OK–Let’s Talk About Virtue Signaling

A few days ago, a commenter dismissed the recent Women’s Strike as “useless virtue signaling.” That contemptuous comment prompted me to consider both the attitude prompting someone to post that condescending taunt as well as the definition and effect of virtue signaling.

I’m at a loss about the attitude, but I have some very definite opinions about what does–and does not–constitute behavior intended to convey one’s “virtue.”

I first encountered the phrase “virtue signaling” several years ago, when I purchased my first Prius, and a colleague–who, I hasten to say, approved of the purchase and who worries about climate change– told me that Toyota depended upon virtue signaling as a marketing tool. Making people feel virtuous for reducing their use of fossil fuel helped them sell their cars. It’s all about the bottom line, baby!

I understood his point; after all, people have been purchasing cars to “send a message” for generations. Until recently, that message had little to do with virtue or the environment–it was more along the lines of keeping up with the Joneses (or letting them know you could afford that Cadillac…)

Wikipedia’s entry on the term distinguishes between virtue signaling that is what we sometimes call “humble bragging” and the other motivations for– and effects of– communicative behaviors. The entry also included the following, very interesting, observation:

Linguist David Shariatmadari argued in The Guardian that the very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signaling in itself. The Conversation‘s Karen Stollznow said that the term is often used as “a sneering insult by those on the right against progressives to dismiss their statements.” Zoe Williams, also writing for The Guardian, suggested the phrase was the “sequel insult to champagne socialist“.

The Wikipedia article also suggested that the term is most commonly applied to online expression rather than in-person behaviors and activities.

The dismissal of the Women’s Strike (and presumably the Women’s March that occurred after Trump’s election) as useless “virtue signaling” struck me as not only patronizing but entirely wrong. It utterly misses the point of civic demonstrations, which are an important–and effective– element of social movements and social change.

The first and most immediate effect of a successful demonstration–a strike, a march, or other public display–is communication. Participation in a protest or other public display does two things: first, it tells other people that their concerns are broadly shared, that they are not alone; and second, it sends a message to those who are in a position to correct the problem that generated the event.

When a segment of the population is upset about something–racism, homophobia, misogyny, failure to fix potholes, whatever–concerted public actions that serve to tell individuals that they aren’t alone, aren’t the only people with that particular concern–are extremely important. (If you hold a demonstration and no one comes, that’s an important message too.) Brooding alone about problem X leads to feelings of powerlessness; joining with others who share your concern or anger strengthens your resolve to do something about it.

It also facilitates contact with others who agree with you, making other action more likely.

In states unlike Indiana, where the existence of referenda or the absence of gerrymandering means that legislators actually have to respond to constituent concerns, demonstrations and other public actions alert those in office to matters requiring their remedial action.

It’s true that few of these public protests get prompt positive results.

But even when strikes or marches or other displays of public concern fail to produce immediate results, over time, those expressions of opinion can and do change the culture. Little by little, they produce social change. Where would the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement or the women’s movement be today without the years of “virtue signaling” that John Lewis aptly called “good trouble”?

In any effort to effect social change, there will be good-faith arguments among proponents about the tactics to be employed. Will X be effective or counter-productive? Is this the right time to try Y? What if we plan a march and no one comes? Those are important discussions.

But they have absolutely nothing to do with “virtue signaling.”

Comments

Federalism And MAGA Lies

I know it’s hopeless to expect anything approaching logic–or constitutional knowledge– from MAGA conspiracy theorists, but I’ll admit I still get surprised by the sheer fact-free idiocy of some of their anti-Biden accusations. In many cases, that idiocy is an outgrowth of what I call “civic illiteracy”–an obvious lack of knowledge of the most basic structures of American government.

Take the MAGA folks who are screaming over Trump’s New York prosecution and subsequent guilty verdicts. Republican partisans–some of whom, as elected officials, should certainly know better–accuse the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Department of Justice, claiming that President Biden was responsible for both Alvin Bragg’s decision to charge Trump and for the subsequent jury verdict.

Yeah! As the Lincoln Project recently noted, it’s also Biden’s fault you got that speeding ticket!

Anyone who took a high school government class (and actually passed) should know the difference between federal and state jurisdiction. That difference is part of what we call federalism–and it’s foundational to our legal and governmental systems. As I used to explain to my students, the Founders gave us both horizontal and vertical checks and balances: separation of powers (dividing authority among the branches of government–someone should tell Tommy Tuberville), and federalism (dividing authority between federal, state and local units of government).

Federalism is evidently a concept utterly foreign to a large segment of the voting population. As the Washington Post recently reported, a CBS News-YouGov poll tried to figure out just “how many Americans buy into the baseless idea that Biden had something to do with the charges against Trump in Manhattan.

