Criticism as fresh as our last class

The folks at Fact Check examine one of the Congressional campaign ads we viewed on Wednesday.

The world's least honorable profession?

From the L.A. Times:

Negative campaigning is hardly new, and Democrats are dishing dirt against Republicans too. But mudslinging is crucial to the Republican plan for this year's midterm elections, because the party's hold on power will probably hinge on shifting attention from the unpopular war in Iraq and other national issues that cut against them.

"When people are looking at national issues that are not breaking our way, what you want to do is focus on your opponent," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former Republican National Committee chief of staff. "You've got to play the field's conditions. They demand very tough tactics."

Cole spelled out that approach in a recent strategy memo to House Republicans: "Define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly…. Do not let up — keep the tough ads running right up to election day. Don't make the mistake of pulling your ads in favor of a positive rotation the last weekend."

Republican incumbents this year began running attack ads earlier than ever. But the hardest-hitting are yet to come.

"You haven't seen the majority of the negative ads yet," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, where a staff of 10 has been deployed on opposition research.

The strategy rests on the widely held belief that negative political ads make more of an impression on voters than positive ones.

GOP consultant Terry Nelson said current voter cynicism may be particularly fertile ground for negative advertising because voters expect the worst from politicians.

"Voters are in some ways more ready to accept the negative about politicians" than the positive, Nelson said. "They often say they would like to see a more reasoned debate in campaigns and more talk about the ideas, but in fact they often respond to negative ads because they tend to find them more credible."

Read, as they say, the whole thing, and note especially the first few and final few paragraphs on the Santorum ad we'll be watching Wednesday.

Getting ready for the Midterm

No, no, not an Exam. It's an election! Well, it's lots and lots of them. Here's a brilliant resource, thanks to our friends at Cursor:

• Cursor's Election 2006

Very, very cool, if you like this sort of thing. And you know I do.

Paid Media: Some Ads

For discussion Wednesday. We'll watch these in class, but if you have the chance, watch them now, and think about them in the context of your reading in Leighley. That is, do political ads matter? How? Who's the target for each ad: is it voters, or the media themselves?

• Johnson/Goldwater: The infamous Daisy ad
• Bush/Kerry: Ashley's Story
• Reagan/Mondale: It's morning again in America
• Bush/Kerry: Swift Boaters (see "Any Questions?") (see one Factcheck.org report on these ads here)
• Eisenhower/Stevenson: Housewife
• Santorum/Casey (Senate): Goodfellas?
• Nancy Johnson (House): Such a nice lady!
• Ross Perot 1992: Who's the best person?
  

If you want to suggest others, I'll add them to this list. And make sure to see the post below for some, you know, not too subtle hints about the quiz Wednesday.

Succinct

From Bush Won't Give Up's review of Aftergood:

The more they conceal, the less they need to explain.

Think about this in the context of the recently-leaked findings of the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate. Read more here. This would be a good quiz question for Wednesday. Seriously. It would.

Sometimes there's a political debate

when there is no policy debate. Global warming, as we've discussed uptown a bit, is just such a case. See this brief overview of the scientific literature, from Science magazine. And how well does public opinion reflect this? See this overview of survey results on the subject, from which the Table to the left is drawn.

Shelter in the Ridiculous

This is good. Hat tip to TC.

K-k-k-katie. . .

The title is an old song reference you won't get. Ask your grandparents. From Tad Friend (what a great name) in The New Yorker:

In its first week, “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” made so much room for soft news—“Snapshots” of Tom Cruise’s alien love child; pop-song teasers for the closing human-interest story—and a my-two-cents segment in which the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Morgan Spurlock (the network’s version of voiceless outsiders) opined, that her broadcast usually had time for four correspondents’ reports instead of the standard six or seven. All these mild innovations, then, made the world seem about fifty per cent smaller. On Friday, three of the broadcast’s segments were set in either New York or Pennsylvania.

. . . .It wasn’t the traditional evening news, exactly, but, then, the evening news hasn’t been particularly traditional since 1981, when Walter Cronkite retired. Nowadays, the networks assume that you’re up to date on the headlines, and they devote much of their energy to explaining how those headlines will affect your bank account and your life expectancy. Couric hit this note hard. On Tuesday, she promised three separate times that an upcoming report on a new oil field in the Gulf of Mexico would explain whether the discovery would mean “cheaper prices at the pump.” The report didn’t actually address how the find would affect gasoline prices—but, then, Couric is so darn likable.

That may be enough. Anchors, who are customarily onscreen for only three to six minutes a night, are not chosen for their investigative skills or their familiarity with the tax code. They are chosen for their uncommon ability to summon trust, to shepherd us from the end of the day to the beginning of the night, and to watch over us during national traumas. On an ordinary day, a trusted anchor is like that first Martini.

