Ted Landau on Apple, politics, evolution, movies & whatever
Media
In Politics, Hypocrisy Rules
Jan 25th
NPR’s On the Media yesterday included a segment about the filibuster (Is 60 the Magic Number?). It echoed the views I expressed last November, when I suggested we should just get rid of the filibuster altogether. But it added a further twist. Here’s the deal:
• In the 1960s, the filibuster (or the threat of one) prevented just 8% of major legislation from becoming law. In the 80’s, it jumped to 27%. After the 2006 election, after Democrats took control of the Senate and Republican’s became the minority, it went up to 70%. In 2009, it reached almost 100%!
• In other words, this idea that “you need 60 votes” to get anything passed in the Senate is a relatively new phenomenon, (mis-)used especially by Republicans.
• The irony here is that back in 2005, the Republican majority protested Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, arguing that Democrats were obstructionist and that “straight up-or-down votes” should be allowed to come to the floor. Amazingly, the Republicans carried the day; Democrats surrendered their weapon, agreeing to avoid filibusters of judicial nominees, except in the most “extraordinary circumstances.”
• Yet today, as the On the Media segment points out, there is virtually no media coverage declaring that the Republicans are being even more obstructionist — and hypocritical to boot. The filibuster situation is reported as if the 60 vote requirement was written into the Constitution or “handed down by Moses” — rather than being a recent development of the last few decades, and greatly exaggerated by Republicans in the last few years.
• How is it that the Republican’s get away with this — opposing the filibuster successfully back in 2005 and yet using the filibuster with great success in 2009?
This gets to what I said in my previous post: Republicans are better than Democrats at framing the issue. Or, as James Fallows noted in the On The Media segment: “The Republicans are simply better at positioning this for the press than the Democrats have proven to be.” You think?
Still, I remain a bit mystified as to how all the major news organizations, from the New York Times on down, have been so easily duped.
If I ruled the world, I would want every politician to take a hypocrisy test before deciding on a position. That is, a Republican might ask him- or herself: “If I am about to be critical of the Democrats for doing X in a current situation, would I be just as critical of the Republicans for doing the exact same thing if the situation were reversed?” If the answer is “no,” then the Republican is being a hypocrite. At this point, they must either shut up or be immediately removed from office. Same for the Democrats. Imagine how refreshing politics would be if my fantasy ever became reality!
In the real world, Republicans appear proud of their hypocrisy. They have no shame in what they are doing. They laugh at how easy it is to dupe the public and get the media to play along. Democrats don’t seem to do this as much. But perhaps that’s only because they haven’t figured out how to be as successful at it.
Making Sense of Massachusetts
Jan 20th
So the Republican Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. How more ironic can you get? The seat held by the man who made health care reform his life’s work may turn out to be the seat most responsible for its current undoing.
If you’re a Democrat or at all politically progressive, it has to be pretty depressing. To me, it’s also a bit mystifying. Especially in terms of the larger picture of what it may say about voters’ current attitudes towards Obama and his political objectives. No, I don’t mean the Tea Party conservatives. I understand their point of view. But these people were against Obama from the beginning. Remember 47% of the country voted for McCain. I get that there is opposition.
What is more difficult to understand is why so many independents have changed their views so radically in just one year. Massachusetts overwhelming voted for Obama. And yet now, in a state in which Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-1, enough independents changed gears to elect a Republican to the Senate — a Republican whose major qualifications appear to be that he owns a truck, appeared as a centerfold in Cosmo and is against health care reform. The voters clearly wanted to send a message to Washington, probably more than they specifically wanted this person as Senator. But what message exactly? And why do they feel it needs to be sent? Let’s look at some specifics:
Unemployment. The economy remains in the doldrums. Unemployment remains hovering at around 10% (worse in some areas of the country, such as my former home state of Michigan). I can certainly understand that people are unhappy about this. But most indicators suggest that things are better today than they were a year ago. And there are signs that the situation will continue to improve in the year ahead. We had deep economic problems before Obama ever took office. And no one was predicting that the economy would fully recover in a year. So why have people already run out of patience? And, given the damage done during the Bush administration, why do voters even consider the idea that a return of Republicans to power is any sort of answer?
Spending. Voters complain that spending in Washington is “out of control.” Of course, Conservatives didn’t seem to mind much when Bush was racking up record-setting deficits. Yet, somehow, in less than a year, this is a reason to abandon Obama. Yes, a lot of money is being spent. But most economists agree that the stimulus package has helped improve our economy. Some have even argued that we should have spent more, not less, on the stimulus. In any case, it’s not as if Obama’s economic plans were a big secret during the election. Most of what he is done (or tried to do) in this regard is exactly what he said he would do if elected. So why act surprised when he does it?
