Sidebar: Sunday School 1/15/23

Last week, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd aka What's-his-name (WHN) received a lot of attention from folks on the left for his interview with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. 

Cheers rang out for how Johnson was 'handled' and how WHN was 'finally doing his job.' The video of the interview was widely shared, too. (Here's the transcript if you want to follow along.)

Give the accolades, you'd think it was a journalistic powerhouse of an interview, right? Well, not unless you think that mocking, laughing, taunting belligerence is the right way to conduct an interview. I don't agree; I think prior hosts of the show would be appalled, and I think WHN is the wrong person for this job.

I'm no Johnson fan; I think he's a partisan hack. Even as I dislike him, I admit he's not wrong on everything. For example, he and I agree, the American people deserve to hear about the bad behavior of government officials, and Congress deserves the chance to provide 'oversight' of the government, even if no criminal statutes have been violated. 

WHN thinks that's ridiculous.

So, I guess the problem that I feel like you run into with that decision is what you're saying is if the Justice Department decides a crime wasn't committed, they're not going to prosecute a crime, it sounds like you still want the information out there because you want to politically damage the person that was investigated?

Or - maybe - we'd like to see bad actors held accountable for their actions? 

Would WHN say that if the subject of the investigation was Clarence Thomas? Brett Kavanaugh? Marjorie Taylor Green? Matt Gaetz? Ron Johnson? Has he ever said that about any Donald Trump investigation?

That leads to another point on which Johnson and I agree: there is a lot of bias in the media, and in politics, of course. We know Johnson and the Rs have no interest in investigating their own guys, or Jared Kushner, or Trump, even as they relish going after the other side; that was clear in this interview. The Dems aren't much different. 

In addition to bias, there's a striking inability by many to discern the difference between a news report and an opinion piece. And a good part of the blame for that belongs to folks like WHN, when they clearly, even eagerly, cross the line between fact-seeking and smoke-blowing in their interviews.

Here's an example; this exchange came after Johnson said the FBI suppressed information about Hunter Biden's laptop before the election. (I clarified which 'they' Johnson was referring to in his comment, and I added emphasis).

JOHNSON: Chuck, Chuck. My concern -- you know, Chuck. You know, part of the problem, and this is pretty obvious to anybody watching this, is you don't invite me on to interview me, you invite me on to argue with me. 

That's true - more on that in a bit. 

JOHNSON: You know, I'm just trying to lay out the facts that certainly Senator Grassley and I uncovered. They (the facts) were suppressed. They (the facts) were censored. They (the FBI) interfered in the 2020 election. Conservatives understand that. Unfortunately, liberals in the media don't. And that's part of the things that -- part of the reasons our politics are inflamed is we do not have an unbiased media. We don't. It's unfortunate. I'm all for free press.

WHN: Well, Senator -- JOHNSON: It needs to be more unbiased. WHN: Senator, look, this is -- JOHNSON: There's misinformation on both sides -- WHN: Look, go to partisan -- JOHNSON: -- but the censorship and suppression -- WHN: Senator -- Senator -- look, we’re trying to do issues here and facts.  JOHNSON: -- primarily occurs on the left. WHN: Partisan cable -- JOHNSON: It's frustrating. WHN:  Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it's part of your identity. 

Notably, this exchange came after WHN said, "I am a journalist. I have to deal in facts." No one believes a word of that - or, I should say, no one should believe a word of that.

Sidebar: Email of the Week 9/17/20

Yesterday's snail mail winner of our coveted Email of the Week award was from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of the many communications folks who have taken the briefing room podium on behalf of the president.  

One of the key things recipients of the emails were asked to do was to fill out the STOP FAKE NEWS petition which was included. And, as I read through the survey, it occurred to me that, with just a minor tweak or two, it pretty much demanded that the media stop covering the president. 

Take a look. 

STOP FAKE NEWS _ A CITIZENS PETITION

To: The United States Senate

Whereas, media outlets in American enjoy freedom due to the First Amendment but with that freedom comes a responsibility on their part to not actively mislead the people or disseminate news stories they know to contain falsehoods;

Whereas, since president Trump took office, the American people have been inundated with stories attributed to unnamed "sources" and the vast majority of these stories have attempted to portray the president;

Whereas, during the past three years, countless media stories have been completely disproven and show to be riddled with verifiable lies;

Whereas, the American people elected president Trump to do a job, and we deserve media outlets that report fairly on his efforts to do that job, not an endless flow of attacks;

Therefore, I demand that all media outlets in America STOP airing/publishing the Fake News they've been churning out for the past three years, and I urge Republicans in Washington to seek new ways to enforce a sense of truth and fairness in media reporting.  

