It Really is All or None….

At its most basic, government is a mechanism for living together. Politics, as the old saying goes, is war without the weapons–the process of mediating the demands of various interest groups and constituencies. Some governments are expressly established to privilege members of certain groups over others; America’s legal system, in contrast, is based upon a belief that people should be treated as individuals–that government should treat its citizens based upon their behavior, rather than their identity.

Being true to that ideal has always been a struggle; there have always been Americans who want to single out others as “less” not because those individuals have behaved badly, but simply by virtue of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. That–as Paul Ryan recently noted–is the textbook definition of bigotry.

In the Age of Trump, those voices of bigotry are in danger of being legitimized. They are certainly being amplified.

From Talking Points Memo, we learn that

The same Republicans who have argued that gay couples should not be allowed to marry, that LGBT Americans don’t need federal anti-discrimination protections and that trans people should not use the bathroom that matches their identity are now claiming that they — not Democrats — are the party on the LGBT community’s side.

Their reasoning? That somehow, in the wake of the Orlando shooting at a gay night club that left 49 people dead, there’s now a mutually exclusive choice between supporting Muslims and protecting gay people, and Democrats have chosen the former.

The unlovely premise of that rationale is that all Muslims are terrorists, as one Republican congressman has baldly stated.

It is hard to think of anything more un-American–or more dangerous– than treating any group of people as a monolithic whole. The truth of the matter is that–idealism and fundamental fairness aside–no one in any group is safe in a society that allows government to pick and choose which identities are to be privileged and which marginalized and demeaned.

The effort to set one marginalized group against another is particularly despicable, although politically understandable. (You guys go fight each other and don’t pay any attention to the fact that we “real Americans” are running the show.)

Fortunately, the LGBT community understands–and rejects–the tactic.  An essay titled “We Are Strong, but We Are Not Okay” posted in the wake of the Orlando massacre, included this paragraph:

We are not okay when you criminalize the Muslim community because of the actions of one evil man. We have been the Muslim community: hated, feared, misunderstood. Questioned, berated, threatened, afraid to show our faces. Why would we condone treating an entire community as poorly as ours has been treated in the past, and in many scenarios, still is? When you come for one minority, you come for us all.

Treating citizens as individuals, refusing to discriminate on the basis of group identity, is a central premise of this nation’s approach to government. An attack on that premise is an attack on America.

Unfortunately, that’s a lesson we keep having to learn.

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Sticks and Stones…

Remember the old child’s chant: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?

It’s more complicated than that.

We have a legal system that distinguishes between acts and words, that protects expression of even the most hateful sentiments while forbidding people from acting on those sentiments.

There are all kinds of reasons–practical and theoretical–for prohibiting government censorship of even the most vile speech. I have addressed many of them previously. (If you want another exposition of those reasons, you could do worse than John Stuart Mill.) The Founders of this country certainly recognized that speech can be dangerous, but they believed–correctly, in my view–that giving government the power to decide which ideas could be expressed is a far greater danger.

Recognizing the difference in the degrees of harm inflicted by hurtful words and violent or otherwise harmful acts does not require us to ignore the very real–and deleterious–consequences of words. But we also need to understand that the only effective remedy is culture, not law.

Refusing to use bigoted terminology is not “political correctness.” It is recognition that decent adults do not contribute to the coarsening of society, and do not participate in the creation of a culture that winks at bad behavior.

Language shapes culture in ways too numerous to count. The nature of discourse considered appropriate for a civil society shapes the attitudes of the young and influences the behaviors of adults. Widespread use of language that diminishes people based upon their sexuality or religion or country of origin creates a belief that discrimination against those people is justified, and in the case of unbalanced folks (of whom there seem to be many), is seen as a license to harm them.

Do people have a right to express reprehensible opinions? Of course. I am one of those free speech purists who, like Voltaire, may “disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it.” But the fact that people have a right to be hateful is not the same thing as an endorsement of their venom, and it does not require us to ignore or fail to condemn the unfortunate effects of such speech on American society.

The law cannot require us to grow up. That doesn’t mean we should behave like spoiled children– and it certainly doesn’t mean electing people who don’t understand the very real and very important difference between “political correctness” and adult behavior.

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Another Contender for the Title of “Most Despicable”..

So many “public servants” who are anything but….

I had never heard of Tom Cotton until he authored that treasonous letter during the Administration’s negotiations with Iran–the one sent to the Iranian government by 47 Republican Senators in a deliberate attempt to sabotage an effort aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It was later reported that he received a million-dollar campaign contribution from Israel–but I’m sure there was no quid pro quo.(If you believe that, I have some swampland to sell you….)

