Rev. Jerimiah Wright: Wheat and Chaff

I heard the Rev Wright speech before the NAACP meeting. I heard the Bill Moyers interview. I heard the mostly negative reactions coming from all the reporters. What did I hear?

I taught intercultural communication. I would not grade the reporter-critics very high in their cultural understanding. They roasted Wright for the chaff, but did not show any understanding of the whole grains of wheat he presented. They threw out the wheat with the chaff. Pastor Wright has very personal and selfish gains to make from becoming controversial and without much care for Barack Obama’s campaign. I understand that. But Wright did make some points that teachers of intercultural communication teach, e.g., the principle that difference is not a deficit. He was both funny-ha-ha and funny-peculiar in getting across that message, wheat and chaff. Now that his credibility has been lost, he may be one who will not be listened to, to get that crucial message across.

I hope that point does not get lost in the excoriation of Rev. Wright. Good critics might have made the distinction between the constructive parts and the bad parts. WHICH PARTS WERE OUTRAGEOUS, and WHICH PARTS WERE NOT? WAS THE WOLE SPEECH OUTRAGEOUS? Absolutely not! I’ll tell you what’s outrageous. The accusation of guilt by association in many critical comments by commentators takes us back to the Congressman Joe McCarthy era of witch hunts for “fellow travelers”.

I would like to have seen one fully functional deliberative mind operating as a critic, but I heard no one except Bill Moyers in a thoughtful probing of Wright. Wright made some criticisms of the United States government’s actions. Many people have done that. Black people have much cause for many discriminatory actions by governments of the past. Those points of Wright’s speeches were not taken up in anything I heard. All I heard was ad hominem attacks, name calling. That’s outrageous! The nutrition is in the kernels, but all I saw was the vultures feasting on the chaff.

THE DELIBERATIVE MIND IS A WINNOWER OF IDEAS, CAN DISTIGUISH GOOD FROM BAD. Most speakers and writers have a mix and need readers and listeners who do not throw out the good with the bad. Be judicious!

As I have said before, this election season is in the care, almost exclusively, of the ham-handed reporters wannabe pundits. They do not know how to moderate discussions nor listen respectfully as participant-panelists. They steamroller their fellows and blur disgustingly all others on the panel. Gibbity-gibbity, yackety-yack. The McLaughlin group is the worst of the worst. Chris Matthews as a hard-baller presses hard his view onto his selected toadies. But I have heard the soft-baller Matthews (see elsewhere on this blog) where he dropped the ball.

Bill Moyers had the requisite intelligence to manage an interview with Rev. Wright. He got to the wheat and stepped over the chaff. Sound bites were coming from everyone else.

I believe that Obama needs to give a speech on religion in politics as a counterpart to his racism speech. I believe Clinton needs to give a speech on gender in politics. Obama has proven he can hold forth on a critical issue and have a very satisfying result. All that Clinton can do is perform dirty tricks. One sneaky one is the use of a red hot branding iron, burning “elitist” into the hide of Obama, putting her brand on him and now she owns him. Hillary is the master of cliche, the thoroughly mundane as her head bobbles incessantly. Mundanity. Cliche. Ascribing traits, characteristics to her opponent, and then the label hangs there like the tag on Minnie Pearl’s hat.

I believe that it is much easier to get into trouble in the U.S. if you are black than if you are a female.

(I will write later about one basic course of training I would institute for reporters.)

Empathize with the Black Woman Voting: Cognitive Dissonance?

Obama or Hillary? Which demographic is the stronger with the black woman voting, being black or being female? I wish I had a poll result that derived from a sample of Democrat white women and Democrat black women with controls of Democrat black men and white men and general population.

There was a program with three people singled out for their opinions, one pro-Hillary white male, one pro-Obama white female, and one undecided black female. The latter made me wonder about the psychological construct of “cognitive dissonance”, which is the state of being of two minds about something. She epitomized a walking definition of cognitive dissonance. She was both Obama and Clinton in outward manifestations.