Turns out, it’s 43 percent — and 80 percent of Republicans. Those are the percentages who agree that the charges were brought because of “directions that came from the Biden administration,” rather than merely by “prosecutors in New York.”…

The article debunked several aspects of the claim, and noted

This theory was also firmly rejected in recent weeks by no less than former Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina, who worked on Trump’s defense early in the Manhattan prosecution. He called the idea “silly” and “ridiculous.”

“Joe Biden or anyone from his Justice Department has absolutely zero to do with the Manhattan district attorney office,” Tacopina said in an MSNBC interview, adding, “We know that’s not the case, and even Trump’s lawyers know that’s not the case.”

“People who say that,” Tacopina told MSNBC, “it’s scary that they really don’t know the law or what they’re talking about.”

By Tacopina’s formulation, 4 in 10 Americans have no idea what they’re talking about.

As the article notes, this is hardly the first time Trump’s base has come to believe nonsense, despite a lack of any evidence–and in spite of the fact that believing it requires total ignorance of the structure of their own government.

Believing that the federal government stage-managed a state-level trial also requires a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance, since the GOP has long insisted on an extreme version of “state’s rights.”

In fact, the Republican Party has never quite gotten over its original resentment over incorporation–the odd word for the doctrine that nationalized the Bill of Rights. That process was initiated after passage of the 14th Amendment constitutionalized the principle that the fundamental liberties protected by the Bill of Rights should be a “floor”–that a citizen in Alabama should enjoy the same basic rights as a citizen of New York. States are able to enlarge on those rights, but thanks to nationalization of the Bill of Rights, they are forbidden to retract them. (That’s why the theocrats found it necessary to eliminate reproductive freedom from the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights.)

Our relatively strong federal government was founded in reaction to the serious and multiple problems the country experienced under the Articles of Confederation, which gave states far too much authority.  Obviously, not all policies need to be nationally uniform–there are plenty of areas where local control is appropriate. However, questions about who is entitled to fundamental rights–and what those rights are–shouldn’t be one of them, as the patchwork of approaches to reproductive freedom that’s emerging is likely to demonstrate. Forcefully. Justice Alito’s dismissal of the substantive due process doctrine is-–among other incredibly negative things– a step back toward the fragmentation of the Articles of Confederation.

But that step back didn’t merge state and federal justice systems.

Some of the Republicans who champion “states rights” are happy to ignore the whole concept in order to fabricate a ridiculous–albeit comforting– accusation. Others–probably the majority– are just broadcasting their profound ignorance of America’s basic governance structure.

Comments

And Don’t Forget Sinclair…

Most sentient Americans who follow political news know that Fox “News” is a propaganda arm of the GOP. Fewer people are aware of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which–as Talking Poiints Memo recently reminded us–also pipes disinformation and right-wing partisan talking points through its network of “185 television stations in 86 markets affiliated with all the major broadcast networks.”


This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.

Sounds bad, right? It’s quite a bit worse than that. As Judd points out, the kinds of material Sinclair has been pumping through it local stations are the most rancid of the attacks on Biden’s age and mental fitness. I’m talking about things like Biden “pooping” on stage during the D-Day commemoration, supposedly “freezing” during other public appearances (according to deceptively edited videos), and his slurring or stuttering of words.

This flood of disinformation is nonstop, it’s still often under the radar, and it’s saturating millions of American homes.

While Fox is widely recognized as a source of disinformation, Sinclair has thus far avoided becoming a household name and  identifiably untrustworthy source of information. That’s because the company lacks branding; it owns stations that are affiliated with all three major broadcast networks. When someone tunes in to Sean Hannity, they do so knowing what they’ll get; the disinformation purveyed by Sinclair is far more insidious.

A couple of years ago, the company required its commentators–news anchors on a wide variety of platforms–to read a statement bashing so-called “fake news.” That particular ploy got a fair amount of notice due to the identical language on multiple stations, but much of Sinclair’s propaganda is less obvious.

As the Washington Post reported earlier this year,

Every year, local television news stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting conduct short surveys among viewers to help guide the year’s coverage.

A key question in each poll, according to David Smith, the company’s executive chairman: “What are you most afraid of?”

The answers are evident in Sinclair’s programming. Crime, homelessness, illegal drug use, failing schools and other societal ills have long been core elements of local TV news coverage. But on Sinclair’s growing nationwide roster of stations, the editorial focus reflects Smith’s conservative views and plays on its audience’s fears that America’s cities are falling apart, according to media observers, Smith associates, and current and former staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company matters.