Not just us

Others evaluate press conferences, too! Here's Media Matters on the President's most recent foray into the Rose Garden. Their overriding theme -- there should have been better questions, with more insistent follow-up -- is what interests me here. What do you think? Are they being fair? Do they present the evidence necessary to support their claims?

That's what I'm talkin' about

C-Doc draws your attention to this exceptionally fine post from The Blog According to Mark.

Don't forget to tip your waitress

From The Examiner:

Must be the beautiful blue eyes ...

. . . Yeas & Nays reviewed the press briefing and press gaggle transcripts from Snow’s first four months on the job and compared them to those of Snow’s predecessor, Scott McClellan, during his first four months.

Under Snow, there were more than 330 percent more instances of laughter — as defined by the transcriber’s insertion of “(Laughter)” in the transcript — than under McClellan.

Have reporters fallen for the former Fox News commentator’s woo and charm? And — gasp! — could Snow actually be making the notoriously curmudgeonly task of covering the White House fun?

“It’s not that Tony’s necessarily a laugh riot,” says Ron Hutcheson, who covers the White House for McClatchy newspapers. “But he engages, and it’s a lot more fun to be in the room with somebody who’s engaging reporters.” Hutcheson says that McClellan, on the other hand, “was just cautious, cautious to a fault. He would retreat to the talking points and it was almost as if he didn’t listen to the question.”

Snow says that his humor is not intentional. “It’s just doing what I do, the way I do it,” he says. “For me, the job is a blast. I love the job and I think that’s part of it. And I enjoy the people out there. It’s not like I feel as if I’m among strangers. You’ve just got to be yourself when you’re doing a briefing.”

But is there any danger in being a bit too humorous?

“Well, I do like to have fun, but at the same time you don’t want to be doing stand-up as the spokesperson of the president and the leader of the free world,” he says.

Aftergood

In preparation for Monday's lecture, here's a link to Secrecy News in blog format. Fun for the whole family.

Is this worth watching?

Via Crooks and Liars, Jon Stewart on Fox and the Question Mark. Works nicely alongside the segment of the Greenwald movie on the "Some people say. . . " trope. Warning: profanity and mother-insulting in the clip.

An old post

from MyDD, a lefty political site that tracks elections, among other things. Reprinted here because it ties in with our discussions on Wednesday about what voters know (and don't) and why this matters (or why it may not):

Voter Knowledge and the House of Representatives

by Chris Bowers, Wed Jan 25, 2006 at 02:50:13 PM EST

I was over at Donkey Rising today, reading through Ruy Teixeira's latest interesting post. I made it about halfway through the post until I found the sort of link that is a real gold mine for a numbers junkie such as myself: the archive of long-term data from the National Election Survey. I'll have to finish Ruy's post later, because I am so entranced by the numbers I found in that link.

One of the most intriguing long-term graphs I saw had to do with voter knowledge concerning which party controlled the House of Representatives. With the exception of 1974, every two years since 1970 the National Election Survey has asked the populace the following question:

Do you happen to know which party had the most members in the House of Representatives in Washington before the elections (this/last) month?" (IF NECESSARY:) "Which one?"

The results were as follows:

Year      '70   '72  '76   '78   '80   '82
Incorrect     50    36   39 41    29    68
Correct       50    64   61 59    71    32

Year      '84   '86  '88   '90   '92   '94
Incorrect     45    67   41 51    41    30
Correct       55    33   59 49    59    70

Year      '96   '98  '00   '02   '04
Incorrect     27    34   49 72    46
Correct       73    66   51 28    54

Looking into the internals of these numbers, "independents" and "moderates" have almost always scored noticeably lower on the knowledge scale than liberals, conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. I don't find this surprising, as it backs up my general thesis that many of the people who consider themselves "independents" or "moderates" do so primarily because they are less politically engaged than the rest of the population and are not even aware of their strong similarities to one coalition or the other. It also isn't surprisingly that as someone's income and education level rise, the more likely they are to know the correct answer, and that this has an impact on other internal cross-tabs in the survey.

Leaving aside what isn't surprising, what really blows my mind is just how much these results vary from one election cycle to the next, even though control of the House has only changed once during the entire survey period. As you can see, voter knowledge on this topic was particularly low in 1982, 1986, and 2002. By contrast, it was particularly high in 1980, 1994, 1996, and 1998. For some reason, knowledge of who controlled the House dropped from 73% in 1996 to just 28% in 2002, even though there was no significant change in the composition of Congress during those six years.

