking about how I was treated when I was teaching at Berkeley and wrote a book against racial preferences. The truth is that if someone made a movie about my life and had students throwing bricks through my office window and a cabal of professors signing a petition calling for my tenure to be revoked, it’d be good drama but sloppy history.
Most people, including professors, are not especially political, and I should say that the Berkeley administration was nothing but supportive of me, seeming to value that my new press presence kept Berkeley in the news more than anything else.
Sure, I got some catcalls, and God knows what sorts of things were being said behind my back. And there was, in fact, one “Indoctrinate U”-type episode. A black education professor invited a black-ish star sociology professor to come to campus and “debate” me, and the event turned out to be an occasion for audience members loudly booing me and hurling extended tirades.
To me, it was all in a day’s work: you don’t do what I do expecting not to be hated. What has never left me, however, is a chat I had with the education professor a few days later. He actually thought the event — a know-nothing burning in effigy in which my opponent had clearly not even read my book — had been a useful debate. To him, that public spanking was a productive and appropriate response to my opinions — at a university no less. I will never forget his sober expression, his sad, earnest eyes: he actually was sincere.
This is the ideology “Indoctrinate U” is about, and it is mistaken to treat these people as bullies, willfully precluding debate by hurling epithets like “racist” and “sexist.” This analysis implies an insecurity of these people which they do not feel. They thrill as much to the idea of open dialogue as anyone — but they think that a radical leftist perspective is truth, not opinion. To them, dialogue about a conservative perspective’s correctness is no more legitimate than dialogue about heliocentrism.
15 April 2008 @ 11:50PM >>
The only thing that can be more gratifying to a filmmaker than having a packed house is having the house packed with a lively audience that responds enthusiastically.
It was truly a special night, and it makes me all the more certain that the only thing standing in the way of massive success for Indoctrinate U is making sure that enough people get a chance to hear about the film.
14 April 2008 @ 9:11AM >>
Reminder: The New York City premiere of Indoctrinate U is this evening at 6:30PM. For more information, visit the Indoctrinate U website.
Also, I’m scheduled to discuss the film and the premiere on Fox & Friends tomorrow morning at 7:40AM (Eastern time).
How is it that when Christian parents complain about such books, they are at best politely dismissed and at worst attacked as intolerant bigots, but when Muslim parents complain, schools can’t bend over backwards fast enough to accommodate them? Is it because people fear violent reprisals from Muslims more than from Christians? Or is it just a matter of the “secular” schools actually being against Christianity specifically instead of all religions in general?
It all goes back to the Multicultural Hierarchy, which dictates that actions can’t be judged without knowing on whose behalf those actions are taken.
Therefore, an action (such as removing books that offend some religious sensibility) can be considered fascistic when done at the request of Christians, but the exact same action, when done in the name of Islam, is considered a sign of tolerance and understanding.
That’s because Christians rate higher on the Guilty Oppressor scale and lower on the Victim scale than gays, who apparently don’t rate as high in the Multicultural Hierarchy as Muslims do.
Of course, the hidden story here is that gay rights activists have been silent. Is the gay community content with suddenly playing second fiddle to a constituency that places higher in the Multicultural Hierarchy? Or, as Jason suggests, are they just afraid of inciting a community with an outsized proportion of members who’ve shown a propensity to commit murder over far more trivial matters?
25 March 2008 @ 10:45PM >>
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is undergoing an assault in an all-out wikifight.
Recently, FIRE’s Wikipedia page and that of the organization’s president, Greg Lukianoff, have been repeatedly modified to insert bogus claims trying to paint the organization as some sort of right-wing front group.
It’s ironic that FIRE finds itself the subject of a partisan smear campaign. FIRE as a group is quite principled in its non-partisan nature, and its staffers are more intellectually diverse than many colleges seem to be. Over the years, they’ve provided consistent and unwavering support for liberals and conservatives alike—and to folks of just about any other school of thought represented on college campuses.
All of the proof for this is quite easy to find, as FIRE’s record is well-documented and readily available online.