I have had that personally, wanting the women to have their president and wanting to have a black president of the calibre of multicultural Obama. I was of two minds early in the campaign season between the two. Hillary’s early speeches were very good, I thought. I was impressed. Obama has had, from the start, brilliant analysis and eloquent style rising above our mundane expectancies.

Barack and Hillary went up the hill, to fetch a pail of voters; Hillary fell down and broke her crown and Barack came tumbling after.

Some black opinion has seen the blackness of Obama as a diluted black. I, being white, wouldn’t know where that is coming from, not having had the black experience except as an on-looker. Am I entitled to have an opinion, or dare I not express one? If not, then I relish the talk of Bill Cosby, among others, on that subject. In the same vein, I look for the talk of Muslims about the actions of radicalized Muslims. If I had opinions on those subjects, they would always be qualified by others’ “consider-the-source” criticism.

I liked Hillary before her tack turned her campaign vessel to the rickety-ticky tacky. Nothing high-minded there. She is a walking definition of mundanity. Listen to her and you will hear every cliche in the book of quotations. Barack is the antonym of mundanity. I like style, and you should, too; you’re going to have to listen to the President for at least four years. The fans of “American Idol”, millions of them, must appreciate the elements of style, for that is the main thing thatnts in separates the idol from the common. So do not ever knock style points in a pol.

Sportsmanship is not whether you win or lose, but how you played the game. Is that not supposed to be the mantra of fair play and Americanism, the American way? Nearly everybody now takes the view of cynics, win at all costs, the type of political game being played now.

If you are a black, female Democrat reading this, do you have such dissonance given the present situation?

Polls. Intellectuals. Be Wary

This pre-election time is all academic. All the talk is academic. These campaigns are all “academic”, and “academic” is the same as “intellectual”. (The proof is in the pudding and the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.) Academics are intellectuals and see the world as more complex than the less intellectual.

Note that we have one candidate recognized for his intellect and touted for his intellectual edge, with especial note taken of his language and a more elevated diction. In my opinion, the “intellectual” label has been the kiss of death for such candidates (Adlai Stevenson against Eisenhower), and the electorate has usually preferred the anti-intellectual (Bush against Gore and Kerry). I know, I know, one case does not prove the generalization. But there’s probably a book on the topic.

I would never sell academics short. I was one. Academic works must yield conclusions that have been tested and verified to a high degree of significance. This campaign has not had its ultimate verification (“tasting”) in the test of the election (the “pudding”), which will tell us much about the candidates (the President-elect) as well as about the electorate (his or her people). More academic studies and books will be written by academics.

Polls are academic exercises, like campaigns. All we ever know about the polls are the results. We may get a “margin of error”—what’s that!?. We do not ever get the operations that produced the results, the sampling technique and other controls. The deliberative mind would like to know those operations. They say the devil is in the details, but who has time for that, as they must think.

Too much of this campaign proccess is in the hands of the journalists who rely on the polls to make their stories about the election campaign. They do read the works of the intellectuals (historians, political scientists, sociologists); however, the difference is, the journalists are called to recycle the academic stuff as panelists on the television roundtables, and the original sources are much ignored, or overlayed with reporter bias.

Reporters Are the Death of Political Debate. Why?

Political “debate”. The Democrat candidates, 4-16-2008. Moderaters: two television reporters, George Stephanopolis, Charlie Gibson. Why did that “debate” become a non-political bicker?

1. Headlines and by-lines are the major concerns of reporters. The first hour was all about the headlines, not the issues that are supposed to be the substance of policies for improving our society.

2. Reporters do not know what “debate” is. They intruded in the direct clash between the candidates, for direct clash is the main marker of any debate, direct clash, pros and cons, affirmative and negative, constructive and rebuttal, on the points at issue. IT CAN BE DONE.

3. The personalities and styles of the candidates that occasioned the bicker making the headlines will come out in their handling of the substantive points at issue as collateral information, and do not need the direct focus. Ah, yes. There are people who need that stuff of trivial pursuits which the reporters felt compelled to dwell on for so long at the beginning. It used to be that newspapers gauged their diction to the sixth grade level of readability. Is that “gossip” level to be the norm of substance and ideas?