Why was voter knowledge so unbelievably low in 2002? Were people confusing control of the Senate with control of both Houses of congress? That seems to be a possibility, as the lowest years of voter knowledge (1982, 1986, and 2002) all occurred during times when control of the two branches of congress were split between the two parties. Incorrect answers also seem to take a large jump after one party wins the national popular vote in the Presidential election but does not end up controlling the House of Representatives (see 1970, 1982, 1986, 1990 and 2002). The three lowest years of voter knowledge occurred when these two factors combined with one another. When the party that controls the House of Representatives loses the popular vote in the Presidential election and does not control the Senate, apparently very few people are aware that that party actually controls the House of Representatives.

I think this means two things. First, people pay significantly more attention to the Senate and to the Presidency than to the House of Representatives. I guess that isn't surprising. More interestingly (and optimistically), it should also mean that many more voters will believe that Republicans control the House in 2006 than believed it in any election cycle since 1998. After all, people know that Bush won the popular vote in 2004, and that Republicans control the Senate. Thus, they will probably at least assume that Republicans also control the House. Considering low congressional approval ratings, this should result in an anti-Republican sentiment that would be reflected in generic congressional ballot polls. With Republicans consistently behind in such generic ballots by sizable margins, and seemingly unable to improve upon a support level in the high 30's or low 40's, there appears to be evidence that this is indeed happening.

Voters tend to never like the job performance of Congress, and I suppose it thus isn't surprising that whichever party they think is in power tends to do poorly in Congressional elections. In 1980, 1994, and 2002, most voters (over 65%) thought Democrats were in charge of the House, and Democrats suffered real losses as a result. In 1982, 1986, 1996, and 1998, most voters (over 65%) thought Republicans were in charge of the House, and Republicans suffered real losses as a result. In all the years in between, voters didn't really know who was in charge of the House (no consenus of 60% or higher), and there was no significant change in seats. If I am right about the knowledge patterns I listed above, most voters should know that Republicans are in charge in 2006, which should result in Republicans losing seats in 2006. Will it be enough seats for Democrats to take over? I don't know, but it should be an encouraging sign nonetheless.

This is why I'm Cranky

The First Amendement has been understood by courts to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources (though not always). This case is important because it's about a Blogger, not a traditional journalist, and it raises some important questions about what it is to be a journalist, and who should be afforded the protections granted a free press. But you would never know that from this Times article. Here it is in all its entirely, in its context-free glory:

Court Panel Denies Blogger’s Appeal

By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: September 12, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 11 — In a case closely watched by First Amendment advocates, a federal court panel has rejected an appeal by a freelance journalist and blogger who has refused to appear before a grand jury or turn over video he shot of a violent protest last summer.

The decision, filed Friday by a three-member panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, reaffirmed a contempt charge against the journalist, Josh Wolf, who was sent to prison on Aug. 1 by a lower court for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into an anti-capitalism protest here in July 2005.

At the protest, timed to coincide with the Group of Eight Summit of world economic leaders in Scotland, a police officer was injured and an explosive device, a smoke bomb or a firework, was put under a police car.

Mr. Wolf sold some of his film to local television stations and posted parts on his Web site, www.joshwolf.net. Earlier this year, the government subpoenaed Mr. Wolf to testify and to turn over the remaining video, which prosecutors wanted to use to gather evidence for potential arson charges. Mr. Wolf has refused, and in an interview on Monday, he remained defiant. “Nothing the government can do,” he said, “will coerce me into submitting to their demands. I intend to appeal this through every measure possible.”

Mr. Wolf remained free on Monday, and it was not clear if the decision would result in his returning to jail immediately. His lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes, said he would ask for a rehearing before the entire court.

Luke Macaulay, a spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, said his office was awaiting an order from the Ninth Circuit “clarifying Mr. Wolf’s custodial status.”

Mr. Wolf, who has continued to post online updates about his case, said he was not fazed by the prospect of more prison time.

“My cellmates were totally chill and had my back,” he said of his recent incarceration. “The fact I only got an hour of fresh air a day was frustrating, but you deal.”

The Ugly Part of Education

I promised you all that I would work toward devising some reasonably transparent method of letting you know how you are progressing in the course. I further said I would start assigning the dreaded letter-grades to all blog assignments beginning with your reviews of Network, and would send each of you an individual e-mail with my review of your review and a grade. What was I thinking? C-Doc hereby renegs on part of that pledge. Since most of my comments on this assignment apply to most of you, below is a general statement about the criteria I used to evaluate this bit of work to substitute for individual e-mails. As to individual grades, I'll note yours on the bottom of the quizzes to be returned Monday. How we proceed for subsequent assignments we'll figure out. As always, if you want to talk to me in depth about any course- or assignment-related matters, let's meet during office hours (or other mutually convenient times), and we'll look at your blog and blog posts together, and talk about them. I'll do this as often as you'd like. C-Doc belatedly realized that his first plan (the whole individual e-mail thang) would mean him writing no fewer than 100 separate e-mails to you all each week. In an ideal world, that's still probably the best way to do this, but C-Doc notes that he does not live in an ideal world.