As the article points out, Sinclair offers its audience “a perspective that aligns with Trump’s oft-stated opinion that America’s cities, especially those run by Democratic politicians, are dangerous and dysfunctional.”
 
“Sinclair stations deliver messages that appeal to older, White, suburban audiences, and they play up crime stories in a way that is disproportionate to their statistical presence,” said Anne Nelson, a journalist and author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.” “All of it is fearmongering and feeds into a racialized view of cities.”

I have often wondered where friends from suburbia get these incredibly distorted pictures of urban life. At root, it is clearly influenced by the fact that cities–especially their downtowns–are where “those people” live. Apparently, propaganda purveyors like Fox and Sinclair (and their rapidly growing number of clones) understand the power of prejudice and intentionally encourage the racism that motivates a disproportionate percentage of Trump voters.

A Think article written not long after the scandal of the identical “opinion” pieces suggested that Sinclair is a “truer” heir to Roger Ailes than even Fox News.

This April, a reporter for a Sinclair-owned TV station revealed that she was fired for refusing to add conservative talking-points to a climate change story. This followed weeks of controversy, including revelations that the media giant had forced local news anchors to read identical scripts denouncing, in Trump-like fashion, “fake” news.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the largest owner of local television stations in America, is still not a household name like, for example, Fox News. Yet it may be the truest heir to former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes’s original vision of conservative news programming. Long before cable news, Ailes — who died in 2017 — had been dreaming up ways to inject local news programs with a conservative spin.

Here’s a list of the stations Sinclair owns.

And we wonder why Americans don’t know who or what to trust….

Comments

A Disturbing Analysis

This blog consistently attributes many of America’s problems to the unprecedented contours of the information environment we occupy. That critique has tended to focus on the proliferation of online partisan propaganda, but I’ve gradually become even more concerned about the reduced reliability of some of our most mainstream publications.

I previously shared concerns about an anti-Biden bias at the New York Times. The Times–like several other publications–has engaged in the sort of forced equivalency that has led them to jump on the slightest gaffe by Biden while ignoring–indeed, “cleaning up”–Trump’s ever-more-demented word-salads.

Then there’s the Washington Post, where recent shake-ups in management threaten the publication’s long-term viability–and current reliability. A recent Substack letter from Robert Hubbell analyzed the precarious situation at what was once a storied newspaper. The letter began:

On a quiet weekend, I received several emails from readers outraged over a Washington Post editorial scolding Joe Biden and his campaign for “ignoring the polls.” The editorial is titled, “Opinion: Biden should assume the polls are right, not wrong.” The editorial drips with pique provoked by Biden’s violation of the First Commandment of Serious Journalism: “We are the source of truth, and you shall not question our wisdom.” Or, as the Post editorial board put it, “Mr. Biden has attacked not just individual polls but polling writ large.”

As Hubbell noted, the piece relied heavily on a Times-Sienna poll that has been widely discredited.

What is most disturbing about the Post’s finger-wagging is that it occurs as the Post’s legitimacy as a major media outlet is open to question. A more urgent topic for the Post editorial board would have been, “Will the Post survive for another year?”

The questions about the Post’s continuing legitimacy arise because–as the publication is hemorrhaging money– its management has been taken over by alumni of Rupert Murdoch’s British media operations. Hubbell spends considerable time on the troubling backgrounds of those new managers. Then he gets to the root of the problem:

Because it is hard to be a successful media business these days. They have concluded that the profit-maximizing strategy is to “Root against Biden during the campaign and then rage against Trump if he wins.” (To understand that strategy, it is helpful to know that WaPo’s website had 100 million unique visitors in 2020 when Trump was president and 50 million unique visitors in 2023 when Biden was president.)

Is the Post surrendering journalistic ethics to garner tabloid profits?

We live in a world where one of America’s major political parties has decided to put party above country; if Hubbell is correct–and I believe he is–we are now seeing mainline news organizations put profit above professionalism.

Hubbell provides a telling example: WaPo’s recent article about Trump’s appearance at a “Black church” in Detroit.

The article peddles the popular narrative that Trump has taken his case to the Black community, where Biden is (allegedly) losing support:

Black voters have overwhelmingly favored Democrats since the civil rights movement. But recent polls show Trump has made gains with Black men, alarming some Democrats because even a small change in Black turnout or preferences could tip such pivotal states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Although it sounds like Trump went to a “Black church” to deliver his message to the Black community in Detroit, the event was a PR stunt created for the media—which eagerly participated in the fraud by failing to write the true story, which is this: No one from Detroit’s Black community—or the church’s congregation—showed up to hear Trump!