I'm not a Republican - heck, right now I'm not a registered anything, truth be told - but I've got to tell you, I'm practically giddy seeing Republicans all up in arms about the lies and the attacks (in which they've been complicit, as we all know - and they know, too).  

I mean, Trump has attacked them, and lied about them, and he's also attacked and lied about:

• their constituents;
• Democrats, Independents, and folks belonging to any other party;
• our allies; 
• urban people;
• suburban people; 
• immigrants and asylum seekers;
• protesters (which, as we all know, are not the same as rioters and looters);
• hurricane victims;
• wildfire victims;
• mask wearers;
• Catholics;
• Hispanics, blacks, and whites;
• LGBTQ and their allies;
• all those people from the shithole countries; 
• the poor;
• the middle-class; 
• women and children; 
• scientists; 
• first responders;
• elected officials;
• doctors;
• Asians and Asian-Americans;
• farmers;
• Americans who were born here; 
• Americans who chose to become citizens; 
• green card holders, DACA recipients, and those here with other special protections;
• public school children; 
• artists, musicians and actors who don't support him;
• reporters, photojournalists, and anchors; 
• folks who work in retail for companies that drop his darling Ivanka's clothing line; 
• folks who work for all the other companies he's asked people to boycott;
• Gold Star families; Angel families
• veterans (including the losers and suckers);
• people who want health insurance and actual health care (not the same thing, but I supposed that's being snitty);
• all the people he's driven out of public service;
• all the crooks who worked for him who haven't been pardoned yet; 
• organizations he screwed over through his, ahem, charitable activities;
• beauty pageant contestants;
• the women he's sexually harassed and/or abused;
• book publishers;
• all of the very good people who still work for us in the federal government;
• athletes;
• businessmen  and -women from all industries;
• small business owners who he said will lose their businesses because of COVID-19 but that's OK because something else will take there place;
• educators and educational facilities of all kinds that serve people of all ages;
• taxpayers who have had to foot the bill for his endless tourist visits to his own properties;
• the disabled;
• all the people he's declared himself smarter than; 
• voters and people who want to be voters;
• the USPS; 
• Native Americans; 
• the Constitution, our flag, the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the rule of law; 
• judges and justices, from village court up to and including the Supremes; and
• anyone else I might have left out of the long list of people about whom the president has lied, whom he has attacked personally and professionally, and whom he has threatened, in any way, shape or form. 

So, yes - let's  STOP FAKE NEWS  - let's' get the president off the airwaves. If I had a grand to spare, I'd be happy to send it along if we could just make him stop talking. 

Email of the Week 9/17/20

Taking a slightly different approach this week, and featuring an actual piece of mail my brother-in-law received from none other than former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders, you'll recall, was no stranger to spilling falsehoods from the podium during her tenure as Trump's mouthpiece, and she's more than happy to volunteer to share people's thoughts with the president, if they would only respond to her survey and make a donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), of course. 

Here are some excerpts from her letter:

Dear Fellow Patriot,

Enclosed, please find your STOP FAKE NEWS petition, which is prepared specifically for your signature.

It is vital you return your STOP FAKE NEWS petition right away, because the DC/New York "reporters" are totally out of control;

X  The New York Times prints articles with quotes from unnamed "sources" all attacking president Trump.

X  MSNBC lets unhinged liars like Congressman Adam Schiff go on TV and smear the president with ridiculous falsehoods; and

X CNN has entire panels of "experts" who spend all night telling made up stories to the American people about presidential "wrongdoing" that simply does not exist. 

I for one, can't sit idly by any longer as the Democrats and their medial allies try to tear down our president, our Republican Party and our values with malicious smears and pervasive lies. Your name was forwarded to me as a strong pro-America patriot, so I am counting on you to join me. 

Trust me, I know that the best way to handle these people is to constantly call out their ridiculous lies, slander and abuse, which they constantly level at our Commander-in-Chief simply because they hate him and they want him out of office.

***So please sign and return your STOP FAKE NEWS petition, which I will show to president Trump as a sign that the American people have his back and do not believe the lies being spewed on TV, online, and in print every day by left-wing radicals in the media.***

The letter went on for another page, talking about how important it was for a donation to be included, and for the Rs to hold the Senate, and did I mention, for a donation to be included? 