Here are the things I was looking for in "rating" your posts (most of these criteria will also apply to subsequent assignments):

Were they:

• posted on time?
• responsive to the assignment?
• produced in a polished, well-shaped essay (with clean, properly-formatted links and quotes and paragraph breaks, and free of spelling, punctuation, or egregious grammar errors)?

Do they:

• offer more than mere summary or description, and present thoughtful analysis, extended argument, or sound critique?
• do more than merely raise questions (though that's all to the good) and try to answer some of them (or explain where you might look for evidence to answer them in some practicable and satisfying manner)?
• connect to our readings, demonstrating that you have read and comprehended the material, and have also sought to apply it?

As always, I'm grateful if you make me laugh, but that's not a requirement here, and is no substitute for those expectations above (you know who you are).

Here are two links to two of the posts that I thought particularly good (but not perfect, by the way), by way of example:

• "Thus spake the evangelical Mr. Jensen to his chosen one, Howard Beale. . ."
• "A prophetic film. . . . "

FYI: Grades ranged from "F" (for those who failed to post, or post by the deadline) to "A" (very few, but you'll get better at this and there will be more of these down the road), with most in the "B" and "B-" range.

File this away

in an actual file, or in the dark recesses of your memory, for our upcoming discussions about public opinion formation and the uses of political propaganda. Even today, with slight variation from poll to poll, a majority or near-majority of Americans think that there was some meaningful connection between Al Qaeda/Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein/Iraq, even though there is no credible evidence to support such a claim (and, in fact, some good evidence to suggest just the opposite -- that Hussein rebuffed advances by BL, and perceived him as a threat to what was then a more secular Iraq). But this mattered, as we'll see when we look at some cross-tabs (have your stats-literate friends explain) showing the connection between support for the war in Iraq with the (false) belief that there was a 9/11-Iraq link.

September 9, 2006

C.I.A. Said to Find No Hussein Link to Terror Chief

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — The Central Intelligence Agency last fall repudiated the claim that there were prewar ties between Saddam Hussein’s government and an operative of Al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to a report issued Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The disclosure undercuts continuing assertions by the Bush administration that such ties existed, and that they provided evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Republican-controlled committee, in a second report, also sharply criticized the administration for its reliance on the Iraqi National Congress during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

The findings are part of a continuing inquiry by the committee into prewar intelligence about Iraq. The conclusions went beyond its earlier findings, issued in the summer of 2004, by including criticism not just of American intelligence agencies but also of the administration.

Several Republicans strongly dissented on the report with conclusions about the Iraqi National Congress, saying they overstated the role that the exile group had played in the prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq. But the committee overwhelmingly approved the other report, with only one Republican senator voting against it.

The reports did not address the politically divisive question of whether the Bush administration had exaggerated or misused intelligence as part of its effort to win support for the war. But one report did contradict the administration’s assertions, made before the war and since, that ties between Mr. Zarqawi and Mr. Hussein’s government provided evidence of a close relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

As recently as Aug. 21, President Bush said at a news conference that Mr. Hussein “had relations with Zarqawi.’’ But a C.I.A. report completed in October 2005 concluded instead that Mr. Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor or even turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,” according to the new Senate findings.

The C.I.A. report also contradicted claims made in February 2003 by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who mentioned Mr. Zarqawi no fewer than 20 times during a speech to the United Nations Security Council that made the administration’s case for going to war. In that speech, Mr. Powell said that Iraq “today harbors a deadly terrorist network’’ headed by Mr. Zarqawi, and dismissed as “not credible’’ assertions by the Iraqi government that it had no knowledge of Mr. Zarqawi’s whereabouts.

The panel concluded that Mr. Hussein regarded Al Qaeda as a threat rather than a potential ally, and that the Iraqi intelligence service “actively attempted to locate and capture al-Zarqawi without success.’’

One of the reports by the committee criticized a decision by the National Security Council in 2002 to maintain a close relationship with the Iraqi National Congress, headed by the exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, even after the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency had warned that “the I.N.C was penetrated by hostile intelligence services,” notably Iran.

The report concluded that the organization had provided a large volume of flawed intelligence to the United States about Iraq, and concluded that the group “attempted to influence United States policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.”

Reporting the American Gulag

The Gray Lady:

In defending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret network of prisons on Wednesday, President Bush said the detention system had used lawful interrogation techniques, was fully described to select members of Congress and led directly to the capture of a string of terrorists over the past four years.

A review of public documents and interviews with American officials raises questions about Mr. Bush’s claims on all three fronts.

