The NonSequitur

Jamison Foser at Media Matters notices some very stunning idiocy and responds accordingly.  He writes:

The Wisconsin Advertising Project looked at a single week's worth of ads in determining that 56 percent of McCain ads and 77 percent of Obama ads were "negative." Aside from the dangers in drawing conclusions from such a small sample of campaign ads, the findings are of limited value given that the project made no effort to assess the veracity or fairness of the ads in question. In fact, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the study counted any ad that so much as mentioned the opponent's name as "negative."

I suppose it might be mildly interesting to know that 56 percent of John McCain's ads mention Barack Obama, or that 77 percent of Obama's ads mention McCain. But it doesn't really tell us anything useful. How did they mention each other? Did the ads criticize policy positions or personality? Were they honest? The answers to those questions are essential to any meaningful assessment of the candidates' campaign tactics. (If you do find the project's findings compelling, you should keep in mind that in July, based on a much larger sample, the project found that more of McCain's ads were negative.)

Despite the study's failure to even attempt to assess the validity of the ads it declared "negative," several news organizations hyped the findings. Worse, some suggested the finding that more of Obama's ads have been negative undermines the recent conclusions of many impartial observers that the McCain campaign ads have been more dishonest than those of the Obama campaign.

The New York Post, for example, reported that the results of the study "clash with recent media coverage accusing McCain of distorting Obama's record in ads." Nonsense. That's like saying that the fact that this is September clashes with the fact that it is Friday.

Foser is right.  This is what one would call a "category mistake."  Also, I think I speak from experience that many people wrongly call anything critical an "attack" and assume that anything "negative" is wrong.  Foser's whole piece is well worth reading, as always.

Another chapter in our dumb national discourse.  The New York Times sent Zev Chafets to interview Rush Limbaugh.  By all accounts, the lengthy New York Times magazine piece lacked a critical perspective entirely.  For a piece on such a divisive figure such as Rush Limbaugh that’s inexcusable.  In defending his work, the author made the following puzzling remarks:

CHAFETS: Well, do you have an example of that? I’m not an apologist for Rush Limbaugh, but I’m a little bit defensive because I think that the liberal media takes such an unfair view of him.

I hear people being vilified on the radio on all sorts of radio stations by all sorts of people all day long. And Limbaugh is not worse than many of the ones I hear, even on NPR. He just has a different point of view.

GARFIELD: The NAACP should have a riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies?

CHAFETS: Not my sense of humor, but it’s not a lie.

GARFIELD: Did Limbaugh not say that Abu Ghraib was no worse than a Skull and Bones initiation?

CHAFETS: Yeah, he did. It’s his opinion.

The liberal media, oh please.  But besides, how does Limbaugh’s claim not being a lie somehow excuse it?  Those kinds of remarks aren’t the kinds of remarks that can be lies anyway–the problem most people have with gutter characters such as Limbaugh is that they and their ilk actually believe the things they say.  So the problem isn’t whether it’s a lie, it’s whether it’s justified.  And that’s a different story.  Way to go liberal media!  

Jonah Goldberg is determined to outdo himself in the category of dumb:

I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there’s the smugness. The
undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less
sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to
bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing that "hate is not a
family value." But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance;
similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as
bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

He’s right about the undeniable message.  But I don’t think it’s saying what he thinks it is.  For evolutionists, the fish represents the connection between life in the sea and mammalian life.  According to their story, God ordered the fish to rise up from the sea and walk on earth, so that, eventually, the fish would become man (without the God part).  This is an alternative to the literal creationism of some Christians which has a couple of different stories each involving a sea.  I would even venture to guess that many Darwin fish cars are owned by Christians–many of whom are dedicated evolutionists. 