Earlier today, Lukianoff singled out Simon DeDeo, one of the Wikipedia editors, for his “many errors.” To his enormous credit, when presented with the facts, Mr. DeDeo retracted his “remarks on [FIRE], some of which were in error and others of which were I think overly harsh and rhetorical.”
Unfortunately for FIRE, the rest of the group’s wikicritics may not be as intellectually honest as Mr. DeDeo.
21 March 2008 @ 1:25AM >>
In my last exchange with John K. Wilson, he tried making the case that Indoctrinate U suffers from “biases, distortions, and omissions” and that I am only a fair-weather friend of free speech.
My response pointed out the various ways in which Wilson makes off-base assumptions about my views. It seems that unless Wilson hears me explicitly state an opinion, he simply assumes I hold whatever position he disagrees with most and proceeds to argue against me from there.
And in his latest piece, a response-to-my-response-to-his-critique, Wilson does it again.
As reluctant as I am to encourage him to issue another interrogatory of my views, Wilson does ask three direct questions that merit answers. He introduces his questions in this discussion:
Maloney wonders “why Mr. Wilson believes I only favor free speech for folks I agree with is beyond me.” The reason is given in my article. At times, conservatives in the movie (including Maloney) seem to advocate censorship in a few cases. So I asked Maloney, does he believe that Foothill College should have banned flyers criticizing the conservative student? Does he believe that the professor in Michigan who denounced a student’s op-ed on affirmative action should have been punished or fired? Does he endorse David Horowitz and ACTA’s efforts to stop professors from discussing politics in classes? I didn’t get a clear answer. I have no problem with Maloney expressing his conservative viewpoint and criticizing professors he disagrees with; but I do want to know if he really support free speech for those he disagrees with.
As for military recruiters, I have my disagreements with the protesters and I have no doubt that some of them should be arrested if they step over the line. However, Maloney still hasn’t defended the right of students to protest, and he hasn’t acknowledged the fact that the rights of student protesters have been restricted at many campuses.
I appreciate Wilson’s questions, but first I need to address another one of those pesky assumptions by turning the tables and asking him a question. He claims, “conservatives in the movie (including Maloney) seem to advocate censorship in a few cases.”
So, my question: When and in what way did I “seem to” advocate censorship?
Perhaps Wilson would have me preface each case in the film with a disclaimer: “Warning: Even though the following scene contains no call for censorship, please be aware that the following scene contains no call for censorship.”
Anyway, getting back to his questions...
Question 1: “Does [Maloney] believe that Foothill College should have banned flyers criticizing the conservative student?”
No, I don’t, and I never said I did.
My purpose in going to Foothill was to try to determine if a professor was responsible for producing the flyers in question. If a professor of Ahmad al-Qoloushi wrote flyers disparaging him, it would be a major revelation that would add to the public’s understanding of the story. And because those flyers were literally stamped with the approval of the school, someone in the administration had to know whether a professor submitted those flyers for approval.
Unfortunately, I ran into a comically evasive administrator who stonewalled, stammered and summoned the police. So I never got a straight answer.
In the film, I wanted the audience to see the contrasts among the different handling of controversial flyers at different schools. At a number of schools, rather tame flyers have been censored, sometimes leading to Kafkaesque disciplinary proceedings that drag on for months. Yet in this case, flyers attacking a student by name got the school’s official stamp of approval. Merely pointing out this contrast should not be confused with advocating censorship.
Question 2: “Does [Maloney] believe that the professor in Michigan who denounced a student’s op-ed on affirmative action should have been punished or fired?”
(In the case Wilson references, a professor harshly criticized a student in class over her letter in the school paper. In the letter, the student discussed her multi-racial family and how it informed her opinion against racial preferences.)
In general, I think that a professor who uses class time to give political lectures when the issues involved have nothing to do with the class is acting in an unprofessional manner. Doubly so when the professor is haranguing a student over political views that she never expressed in class and that had nothing to do with the topic being taught.
Do I think the professor should be fired or otherwise punished? Not for this. But I’d hope that someone somewhere in the university would remind this professor what it means to act like a professional.
And if students ever decided to demand a refund for the portion class time wasted on off-topic political rants by professors who repeatedly and egregiously abuse their academic freedom, a school would be on thin moral ground to deny that refund.