Raises questions? This happens a lot in Big Media: in order to abide by their notion of themselves as Reporters of Objective Fact they'll twist themselves into big doughy pretzel shapes in order to avoid seeming partisan. For example, the preponderance of evidence that I am aware of does more than raise questions about these claims. The claims are false -- the United States has been applying illegal techniques of torture (and at least some of our victims have been innocent of any crime), Congress has been selectively and deceptively briefed, when briefed at all, and there's no evidence to support the claim that the torture conducted in our worlwide network of secret prisons has yielded positive results. Raises questions?

Some time ago, someone (was it Paul Krugman? Frank Rich?) wrote that the search for journalistic "balance" has been taken to such an absurd degree that if a senior administration official were to insist that the world is flat, the headline in the NYT would read: "Shape of Earth: Views Differ." Instead, of course, it should read: "Senior Administration Official: Idiot or Liar?" Raises questions?

For the record, remember that I pick on those with power -- right now, they're mostly Republican. The Democrats will get their turn again, as they have in the past (as a friend once said to me, "Wow, don't you have anything nice to say about the Clinton Administration?").

Not just talking horses and dancing cigarettes

Speaking of Murrow, and we were (scroll down), here's an astonishing clip from an interview he gave to WGBH in 1958. He'd be right at home with the conversations we've had in class over the past week, and of the six media models/theories we've put on the table (quick -- can you name them?), he lands pretty unambiguously in the deTocqueville/Stewart/Pimpare camp. I'd like to think this puts him in good company, but I like to think lots of things. Hat tip to Prof. Daves for the link.

It's from Gawker, so you know it's true

Click, read, enjoy, but remember Ye Olde Logical Fallacy: correlation is not causation. Still, it's more than a little interesting (yes, that's the word of the day).

Complaints are irresponsible, says ABC

Hat tip to Atrios. Editor & Publisher Editor Greg Mitchell on the upcoming made-for-TV "docu-drama." Question: how does this differ, if it differs at all, from Oliver Stone's JFK?

For Monday

It's not quite on point, given our subject matter here. But for those interested, some thoughts on this coming Monday's anniversary (what an awful word in this context) are posted elsewhere under my super secret pseudo-social-worker identity. Hmmm. . . . What would such a Super Hero be called. Just-Trying-to-Help Man? Let-Me-Ask-My-Supervisor Guy? The Electric Caseworker?

A cheap shot

On the one hand, this post strikes me as utterly unfair, since it, quite literally, removes all sense and context from the President's speech in order to make a point. On the other hand (was it LBJ who begged for a one-handed economist?), political language matters, words matter, and rhetoric is now and ever has been a powerful tool of political persuasion and manipulation, as we'll discuss at length later in the semester. What do others make of this? Do we have a third or fourth hand to add to the mix?

Here is a condensation of President Bush’s speech yesterday, omitting all the extraneous parts:

. . . . al Qaeda . . . terrorist allies . . . September the 11th, 2001. . . . global war . . . threatens . . . . terrorists. . . .

September the 11th, 2001 . . . terrorist attacks. . . . World Trade Center. . . towers collapse . . . . Pentagon. . . . . hijacked plane. . . . terrorists . . . . Osama bin Laden. . . . massacre . . . .

al Qaeda . . . . terrorists . . . . killed . . . . attacks of September the 11th . . . . passenger planes.

. . . . nation was attacked. . . . terrorist danger . . . . nation at war . . . . terrorist sanctuaries . . . . terrorist cells in America . . . . new attacks . . . . terrorists . . . .

. . . . five years . . . nation was attacked . . . . enemy documents . . . . terrorists . . . . enemies. . . .

. . . .terrorists . . . offensive . . . . threat . . . . violent Islamic radicalism . . . terrorists . . . battlefield . . . .

. . . .terrorists . . . September the 11th, 2001 . . . . kill . . . . evil. . . . al Qaeda terrorists . . . .violent . . . extremists. . . . radical . . . Islam . . . crushes . . . murder . . . . violent . . . . Middle East . . . . “Caliphate” . . . . Osama bin Laden . . . 9/11 attacks . . . . Muslims … [Caliphate].”

. . . .caliphate . . . totalitarian Islamic . . . Muslim . . . . al Qaeda . . . . Zawahiri . . . al Qaeda’s . . . al Qaeda . . . Islam . . . Iraq.

. . . . Taliban and al Qaeda . . . totalitarian . . . beaten. . . . Summary executions . . . . Muslim. . . .

. . . . Sunni extremists . . . Muslim . . . extremists . . . . Muslims . . . Islam. . . . . Osama bin Laden . . . .

. . . . freedom. . . . . enemy . . . terrorist . . . . terrorist . . . al Qaeda . . . . Allah. . . . . terrorist . . . al Qaeda . . . . Killing. . . . assassination, bombing, and destruction. . . .