The ridiculous thing about Goldberg’s remark is the charge of hypocrisy.  The point, obviously, of the Darwin fish is to insist on scientific evidence over the unsupported factual assertions of a religious text.  The evolutionists, in other words, challenge fact with fact–the literal creation story (which for some reason very many Christians believe isn’t true at all).  Many Christians do believe this story, however.  They believe it with such a vengeance they think it ought to be taught as fact in science classes in place of or at least alongside of the evolution "story."  In some places, they have even succeeded in undermining the teaching of evolution on the grounds that it’s just a "theory."  That view, of course, is absolutely preposterous–and ignorant and intolerant of basic scientific knowledge. 

Here’s the really dumb thing. To believe in the literal truth of Genesis in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence is not the same as being black, female or Muslim–unless being those things involves embracing obviously false assertions about reality.  To believe in the literal truth of Genesis (and the sometimes consequent belief in the immorality and falsity of evolution) is not even the same thing as being Christian.    

Has Hillary Clinton been subjected to more "scrutiny" on account of her gender?  All signs point yes.  A cursory examination of the media coverage will find Clinton having to contend with questions directed at gender in a way that, say, John McCain won’t.  Here’s just one of countless examples.  Enter Maureen Dowd (courtesy of Media Matters):

 

After saying she found her
"voice" in New Hampshire,
she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had
Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic
Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary,
It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary,
Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and
hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke
up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a
political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that
about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama’s. But the
whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.

And Maureen Dowd, by the way, is supposed to be a liberal.  But, like we’ve been saying, the liberal op-eds disappoint.  In the face of such evidence, Ruth Marcus argues that Clinton cannot claim to be "hampered" by her gender.  Marcus’s claim (isn’t she supposed to be a liberal too?) has what we professionals call a ring of falsity to it.  But she also makes a conceptual claim to support the false empirical claim:

 

The candidate of inevitability and the victim of the uneven playing field aren’t compatible concepts.

The candidate of inevitability is an empty concept.  There might have been a presumption among media types like Marcus that Clinton was the candidate of inevitability, but there hadn’t been an election yet.   Besides, being a candidate for a job, as I can attest from personal experience, doesn’t mean you’ll get the job–or that you even have a chance of getting the job. 

Mysterious words from someone in the Washington Post.  And apropos of the woman voter, she writes:

Penn was right about the importance of the women’s vote. About 57
percent of the voters in the Democratic primaries so far have been
women. As of Feb. 12, Clinton had a lead of about seven percentage
points over Obama among them (24 points among white women). But the
Obama campaign reached out to the fair sex, following Clinton’s
announcement of women-oriented programs with similar ones within a
matter of weeks. I can imagine the strategists for the senator from Illinois thinking, "What’s that song in Verdi‘s ‘Rigoletto’?" Women are fickle.

Turns out it’s true.

Why’s that, you wonder?  

From the moment the primary season began, the group "women" divided
along racial lines. Black women have backed Obama by more than 78
percent. But even after subtracting that group, white women (including
Hispanics) are still the single largest demographic in the party, at 44
percent. If they voted as a bloc, it would take only a little help from
any other bloc to elect the female candidate. White women favor
Clinton. So why is she trailing as the contest heads to Ohio and Texas?

I know this is supposed to be funny–what with the hilarious reference from Rigoletto–but aside from being representative of Cokie Roberts style Monday morning identity politics breakdown, it’s just silly.  Women would only be fickle if, as an identical group, they changed their minds–qual pium al vento.  The quick references to the polls hardly establish that. 

The more likely conclusion is that the author of this silly thoughts is muta d’accento e di pensiero. 

To many pundits the challenge of the Obama campaign consists in the separation of "lofty rhetoric" from substance (by the way, the search string "'lofty rhetoric' + Obama" yielded 6,880 hits on Google, go figure).  Such a task, however, seems an odd challenge for people whose job description ought to presume an ability to separate real arguments from their window dressing.  A pundit ought to be able to leap a speech in a single bound.  But no.  For some of them, well three of them so far this week, Obama seems a powerful intoxicant.  Today it's Robert Samuelson's turn.  He begins his "Obama is a mirage" discussion with the now canonical admission that he too was beguiled by his honeyed words:

It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

There is something about Obama that drives these guys to autobiography:

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

Whatever you might call him, Samuelson is not a journalist.  He writes on the opinion page, which makes him a pundit, a completely different activity from journalism.  Besides, the following paragraph smacks not of journalism–which would involve an impersonal and objective analysis of facts–but of self-centered opinion offering.  On top of that, how does being a journalist somehow imply "serious doubts" about each of the candidates?    