Here's what my brother-in-law was supposed to have returned to Ms. Sanders:

I can assure you that his 'best contribution" is a whopping zero dollars - as mine would be, and as would the contributions of most people I know. 

I'm thinking I have to  subscribe to emails from the former Trump mouthpiece - it sounds like it might be fun. Until I on her mailing list, I'll be happy with just awarding Sanders the snail mail version of the coveted Email of the Week. 

Maybe It's Not as Bad as We Think It Is

I think we all know, in our heart of hearts, that we are a more polarized society lately than we were in the past, or at least, than we are in 'our' past, right?

I'm not old enough to remember the civil rights battles of the 50s and early 60s, and while I remember what was going on during the Vietnam War era and the assassination of MLK and RFK, I experienced those as a child of a history teacher, not as an active participant.

Those were polarizing times, for sure, but what's happening now has to be worse; it has to be. I mean, we're reminded all the time how polarizing the election of Barack Obama was - a black community organizer, not even an American, married to an arms-baring tranny? How could that have happened in America???

And then everything got at least a bazillion times worse when Donald Trump lost the popular vote, won the Electoral College and plopped on his imperial, racist, lying, swampy throne, putting his family in charge of policies, stealing the party - how did THAT happen here???

If you believe either of those descriptions, or similar ones, of the Obama and Trump years, how do they influence how you interact with people who hold a different opinion? Or do they impact your interactions at all?

Well, that's what the folks at The Atlantic tried to figure out. They recently shared their findings in an article which used data and analytics from PredictWise to determine the relative 'affective polarization,' county by county, for the entire country. The methodology is here, including survey questions measuring how people feel about things like a family member marrying someone from the other political party, how much certain words describe Democrats and Republicans, and feelings about the political parties and voters in each party.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that New York as a whole fared well; we're less politically prejudicial than we're led to believe, than what we see and hear and read. In fact, one small city in northern NY was featured in a related article for its lack of political prejudice.

...Watertown is notable for another reason, officially unrecognized until now. It is located in one of the most politically tolerant counties in America...Jefferson County and several nearby counties in the North Country are distinct from other parts of America. 

In New York, can you believe it? And my neck of the woods fared pretty well, too.

Let's take a look.

The System is Rigged (Part Three)

Is the system rigged? I remember fondly the days when Trump first spoke of a rigged system --It was to try and coax Bernie Sanders supporters over to the dark side.

Now, though, in the World According to Trump, there is not a single independently-thinking person who believes we are #StrongerTogether, no one who decided on their own to purchase an #ImWithHer t-shirt or plant a Clinton/Kaine yard sign, and certainly no one who is a #NeverTrump thinker has become one without being influenced by the Clinton Machine. Only Kool-Aid drinkers and indiscriminate Skittles eaters buy into that stuff.

No, all the Dems are in bed with Clinton, who is in bed with the media, when the media isn't in bed with itself, or digging up liars (whom Trump will sue as soon as the election is over and he's done suing the New York Times), or being banned when they say something mean or nasty.

Need proof? Look at all of these media contributions to the political candidates! 96% of those who contributed gave to Clinton, not Trump. Clearly the election is rigged by these television critics, sports and fashion editors, restaurant reviewers, local beat and tech gadget reporters, and so on, especially by those in, say, Shelter Island, NY and Liberty, MO.

Missing from the list: Any national political reporters or anchors. No George Stephanopoulous or Keith Olbermann here - because if there was, we wouldn't be reading about Russia Television's Larry King donating to HRC. The study did not consider talking heads and paid gabbers to be journalists, but if the finance director of the Washington Post is included, how is a talking head not?

I believe there should be a wall between journalists and the people and stories they cover, but absent a connection between donors and articles they wrote or influenced, what are we to make of this? Is 'the media' against Donald Trump, and complicit in creating the 'rigged system' of which Trump recently grown so fond?

Well, that might not be the case, or at least, not the way Trump thinks. There's an interesting study, released back in June without a lot of mainstream media attention; folks at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy looked at coverage in 2015 leading up to the primaries, or what they called the 'invisible primary' season, and found that

...during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers - a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump's rise in the polls... The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of the Republican polls. 

The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race... For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her "bad news" outpaced her "good news," usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015.  (Note: all emphasis added.)

Huh?. Rigged system, you say?