4. The reporters turned what was supposed to be a “debate” into a press conference. That’s what is in their blood, what they do by habit. They know no other way. They do not know “debate”.

5. I do not blame them for doing what comes naturally to them. Then who is responsible for that programming? He or she does not know “debate”.

6. Who should be responsible for a “debate” between political opponents, debate that is truly debate? There are people in the colleges and universities who specialize in debate, just as there are specialists in biology, history, sociology, They know debate. They know how to moderate and deliver a meaningful debate. They have produced great leaders in society who have extensive knowledge about debate. They would not be the celebrity journalists that are now dominating the process, to the death of debate. A celebrity is not essential for the moderator role, but a good critic who is master of the criteria is mandatory.

7. SEE: National Communication Association. The experts are there.

WILL WE EVER LEARN!

The “Elitist” Charge—

—was loaded from the start with TriNitroToluene, dynamite, and gunpowder in large volume with a short fuse lit by some commentators and critics I have heard and should, by now, have EXPLODED the Clinton and McCain campaigns. How could those two, most elite candidates have ever had just one cell of their brains conceive of such a curse on Obama? And then to think that a number of critics and so-called pundits yupped and yipped the charge that issued from the desperate mouth of Hillary!!!

On the whole, the elitism charge has been turned back on the multi-millionaires McCain and Clinton.

We have the patriotism, race, gender, elitism, media, style, super-delegate, electoral college, popular vote, elected delegates, authenticity, guns and religion, John McCain, Bill Clinton, (any more?) problems.

What about the real issues?

The issue problems have been hijacked by irrelevancies. This party is not the “Democratic Party”. It is the “Democrat” Party, in back-alley cat fights. Hear the yowling in the dark? Fix the blame for that! I have!

Maybe there should have been other people if those people can’t get a good issue campaign on the road. People who vote for Democrats have passed up the two most mature and intelligent and knowledgeable leaders of stature and presence, two powerful men, A.G. and J.B. They are world class leaders. Obama, if elected, will pass the first test of his maturity as a presidential leader if he puts A.G. and J.B. in prominent cabinet positions.

There is an “elitism” of intellect and knowledge and competency beyond markers related to wealth and social position. Those two have it. The safety of the U.S. and the world should be in the hands of such people. We should be so lucky. I am betting Barack Obama has what it takes. I will bet on intellect any day.

Hillary Clinton and Misogyny: REVISITED

Since I wrote a previous entry, “Hillary Clinton and Misogyny”, I have heard Erika Falk, author of “Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns”, speak on BookTV, CSPAN2, 4-13-08. She studied the topic covering a period from 1884-present.

(At the end of this entry, I have a big BUT!)

She has uncovered some dimensions of bias against women candidates that only scholarship would reveal. The trend lines of media bias have shown systematic and continuous bias against women with no convergence to equality of treatment (with one exception) in the press. That in a society where the principle should be: People should have equal access to power. The unequal access discourages women from putting themselves in races for political offices. There are other negative consequences as well.

She cites eight cases of women who ran for President, and analyzed the media coverage in each case. (1872 was the exception.) In substantive coverage, men received %68 more column inches. Women’s accomplishments were substantially reduced. Women’s titles were dropped (Senator, Representative, etc.). Women were subjected to stereotypical treatment–physical descriptions, etc. Women received four times more stereotyping than men. Men were given three times more mentions of positive viability statements. Women received twice as many descriptions of emotionality as men. Women received significantly more arguments against their competence as leaders and their ability to handle crises. Women were represented as unnatural in the position of the presidency (as it is unnatural for a woman to hold a position of authority over the male–the Bible says so.)

The press feels compelled to remark about the novelty of a woman running, i.e., the “first” to run, forgetting that others have run in the past. The media portray women as unsalable as candidates: “America is not ready for a woman President.” “A woman can’t win.” “It is un-womanly to run for President and campaign door-to-door.” Women are essentially “mothers” .