Besides that, Samuelson offers up the rather strange charge that a "huge and deceptive gap" separates Obama's "captivating oratory" from his "actual views."  Let's sit here for a second and try to figure out what that means.  

It could mean that (1) Obama is a liar, because what he says differs from his actual beliefs.  His beliefs, in other words, are other than what he says they are. 

Or perhaps it means that (2) Obama's captivating rhetoric does not match his views, because his views are not captivating–they're perhaps a little boring or ordinary.  Worse than this, Obama somehow knows this and he works to cover it up.  That's an odd charge.  Actual views are likely not to be "captivating."  Being "captivating" is an attribute rather of rhetoric or art.  The ideas may be plausible or sound or true or some other such thing.  But captivating?  Nope.

So which is it?  I can't really tell.  Because Samuelson's point is too confused to evaluate.   He writes:

The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative — to become the first African American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery — can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient goodwill, intelligence and energy. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white," he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.

But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. The task requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

Samuelson's reading of the "Obama subtext" is baffling.  In the first place, the subtext is an aesthetic category used by critics in their evaluation of literary (or other) works–it isn't a position Obama is actually advocating.  Besides, the remark following that isn't even about race.  All of this is followed by the even more bizarre claim that the "metaphor is a mirage."  It's a mirage, because it turns out, because Samuelson doesn't find Obama's ideas compelling.

That's different.  If Obama's ideas aren't compelling, then perhaps Samuelson could write an article about how they're not.  Taking Obama to task because his ideas do not match the various adjectives Samuelson and other equally vacuous pundits use to describe them doesn't establish anything other than they have the wrong method of evaluation.

And by the way–by all means.  Let's have the discussion of Obama's ideas without the tiresome preamble about how much you had a crush on him.  That's your fault.

Now to be fair, Samuelson goes on to point out his problems with Obama's views.  But he concludes:

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media — preoccupied with the political "horse race" — have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

Again with the categories.  Stick with the agenda.  Obama has been forthright enough for you to discover his "real" positions on things.  It's not so hard.  After all, you're a "journalist."

It's time again to play the Sesame Street game: "which one of these things is not like the other? with Nicholas Kristof.  In Yesterday's column he writes:

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith.

Oh the intolerant liberals!  This is what you would hear (not what he did hear).  It gets worse:

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.

Stunning tu quoque: how hypocritical are the liberals for making fun of a guy–oops, for being the type of people who would make fun of a guy (1) who wants to amend the Constitution to be in line with God's standards; (2) claimed that had Jesus been against the death penalty he would have said something about it on the cross; (3) doesn't believe the theory of evolution explains the organization of diversity of life; (4) compares non-heterosexual partnerships to bestiality, and much more.  I can't believe someone would make light of those beliefs.  Oddly, the rest of the article goes on to point out that many evangelicals do not have the laughably ridiculous beliefs of, say, Mike Huckabee:

Look, I don’t agree with evangelicals on theology or on their typically conservative views on taxes, health care or Iraq. Self-righteous zealots like Pat Robertson have been a plague upon our country, and their initial smugness about AIDS (which Jerry Falwell described as “God’s judgment against promiscuity”) constituted far grosser immorality than anything that ever happened in a bathhouse. Moralizing blowhards showed more compassion for embryonic stem cells than for the poor or the sick, and as recently as the 1990s, evangelicals were mostly a constituency against foreign aid.

So let's get this straight.  Liberals are intolerant for opposing the views of intolerant people because some other less intolerant people aren't as  intolerant as those intolerant people liberals make fun of. 

One final point.  Barack Obama's race and Hilary Clinton's sex don't entail that non-females and non-blacks have done something wrong or ought to be punished for their difference.  Race, sex and faith are not members of the same category.

