Month: October 2010

Glenn Greenwald notes what I have: that the full context in no way exonerates Williams in his conflation of Muslims – not Jihadists or al Qaeda or extreme Muslims or radical Muslims – but Muslims period with terrorism. Williams is not observing and airing the irrational fear of Muslims who put their Muslim identity first and foremost, airing a fact, he is saying it is justified given the extremist Muslim origin of recent terrorism. He is conflating the extreme with the general. This is what bigotry is. It is unfairly tarring the vast majority of innocent members of a group with the acts of a tiny few of 1.3 billion people.

On the question of p.c., I don't think cases of outright bigotry are in the realm of p.c. at all. Goldblog explains why:

There are roughly 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. Of these 1.3 billion Muslims, it is my belief that only several thousand, or at most, several tens of thousands, are directly involved in Islamist terrorism. Therefore, the chance that a Muslim in any given airport is a terrorist is very small… [So] I don't assume for a second that any individual Muslim on my radar screen is a terrorist.

That's why Jeffrey is not a bigot and Juan Williams made a bigoted statement (although he has never struck me when I have engaged him as anything close to being "a bigot" as such). The truth is: we can all have bigoted thoughts and say bigoted things because we are human beings, but we should seek to suppress them in a multicultural society within ourselves, let alone lend them actual legitimacy on air. And if you do lend them legitimacy – like Rick Sanchez did and Juan Williams did and Bill O'Reilly did and Brian Kilmeade did – I don't think it's inappropriate for a broadcasting company to say it doesn't want to be associated with it. That's why I thought CNN was right to fire Sanchez but not Octavia Nasr, because there was no bigotry in Nasr's tweet, and no support for terrorism, and in full context, it was fair, nuanced  journalism. I think Helen Thomas said nothing bigoted per se, but her callous disregard for the feelings of those whose families were incinerated for being Jews in Poland was horrifying. You should be free to be an anti-Zionist, but there is something grotesque about telling Israelis to "go back" to the countries where they were once murdered en masse.

I think you have to take these cases of journalists blurting out bigoted statements individually, and also make the distinction between the state suppressing free speech and broadcasting noutlets deciding not to associate or sponsor certain journalists for saying certain things. What we know now is that CNN and NPR take bigotry seriously and that Fox actually rewards its employees for making bigoted remarks.

On the issue of the double standard: when Helen Thomas was "retired," Howard Kurtz wrote a Washington Post column citing one neocon after the next insisting that her comments disqualified her from working as a journalist any longer; today, however, the same Howard Kurtz predictably argues that Williams should not have been fired by NPR (but, he insists, Rick Sanchez should have been fired by CNN).  Similarly, as Emma Mustich notes in Salon, Mike Huckabee today "slammed NPR for discrediting 'itself as a forum for free speech' and solidifying 'itself itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum'," but the very same Mike Huckabee was one of the ring-leaders forcing Helen Thomas to resign.

Finally, and most important:  Simon Owens brilliantly demonstrates how various right-wing commentators wrapping themselves today in the self-victimizing flag of "free expression" in order to protest what was done to Juan Williams, were making the exact opposite claims when CNN fired Octavia Nasr and they were cheering it on, and they did the same in other instances where they disliked the ideas that were being punished.

The Owens piece really is great.

Dan Savage should be beaming with pride about what he started. Here is the president of the United States reaching out to gay kids being bullied in their teenage years.

It's beautifully crafted and gently put. I think it's the first time in history that a US president has spoken directly to gay Americans in support from the White House. Which makes it a milestone.

It comes the same day that the procedure for expelling openly gay servicemembers solely for being gay has been made the responsibility of only five senior figures in the military, so that abuses do not occur, that the discharges can get rarer and rarer, that some of the country's servicemembers do not need to live in constant fear as they risk their lives to defend us:

In a memorandum dated Oct. 21, Mr. Gates said that “until further notice,” only five senior Defense Department officials, all civilians, would have the authority to expel openly gay service members. As the memo explained it, the relevant service secretary — either the Secretary of the Army, Navy or Air Force — has to consult with the Pentagon’s legal counsel, Jeh C. Johnson, and the undersecretary for personnel, Clifford L. Stanley, before the three can make a group decision on whether a gay service member should be forced out of the military. Until Thursday the decision was in the hands of a far larger number of less senior military and civilian officials.

I have been very critical of this administration for its slow and cautious approach to gay civil rights. That is not because I believe they are somehow not in favor of such rights, but because I feel strongly about our dignity and equality, and have always used whatever mouthpiece I have to make the case. But I have to say that this gesture from Obama and the practical reform within the military are important steps forward. The ban still needs to end.

But this is a real step in the right direction, and many of us are deeply encouraged by it.

Drum muses:

I think a lot of Americans might be surprised to hear just how constrained the British forces will become. Despite British claims, the fact is that right now the United States has virtually the only expeditionary force left on the planet. Other countries can defend themselves, or send troops across a border, but there’s almost no capacity left for projecting force any further than that anywhere in the world. This is one area where American exceptionalism is truly a fact.

What this does to any idea of collective intervention or intervention with even a veneer of international legitimacy is surely profound. And that in turn exposes and isolates the US hegemon even further. It will make every argument for a new war an argument solely about the projection of American force, and make the endeavors seem even more neo-imperial. If you combine this with what will have to be real cuts in defense if the US is to avoid default, and the unavoidable disasters of the Iraq and Afghan adventures, then the American century, in terms of global control and global legitimacy, really is receding faster than many now realize.