We citizens of the U.S. do have a media problem, BIG TIME! And the media do not know it because we do not read much of their self-analysis and -criticism in the columns we like to read. Why? Because the commentators are generally promoting themselves as stars, celebrities. Who would want to jeopardize that? Criticize yourself and people will seize on that without giving credit for the highly worthy attempt to qualify something one has said or done. We have seen how difficult it is for a candidate to admit that a mistake has been made.

I believe Hillary has not campaigned well. I like “words”. She has attacked “words” because she perceives that Obama’s main appeal is “just words”. I find her words to be mundane. I want something more than mundanity in our national CEO. That is an issue for me, and a reasonable one,I believe.

Another issue is her stretching the truth to score political points.

Now, have I shown a bias against her gender? I think not. I voted for her in the caucus. But if I had it to do over again, I would not.

To me , race, gender, and age are not that relevant. I have a hard time fixing in my mind the candidates’ stands on the critical issues. That debate has dropped out of view.

However, here is my big BUT!

Much of the above about the treatment of women candidates PROBABLY IS APPLICABLE TO BLACK MALE CANDIDATES as well.

The Hillary Pillory of Barack Obama: A Shameless Opportunist Is She (and McCain, Too)

Barack Obama is being pilloried by Hillary Clinton and John McCain for making what was, in my estimation, essentially

a sociological assessment of small town life

in Pennsylvania. The statements he made were empirical observations, not loaded with the bad affect his opponents and gotcha journalists and commentators gave them.

Consider that there may not be a negative interpretation of what he said, which a rush to judgment by opponents has put out there.

Consider this: he is probably, almost certainly, more sensitive to race and gun issues in the U.S. than the white candidates (from our history). In his campaign trips around Pennsylvania, he obviously encountered something in the people he talked with that a bright, deliberative mind would be sensitive to, and something that a white woman candidate might miss. I believe he saw what could be termed a xenophobic provinciality—turned against him?— and he was cognizant of it, and reacted honestly to explain his special sensitivity. As President, such an awareness would mean that he could find some ways of confronting the special problem of small towns when government programs are implemented to assist them.

And Hillary’s (and John’s) opportunistic bent to cast what she can in the worst light for personal gain came to the fore. But any person who has an adequate critical mind should not be too quick to fall for the “feeding frenzy” of two opponents whose flip-floppery and opportunism may be suspect. Consider the source. Withhold judgment, in this case, until comprehension is complete.

Two Georges Side by Side: See the Column on the Right–>

May I direct your attention to the two contrasting mind-sets of people named George on pages in the blogroll to the right. You will find the differences to be very comical, one unintentional and the other intentional.

To all who read this, pretend—

—you are a member of this class. For your term paper, which will be your final exam, you are to write answers to these two questions: (1) How many grandfathers do you have? (2) What is the name, or title, of this course of study? Write the answers as ‘COMMENTS’. I am hoping there will be some ingenious people responding and at least one genius, who gets it all.

An exercise for the Deliberative Mind.

The Friday Night Dump

Reporters are making much of the “Friday-night dump” of the Clintons’ tax returns. And by the way the reporters speak of it, the “dump” must be a recurring event. Politicians hope therby to slip something by the press. It is believed that the weekend papers have too much extra content, and real newsy stories stand a good chance of being overlooked and then forgotten by weekenders escaping the city.
Does anyone remember that one favorite tactic of Adolf Hitler’s was his Friday night decrees which contained infamous policies destructive of the “democracy” of the Weimar Republic. Such was one political use of the “Friday night dump” by one of the world’s most hated totalitarians.

Are our politicians taking a page out of the history of totalitarianism? Or is it a smart political means of slipping bad news past the press and the public? Oh, well, newspaper reading seems to be going out of style, according to what I hear, and the entertainment function of media is overtaking the news-reporting and editorial functions. Called, “amusing ourselves to death.”

The tax returns reveal that the Clinton’s have substantial wealth. How does it affect their policy-making for the not well-to-do? It certainly made a contribution to keeping Hillary’s campaign afloat. In a vote of dollars, Obama is winning the election. I do not believe that the tax returns should have been treated by the Clintons as a “Friday night Dump”, or was the release just coincidentally on Friday?