I don’t know who comes up with titles for op-ed pieces. I hear sometimes it isn’t the author. I won’t therefore begrudge the author of “the case for facing facts” for having picked such a silly title. Imagine someone writing the case for ignoring facts. I can imagine that, actually. And that’s a sad thing.

Anyway, he makes what one might call the “there are bad arguments on both sides” or the “David Broder” argument:

>The problem is one that I have seen cripple our political life again and again and that seems to grow steadily worse. Liberals and conservatives are equally guilty. Neither side wants to face facts that don’t fit its case.

>Consider abortion. Too many pro-lifers and pro-choicers seem determined to ignore the other fellows’ points as they cling to their own rigid positions. And abortion is just one example.

The silly thing about this silly piece (which, by the way, cites no facts that need to be “faced”, but that’s another matter), is that the abortion case isn’t about facts at all–it’s about the value of facts. No one disagrees, for instance, that women can get pregnant, and for one reason or another, don’t want to carry the baby to term. The question is what to do about it. It’s an “ought” question, not an “is” one.

A grad school professor of mine once said: beware of scientists in a metaphysical mood. And lo. Yesterday’s New York Times op-ed section contains this, from Paul Davies, physicist:

>Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

>This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

>And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

By religion, Davies means his version of the Christian religion, and others that will fit those particular metaphysical presuppositions (this won’t include Mormonism, by the way). And while Physicists don’t have all of the answers about the nature of the objects of their study (which discipline does?), that’s hardly grounds to claim that it’s a lot like religion. The evidence for the basic elements of religious faith (not to mention the truth of various intricate Christian doctrines, among others) is completely like evidence for the physical laws that characterize matter. Just because physics doesn’t tell the whole story (why should it and who claims it does?) does not mean the whole thing is accepted without evidence. Others, I’m certain, can say more.

But the Times ought to be beyond these tales of faith found among microscopes: it’s so washingtonposty.

George Will loves to use the word “traduce.” It’s one of those words that sounds real smart, but in the end just conceals the absence of actual reasoning:

>In 1943, the Supreme Court, affirming the right of Jehovah’s Witnesses children to refuse to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag in schools, declared: “No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Today that principle is routinely traduced, coast to coast, by officials who are petty in several senses.

>They are teachers at public universities, in schools of social work. A study prepared by the National Association of Scholars, a group that combats political correctness on campuses, reviews social work education programs at 10 major public universities and comes to this conclusion: Such programs mandate an ideological orthodoxy to which students must subscribe concerning “social justice” and “oppression.”

Teachers at public universities are not “officials” in the same sense as those enforcing the saying of the “Pledge of Allegiance.” At best, they are officials enforcing “orthodoxy” in a very extended and analogous sense.

The real presumption of this piece, however, consists in Will’s sneering (always sneering he is) and ironic dismissal of social work. He doesn’t think, so it appears, that social work rises above the level of shallow opinion-mongering–the kind that gets protected by the First Amendment. He writes:

>In 1997, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted a surreptitious political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social workers to advocate for social justice “from local to global levels.” A widely used textbook — “Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skill” — declares that promoting “social and economic justice” is especially imperative as a response to “the conservative trends of the past three decades.” Clearly, in the social work profession’s catechism, whatever social and economic justice are, they are the opposite of conservatism.

If it’s so clear, then he wouldn’t need to say clearly. It isn’t clear. And it’s only a textbook. A textbook, as a professor who employs them can attest, isn’t some kind of set of beliefs to which one must subscribe and whose contents one must slavishly and mindlessly repeat. The study of any discipline, as Will seems to think, doesn’t consist in the inculcation of doctrinal maxims–anecdotal evidence (as Will goes on to offer) doesn’t establish that fact.

Besides, social work, on account of its “social” work, stands in marked contrast in its orientation and objective from every single one of George Will’s conservative ideological principles. But that fact alone does not, as Will seems to think, mean its equally unjustified and ideological.