Academic freedom bears a cost that is paid for by tuition and tax dollars, and it carries with it the expectation that professors will use that freedom to fulfill their educational responsibilities to students.
Having said all that, I think that professors should be given absolute freedom to discuss whatever controversial topics they wish in the classroom, when it relates to the educational purpose of the class. And outside of class, of course, professors are free to say whatever they’d like.
Question 3: “Does [Maloney] endorse David Horowitz and ACTA’s efforts to stop professors from discussing politics in classes?”
Wilson refers to a person and an organization, each with a long history of activism in academic circles, so I’m not entirely sure what efforts in particular he’s asking me to discuss.
I think my answer above covers my view of political advertising in class well enough.
But in case it’s still not clear where I stand, rather than consign myself to an infinite loop of questions aimed at determining whether I really am a genuine supporter of free speech in Wilson’s eyes, let me offer a rough outline of my thinking:
People should have the right to speak their minds
Academic freedom does not exempt professors from criticism
Feeling offended by speech does not give one the right to suppress it
People should not be forced to finance the speech of others
If a person declines to finance the someone else’s speech, that is not censorship
The right to speak encompasses groups, so that assembly and protest are possible
A protest that disrupts an event or otherwise interferes with the speech or movement of others is not covered by the concept of free speech
Hopefully this list will help make Wilson’s future assumptions about my views a little more accurate.
But, in the end, it may not matter much. I don’t think I’m going to persuade him. The author of a book called The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education might have a vested interest in not being persuaded by the data and cases covered in Indoctrinate U.
Wilson closes his piece with a plug for one of his other books and a call to “unite in the struggle for freedom of expression.”
As Wilson knows from my previous response, I publicly defended Ward Churchill’s speech rights despite comments that I personally found abhorrent. I’m already on the free-speech-in-the-abstract team. But since Wilson still seems not to believe me, I’ll just end with something I wrote last September:
Erwin Chemerinsky, “a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law” according to the Los Angeles Times, was hired and then quickly fired by the Irvine campus of the University of California. The culprit, says Chancellor Michael V. Drake, was “conservatives out to get” Chemerinsky. Later on, an “emotional” Drake, “his voice at times quivering,” reversed his position and “said there had been no outside pressure and that he had decided to reject Chemerinsky” himself because the professor’s views were “polarizing.”
Given the unreliability of Chancellor Drake’s public testimony, it’s hard to know whether there really was a conservative cabal trying to take out Chemerinsky, or whether he was just the victim of a spineless administrator seeking to avoid controversy. Either way, the only decent thing for the university to do is to re-hire Chemerinsky, assuming he’d be forgiving enough to take the job instead of taking the school to court.
[...]
If there was a concerted effort among conservatives to block Chemerinsky, they probably felt justified in doing so, thinking that they’d just be preventing the dominant campus thinking from dominating another campus. But it’s hard to argue for tolerance of your views when you’re damaging the career of a man whose only transgression is disagreeing with you.
Whatever the sequence of events that led to Chemerinsky’s firing, conservatives who believe that their views deserve better respect on campus must stand with him on principle.
And who knows? Maybe the next time a conservative professor runs into career trouble for his or her views, some decent-hearted decision-maker will think back to this story and remember how not to act.
Respect can be brought back to campus if only enough people have the courage to practice it.
The second video shows what happens when a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice comes to give a speech on campus. In Welcome Wagon NYC, students at NYU Law School object quite strongly to the presence of Antonin Scalia, giving him a reception worse than the President of Iran received at that other large Manhattan institution, Columbia University.
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would grant free college tuition for some juvenile offenders. Supporters say it’s a way to encourage troubled youth to get their lives back on track. John Dixon, Deputy Secretary for the MD Department of Juvenile Services says, “The kids the department serves face a lot of obstacles and challenges when they return to the community. This bill will allow kids who are interested in attending public institution to go there tuition free.”
Delegate Norm Conway is sponsoring the bill. As an educator for 39 years, he says it’s important to help troubled teens make a positive transition. “They’re out of their own families in many instances. You’re hoping for the best possible transition and incentives that say hey if you’re willing to do your part there are some opportunities out there for you.”
