The Blatant Dishonesty of CNN

When it came to CNN's exclusion of Gov. Gary Johnson from their "debate" for all Republican candidates who aren't Gary Johnson, I took it as a stupid policy based on their own ignorance. Now, I have reason to think otherwise. Now I believe they are intentionally dishonest.

Johnson, who as far as this blogger is concerned, is the only libertarian in the race, was excluded because CNN says he doesn't poll high enough in opinion polls. Opinion polls at this point i the race are nothing more than name-recognition polls and I thought CNN ought to know this, or at least one of the kids interning there might be able to tell them.

But look at this poll that CNN has done.

Tell me how Gary Johnson can qualify for one of the CNN bogus debates if they intentionally exclude him from the poll. See, CNN goes around asking Republicans what that they think about Republican candidates. They rattle off a list of names of bigots, morons, warmongers, statists, immigrant-hating, earmark-loving, Republicans. And then the member of the public responds to the name. They include everyone and the kitchen sink, include Gingrich whose campaign has collapsed with the mass defection of his own staff. Well, almost everyone. The one candidate they will not mention is Gary Johnson.

Let us consider how the media looks at this race. They have all these Right-wing conservatives willing to impose some level of theocracy on America, Rick Santorum being the worst of the bad lot. They have the token black guy that got attention by saying silly things in a debate and thus got some name recognition. And they have their token "libertarian," Ron Paul, who they can easily make look absurd by showing the world his wacko views on the NAFTA Superhighway, the "Amero" conspiracy, the banking conspiracy, the CFR conspiracy, and whatever paranoid delusion the Birchers are dishing out this week. And they have Gary Johnson who is far closer to being an actual libertarian. Unlike Paul, Johnson does NOT support things like DOMA, doesn't want to ban to abortion, doesn't hate immigrants, said that Paul's Wall on the Border is a waste, etc. In other words, Gary Johnson is good where Ron Paul is pathetic and Johnson has a proven track record of attracting Democrats and Republicans both in elections.

He was a Republican elected in majority Democratic state and then he got re-elected a second time with an even higher majority. One poll showed that of all the Republicans running, who were polled to that day, he was the only one where with a positive rating in his own state. For all the others, people in their home states had higher negatives views about them, then positive. All, except Gary Johnson.

When CNN sets the rules for debate inclusion, and requires candidates to get a certain percentage in the polls, but then goes out of the way to exclude specific candidates from the very polls they take, that is not oversight. That is dishonesty.

The Baltimore Sun has taken on CNN and the other "sponsors" of this dishonest debate. They note that by the qualifications listed by CNN, Gary Johnson did qualify for inclusion in the debate. CNN immediately changed the rules to exclude him. They said "this last-minute alteration of the criteria is akin to that most-hated sports analogy: Changing the rules in the middle of the game." As the Sun write: "They shouldn't change the rules to justify the exclusion of a candidate whom they had already improperly decided to exclude." My view: FUCK CNN, they are scum.

Why bother with research, we know we're right.

Chrystian Freeland write a book review for the New York Times, apparently without knowing the facts behind the statements she makes. The book in question is Roger Martin's Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes and What Capitalism Can Learn From the N.F.L.

From the sound of things, and I have not read the book, it sounds as if they are writing about modern, politically-manipulated markets and not markets free of political rigging. Certainly the term "Fixing the Game" implies as much. But don't assume they don't want the rules of the game being "fixed," that is precisely what is being sought. As the review notes:

Mr. Martin’s unifying metaphor — and here I do see a reach for the best-seller list — is a comparison with the National Football League. The league’s commissioners, he argues, are constantly tweaking the rules of the game to ensure the right collective outcome. When a brilliant coach or player devises a technique to strengthen defense, for instance, the commissioners alter the rules to offset that advantage. Capitalism’s rule makers, Mr. Martin believes, must be likewise perpetually alert to these sorts of business innovations — the kind of thing lionized in the traditional business advice best seller — and change the rules of the game to neutralize their impact.