. . . . al Qaeda . . . Muslim . . . terrorist enclaves. . . totalitarian . . . . al Qaeda . . . Iraq . . . Iraq . . . Anbar Province . . . . al Qaeda . . . “Execution Unit” . . . Murder, and Destruction.

. . . . Middle East . . . . al Qaeda . . . . totalitarian Islamic . . . destroy . . . .

. . . . violent extremists . . . . al Qaeda . . . terror . . . . terrorize . . . .

Bin Laden . . . . 9/11 . . . . 9/11 . . . Osama bin Laden . . . al Qaeda . . . . al Qaeda . . . . Bin Laden . . . .

. . . . propaganda . . . . Osama bin Laden . . . . Taliban . . . Mullah Omar, . . . . bin Laden . . . al Qaeda media. . . . media. . . bin Laden . . . . Bin Laden . . . al Qaeda. . . .

Bin Laden . . . . Osama bin Laden . . . . terrorist Zawahiri

. . . . terrorists . . . . Iraq . . . bin Laden . . . “capital of the Caliphate.” . . . bin Laden … Islamic. . . . [Iraq] . . . . Islam . . . . al Qaeda, Iraq . . . .

. . . . al Qaeda . . . Iraq. . . terrorist Zawahiri . . . al Qaeda . . . Iraq. . . . Islamic . . . amirate . . . . Caliphate… jihad . . . . Iraq.

. . . . evil . . . . Iraq . . . . Iraqi . . . totalitarian . . . Iraq . . . Iraqi people. (Applause.)

. . . . terrorist Zarqawi . . . . Iraqi . . . . Iraqis . . . Iraq . . . al Qaeda . . . .

. . . . Iraq . . . . bin Laden. . . . war . . . .

. . . . terrorists’ . . . . evil . . . . communist . . . Lenin. . . . Soviet Empire . . . killed . . . thermonuclear war. . . . failed Austrian painter . . . . Aryan super-state . . . Germany . . . eradicate . . . Jews. . . . Hitler . . . . Nazi . . . . gas chambers. . . world aflame . . . .

Bin Laden . . .terrorist . . . Lenin . . . Hitler . . . . evil . . . .

Five years . . . . Al Qaeda . . . . al Qaeda . . . . al Qaeda . . . dangerous . . . . Bin Laden and Zawahiri . . . . Al Qaeda . . . . al Qaeda. . . Internet . . . terrorists. Al Qaeda . . . . suicide bombers. . . . terrorist attacks . . . .

. . . . al Qaeda . . . terrorist . . . . threats . . . terrorist cells . . . al Qaeda . . . . al Qaeda . . . . terrorists . . . . radical Islamists . . . .cells . . . . attacks . . . .

. . . . al Qaeda . . . . Sunni extremists . . . . Shia extremists . . . . al Qaeda. . . . Sunnis . . . Shia . . . . Iraq . . . Shia . . . terrorist . . . . Shia extremists . . . . Shia . . . Islamic radicalism . . . . Shia extremists . . . . al Qaeda . . . . Iran. . . .

. . . . al Qaeda . . . Sunni extremists . . . Iranian . . . .destroy Israel . . . . Hezbollah . . . . attack Israel . . . . terrorist . . . al Qaeda. . . . alQaeda. . . . murder . . . . Hezbollah . . . . bombing. . . . Saudi Hezbollah . . . . Khobar Towers . . . . attack . . . terrorists. . . .Iranian officials.

. . . . Sunni extremists . . . Shia extremists . . . . Hezbollah . . . terrorist Nasrallah . . . . 11 September, “Death to America . . . Death to America.”

Iran . . .Hezbollah. . . . Iran’s President . . . . Iran’s President . . . annihilation. . . . anger . . . Muslims . . . explosion . . . . Iranian . . . Iranian . . . .Iranian . . . .

. . . . Iranian . . . terrorist . . . kill Americans . . . Iranian . . . nuclear weapons. . . . Iran’s regime . . . mass murder. . . . Iran . . . . Iran . . . . Iranian . . . . Iranian . . . . Iran . . . .Iran . . . a nuclear weapon.

. . . .Shia and Sunni extremists . . . threat. . . . violent Islamic . . . Middle East. . . . weapons of mass destruction. . . . . Iraq . . . . violent Islamic . . . . terrorist . . . .

. . . .oil . . . oil resources . . . . weapons of mass murder. . . . nuclear weapons, . . . mortal threat to . . . Iraq , if. . . .

. . . . “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” . . . .September the 11th. . . .

. . . combating terrorism. . . .

. . . . terrorist attacks . . . . 9/11 . . . al Qaeda. . . terrorists . . . . terrorists . . . new attacks.