Under the proposal, committed juveniles under the age of 21 would be eligible for free tuition at any public institution in the state.
11 March 2008 @ 7:35AM >>
Not content with fighting “excessive” and “obscene” pay for corporate officials, the Governor of New York has a new target. In a piece entitled “Eliot Spitzer Vows To Crack Down On Excess Prostitute Pay,” financial website DealBreaker.com reports:
Discovering that the exclusive international ring of prostitutes known as the “Emperor’s Club” charged up to $5,500 an hour for their services, New York governor Eliot Spitzer vowed to put an end to this price gouging practice.
Four people alleged to have run the “Emperor’s Club” were charged with conspiracy to violate federal prostitution statutes, while two of them were also charged with laundering more than $1 million in illegal proceeds.
“That kind of excessive compensation is simply outrageous. Prostitution is allegedly a victimless crime,” Spitzer said in a press conference that took place only in our imaginations. “But now we see that its customers can become its victims.”
Spitzer added it was especially shameful that one of the most trusted names in prostitution had engaged in this shocking betrayal and rank greed.
Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won’t let them work out in front of men.
In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.
At Harvard, that’s called progress.
When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”
By banning all men from the facility, right?
“It’s not ‘banning,’” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”
In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.
And Glenn Reynolds adds, “Meanwhile, some readers wonder if Harvard will close its gyms to openly gay men at certain hours, so that straight men who are made uncomfortable by gays can work out without being uncomfortable. It appears that they’re in sync with Islamic thought.”
20 February 2008 @ 7:18PM >>
Commandments from on high:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
[...]
You have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eights years from now, you will have to be engaged.Michelle Obama,wife of Senator Barack Obama
LEGENDARY Nessie hunter Robert Rines is giving up his search for the monster after 37 years.
The 85-year-old American will make one last trip in a bid to find the elusive beast.
After almost four decades of fruitless expeditions, he admitted: “Unfortunately, I’m running out of age.”
World War II veteran Robert has devoted almost half his life to scouring Loch Ness.
He started in 1971. The following year, he watched a 25ft-long hump with the texture of elephant skin gliding through the water.
His original trip was to help another monster hunter with sonar equipment and quickly identified large moving targets.
He was smitten and returned the next year, which is when, he says: “I had the misfortune of seeing one of these things with my own eyes.”
Since then, he has been obsessed with tracking down the creature with a staggering array of hi-tech equipment. It was this gear that took the famous “flipper” picture that year which created a stir around the world.
Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen that many unicorns or leprechauns recently, either.
12 February 2008 @ 12:52AM >>
A Clinton-related conspiracy theory:
It isn’t all that hard to believe that a guy who’s alpha [male] enough to risk his entire political career and presidential legacy for a few hummers from a pudgy intern might subconsciously sabotage his wife’s ascent to power, is it?
6 February 2008 @ 12:46AM >>
If Senator Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination and goes on to lose the general election, there will undoubtedly be those who argue that his loss is a sign of racism among American voters.
So, after a primary fight in which Senator Hillary Clinton’s husband repeatedly and clumsily steered attention to Obama’s race, if Democrats subsequently reject Obama, is that a sign of racism among Democrats?
The race among Democrats is still very close, and Obama racked up some important wins last night. But it seems that Obama tends to do better in polls than he has in actual elections. He could have pulled into a commanding lead yesterday, but instead he finds himself nearly tied with Hillary in the delegate count.
Late polls had him winning last month’s New Hampshire primary and yesterday’s California contest by what, 8-13 points? Then he loses, and not by razor-thin margins. Are some Democrats lying to pollsters about their choice? And if so, why would that be?
Throughout the night, reporters on both CNN and Fox News cited exit polling data showing that Obama does much better among white male voters than he does among women, Asians or Hispanics, who support Hillary overwhelmingly.
If Hillary is nominated, it may be that identity politics prevented a black man from moving into the White House.
Who would have guessed that the one group that couldn’t be blamed for such a scenario would be white male Republicans?