Do you get that? Every time a new innovation comes along government should change the rules of the game to "neutralize" it. This is demanding constant, unending political manipulation of markets by the politically connected. This is precisely how Big Corporations used politics to screw over working people and taxpayers. This is how they transfer wealth from people who have less, to people who have more. This is the dream of the big corporations, the ability to make money through political connections and NOT in a competitive marketplace where you can't trust consumers to buy your product. Better to force them to buy your product, or force them to subsidize you in one of hundreds of ways that politicians invent to hide the real redistribution of wealth and rights.

Wealth and rights have constantly been redistributed in America—just not in the direction that most people believe. There is precious little redistribution of wealth from the wealthy and powerful to the poor and powerless. The bulk of redistribution is the other way around. And the Republicans want to keep it that way—but so does Obama and the Democrats. All of them are in cozy relationships with the powerful, wealthy classes who are the true beneficiaries of government redistribution. Fixing the game is precisely how they manage this slight-of-hand.

Freeland claims that Martin's approach is quite radical, when in reality it is the continuation of the policy for well over a century. But she also writes: "The central insight of his book is that rules of capitalism aren't about God-given rights à la Hayek, Ayn Rand or the Tea Party." Back that up for a second!

First, both Hayek and Rand were atheists, neither believed rights came from a god. The Tea Party, is an amalgam of all sorts of people, most with confused, contradictory premises about politics. They want smaller government except when they don't. They have government programs except when they love them. They want less regulations except when they want more. They are fundamentally, unprincipled, unthinking conservatives who are mad about things in general but don't really want change, other than being in control of the things they don't like.

Most the Tea Party types would be god-addicts who thinks invoking a deity answers every serious question in life. Rights are not that simplistic.

But certainly neither Hayek nor Rand believed in god-given rights. This is part of the unthinking, uninformed, stereotyping the Left uses all the time.

I will accept that Left-wing stereotypes tend, for the most part, to not be as vicious and cruel as those on the Right. Though they do become unhinged emotionally and mentally when discussing Rand and will lie through their eye-teeth about her. I have watched them completely invent stories, or rip comments so out of context as to reverse their original meanings.

Now, Freeland is "global editor at large" for Reuters, a major news wire service. You would think that someone in a position like that would have learned a thing or two about not attributing views to people who don't hold those views. She might have even been told to do a bit of research before making claims. In this case she did neither. She appears to have been looking for some way to attach Hayek and Rand to the Tea Party crowd. Sure, the TP movement have latched onto books by Hayek and Rand but I would bet you that most have never read them. And those who did probably didn't understand half of what they said.

For Hayek they latched onto his book The Road to Serfdom, which doesn't really lay out Hayek's views on the nature of a free society. But then reading The Constitution of Liberty would be beyond most of them. They couldn't get past the first chapter. And while Atlas Shrugged is easier to read it is prone to misinterpretation by people who impose on it what they want to find.

And it isn't only the Left that invents meanings for the book that are not there. I remember one occasion when poor Ayn was being questioned by some loony-Bircher type who insisted the novel was the master plan of the secretive Illuminati conspiracy to take over the world. Ayn truly had no idea what the woman was talking about. Others have taking that view and added in that she was the mistress of a Rothschild in a Jewish plot to take over the world. All of it nonsense, but people love nonsense. On a discussion board for Atlas Shrugged, the movie, I read conservatives who insisted that Ayn was not an atheist, or tried to claim that atheism had nothing to do with her philosophy.

Wingnut News Daily Distorts Parental Dispute

I hate to refer to World Net Daily at all because they are such a dishonest, extreme website and they distort the facts regularly. But I want to mention them today to give you an example of just how dishonest they can be.

Their headline, about a New Hampshire case, implies a girl is being forced to attend a public school because of her mother’s extreme fundamentalism. The article, however, quite carefully avoids giving readers any links to the decision or even giving them a hint as to the actual nature of the case. They quote the theocratic, anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund, which was involved in the case.

The ADF lawyer said: “Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children. Courts can settle disputes, but they cannot legitimately order a child into a government-run school on the basis that her religious views need to mixed with other views.” All of this is true, but the WND article is being dishonest, they are hiding facts from their normally rabid readers.

They mention the fundamentalist mother and the girl’s father are divorced. They mention the mother has “homeschooled” the girl in her fundamentalist faith. And they talked a lot about religion. What they left out was the actual nature of the dispute.