. . . . the enemy here at home. . . . Patriot Act . . . .Terrorist Surveillance Program . . . monitor . . . communications . . . al Qaeda . . . .terrorist operatives within our borders. . . . al Qaeda. . . .attacks.

. . . . terrorist cells . . . terrorist operatives and supporters . . . New York . . . Oregon . . . New Jersey. . . Illinois . . . terrorists and their supporters. . . al Qaeda. . . .

. . . weapons of mass destruction . . . terrorists . . . . dangerous nuclear trading cartel . . . .Iran . . .Libya . . . North Korea . . . nuclear weapons. . . . . weapons of mass . . . . terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction . . . .

. . . . terrorists . . . . September the 11th. . . terror . . . . terror. . . .September the 11th, 2001. Afghanistan and Iraq . . . . terrorist states . . . . war on terror . . . . weapons of mass destruction. . . nuclear materials . . . . terrorist states . . . terrorist networks. . . . .terror . . . . (Applause.)

. . . .terrorist . . . Iraqi government . . . terrorists . . . taking control of Iraq. . . attack America . . . terrorists . . . .

. . . .terrorists new recruits. . . .freedom across the Middle East. . . .Middle East . . . .freedom . . . terrorists . . . willing recruits. . . . September the 11th . . .terrorists. . .death and destruction . . . .

. . . . September the 11th . . . . Middle East . . . . freedom and liberty and democracy . . . .Middle East. . . . Muslim . . . .al Qaeda . . . Taliban . . . .Iraq . . . defeat the enemies of freedom . . . . Iraq. . . . Iraq . . . Middle East . . . .

. . . the last five years . . . . terrorists . . . .Muslims. . . Muslim . . . .

. . . . terrorists . . . . conquer tyranny and terror . . . . Nazi Germany. . . . Soviet communism . . . .

. . . forces of darkness and tyranny. . . . Middle East. . . .

. . . .Middle East . . . . Middle East . . . .

. . . .extremism. . . . Middle East . . . .

It’s basically a ceaseless repetition of “Iraq,” “al Qaeda,” “terrorist,” “Iran,” “Islam,” “Osama bin Laden,” and especially “September the 11th,” with a few “freedoms” and a couple of “Hitlers” and “Lenins” thrown in.

Well, this is interesting

I've posted below the text of a message by Rabbi Blau, which I've just seen. My understanding was that it was sent to all undergraduates. What I think interesting is how similar his argument about arguing in a respectful manner is to the arguments I've made about our rules for civil and thoughtful discourse, especially in our online community. My only quibble, perhaps, is his discussion about "both sides" and "both positions," since I would suggest that in matters of policy and politics, there are rarely just two sides (although the American two-party duopoly tends to encourage us to think this way). The political world is complex, at best, and serious inquiry and engagement more typically results in a multiplicity of views, proposals, and positions. Oh, and I'm not sure that I concur in his assessment of Plato, since I've often found Socrates to be something of, well, a sophist, and a sometimes-master of cheap rhetorical tricks, which can serve to bolster his opponent's arguments. But that's a debate for another time.

DISAGREEMENT FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE
By Rabbi Yosef Blau

Yeshiva students are known for not accepting professors’ statements automatically. This does not reflect their being contrarians but emerges from the methodology of their Talmudic studies. If one visits the Beit Hamedrash (study hall), particularly after being in the library, the noise level seems baffling. A crowded room is filled with pairs of students debating points vigorously. How do they manage to concentrate? Why all the argument?

The Babylonian Talmud (Kiddushin 30B) describes a teacher and pupil who study Torah together as entering as enemies and leaving with love for each other. This can be best understood in light of a story told in the Talmud (Baba Metzia 84A). Rabbi Yochanan is described as terribly distraught after the death of Reish Lakish. (The two names appear together many times in the Talmud, almost always in disagreement.) The rabbis sent Rabbi Yochanan’s closest disciple, Rabbi Elazar, in an attempt to console him. When Rabbi Yochanan started to teach, Rabbi Elazar immediately interjected that the earlier sources support Rabbi Yochanan’s interpretation and not that of Reish Lakish. Rabbi Yochanan responded: “your words are not consoling me nor are you replacing Reish Lakish. When I would teach, Reish Lakish would raise twenty-four objections and I would give twenty-four answers. From the give and take the truth would emerge. I do not need you to tell me that I am right.”

The rabbinic literature is filled with disputes. Our students are trained to understand the reasoning of both sides, including opinions that are rejected. In Plato’s dialogues, only Socrates’ views are taken seriously. In the Jewish tradition, however, both positions are accepted as valid even though only one can become the accepted religious norm.