So what explains the news media's early fascination with Trump?...Although journalists play a political brokering role in presidential primaries, their decisions are driven by news values rather than political values. Journalists are attracted to the new, the unusual, the sensational... Trump fit that need as no other candidate in recent memory. Trump is arguably the first bona fide media-created presidential nominee. Although he subsequently tapped a political nerve, journalists fueled his launch. 

But wait - it's gets better.

Journalists seemed unmindful that they and not the electorate were Trump's first audience. Trump exploited their lust for riveting stories. He didn't have any other option...The politics of outrage was his edge, and the press became his dependable if unwitting ally.

Here's another interesting finding, that goes to what was reported. For Trump, a mere 12% of his coverage was about the issues, with 43% of the coverage being negative (particularly after the Muslim ban comments). For Clinton, more than double the amount of coverage was issues-related (stil a meager 28%) but the negative coverage was an overwhelming 84%.

In 2016, things continued on the same general level; Trump's overall coverage was 49% positive to 51% negative, with most of the negative coming after both Ted Cruz and John Kasich had dropped out of the race, when the balance tipped to 61% negative/39% positive.  Making things worse, the 2016 study notes,

The press did not heavily cover the candidates' policy positions, their personal and leadership characteristics, their private and public histories...Such topics accounted for roughly a tenth of the primary coverage. 

And yet, Trump is the one making the 'the media is against me' claims; it seems likely that argument could most substantively by made by the Clinton campaign, based on the Harvard studies and on the amount of free media the campaigns have received. According to this analysis published in The Economist,

Data from mediaQuant, an analytic firm, show that Mr. Trump has enjoyed a healthy advantage in 'earned media' or free media coverage, throughout his campaign....And Mr. Trump has consistently dominated the news compared with Mrs. Clinton - sometimes by margins as large as six to one.  

Trump's plan - hog the limelight "by crossing a sacrosanct political line, bask in the attention for several days, then do it again before your opponents have a chance to get noticed." - worked well against his 16 Republican opponents, but Clinton's free media eventually caught up with Trump after the Democratic convention, when his strategy was proving less successful.

What does this all boil down to?

As noted in The Economist's article, which was published in mid-August but still rings true today,

As his polling numbers drop, Mr. Trump is doubling down on his media bashing... this seems an unlikely strategy to win votes. After decades in the spotlight, Mr. Trump may at last be learning that not all publicity is good publicity.

I would only add that not all negative publicity is a sign that the system is rigged against you.

Newt Gingrich's Religious Sniff Test

Politico.com photo

Newt Gingrich, fresh off his stinging defeat in the VPPrentice, as CNN called it, fought for relevance by offering these comments on Fox News after the attack in Nice:

Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about defining who our enemies are. Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS or Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately. 

Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet-based source. And frankly if we can't destroy them through the internet, we should destroy them with kinetic power, using various weapons starting with Predators, and frankly just killing them.

The ever-helpful fair and balanced Sean Hannity, noting his "whole-hearted" agreement with Gingrich's "powerful statement" asked a followup:

How do we ascertain - how do you possibly ascertain whether or not that person really wants assimilation, really wants a new life, or whether or not they want to expand that caliphate, which is what we're at war against?

Here's the response:

Look, the first step is you have to ask them the questions. The second step is you have to monitor what they're doing on the internet. The third step is - let me be very clear. You have to monitor the mosques. I mean if you're not prepared to monitor the mosque, this whole thing is a joke. Where do you think the primary source of recruitment is? Where do you think the primary course of indoctrination is? You've got to look at the madrasas. If you're a school which is teaching Sharia, you want to expel it from the country. We have to understand - we are behaving as though we are insane. We're like sheep wondering why the wolves keep killing us.

After you're done monitoring the mosques, Newt, and the internet, and doing your religious sniff tests and looking under the burqas and hijabs and niqabs, can we take a look at the people that I want to investigate and deport or send to jail?