Not that I would have had high expectations of a newly-elected Republican Senator from Arkansas, but his sheer arrogance, his willingness to ignore the longstanding bipartisan patriotism that used to stop policy disputes at the water’s edge, was astonishing and disheartening.

It was clear then that something was very wrong with this guy, and recently, more evidence has emerged of what can only be described as significant moral defects.

Cotton has been one of the Republican Senators refusing to act on judicial vacancies–from the Supreme Court down to the District Court level–simply because Obama is President.

It’s bad enough that the federal courts are so understaffed that Americans are being denied access to justice. But according to several news reports, Cotton isn’t just participating in the GOP’s willingness to indulge partisan spite at the expense of the common good. He’s twisting the knife.

Consider, for example, the New York Times’ Frank Bruni’s report on Cassandra Butts’ nomination to serve as the United States ambassador to the Bahamas.

After “decades of government and nonprofit work that reflected a passion for public service,” Butts received a nomination from President Obama to a diplomatic post for which she was well qualified. Her confirmation should’ve been easy, but the Senate kept putting her nomination on the back-burner – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), for example, blocked her as part of a tantrum against the Iran nuclear deal.

And then there’s Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who blocked Butts and the nominees for the ambassadorships to Sweden and Norway.

Cotton eventually released the two other holds, but not the one on Butts. She told me that she once went to see him about it, and he explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s – the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates – and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.

Bruni’s report added that Cotton’s spokesperson “did not dispute Butts’s characterization of that meeting.”

Butts died recently at age 50 of acute leukemia, which she didn’t know she had until her life was nearly over. She waited 835 days for the Senate to vote on her nomination, but the vote never came.

In the highly competitive sweepstakes for “most despicable,” it will be hard to top that.
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Sexism and Public Life

I’ll begin this post with a confession: I’ve never been a Hillary Clinton fan. Unlike the “Hillary haters,” I don’t have a major grievance (real or imagined); I just haven’t been inspired by her. I will absolutely vote for her in November (a vote for Trump is unthinkable, and a vote for a third party is effectively a vote for Trump), but I haven’t been an enthusiast.

I’ve been thinking about that, believe it or not, because I keep remembering two jokes my Jewish mother used to tell.

The first was about the elderly woman who went into a kosher butcher shop and inspected a chicken. She smelled under both wings, both drumsticks, and sniffed in the cavity, after which she held the bird up and said “Butcher, this bird stinks!”

To which he replied, “Madam, could you pass that test?”

How many of us would appear unblemished if for 25+ years, virtually every aspect of our lives had been publicized, scrutinized and subjected to public debate? How scandalous or mendacious would even our innocent blunders look–especially to political adversaries gleefully jumping on every misstep and interpreting them in the most sinister way possible?

So why has Hillary Clinton generated a degree of animus and scrutiny that has vastly exceeded that experienced by most male politicians?

On that question, my mother’s second joke may–or may not– be instructive. It involved an elevator operator at the Chicago Merchandise Mart. (Yes, that used to be a real job.) There was a radio station atop the Mart, and one day, a man got on the elevator and, stuttering badly, asked for the top floor. He was the only one on the elevator, and the operator asked why he was visiting the station. The reply: “The-the-they have a-a-a opening for an an-an-anouncer.”

As luck would have it, an hour later, the same man was again the only passenger on the same elevator coming down, and the operator couldn’t resist asking how the interview had gone. “T-t-terrible,” the man replied. “The-the-they hate Jews.”

My mother’s reason for telling that particular story was cautionary: members of disfavored groups should avoid the temptation to blame our failures on prejudice. We are responsible for most of our own disappointments, and we need to take responsibility for our personal deficits. It was a profound–and I think important–lesson, and together with her insistence that women could do anything we wanted, it inculcated in me a reluctance to attribute criticisms to sexism or anti-Semitism.

But after watching 7 years of ridiculous and unprecedented attacks on a black President –and seeing the wildly contradictory and vicious attacks on Hillary Clinton– I have to conclude that racism and sexism explain a lot.

A recent column in Market Watch, of all places, was eye-opening. Titled “All the Terrible Things Hillary Clinton has Done–in One Big List,” it began

Am I supposed to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton because she’s too left-wing, or too right-wing? Because she’s too feminist, or not feminist enough? Because she’s too clever a politician, or too clumsy?

Am I supposed to be mad that she gave speeches to rich bankers, or that she charged them too much money?

