I hate to be snarky, but have they considered giving that portion of the test to our state legislators? Or perhaps to Romney advisor Ed Gillespie, who appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, and “explained” Governor Romney’s position on Planned Parenthood.
When asked if Romney really meant it when he said he’d get rid of Planned Parenthood, Gillepsie said of course, but “getting rid of Planned Parenthood” wasn’t really “getting rid of it.” Because “defunding” isn’t the same as “not having funding.”
Well, Ed, let me try to explain this to you.
When the vast majority of the money you need in order to provide services comes from government, and government stops giving you that money, the result is that you don’t have the funds necessary to survive. That’s called “getting rid of it.” And if Governor Romney is elected and follows through–if he does “get rid of it”–thousands of poor women will lose access to basic healthcare, the provision of which–crazy rightwing rhetoric to the contrary–is the vast majority of what Planned Parenthood does.
Darn! Where’s that “critical thinking” thing when you really need it?
There’s nothing like a funeral to focus your mind on what’s really important.
Sunday, I attended the funeral of my uncle Harold–actually, he was my first cousin once removed in the arcane language of family trees, but he was my mother’s age, so my sister and I grew up calling him “uncle.”
Harold would have been 93 next month, so it was rather remarkable to see 250+ people of all ages, genders and races crammed into the funeral home. As Rabbi Sasso noted at the beginning of the service, Harold led a full, rewarding life. The eulogies from his children and grandchildren were clearly heartfelt, full of genuine love and affection, and that affection was shared by the many nieces, nephews, cousins and other family members in the crowded room (too many of whom, I regret to say, I see only at weddings and funerals these days). Even though he was 93, his death was a shock; he had always been healthy, and he’d been out and about until just weeks before he died.
During the service, I considered what Uncle Harold had taught our large, quirky family.
Everyone who spoke reiterated a central theme: here was a man who never said an unkind word about anyone, who looked at the world through rose-colored glasses and saw the positive side of every situation. He was absolutely devoted to his family. He made everyone he came in contact with feel important. He had a great sense of humor, and was the MC of choice at family gatherings.
But perhaps the most accurate description came from his nephew, my cousin, who described him as a man of fundamental decency.
Uncle Harold loved sports, especially basketball and golf. In the 1950s, his favorite basketball team was Crispus Attucks. At a time when segregation was strictly enforced in Indianapolis, Harold, his young son, and my cousin would be the only whites sitting in the stands behind the team, cheering them on.
Harold had become close friends with the legendary coach, Ray Crowe, when he financed the coach’s first car; his finance company was one of the very few that made no-down-payment auto loans–or any loans–to blacks in those days.
When Crispus Attucks won the championship in 1955, blacks couldn’t even hold a celebration on Monument Circle. The team members–even its star, Oscar Robertson–were unwelcome in most of the city’s restaurants and bars, so Uncle Harold took the whole team to Broadmoor Country Club for steak dinners. He also found summer jobs for several of the players, and forced restaurants owned by friends to serve them. To my knowledge, he never talked about any of this; I came across the information in a book about Hoosier basketball.
There is a Yiddish word for people like my uncle Harold: mentch. The best translation is “a real human being.”
As one of his sons said during the service, Harold died a wealthy man. Not because he was financially comfortable, although he was. His was real wealth–the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who adored their “peepaw,” the genuine affection of many good friends, the ability to enjoy–and be grateful for–the gifts life gave him, and something money and power can’t buy: a good name.
Chris Mooney has written several books about science–or more accurately, the rejection of science by conservative Republicans. His most recent book is The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality.
While Mooney has an obvious political perspective, his analysis of the role of media–and specifically, Fox News, is interesting.
Mooney reviews a number of peer-reviewed studies looking at the connection between political misinformation and media preferences–public information surveys that ask citizens about their beliefs on factual issues and their media habits. It won’t come as a revelation that people who depend exclusively or primarily on Fox News are far and away the most misinformed. The more interesting question, however, is whether Fox creates a particular mind-set, or whether people with that mind-set seek out Fox and similar sources.
Is Fox the chicken or the egg?