No -- wait -- these folks are all over the place, they've been here forever, they're easy to find on the internet so people - even politicians - can emulate them-- let's start with these folks and when we're done purging the scum that incite honest-to-goodness homegrown terrorism, and talk about rape and sexual assault as if they're jokes, and approve or turn the other way when it comes to attacks on gays, or children, you can go ahead and take on the Muslims:

• Good Christians who think it is impossible for a man to rape his wife, and OK for him to sexually abuse her? Or good Republicans who justify rape in any number of ways?
• Good Christian pastors who believe that gays should face a firing squad or that the 9/11 attacks were punishment from God? And if they have schools, well, we surely need to shut them down so these ridiculous, hateful and dangerous beliefs cannot be spread.
• And of course, there's the Westboro Baptist Church - shouldn't they go to jail for terrorizing funerals of fallen heroes, spitting on our soldiers, mocking their sacrifice?
• Catholic priests? I mean, this one's easy, right? Thousands of victims, millions of dollars in payments, let's shut 'em down. 
• White supremacist groups such as the ones that radicalized the Charleston terrorist on the internet? And presidential candidates who can barely bring themselves to disavow these groups and their leaders, as well as everyone who supports such a candidate? We cannot possibly have room for this type of terrorist thinking in America, can we? 

Let me know if you need any more examples of groups or people who terrorize us right here at home, every single day, and likely don't have a Muslim belief among them. 

Oh - and let us not forget that if it's the rhetoric that causes the problem, we'll need to go after the irresponsible media who fan the flames of hatred every day, on television and the related websites, radicalizing impressionable Americans, young and old -- starting with the talking heads at Fox News and their guests.

Are You Implicitly Biased?

If you've been reading veritable pastiche for a while, you know that I've talked about bias, and racism, even the 'accidental' kind of racism that I have.

• I've talked about race in the shadow of the Trayvon Martin case, and President Obama's heartfelt comments on the 'not guilty' verdict in favor of George Zimmerman, who has gone on to make absolutely nothing of his life - most recently auctioning off the gun he used to kill Martin. 

• I've talked about it in the context of Ferguson, and the social media hashtags that come from situations like the Michael Brown case, and the Eric Garner case, and the rest of them. 

• I've talked about it in the context of Donald Trump forcing Barack Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate, a low point not just for Obama but for the Office of the President itself. 

• I've talked about it in the context of  Paula Deen and other 'celebrities'.

• I've talked about it in the context of Donald Trump just being Donald Trump; I see him not as the potential Commander in Chief but as the actual inflamer in chief, and I truly believe he relishes the latter role more than the former. 

And now, in a matter of hours, we have two black men - Alton Sterling and Philando Castile - killed by Louisiana and Minnesota policemen in what can only be described as mind-boggling and horrific circumstances.  And we have the death of five police officers in Dallas, and attacks on officers in other states, in what can also only be described as mind-boggling and horrific.

We mourn the loss of them all - or we should - because neither being a police officer nor being a black man should be a capital crime in our country.

Law enforcement representatives are describing what it's like to be them, and almost without exception, you can replace the word 'officer' with 'black man' and the sentiment is exactly the same: they are not all bad; they just want to come home at night; they want to be safe on the streets; don't paint everyone with the same brush, and so on.

We have people - politicians, friends, family, strangers - trying to find a brush narrow enough to paint the picture that we have in our country, because either 'side' (a poor way to describe it, but I don't really have a better one) using any broad brush will further incite and inflame the other.

And so, it was in that context that I took a ten-minute test this morning to see if  I am biased based not on whether or I think I am, but based on a series of exercises that are designed to identify implicit reactions to black and white, good and bad.

The test showed that I have "little to no automatic preference between European Americans and African Americans" which surprised me a little, based on the self-exploration I've shared with you. To be clear, the 'debrief' that comes with the results notes that

How implicit associations affect our judgment is not well understood and may be influenced by a number of variables. As such, the score should serve as an opportunity for self-reflection, not as a definitive assessment of your implicit thoughts. 

I encourage you to take this test and reflect on your own results. Share it with friends and family and encourage them to do the same.

Share your results on social media, just as you would share your results of your viking name, or the flower or animal that most represents your spirit, or a bacon recipe.

Share it with your church congregation, your scout troop, your volunteer board, your elected representatives, and so on.

Why? Because if we all start with a little self-reflection, just maybe we can progress towards communal reflection, and from there maybe we can at least agree that something needs to change, and start working on solutions.

Is Our Input on a Bias?

I've been thinking a lot lately about perceptions, and bias, particularly as those relate to how we are delivered, and then interpret, the news of the day.

I was reminded of a cat my parents had, years after I was out of the house, about whom their veterinarian proclaimed, "her input is on a bias." That peculiar diagnosis had to do with the cat walking a little lopsided, and if memory serves, occasionally running into things. Her issue may have been solved by a dietary change and an antibiotic, can't remember for sure.