The reporter clearly understood what was really going on-seventeen paragraphs into the story, he wrote that “No one in line [for the event] identified themselves to a reporter as a member of [the] church.” (He did write In the third paragraph that the audience at the event “was not predominantly Black.”) In fact–as a photo Hubbell helpfully linked to clearly showed, the audience was almost completely White.

The story that the Post’s reporter should have written was this: “Trump holds sham event in Black church with white audience to conceal lack of support among Black voters.” If Biden had pulled the same stunt, that is exactly the type of headline the Post would have run on its front page.

 Hubbell concludes that the major media has lined up against Biden and is rooting for him to lose. “The prophets of doom putting profit ahead of democracy include the Washington Post and the New York Times. We just need to accept that fact and focus on getting likely voters and new voters to turn out.”

Following the money explains a very dangerous turn of events…..

Comments

Women’s Strike Tomorrow

Somewhere in our various educations, most of us have come across Aristophane’s play Lysistrata. In the midst of a war between Athens and Sparta; an Athenian woman named Lysistrata calls women from throughout Greece together, to present her plan for ending the hostilities. The women agree to dress provocatively and act seductively towards their husbands and boyfriends, but then withhold sex until the men swear to end the war. It evidently worked.

Lysistrata appears to be the very first Women’s Strike.

Tomorrow, June 24th, Hoosier women are planning to join with other American women in a more modern-day version. As the strike website describes the effort: 

Women4Change and women in Indiana are going on strike, June 24th, 2024 with thousands of our sisters across the United States.

Why are we going on strike?

In acknowledgement of the 2nd anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we are removing ourselves for 1 day en masse.

What is a strike?

No spending. No work. No school.

(Evidently, the “no sex” aspect pioneered by Lysistrata is up to the individual woman…)

Hoosiers for Democracy has elaborated on the motivation for this one-day expression of resistance.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court reversed a fifty-year constitutional right to reproductive health and safe access to abortion. The country has ample evidence that Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas are under the influence of White Christian Nationalists and ‘dark money’ contributions. We have a tape recording of Justice Samuel Alito saying that he will fight to return this country to a state of Godliness; so we can assume that the upside flag that flew outside his house on the day of the attack on the Capital and the white nationalist pine tree flag that has been seen waving at his summer home were not by mistake. Justice Clarence Thomas has received a little over 4 million dollars in gifts from Republican mega donor Harlan Crow. We also know that the three justices appointed by Donald Trump lied when they stood before their Senate Confirmation Hearing and testified that they believed Roe V. Wade was ‘settled law’. The Supreme Court has only begun reversing personal freedoms. The right to contraception, the right to gay marriage, protection of voting rights and an attack on the LGBTQ+ community are in the ‘wings’ of what is coming next.

It was actually much simpler for women back in olden-times Greece–women didn’t hold jobs or attend school. (I’m not sure whether they even had the right to spend money in that patriarchal society.) Withholding sex was pretty much the only “strike” available. Today’s women, having gone from being property to something approaching partnership (hence the title of the book I wrote with Morton Marcus and that I continue to promote here), undoubtedly find themselves in a more complicated situation when it comes to withdrawing from their obligations, even for one day.

But as Hoosiers for Democracy remind us, Indiana women face a particularly ferocious attack.

  • The Republican candidate for Governor, Mike Braun, supports Indiana’s six-week abortion ban and is an ardent Trump supporter. He ‘goes along’ with whatever Trump says. His running mate for Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist, and was the person spearheading the Hamilton County Library Board’s decision to remove John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars, from the Young Adult section of the Fishers library. Beckwith says that the January 6th attack on the Capital was ‘divinely inspired’.
  • The Women’s Strike is an important action for Hoosier women and their allies. The 2022 Dobbs decision to deny women their constitutional right to an abortion is a decision that several of our state candidates support. Mike Braun, the Republican candidate for Governor, Micah Beckwith, the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Jim Banks, the Republican candidate for Senate, and Victoria Spartz, the Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District will work to further those restrictions. We must let them know that we will not go back. We can make a statement on June 24, 2024 and again on November 5, 2024.

At the very least, we women can withhold our dollars tomorrow. Absent some important obligation at the office that cannot be rescheduled, or an exam that a teacher will not allow a student to take at a different time, a one-day absence from the office or classroom shouldn’t work a hardship–but should send a message.

And while we’re sending that message, we need to demonstrate support for Jennifer McCormick’s campaign for Governor and Valerie McCrae’s Campaign for Senate. Send them money–no amount is too small to function as evidence that you support sanity and sense over theocracy and misogyny.

Comments