Some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton because her husband was good to us. That’s not true. He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky.Rev. Jeremiah Wright Trinity United Church of Christ
Now, in the interest of fairness, I should balance that critique of America’s First Black President with a few words in support of his wife:
Was reading your most recent post about campaign finance reform and how it relates to private citizens generating “issue oriented” content. This is such a slippery slope, on all sides, that I think the judges and congress should be more worried about than us as private citizens. These guys are still thinking about content distribution and ad placement in terms of quaint methods they can wrap their heads around. How do they plan to apply such decisions to web distribution? What about hybrids like CurrentTV? What about YouTube on your TV via AppleTV? Do people have to give equal time on their blogs and social networks? Podcasts? RSS feeds? Twitter?
Further, as an internet marketer I am really curious to see how they ever plan on extending their reach into the numerous platforms of ad distribution: paid search, organic search, banners, email, pay for post, mobile marketing, embedded ads in video, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing, flash mobs... I could go on for hours, and that’s the point. Are these guys who think of the internet in terms of tubes really ready to delve into that world? They are ill equipped to wade into the pool beyond radio, TV and print, and quite frankly, two of those three are all but off the table for most promotional purposes and TV is quickly becoming unattractive as other methods offer vastly superior ROI. They are making bad decisions that won’t even apply to reality by the time they finally pass anything legislatively.
You can’t control political speech and advertising with today’s technology any more than you can lasso the moon. Whether it should be done or not becomes a moot point then.
I agree that political speech will be harder to regulate as media becomes more fractured and decentralized. But I wish I thought that meant politicians and bureaucrats wouldn’t try. If anything, the seeming chaos of the cacophony of individual voices in online media will probably lead some people to start arguing for tighter controls on political speech.
So as long as speech regulations are pitched as something else—such as campaign finance reform—it ends up getting supported by people who don’t pay much attention to politics but casually believe campaign finance needs reforming. And unfortunately, people have a tendency to care a lot less about free speech when it isn’t theirs being stifled.
It is interesting that, by and large, the editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers supported the McCain/Feingold political speech limitation bill. The fact that the legislation limited the speech of other private citizens—and not newspaper editorial writers—probably didn’t hurt. After all, in a world with less political speech, the power of a newspaper editorial writer is enhanced. Faced with a media environment where more people are getting news online and from independent voices, a cynic might say that newspapers saw campaign finance reform as the McCain/Feingold Endangered Editorialists’ Protection Act.
Being embedded in an old-media business, the ink-and-paper columnists might not have seen the regulations as a direct threat to their speech. But that’s only because they’re confusing their product—words and images—with the physical carrier of their product.
By encouraging the government to regulate political speech differently based on the employment status of the speaker and the medium in which the speech is conveyed, myopic editorialists have guaranteed that busybody bureaucrats will eventually try to tie down whatever medium those newspaperites flee to once the last inch of their sinking paper ship is finally dragged beneath the surface.
Whether they be political activists or not, if private citizens, like the folks who formed Citizens United, do not have the right band together to engage in political speech during certain times of the year, then the First Amendment is just a part-time right afforded to only part of the citizenry.
10 January 2008 @ 6:37PM >>
A few years back, I interviewed Michael Moore and asked him if Fahrenheit 9/11 should be considered a political advertisement, and if so, whether campaign finance laws should apply. Moore admitted the film contained his opinions, but that his film should be treated like an op-ed in the paper.
During the 2004 election, neither ads for the Bush-bashing Fahrenheit 9/11, nor the film itself were regulated under campaign finance laws.
The early reviews are in, and three federal judges appeared in agreement Wednesday that a movie lambasting Hillary Clinton seemed an awful lot like a 90-minute campaign advertisement.
Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is challenging the nation’s campaign finance laws, which require disclaimers on political advertisements and restrict when they can be broadcast. The group argues “Hillary: The Movie” and related television advertisements are not political advertising even though the New York senator is in the presidential race.
Attorney James Bopp argued that they should be considered “issue-oriented” speech because viewers aren’t urged to vote for or against the Democrat.
[...]
The movie is scheduled for two screenings in theaters, once each in California and Washington. It is also being sold on DVD. Neither of those methods are regulated under campaign laws. The advertisements, however, are scheduled to run during the peak presidential primary season and would be regulated.