If you read the WND report you would think that the courts stepped in, said they didn’t like the mother’s religion, and then ordered the girl to go to government schools for no other reason. But the courts did not just step in. While ADF laments the destruction of a parent’s right to determine their child’s education they deceitfully hide the fact that this court upheld a parent’s right in this case: the father’s.

The court did not intervene against parental wishes. It got involved to settle a dispute between both parents. The father was worried that his daughter was not learning how to think, but merely being indoctrinated in the mother’s extreme beliefs. Now, whether or not the public school will teach thinking remains to be seen, but the case was a dispute between two parents with joint custodial rights over the child, with the mother having primary physical custody.

This blog reported about the case one year ago, listing it as one of the top ten lies that fundamentalist were telling about America. We reported then:

Brenda Voydatch and Martin Kurowski were divorced parents of a 10-year-old girl. Voydatch wanted the child home-schooled. Kurowski wanted her to attend a school saying her mother deprived her of socialization opportunities. In this dispute over child rearing by two parents, the court asked a guardian ad litem to investigate. That was done and this individual sided with the father in this case. The guardian ad litem mentioned the small girl’s rigidity of beliefs as reflecting the mother’s. That was enough for the Christianists to leap on it.

Kurowski’s attorney, Elizabeth Donovan, says the “the ruling was based on the girl’s isolated learning environment, and not on her mother’s religion.” Donovan also notes that Kurowski never complained about the mother taking the daughter to church. This was purely about education and socialization, not religion. Donovan said: “When two parents with joint decision-making responsibility disagree and they cannot come to any common ground, we submit it the court.” Once again the incident isn’t what it was portrayed to be. And this was the 4th worst incident against Christians—ah, if all persecuted groups only it had it that good.

In all their talk about parental rights, WND ignored the father's rights. Why? Perhaps because he is not a fundamentalist Christian.

When two parents have custody rights over a child and both are allowed to make decisions, they will sometimes disagree. If they cannot come to agreement the courts are asked to adjudicate. Only one parent’s will can be done since they do not agree. WND has every right to prefer the mother because she shares their far right Chistianist views. They have a right to their own opinions and conclusions, but they are claiming a right to their own facts as well, by refusing to tell the truth to their readers about the actual nature of the dispute.

They know the case was not about denying parental rights. It was about settling a dispute between two parents with conflicting wishes. In that sort of case, a court will always end up disappointing one parent while granting the parental rights of the other parent. WND pretended there was only one parent’s rights involved and ignored the other parent. This was the only way they could present their claims in the dishonest manner that did. An honest presentation of the facts would have undermined their political claims so they chose to be dishonest instead. But that is pretty standard with them.

Crappy Network News: CNN

Long ago I realized that CNN was a crappy outlet for objective reports. I remember how they reported on incidents in Africa, which I knew quite a bit about, and they skewed the reporting quite openly. The reporter in question gave an interview in which she said she intentionally doesn't like to give reports that made the government look bad and that she instead, prefers the "new news" which was reports that made the government in question look good.

I've been in a hotel on trip for a couple of days and turn on the news to get some vague idea of what is going on, details I find elsewhere, but at least the main reports I can get. And since the time of day when I watch varies I turn on CNN, realizing I will get pathetic reporting from their news anchors.

Yesterday they had a report on the budget crisis in Wisconsin and showed the state workers on the floor of the state legislature disrupting and screaming. They then had a reporter lying through her eye-teeth by claiming that higher wages for bureaucrats means higher wages for all Americans. She also invented a claim that the average salary of Americans has declined as the percentage of union members in the workforce has declined. She actually said that wages are down in absolute terms without taking inflation into account. She claimed the average salary is now just $34,000 per year gross, down 10% from a decade ago. The last figure I saw was for 2005 and it said the average was $42,028. Remember this is average.

Then today they had a Lisa Desjardins on who was reporting on the federal budget and negotiations in DC to trim tiny, tiny amounts from the budget—about 1% in total—which the media calls "massive" cuts. Desjardins was saying that without the budget passing the government closes down. Well, that is never quite true, unfortunately. But we know what she means. Then she said something astounding in reference to government workers having an unpaid vacation. "All my friends and neighbors ask me, 'Am I going to have a job?'" I was rather astounded.