I’m up here in New Hampshire watching her talk to a group of supporters, and I realized that I have been following this woman’s career for more than half my life. No, not just my adult life: the whole shebang. She came onto the national scene when I was a young man.

And for all that time, there has been a deafening chorus of critics telling me that she’s just the most wicked, evil, Machiavellian, nefarious individual in American history. She has “the soul of an East German border guard,” in the words of that nice Grover Norquist. She’s a “bitch,” in the words of that nice Newt Gingrich. She’s a “dragon lady.” She’s “Elena Ceaușescu.” She’s “the Lady Macbeth of Little Rock.”

Long before “Benghazi” and her email server, there was “Whitewater” and “the Rose Law Firm” and “Vince Foster.” For those of us following her, we were promised scandal after scandal after scandal. And if no actual evidence ever turned up, well, that just proved how deviously clever she was.

The article went on to list all of the various accusations, many of them contradictory or patently ridiculous. I encourage you to click through and read the whole thing.

Hillary Clinton has been the subject of more intensive investigations (conducted by people absolutely salivating to find something ) than anyone I can think of. Either she hasn’t been guilty of whatever the accusations were, or we have the most inept investigators in the world.

Does that mean she hasn’t been guilty of clumsy lies, poor decisions, tone-deaf pronouncements? Of course not. She’s no saint. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that a man who’d made identical mistakes and had identical personal defects would have been subjected to far less vilification.

Sometimes, the problem is prejudice.

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Politics and the Press–Redux

Last night, I participated in a panel discussion focused in part upon the role of the press in the 2016 election cycle.

In my brief introductory remarks, I began by noting that the course in Media and Public Policy that I teach every two years requires an entirely new syllabus every time I teach it, because the media environment and the way we citizens get our information is constantly changing.

I also emphasized the difference between MEDIA and JOURNALISM. We are marinating in media, but we are losing what used to be called the journalism of verification. And I ticked off some of what I see as the consequences of this new reality:

  • The competition for eyeballs and clicks has given us a 24/7 “news hole” that media outlets race to fill—far too often prioritizing speed over accuracy.
  • That same competition has given us sports and gossip and opinion—often wildly inaccurate– rather than the watchdog journalism that informs citizens. It’s cheaper to produce, and (let’s be honest) those are the things people click on and watch.
  • We still have national coverage but with the exception of niche media, we have lost local news. The reporters with institutional memory who produced it are gone. There’s virtually no coverage of either the Indiana statehouse or the City-County building—instead we get the “beer beat,” telling us where to party on the weekend.
  • Most troubling of all is the “filter bubble.” The Internet has exponentially expanded our ability to live in a reality of our own creation, where (in defiance of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous dictum) we can indeed choose our own “facts.” Political psychologists call this behavior “confirmation bias.” We used to call it “cherry picking”—the intellectually dishonest process of picking through information sources from the bible to the U.S. budget looking for evidence that confirms our pre-existing beliefs.

As I tell my students, the sad state of journalism is ultimately our fault. The media is giving us what sells. If a naked Kardashian gets more clicks than articles about school vouchers, naked Kardashians are what we’ll get. When Donald Trump’s inane insults and kindergarten antics make money for the media, the media gives us nonstop Trump.

How all this will affect the 2016 elections is anyone’s guess, but a recent report from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center isn’t comforting.

The report shows 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. Trump’s coverage was positive in tone—he received far more “good press” than “bad press.” The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls.

The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. 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.

Now, if Clinton’s negative coverage consisted of actual news, emerging information that had not already been exhaustively covered, that would be appropriate. But as the report notes,

Whereas media coverage helped build up Trump, it helped tear down Clinton. Trump’s positive coverage was the equivalent of millions of dollars in ad-buys in his favor, whereas Clinton’s negative coverage can be equated to millions of dollars in attack ads, with her on the receiving end. Of the eight news outlets in our study, Fox News easily led the way. Clinton received 291 negative reports on Fox, compared with only 39 positive ones, most of which were in the context of poll results that showed her with a wide lead….

What accounts for Clinton’s negative coverage? One reason is the schizophrenic quality of journalists’ coverage of a “front-running” candidate. It is the story of a candidate with a solid lead, which is the main source of the candidate’s “good news.” There is, however, a less positive aspect to a frontrunner’s story.  The candidate is typically described as overly calculating and cautious—the implication is that the candidate is withholding something from the voters. And if the frontrunner loses support in the polls—a virtual certainty given the artificial boost that comes from high name recognition in the earliest polls—the narrative tilts negative.

We voters have to rely on the media for our information about the candidates. But in this media environment, in this time and place, we need to be very careful consumers of what passes for news.

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