Mooney cites a 1957 seminal book by Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. That book predicted that people who are highly committed to a belief would try to avoid encountering claims that challenge that belief. Rather, they would seek out “information” that confirmed their preconceptions.
This was well before the internet facilitated the construction of such information “bubbles.”
Festinger called his prediction theory “selective exposure.” Today, we more often refer to it as “self-selection.”
A recent meta-analysis of 67 studies by a University of Alabama psychologist found that people overall were nearly twice as likely to “consume ideologically congenial information than to consume ideologically inconvenient information”–and that the most “highly committed” people were far more likely to do so.
According to the research, people most likely to be among this “highly committed” category are right-wing authoritarian personalities.
So while we do have examples that Fox News “makes shit up”–a practice that distinguishes the network from networks like MSNBC that “spin” facts to favor a political perspective but generally refrain from manufacturing them–the chicken and egg question remains.
Are people who get all their information from Fox being indoctrinated, or do they watch Fox because they are looking for confirmation of their pre-existing ideological commitments?
Of course, no matter what the answer to that question, there’s another: if Fox–and Rush, and Drudge, etc.–didn’t exist, would America still be so polarized? Or did our polarization lead to the creation of Fox, Drudge, et al?
Chicken? Egg? I report–you decide! (Sorry–couldn’t resist!)
McCarthy’s charges were dishonest at best, paranoid at worst, and he did a lot of damage to a lot of of people and to the country as a whole. But give him credit for one thing–he did know what a communist was.
West, on the other hand, is a loon and an embarrassment even by the standards of today’s Tea Party GOP. (Google him if you are unfamiliar with his delusional worldview.) I doubt he could define “communist” if his life depended on it. His latest paranoid rant is worth mentioning only because it is a slightly exaggerated example of a much more common–and worrisome–aspect of what passes for political discourse these days.
Increasingly, Americans use words as epithets, rather than to communicate ideas. Terms like “liberal” “evangelical” “socialist” “fascist” and the like are thrown around by people who clearly have no idea what those labels mean. The result is that we no longer have arguments between people who hold different points of view, we have tantrums. As a colleague of mine noted a few months ago, after one disheartening episode of political pique, when a serious legislator suggests a course of action, he won’t be countered with reasons why that proposal is flawed, but with the functional equivalent of “you’re a poopy-head!”
In a sane world, people like Allen West would be medicated, not elected to Congress.
There are a lot of positions conservatives take that I understand, although I disagree with them. There are sincere anti-abortion people who believe life begins at conception, for example. Belief in “fiscal responsibility” leads many people to draw (bad) analogies to household budgets and disputes over what sorts of behaviors actually are fiscally responsible.
I even understand–I think–where less intellectually respectable positions come from. The desire to roll back women’s rights to birth control, equal pay and similar markers of equality, the hysterical response to same-sex marriage (or even equal civil rights) for GLBT folks, the punitive attitudes toward immigrants and similar attitudes are pretty clearly part and parcel of a profound unease with contemporary realities, and a desire to return to a (largely imaginary) past.
But what in the world motivates opposition to mass transit?
A couple of years ago, Chris Christie–the Republican Governor of New Jersey–killed one of the most important transit projects in the country: a tunnel that would have linked his state to Manhattan and relieved the congestion that currently chokes both. At the time, he claimed his reasons were financial–that New Jersey’s share of the costs were simply too high.
I hope everyone reading this will click through and read the whole report. This is absolutely bizarre behavior, but what makes it worse is a passing reference in the article to the fact that opposition to mass transit has become part of the conservative “creed.”
Why in the world would someone have a philosophical opposition to transit? I certainly understand believing that a particular project is not well thought-out, or too expensive or otherwise flawed, but opposition to all mass transit? To suggest such a belief sounds paranoid.
The tunnel Christie killed is desperately needed, and had been planned for many years. It would have relieved congestion and helped the environment (okay, I realize that conservatives also reject science and the fact of climate change, but still). If built on schedule, it would also have created jobs at a time when those jobs were desperately needed.
I thought Christie was stupid and short-sighted for pulling the plug over up-front costs that would be recouped (many times over) over the long-term. But stupid and short-sighted are explicable; flat-out lying in order to justify an otherwise inexplicable decision is beyond my ability to understand.