I know hundreds of people and I don't know anyone who works for the federal government and know one person who works for a state agency. I would never say that "all" my friends and neighbors are government employees. What kind of universe does she live in when everyone, or even most people, that she knows are government employees?

That report was then followed by a report, again, on the Wisconsin budget issues. This was a series of talking heads, about half a dozen of them. Every single one was a trade unionist predicting the end of the world, except for two minor Hollywood actors who predicted apocalypse if government employees are not allowed to hold taxpayers hostage. So, in two days they had two reports on the same issue. Both reports presented only one side of the debate. Yesterday they did it using bogus statistics and today it was by only have representatives of the trade unions on the screen.

This is what CNN calls objective reporting.

Why is the New York Times so silent?

Where is the New York Times when it comes to the testimony regarding Obamacare that was heard yesterday in Congress?

The Story

Associated Press reports that Medicare's "indepedent economic expert," Chief Actuary Richard Foster was testifying before Congress yesterday. He was asked about two of the major selling points that Obama has attached to his health care regulations. Obama has repeatedly told the public that his measures would reduce health care costs and that people would be able to keep the insurance they have. Critics, including this blog, have said that neither of those points are true. They are selling points, political campaigning points, etc., but they are not accurate.

Asked if he could give true or false assessments to these claims the government's own expert said that regarding costs, "I would say false, more so than true." In other words, the health care reforms will actually push up health care costs, not reduce them. As for keeping their own insurance, he said that is "not true in all cases." It certainly isn't. But to be fair no one said that everyone would lose insurance they like. Over time more and more will but certainly in the short term it will be limited numbers. What will happens is that insurance options will be reduced on a regular basis and you will face a dwindling pool of options, making it harder and harder to find one that fits your needs the best. Government is notorious at believing in one-size-fits-all" theories. It does with education, social security, welfare benefits, etc. It really has to since government is like a lumbering dinosaur moving about in a small space, it can't make individual exceptions because it wouldn't be able to move fast enough to make decisions. They would accumulate and backlog the system. So, everyone is forced into tiny boxes.

When You're Good to Mama, Mama's Good to You

The problems with the tiny boxes is that they are designed by special interest groups that most directly benefit by changes in the system. If the pharmaceutical lobby wants to push certain types of drugs, over others, they lobby for coverage for those drugs while others, which may be cheaper, are ignored. Consider the expansion of medicare that Big PhRMA pushed during the Bush administration.

Take an opportunist politician like Billy Tauzin as an example. Tauzin had been a Congressman from Louisiana for years, as a Democrat. When the relgiously-motivated Southerners decided to use Big Government to regulate morality more the South went Republican. So did Tauzin who quickly switched political parties so he could stay in office. Tauzin was a major player in Congress on pushing through the Medicare drug expansion and was co-sponsor of the bill. Before his term in office was finished, but after the "reforms" were law, Tauzin announced his resignation from the House, where his salary was $174,000 per year. He already had a new job lined up with PhRMA which would pay him $2.5 million per year. As USA Today reported at the time, Tauzin, "stepped down earlier this year as chairman of the House committee that regulates the pharmaceutical industry, [and] will become the new president and CEO of the drug industry's top lobbying group."

Tauzin had survived cancer and was recovering when he made the announcement. He said: "The question is what I wanted to do with the new life God had given me. This is the mission I want to take on." I'm thrilled to know that Jehovah—God of the universe —is concerned about lobbying for the pharmaceutical industry.

This illustrates a key fallacy in progressive thinking. Progressives are right on many, many things. They generally want the right results but they simply don't know how to get there and are blind to the institutional failures of big government. They demanded lots of regulations on the pharmaceutical industry and political oversight of the industry. They got it. Then it turns out that the head of the committee, who had been both a Democrat and a Republican, was so much in the pocket of the industry that they rewarded him with a $2.5 million per year position. Tauzin worked for them for five years and then retired with a cushy nest-egg not counting the pension he'll collect from Congress for all his valiant efforts at regulating Big PhRMA.

The sad reality is that the regulatory state almost always ends up in the hands of the people it was set up to regulate. There is a species of businessmen who long ago discovered that they can increase profits more through manipulating the political process, and skewing markets, than they can do in markets that are not open to political manipulation. Right at the birth of the Progressive Era, when these regulations were created, this sort of manipulation was taking place. Big Business was a major funder of efforts to regulate Big Business, because they knew they would effectively write the regulations.