Health Care Reform. Almost everyone agrees that the current health care system is hopelessly broken, that unless we do something major, it risks bankrupting our country in the years ahead. The Republicans have not offered any real reform. So why be so quick to refuse to even consider the Democrat’s legislation? I understand that some people are philosophically against being required to pay for insurance. But do they really prefer a system where people choose not to have (or cannot afford to have) any insurance and then have the public pay for their emergency care? Do they not understand that if you want a prohibition against denial of insurance for “pre-existing conditions” that some sort of required insurance for all is needed? In any case, it is again true that Obama made his intentions here very clear during the campaign. So why are people having “buyer’s remorse” when he actually tries to do what he campaigned on?
And I also understand the objections to all the compromises in the bill. But much of this is the result of problems getting sufficient support to pass the initial legislation. The solution to this is to give greater support to health care reform, not less.
It is especially ironic that Massachusetts would elect a new Senator who is opposed to health care reform — as Massachusetts already has a health care system that is more progressive than the one being considered nationally. Is it simply that the voters are being self-serving (”We already have it, so why support something that allocates money for others to have it as well?”)?
Progressive opposition. Actually, significant opposition to Obama these days comes from the left wing. These are the people against the Afghanistan surge, against the fact that the public option is likely gone from health-care reform, that Obama has done next to nothing in support of gay rights since taking office, that Obama has spent too much political capital attempting to get bipartisan support and not enough on getting things done by whatever means necessary. But I can’t imagine that these are the people who voted for Scott Brown. How would his election improve matters on any of these issues? The votes must have come from right-leaning independents.
The overview. It’s only been a year since Obama took office. Compared to the eight years of Bush — with Iraq, WMDs, secret wiretapping, torture, politicizing the justice department, and the unraveling of our entire economy (to name just a few highlights) — it’s hard to see how anyone could view a move back in that direction as a positive. It’s also difficult to understand, given all of the above, how people can reasonably claim to already be out of patience. Again, I’m not talking about the people who were opposed to Obama from the word go. I’m talking about those who have shifted in the last year.
So what happened? Given all this, what exactly went wrong? I believe three major forces were at work:
• At least since Ronald Reagan was elected, the U.S. has been a right-leaning country. This continues today. The 2008 election was more of an exception than a shift. It doesn’t take much to tilt this country back to the right. In contrast, getting a sustained move to the left is akin to pushing a boulder uphill. The Massachusetts election is just the latest example.
• Republicans have been and remain much much better than Democrats at appealing to voters’ emotions. And successful emotional appeals win elections. Even if it doesn’t make sense and isn’t true, Republicans have managed to equate health care reform with hot-button terms like socialism and out-of-control spending. Democrats are completely unable to balance this with their own emotional tagging. This is classic Don’t Think of an Elephant framing.
• Even ignoring the “framing” problem, Democrats are so incompetent as to be laughable. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, their bar has been set so low that it is now on the ground. In Massachusetts, Democrats ran a poor choice for a candidate, who ran a poor and lackluster campaign, and assumed she would win without even trying. In the Senate, even though they have to deal with the ridiculous filibuster rules, they still have a 59-41 advantage and yet appear completely paralyzed.
As a progressive and a Democrat, it would be nice to blame all of this on nasty scheming Republicans and irrational fickle voters. There is some of this at play, of course. But ultimately, the major culprits are the Democrats themselves. This was not an election they were doomed to lose. They did it to themselves.
They say we get the government we deserve. So, congratulations to everyone. You all deserve what you got. All we can do now is wait and see how it all works out.
(Atheist) Signs for Our Times
Dec 16th
In a New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof expresses hope that a new crop of books, with titles like “The Case for God,” will lead to a truce in the “religious wars.” This is just one of several articles I have read recently — that all seem to suggest that prominent atheists (such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris) represent a form of intolerance that is equal to those of religious fundamentalists at the opposite extreme. What we need to find, so the argument goes, is some middle compromise.
I have already stated my general opposition to this viewpoint. I won’t repeat all of those arguments here. I will, however, point out one particular dismay: Although the “truce” articles pay lip service to the need for accommodations by “both sides,” the onus of responsibility always seems to fall on the atheists. It’s as if they are saying: “Things were going so well before people like Dawkins came along to upset the apple cart. Can’t we just return to the civility we used to have?”
First off, unless you ignore the inflammatory statements made over the years by religious extremists, it can hardly be said that things were civil before Richard Dawkins arrived on the scene. To the contrary, any superficial appearance of civility was only because religion has had the playing field to itself, fending off criticism by claiming that it should be immune to critique. The “new atheists” did not create the current controversy. Rather, they are simply the ones to be outspoken in pointing out that there is another possibility to consider (a bit like the child who shouts “the emperor has no clothes”). If one believes that God does not exist, then it follows that all religions are wrong and are based on a myth. It is not intolerant to point out this implication, any more than it is intolerant to point out that humans are the product of evolution.