Back to bias. Regular readers know, for example, that I struggle with how we collectively discuss mass shootings; there are some obvious differences depending on who the shooter is, or what the shooter represents. For example 

• In December, the shooting in San Bernardino was 'terrorism' because the American-born shooter professed at least some allegiance to what's referred to as radical Islamist beliefs.
• The shooting in Orlando was also described as 'terrorism' because of similar beliefs held by yet another American-born shooter. 

Compare that to these two other recent shootings:

• We just marked the one-year anniversary of the shooting at 'Mother Emanuel' in Charleston, which was committed by an American-born shooter who professed racist beliefs. This was described as a 'hate crime' but not terrorism.
• In November 2015, after a shooting at a clinic in Colorado Springs left three dead and nine wounded, the American-born shooter was described as being anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood, but this too was not described as terrorism. 

In all four of these shootings, the perpetrators acted out of a belief, first and foremost, that they were right in acting as they did. And, in all four cases, one could point to extremism of one kind or another as being at the heart of the murders, and to the intent to terrorize people, to install fear that no one is safe, anywhere.  Not at a historic church during an evening prayer session, or at a medical facility at what is typically a very difficult time. Not at an office party, and not at a nightclub where a people gather to truly be free from hatred, to be themselves. And yet, only two have been labelled terrorism - the ones where the beliefs were furthest away from what "we" believe.

Here's another pair of news stories, both of which enthralled the regular news media and social media as well:

• Remember the story about the little boy who fell into the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati zoo, leaving zookeepers with no choice than to kill the gorilla to save the child? And the immediate cry from animal rights groups and many average Americans about how on earth the mom could have been so neglectful in her actions that they resulted in the death of a beautiful gorrilla? And the online petition to pressure the police into investigating the family? (That happened, and the mother was cleared of any wrongdoing.)
• More recently, there was the story about the little boy who was snatched and killed by an alligator at Disney World, and the immediate calls to have the parents investigated for neglect? And the cries from the animal rights activists that several alligators were killed in the search for the specific one that took the child?

No? I don't remember that last part, either.

I would love to be positive that there's no correlation between the race of the families (zoo was black, Disney was white), or any other type of bias that went into the reporting or the reactions.  Heck -- I admit that, until I saw an Internet meme, the thought didn't even occur to me that there could have been any bias here. 

But you know what they say: you can't unring the bell. 

One more example, and then I'll leave you to ponder. Again with the Orlando attacks.  Donald Trump, in one of his several reactions to the shooting, blasted the alleged protection of terrorists by American Muslims, noting that

They know what's going on. They know that (the shooter) was bad. They have to cooperate with law enforcement and turn in the people they know are bad.. But you know what? They didn't turn them in. And you know what? We had death and destruction.

Except that, in this particular case, we have a witness coming forward to talk about how he did turn this shooter in (confirmed by the FBI), and we know how that ended, right?

Except that, as Trump wanted, the number of people who will walk away from this believing that Muslims are bad and are hiding terrorists is significantly, perhaps even exponentially higher than the number who will learn of this first-person account of a person who did exactly what his entire faith is accused of not doing.

Is your input on a bias? Do you see things as you expect them to be, instead of the way they really are? If yes, you're not alone; I publicly confessed to this about three years ago, right here in these pages.

The realization of my own biased thinking doesn't give me a pass. I hope it makes me more aware of bias when I express it myself, or when I see it.  And, too, when I miss it.

I think that's a whole lot better than the dietary change that was recommended for the cat.

Point/Counterpoint: The Comic Book Debate

Not unexpectedly, reaction to the CNBC GOP debate was fast and furious. Or maybe, it was furious and fast.

During the debate, the candidates themselves were quick to pounce on the moderators; a few of those reactions I included in yesterday's post, but I did save a couple.

The first is from Ted Cruz:

You know, let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions - "Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?" "Ben Carson, can you do math?" "John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?" "Marco Rubio, why don't you resign?" "Jeb! Bush why have your numbers fallen?" How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about? 

And this, from Chris Christie:

Carl, are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football?  We have -- wait a second -- we have $19 trillion in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and al Qaeda attacking us.  And we're talking about fantasy football  Can we stop?

The official response from the party came via a letter from RNC head Reince Priebus to Andrew Lack head of NBC, advising

I write to inform you that pending further discussion between the Republican National Committee (RNC) and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016...