As the pair in the Beit Hamedrash (study hall) debate they become part of a long tradition and they can tune out the din in the room. Being surrounded by others equally absorbed is indicative of their inclusion in this chain. The argument and debate is a reflection of friendship that is based on a mutual search for clarity and truth.

Our tradition also speaks of disagreements that are not for the sake of heaven, acknowledging that in reality there are many motives for people to be argumentative. The proper goal of debate is the search for greater clarity and a deeper understanding of truth. Argument is appropriate but only when the debate and disagreements occur in this spirit of mutual concern and respect.

Cruise baby photos from CBS

While NBC, much more serious, you know, wonders where all the barns have gone (see chart below).

From the Gray Lady:

CBS’s huge promotional campaign in advance of Katie Couric’s arrival as anchor of its evening news program paid a rich dividend, at least on her opening night: the broadcast drew 13.6 million viewers on Tuesday, its largest audience in more than eight years, according to preliminary estimates by Nielsen Media Research released yesterday by the network and its competitors.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Meanwhile, in another closely watched arrival on Tuesday, Rosie O’Donnell’s first morning as a co-host of “The View’’ on ABC was seen by an estimated 4.2 million viewers, roughly 54 percent more than the 2.7 million who watched on Sept. 6, 2005, the day after Labor Day last year, according to preliminary Nielsen figures provided by an ABC official only on condition of anonymity.

The Chart below from the same Times article is interesting, too, and confirms a point I made yesterday (those are my favortite kinds of Times articles, by the way): the CBS Evening News will be different, but not too different; and my guess is that the others will move even further away from "hard" news to "soft" news.

Here's the transcript

of the Rumsfeld speech Olberman (below) is responding to, from our friends at DOD. And here's another response, proving blog entries need not be short (ahem).

Apologies in advance. I couldn't resist.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us

In response to a brief discussion we had this morning about Edward R. Murrow, here's a link to Keith Olberman's recent jeremiad, which echoes, and then quotes at length, Murrow. We'll pick up this discussion later in the semester, when we watch and discuss Good Night, and Good Luck. Get a hold of a copy and watch -- it's worth it.

Partisan Politics, FISA, and the Press

From Glenn Greenwald. Remember, just because it's partisan doesn't mean it's wrong:

When Bush and his supporters argue, as they will relentlessly in the coming weeks, that Democrats oppose eavesdropping on Al Qaeda, that is not political advocacy. That is not "spin." It is not a legitimate argument or a factually questionable proposition that ought to be passed along without comment. It is none of those things. What that is instead is a factually false claim -- a lie, if one insists. Nobody opposes eavesdropping on Al Qaeda. The President has the full power right now under FISA to eavesdrop as much as he wants on terrorists. To say otherwise -- to say that Democrats want to stop eavesdropping on terrorists -- is just untrue. Period.

If journalists have any responsibility at all beyond being stenographers, it is to make clear the falsity of claims like that. When political officials make false statements as part of their attempt to persuade the public, the role of journalists is to expose the falsity, point out that it is false, not pass it along and treat it like a questionable though legitimate political argument. Journalistic neutrality does not justify -- nor does it permit -- journalists to repeat the factually false statements of government officials without clearly stating that they are false.

This week's FISA debate is about whether the President can eavesdrop on Americans in secret, not whether he can eavesdrop on terrorists. And most Americans oppose -- not favor -- secret, warrantless eavesdropping. Those are two clear, simple facts which every journalist who reports on this story ought to know and make clear to their readers and viewers whenever they "report" on the debate over eavesdropping.

Yup. Read the analysis in its entirety.

I'm mad as. . . .

We're trying to arrange a screening of Network for those of you who have not yet had a chance to see it. Let's convene Tuesday (Sept. 5), 8:15 PM in Furst 203 (thanks to blogger neoconscience). Feel free to bring friends, or sworn enemies, for that matter. Also feel free to bring food and beverages -- if you bring enough to share, also bring receipts, and I'll see that you are reimbursed. If it's not too late and we're not all too tired and cranky, I'll stay around for a bit afterwards and we can talk about the flick -- or you can run home to write your review before classtime on Wednesday. And remember when I said I would reserve the right to offer periodic quizzes? You might make sure you've read (and thought about) Chapter 4 in Leighly by Wednesday. Just sayin'.

How many words are they worth?

Take a look at this post from Crooks and Liars, and follow the links to the photo essays and analysis of the meaning and power of images from Hurricane Katrina. Powerful and provocative stuff.

How many number twos were there?

Note this headline from the Washington Post:

No. 2 Al-Qaeda in Iraq Leader Is Arrested

Now, I have this more-than-vague memory of having seen this headline more than a few times over the past few years. If anyone has the interest and the inclination, it would make an interesting Nexis-based short research project. Any takers? Post your results on your blog, and post a link in the Comments section of this message.