Bopp, who successfully led a challenge to one aspect of the campaign finance system last year, compared the film to television news programs “Frontline,” “Nova,” and “60 Minutes.” That prompted Lamberth to laugh out loud from the bench.
“You can’t compare this to ‘60 Minutes,’” the judge said. “Did you read this transcript?”
The movie features commentary from conservative pundits, some of whom specifically say Clinton is not fit to be the nation’s commander in chief.
The content of the film is irrelevant; if the film merely expresses opinions, it is protected constitutional speech. And if it is factually inaccurate in a way that is defamatory to Hillary Clinton, she has legal recourse for that.
It shouldn’t matter whether a film is made by a Hollywood insider like Michael Moore or an issue-based outfit like Citizens United. Groups like Citizens United—on the right and the left—are formed by private citizens with a common goal of promoting their shared ideas. The speech of Citizens United should not be more regulated than the speech of any of its individual members—or any other private citizen for that matter.
All filmmakers—in fact, all citizens who value their free speech rights—should be concerned about this decision. Michael Moore should be concerned. Because even though he has the benefit of Hollywood’s infrastructure and support (and therefore has no need to become involved with an organization like Citizens United), his films are financed and distributed by corporations that may one day find themselves subject to the same regulations now being imposed on Citizens United.
Any attempt to regulate political speech is direct assault on the First Amendment.
The quickest way to get the liberal media to pay attention to you is to claim to be a Republican who hates Republicans. It’s an almost infallible public relations strategy that of late has worked well for "Republican" Monica Green.
It’s also done wonders for "lifelong Republican" Henry A. Lowenstein, who has managed to get 20 different letters published in the New York Times since 2003, a remarkable feat when you consider that the Times (by its own admission) receives around 1,000 letters a day and prints only 15 on its letters page. That means the odds of the average liberal person (the paper freely admits it favors left-wing letter writers) getting his or her letter printed are about 1.5 percent.
It’s worse when you think of the numbers on a yearly scale. In the past five years, the Times has received approximately 1.8 million letters. It’s printed 20 of Lowenstein’s.
With a look at Lowenstein’s e-mails (and the political contributions of a New Yorker with the same name), Sheffield makes a convincing case that the Times has been duped. Perhaps willingly?
12 December 2007 @ 8:32AM >>
Celebrities are frequently mocked for making political statements that yield applause on Hollywood back lots, but that sound tone-deaf to the rest of America. So it’s refreshing to hear a little common sense from a source I didn’t expect:
During a discussion of Republican Presidential candidates on ABC’s “The View,” which the comedian co-hosts, [Whoopi] Goldberg said, “I’d like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That’s what I want. I don’t want to get taxed just because I died.” The studio audience started applauding, but she wasn’t done. “I just don’t think it’s right,” she continued. “If I give something to my kid, I already paid the tax. Why should I have to pay it again because I died?” (Watch the video here.)
[...]
When another co-host, Joy Behar, responded to Ms. Goldberg’s remarks by asserting, “Only people with a lot of money say that,” Ms. Goldberg shot back, “No, I don’t think so. . . . It doesn’t matter if you have or don’t have money. Once you paid your taxes, it should be a done deal. You shouldn’t have to pay twice.”
At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are “the third group,” far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right.”
I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I’ve been on the “far right” as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.
All these views — commonplace in American society and among the political class — are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.
A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”
[...]
Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach.
There are numerous examples of this ideological isolation from society. As political scientist Steven Teles showed in his book “Whose Welfare?,” the public had determined by the 1970s that welfare wasn’t working — yet many sociology professors even now deny that ’70s-style welfare programs were bad for their recipients. Similarly, despite New York City’s 15-year-long decline in crime, most criminologists still struggle to attribute the increased safety to demographic shifts or even random statistical variations (which apparently skipped other cities) rather than more effective policing.
[...]
All this is bad for society because academics’ ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.
[...]
Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement, higher education needs to encourage intellectual diversity in its hiring and promotion decisions with something like the fervor it shows for ethnic and racial diversity. It’s the only way universities will earn back society’s respect and reclaim their role at the center of public life.