All of this, however, is not the primary reason for my blog entry today. Rather, it is something more specific. On December 2, a New York Times article described a new advertising campaign for atheism. It features signs on buses and trains with statements such as “No god? … No problem!” and “Be good for goodness’ sake.” A major sponsor of the campaign is the American Humanist Association.
In a letter to the editor, Edd Doerr (a former head of the American Humanist Association) wrote that he was “embarrassed” by the campaign. He argued that we should avoid the divisiveness resulting from these ads and instead focus on those things we (atheists and religious believers) hold in common, such as “peace, civil liberties, religious freedom, the environment, social justice…” He described the signs as “name-calling and invective.”
Whew! I was both saddened and angry to see this letter. To me, it captures almost everything that is wrong with the current criticism. To have it written by someone within the humanist movement was especially disheartening.
First of all, to suggest that these signs represent “name-calling and invective” is almost libelous. They are incredibly tame, especially compared to the true invective that is often directed toward atheists. “Be good for goodness’ sake”? Where is the invective in this? If atheists are not to be “allowed” to express their views even in these mild terms, in what form can we express our views? Or, to turn it around, should any signs promoting a religious belief, no matter how mild, be banned as well?
But let’s put all that aside. Suppose we accept the idea, however wrong, that these signs are provocative and hostile in some way. Does this mean that these signs are necessarily a bad thing? Hardly. When it comes to making progress against discrimination, being provocative has often been a requirement.
Where would African Americans be today if Rosa Parks had quietly sat in the back of the bus? Or if Martin Luther King had never staged a sit-in? Where would women’s rights be today if not for the provocations of people such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinham — women who were criticized as “strident” in expressing their beliefs?
The actions of such people may not be the only ingredients necessary to move the country forward. Conciliation will also be needed. But without these actions to lead the way, there will be no movement at all.
As such, these signs represent a mild and relatively polite form of political activism. If nothing else, they help make it more acceptable for atheists to be open about their beliefs and will ultimately lead to greater tolerance of such beliefs (see this Wikipedia page for a discussion of discrimination against atheists). We may actually already be seeing the beginnings of this shift. As pointed out in the above-cited NYT article, there is a “growing number of nonbelievers. Fifteen percent of Americans identified themselves as having ‘no religion’ in a 2008, up from 8 percent in 1990…”
Sorry Edd, but it is the rest of us who should be embarrassed by you. Your letter represents the sort of frightened head-in-the-sand attitude that, if followed a half-century ago, would have resulted in blacks still drinking from separate water fountains today. As an atheist, I am proud of these signs. I also look forward to the day when they are no longer needed.
NPR flunks evolution
May 1st
The following is a slightly edited copy of feedback I sent to NPR earlier this week. It’s probably a bit more harsh than they deserved. But I felt I needed to do some shaking here.
“I was truly disappointed in your coverage of the Florida evolution bill issue today. Even the title of your piece, ‘Bill in Fla. Lets Schools Teach Evolution Alternatives,’ is a distortion.
The truth is that no bill is needed to allow teaching of alternatives to evolution. Schools are already allowed to teach scientific alternatives to evolution, just as they are allowed to do so for any other theory in science.
What they are not allowed to do is teach religion in the guise of science. That is what this law is really all about. It is the latest attempt by the proponents of creationism to shoehorn the teaching of creationism in science classes. The more neutral sounding language is simply designed to circumvent the latest legal rulings against such teaching. Your report never really makes this clear.
Instead, your report makes the issue sound more like a “he said, she said” debate between Republicans and Democrats, with the Republicans on the side of academic freedom.
To describe this bill as advocating academic freedom, is like describing a bill that weakens anti-pollution regulations as a “Clean Skies Act.” It’s just double-speak. This is an anti-evolution bill, plain and simple.
Similarly, your report mentions the Discovery Institute as a source of support for the Florida legislation, but fails to mention that this same Institute was on the losing side of the Dover, PA trial that strongly ruled against teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. Indeed, the Discovery Institute spokesman quoted in your report acknowledges that the wording of the Florida legislation was in part based on model language provided by the Institute.
Your report mentions Ben Stein’s new movie (Expelled), but fails to mention that it has received near unanimous condemnation for its promotion of knowingly false and inaccurate information. The New York Times, for example, called it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” There is an entire Web site, Expelled Exposed, that exposes the many falsehoods in this movie.
While citing Ben Stein and his film, and quoting a person from the Discovery Institute, your report offered no statements from scientists or experts of any sort on the other side of this controversy.
In the end, your report comes off as a shameful example of ignoring the facts, and promoting the legitimacy of discredited views, apparently in a sheepish attempt to give yourself an appearance of neutrality.”