The Indianapolis Star has appointed a new editor, who is quoted in this morning’s edition promising “news you can use.” This catchphrase has come into increased use as newspaper readership has continued to decline–not just in Indianapolis, but nationally.
The problem is that no one completes the sentence. Those who toss off the phrase do not proceed to the important issue, which is: use for what?
In my opinion, the news citizens can use is information about their common institutions–including but not limited to government, and especially local government. Judging from what the newspapers are actually covering, however, they consider “news you can use” to be reviews of local restaurants, diet and home decorating tips, and sports. Not–as they used to say on Seinfeld–that there is anything wrong with that. At least, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that if these stories were being served as “dessert” rather than the main course.
The new editor also promises an emphasis on journalism’s time-honored watchdog role. I hope that isn’t just rhetoric, but I’m dubious. Genuine watchdog coverage requires resources–enough reporters with enough time to investigate and monitor a wide variety of important government agencies and functions. The Star has experienced wave after wave of layoffs that have left it with a skeletal reporting operation, leaving the paper’s capacity to provide genuine journalism an open question.
What residents of central Indiana could use is a real newspaper. I’m not holding my breath.
Muhammad Ali was in town last November for the funeral of Smokin’ Joe Frazier, but it turns out the boxing legend was back in the area on April 28 for the bar mitzvah of his grandson Jacob Wertheimer at Rodeph Shalom on North Broad Street.
Khaliah Ali-Wertheimer, Jacob’s mother, told Ali biographer Thomas Hauser that though her father raised his children Muslim, he was “supportive in every way. He followed everything and looked at the Torah very closely.”
“It meant a lot to Jacob that he was there,” she told Hauser, who reported on the bar mitzvah at TheSweetScience.com.
“I was born and raised as a Muslim,” Khaliah said, “but I’m not into organized religion. I’m more spiritual than religious. My husband is Jewish. No one put any pressure on Jacob to believe one way or another. He chose this on his own because he felt a kinship with Judaism and Jewish culture.” Her husband is attorney Spencer Wertheimer.
When I was in college, I read everything Ayn Rand wrote–and was immensely influenced by it.
The Cold War was still a reality, and Soviet communism was a genuine menace, ideologically and geopolitically. Rand’s books were a corrective (okay, an over-corrective) to the notion that the individual should live for the state, and her lack of balance was understandable coming as it did from someone who had escaped the Soviet Union when she was still a teenager.
Over the years, Rand’s books and philosophy took their place as one aspect of my own broader exploration of political philosophy. I still think they are a useful expression of radical libertarianism, even though the demise of the Soviet Union and communism have made her work seem increasingly dated and shrill.
People can agree or disagree with Rand’s philosophy, but what has bemused me is the appropriation of bits and pieces of her writing in ways that I think would probably infuriate her. Case in point: the head of a state agency who told a colleague of mine that he required his employees to read two books for inspiration: Atlas Shrugged and the Bible. Ayn Rand, a committed atheist who considered religion a weakness, would have been appalled.
I also had to laugh at the rash of bumper stickers and letters to the editor a few years ago from people self-identifying with Rand’s hero, John Galt. Virtually all of them were arguing for government policies that would benefit businesses–tax breaks, subsidies, regulatory changes and the like. Most of their arguments echoed those of Rand’s villain, James Taggart–the sniveling parasite who embodied the corporate behaviors of which Rand disapproved–rather than the ideology of her (very unrealistic) protagonist.
As the current political season heats up, we are once again seeing references to Rand–Eric Cantor, the architect of the GOP budget is said to be deeply influenced by her philosophy, and left-wing bloggers mutter darkly about her evil and pervasive influence–and I can’t help seeing parallels between the way people read Rand’s books and the way they read the bible or the Koran or the Constitution–which is to say, very selectively.
Homophobes point to three or four passages in the Christian bible to justify marginalization of gays. Anti-Muslim bigots point to isolated passages of the Koran to paint all of Islam with a broad, terrorist brush. People who don’t like the implications of government’s obligation to treat citizens equally and their belief systems neutrally use isolated provisions to justify revisionist interpretations. Those on the other side of the philosophical fence respond with their own cherry-picking.
Ayn Rand, like those who wrote our Constitution and other “holy books,” was a product of a particular time and place. In her case, she was reacting against a repressive, totalitarian regime. She really can’t be faulted for failing to recognize the threat posed by a radical individualism that didn’t exist in her world, just as Karl Marx can’t be faulted for failing to recognize the dangers of the communist revolution he was promoting.
Ideally, we should all read widely–Rand and Marx, bible and Koran. But if we can’t read widely, at least we should read carefully.
I think about that every time I encounter a “bible-believing” Christian who identifies with Ayn Rand.
When the Supreme Court decided Buckley v. Valeo and declared, in essence, that money equaled speech, I agreed. I have always been a free-speech purist, and it seemed reasonable to me that the freedom to express my opinion should include my freedom to spend my money supporting issues and candidates with whom I agreed.
I was wrong. The Court was wrong. Money is not speech, and corporations are not “people.”
Citizens United should have been a predictable consequence of Buckley. Recent experience teaches us that reasonable restrictions on political spending and insistence on full disclosure are absolutely essential to the democratic process.
I do not make the argument that the candidate with the most money will always win an election. There are plenty of examples to the contrary, and lots of reasons besides financial ones why elections are won or lost. That said, in order to be viable, candidates need enough money to compete, to get their message out. Money more often than not makes the crucial difference.
Here in central Indiana, the airwaves are already full of gauzy, saccharine 30-second spots introducing us to a new and improved version of Mike Pence. The real Pence polls high negatives. He has a legislative record that is–to be kind about it–undistinguished, and a hard-right self-righteousness that is off-putting. He is also clearly favored to win the gubernatorial race, for two reasons: he will have lots and lots of money, courtesy of many of the same plutocrats who supported Scott Walker; and his opponent, who has shown an unfortunate propensity for unforced political errors, has thus far not raised nearly enough.
If Gregg continues his lackluster fundraising, Pence will continue to dominate the airwaves, airbrushing his own persona and redefining Gregg’s. By the time November rolls around, voters will choose between two caricatures bearing very little resemblance to the flesh-and-blood individuals upon whom they are based.
This situation is not unique to Indiana. Thanks to our conflation of a right to spend unlimited sums of money with a right to freedom of expression, we have turned campaigns into arms races, where a candidate’s ability to ingratiate himself with big-money donors outweighs any other strengths he may bring to the table. Even good candidates find themselves compelled to spend untold hours fundraising, at the expense of the sorts of “retail” politics in which voters have unmediated contact with candidates for office.
Given enough money and a really good media operation, Lady Gaga could run for office as a clone of Mother Teresa. It wouldn’t be any more of a stretch than Mike Pence pretending to be someone who cares more about jobs and the economy than about demonizing gays and de-funding Planned Parenthood.
Today, I am turning this space over to Andrew Sullivan, who has written an incisive, comprehensive must-read take-down of the anti-Obama grievances of both the hysterical right and the pissy left.