CNBC billed the debate as one that would focus on "the key issues that matter to all voters - job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy." That was not the case. Before the debate, the candidates were promised an opening question on economic or financial matters. That was not the case. Candidates were promised that speaking time would be carefully monitored to ensure fairness. That was not the case.  Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive...

What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates' policies and ideas... 

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, The Networks of NBC.

Elsewhere, the view was a little different.

John Harwood, he of the "comic book version" question to Trump, defended the way he asked the question in an appearance on On Point, a radio show from WBUR and NPR.  When asked by host Tom Ashbrook if he went "a bridge too far" with the question, here was his response (you can listen to the audio here):

No. Look, there is nobody - including the candidates on that stage - the day before John Kasich had given a speech and he said "we've got somebody who's promising to send 10 or 11 million people out of the country. That's just crazy. That is fantasy."  There is no one on that stage who actually believes that you can send those 11 million people out of the country. There is no economist who believes that you can cut taxes $10T without increasing the deficit. It is simply a set of discussions that is not connected to the real world we live in. And I felt and feel at this moment that it's appropriate to pose that to Donald Trump in that way. 

CNBC's Brian Steel, VP of communications, allowed as how

People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions. 

Writing in the Boston Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby noted, in reference to Cruz's "brutal takedown," that

It was a good night for Cruz and Rubio; a bad night for Bush. But the biggest loser in Boulder wasn't a candidate. It was the media.

And here's Helaine Olen, author of a couple of books on personal finance who also writes for Slate; she also arrived at the conclusion that CNBC was the biggest loser.

The main moderators  (Harwood, Quick, Quintanilla) appeared to be in a different time zone from Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli, who pitched in with a few questions. Although, come to think of it, Quintanilla may have been in a different time zone from everyone.. Were there tough questions? Sure there were more than a few... But mostly, CNBC's debate was a mess.

Olen's take on it was a bit different - she noted that regular viewers would have seen a "familiar" mess which is not exactly a confidence builder.  She also recollected Quintanilla has had other less than shining moments, such as this one:

...his performance managed to remind me almost at once that his finest moment as a journalist was when he got an interview with soon-to-be-indicted $8B Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford and asked him "Is it fun being a billionaire?"

Hmm.  Now I have to wonder, were my expectations too high to begin with?

Back to Priebus, before we go. His letter to NBC News also noted that

The RNC's sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay our their vision for America's future. We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns.

That  'consultation' is going to occur tonight, with a high-powered Republican attorney facilitating things, according to the New York Times.

The article points out that there are different opinions from the camps on how to proceed, illustrating again that while it's relatively easy to rally against the media as a common enemy, it may prove harder to change something that - good, bad, or indifferent - benefits some of the candidates just as much as it marginalizes others.

Stay tuned.

The Other is an African-American Woman

So today on the radio a few fairly well known commentators were discussing the situation in Ferguson;  one of today's topics was the District Attorney Bob McCullough.

The DA is a real law-and-order guy, according to reports. His dad was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty, and other family members have worked for the police department. Not surprisingly, given his background, some folks in Ferguson and some from outside who are offering assistance and support have called for the DA to voluntarily recuse himself from the Michael Brown case. To be honest, even if his background had been different, I would have expected calls for recusal, given the lack of trust that we've seen and heard expressed since the teenager was killed almost two weeks ago.

So, in discussing this on the show today, the commentator noted that the DA has not yet recused himself, and may very well not. It was also noted that he is not personally presenting the case to the grand jury, but that two others from his office were handling the case.  Here's how they were described:

One is a 27-year veteran prosecutor, and the other is an African-American, woman, I believe. 

Really?  Is it just me, or is there something askew with those descriptions?

And what exactly are we supposed to infer from them?

• The African American woman has so little experience it's not worthy of mention?
• She's only on the case because she's African-American, to appease Ferguson residents?
• The experience and long tenure of the one DA, who I'm thinking is a white male, suggest that this person will be doing the heavy lifting, and that obviously the gravitas gained from experience matters more than gender and skin color.  Unless you're an African-American woman.

Perhaps the 74 year old white woman who made those statements didn't really mean to describe the two district attorneys so very differently.  Perhaps, like Paula Dean, she is what she is and can't help herself.  

But for someone who has such a public stage -- a published author, frequent contributions to print and online media, and who has a fairly regular TV gig -- particularly one who speaks from the left -- she certainly should have known better. 

Or, again, maybe it's just me.