Why Big Business Promotes the Regulatory State

Left-wing historian Gabriel Kolko did an exhaustive study of the origins of the regulatory state in America and says most people view the period as if it were a mirror image of itself. For instance, "it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it." He wrote: "It is business control over politics (and by 'business' I mean the major economic interests) rather than political regulation of the economy that is the significant phenomenon of the Progressive Era." The reason for that is not hard to understand, "regulation itself was invariably controlled by leaders of the regulated industry, and directed toward ends they deemed acceptable or desirable. In part this came about because the regulatory movements were usually initiated by the dominant business to be regulated."

My guess is that Obamacare will end up dominated by a few big insurance companies who will continue to tweak the system to shut out smaller competition. While the insurance industry appears competitive it is largely illusionary in that, in regards to health insurance, individuals are forbidden to buy from out-of-state insurers, which dramatically limits the options given the consumer. Limiting options is what the insurance industry has demanded and what the politicians want. Sure, the industry will scream and holler during the forging of the regulatory chains but that is to help guarantee the chains will quite profitable for themselves while restricting the movement on smaller competitors. Regulation, in reality, leads to de facto cartelization, which is why I support depoliticized markets instead.

Foster said that around 7 million Medicare recipients who are in private "Medicare Advantage" programs, will have to find other coverage because the new policies will raise premiums and causes some insurers to drop coverage completely.

So Where is the New York Times?

This is a major story in regards to Obamacare, so precisely who is covering it? We had the Associated Press report, which means it went out on the wires to the major media outlets of the country, yesterday. A conservative columnist at the Washington Post blogged about it. The Tucson Citizen didn't actually report on it, but they did link to a blog talking about it on their own blog. The Boston Globe did run a truncated version of the AP story. However, the story was not run in the main news section, or even under the politics section. It was isolated in the "Home/Lifestyle/Health" section instead.

The so-called "newspaper of record," the New York Times doesn't appear to have anything about the story. An on-line search, at their own website, indicates that "Richard Foster" has not been mentioned by the paper in the last 30 days. The Associated Press story was yesterday so clearly they decided NOT to report to the public that two major talking points of Obamacare were wrong. The Los Angeles Times ran the AP story saying: "The landmark legislation probably won't hold costs down, and it won't let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it." So did the San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald. But no matter what search terms I use, the New York Times site shows nothing about this important testimony.

The birth of a panic.

I am betting that this story will go viral precisely because it feeds into the political ideology of people. (Actually this story is already viral, with tens of thousands of websites reporting it.)

The town of Ilulissat, Greenland got glimmers of sunlight two days earlier than normal. So it was panic time. As scientists note this was the only place that got sunlight earlier than normal so it had nothing to do with the earth tilting at a different angle and the sun isn't moving.

But there is a class of panic-mongers always ready to jump on anything and everything as proof that we need to implement their political agenda: that is the global warming hysterics. Here is how Huffington Post explains it:

But the most troublesome theory may also be the truth. Some scientists suggest that the sun rose early due to global warming, namely, Greenland's melting ice capes.

What sort of reporting uses the phrase "may also be the truth" and why did they say this. This certainly wouldn't be the most troublesome theory, the earth shifting on its axis would be a tad bit more upsetting and more obvious.

Huffington Post says there "is some debate" about this. Actually no. They warming hysterics say the sun appeared early because ice sheets melted and are lower than normal. Even if that is the case it doesn't make sense in this case. The ice sheets near this town are to the east. Given the location of the town, north of the Arctic circle, the sun rises almost due south. The ice sheets could disappear completely and it wouldn't change sunrise for this town.

There is one final, conclusive proof that lower ice sheets had nothing to do with the sunrise being earlier than usual. The first day the "sun rose" was January 11th, not January 13th. So what happened January 12th? Nothing. No sun rise whatsoever. And on the 13th the sunrise appeared to be later than normal. Apparently the ice sheets grew substantially in a 24 hour period, if they are the culprits as the hysterics are theorizing. If lower ice sheets explains the sunrise on the 11th, but there was none on the 12th and it was late on the 13th, then the same ice sheets had to have massively expanded. Of course, ice sheets have nothing to do with it.