Michael Petrelis sighs:

Always on the prowl for ways to dupe naive gays into parting with their money, in the ludicrous belief that doing so abets solving any of the problems facing gay people, the Human Rights Campaign is offering a plastic bracelet for $3, ostensibly to do something about bullying and gay kids committing suicide.

Al Giordano is hopeful:

If the historic Proposition 19 passes, the pundits and talking heads that generate the misnamed “conventional wisdom” in the Washington DC beltway will be falling all over each other to note that Prop 19 won and it pulled Boxer out of the fire with it. If coming out of Election Night, Prop 19 emerges with the sheen of a  newly-minted winner, Democratic strategists will have little choice but to adopt a “50 state strategy” (especially in the 26 states – Maine, Massachusetts, and virtually everything west of the Mississippi River – that have citizen generated statewide ballot initiative processes), and go “all in” on legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana, even if their politicians continue to balk at saying it aloud. 

Samuel describes his brutal experience with ex-gay therapy. Part one: Part two:

Jim Burroway reflects on the videos:

The sad tragedy to all of this is that Sam’s story is both unique and not uncommon. There’s hardly a month that goes by that I don’t get an email from someone asking for advice. Either they are trying to recover from an ex-gay experience or, more commonly, a friend or relative asks what they should do when someone they know enters some kind of “treatment” program. These are hard stories to deal with, but one good resource is Beyond Ex-Gay, a network of ex-gay survivors. It’s not only for survivors themselves, but also their families and friends. I know that they have provided valuable support to those who are coming out of the ex-gay experience.

John Gravois wonders how the cannabis industry will develop should California pass Prop 19. He focuses on Mendocino County, where Gravois claims marijuana accounts "for two-thirds of the local economy, by some estimates":

Mendocino County’s second-largest product—wine—may provide the best alternative vision for dope. Thanks in part to a legal loophole that always allowed for home producers, wine has been much slower to consolidate than other industries, and no single winery has the political clout of an Anheuser-Busch. This has been better not only for small producers, but also—more importantly—for the public. So maybe we should all hope that Matthew Cohen is right: that Mendocino will become the Napa Valley of marijuana, and that the premium growers can charge for a sustainably grown, artisanal product backed by a helluva marketing narrative—America’s last frontier! Land of the organic outlaw!—won’t turn out to be too much lower, in the end, than the premium they charge now for growing a crop under conditions of abject fear. It’s not such a bad dream, anyway.  

I wonder if one day the market will truly be allowed to work and we'll see a range of marijuana outlets emerge, from cheap Dunkin Donuts versions to really serious, hardcore esoteric ones, like the best wine collections or cigar shops.

Today on the Dish, Andrew sized up Britain's budget cuts and replied to Rick's response on inequality and the dying middle class. British defense cuts could precede our own, and even McCain's former policy advisor applauded them. Al-Sadr switched up the chess game in Iraq.

We talked bigotry on air with the firing of Juan Williams, and Andrew wasn't going easy on him, Fox News, or those who came to his defense. Andrew relished Jonathan Martin's Palin expose two weeks before the midterms, Nate Silver measured the electoral wave, and a political ad unsettled Ozimek. George Packer mulled liberalism, and a reader changed Andrew's mind on Palin-Nixon parallels. Andrew joined the defense of hipsters and hippies, and connected them to the truly religious.

Scott Morgan laid the smackdown on the LA Times, Reason interviewed Prop 19's supporters and opponents, drug busts don't affect prices, and the polls tightened. Yglesias urged the scandalous to stick around, Greenwald gutted the defense of Miller's "bodyguards," and we hailed Tyler Cowen as an economist. The DADT ruling was stayed, and Ben Adler annihilated Obama's argument that only Congress can allow gays to serve.

TNC weighed the benefit of fighting when young, with the bad of fighting as an adult. Kinsley summoned the best defense of buck-raking there is, the Dish became a "mixed regime," and this quote made William F. Buckley roll in his grave. Megan learned no one owns a city, and police officers chilled out because of surveillance. FOTD here, headline for the day here, Nick Carr bait here, quote for the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, map of the day here, and skinny CPAP views here.

–Z.P.

Ezra Klein argues that "the best way to solve your deficit problems is simple, at least in theory: Increase how fast your economy is growing." Douthat thinks this "argument is correct, but it’s also potentially dangerous … because it’s a line of thinking that can persuade politicians that their favored stimulative policies — whether tax cuts, spending increases, or some combination thereof — will turn out to be a free lunch …" He elaborates:

As liberals have enjoyed pointing out, Bush’s first term policies amounted to a kind of right-wing Keynesianism — and as of 2006 or so, the administration could credibly argue that its unfunded tax cuts and spending increases, while budget-busting in the short term, had played some role in pulling the economy up out of its post-Internet-bubble, post-9/11 doldrums. Yes, they’d piled up debt for a few years, but the important thing was that the economy was growing (not that quickly, but what wouldn’t we give for Bush-era growth rates today?), which in turn was gradually bringing the budget back into balance and laying the necessary foundation for future deficit reduction.

I don’t think that argument looks nearly as credible today. Which is why I’m cautiously optimistic that the Cameron government is taking the right course in Britain — and somewhat more pessimistic about America’s capacity to follow suit.