What is interesting is the dishonest way Huffington Post reports this story. They have one sentence saying that a scientist explains "that the sun's rays may have have a stronger bend than usual, resulting in the sun appearing earlier." But then they have two paragraphs talking about global warming. They then start listing various things to blame on warming including blizzards, faster satellites, allergies, wildfires and "the potential reintroduction of smallpox" and then say: "And now, we just may have to add 'early sunrise' to the list."

Their source is LiveScience. But LiveScience offers a more realistic take than Huffington Post.

LiveScience says experts agree this is "not a sign of earlier spring around the Northern Hemisphere." The appearance of the sunlight was restricted to this one area of the world only. One scientist told LiveScience the cause was most likely "the refraction of sunlight at the horizon." LiveScience writes: "Most of the other scientists interviewed agreed this was the most likely culprit."

So, most the scientists said it was light refraction and not global warming. Yet Huffington Post spends considerable more time theorizing that warming is the culprit and briefly mentions refraction, which is the "most likely" cause. They spend more time on warming, which couldn't be involved in this situation, and hardly mention the "most likely" reason it happened. But then there is no political agenda attached to light refraction—at least not yet.

As bad as the Huffington Post report was, Time was even worse. They use a Reuters report on the incident that says: "Perhaps the most convincing explanation is Greenland's melting polar ice caps." They offer no source whatsoever for why this is the most convincing explanation given the ice sheets are in the wrong direct to be a factor.

Where did Time get their story? According to the web report "via Huffington Post." Follow how this game is played.

First, LiveScience reports the sun appeared two days early, says that there were many theories, dismisses that warming was involved and says the "most likely" cause was stronger light refraction than normal. Huffington Post rewrites the story, de-emphasizes the "most likely" cause and spend an inordinate amount of space on global warming which was dismissed in the original story as being a factor. Then the Reuters reporter, Bob Strong, uses the Huffington Post article, not the original source, to rewrite the story. In his rewrite the "most likely" cause gets NO mention whatsoever. And the theory that was dismissed in the original article becomes "the most convincing explanation" as a result.

It appears to me that Huffington Post rewrote the original story to fit their political agenda. But the Reuters reporter is guilty of sloppy journalism, or more likely, lazy-ass journalism. He read the Huffington Post distortion and simply didn't bother to go to the original source to see what it really said. And then, probably because it fit his politics, he took the HP distortion and reported it as if that is what the original article said. And the false story is spreading, a combination of the fact that most journalists are lazy and most believe warming is a threat so anything confirming that must be truth.

The Daily Mail, who were recently took on due to the bizarre reporting of Peter Hitchens, runs the story claiming that "the most likely explanation is that it is down to the lower height of melting icecaps allowing the sun's light to penetrate through earlier." There is no mention to the original article reporting that the "most likely" explanation was light refraction. Light refraction doesn't sell newspaper, fear stories about warming does.

The UK website, FirstPost runs even further with the bogus take on the story. "Scientists claim to have discovered more evidence of global warming, aster the sun rose two days early in Greenland, apparently because melting glaciers lowered the horizon." This article briefly mentions light refraction as a "possible" explanation right after mention "conspiracy theorists blaming everything from chemtrails to build-up of methane in the atmosphere or a shift in the earth's axis."

The European Union Times actually said this incident "shocked scientist the world over as this historic event leaves many wondering if, in fact, the End of Days are now truly here." Okay, clearly this is a kook site. But so is the Daily Mail.

Here we witness the birth of a panic story that is completely bogus. We witness the distortions being introducted by Huffington Post, we then see other reporters using the HP story as the basis for their own story. But they tweak the story even more. Soon the story is spreading like wildfire that warming melted the ice in Greenland, lowering the horizon, causing the sun to come up early. That, in spite of pretty convincing evidence, that such a claim is entirely false. The theory dismissed by most scientists originally is now reported as the "most likely explanation" while what scientists actually said was the likely cause goes unreported.

Welcome to the modern world of journalism.

Photo: This photo is not Greenland, it is just to illustrate the story.

The Media and the State

Left journalist Glenn Greenwald and libertarian Matt Welch discuss the current state of American politics. This is one hour but an hour well spent.

What I found most fascinating was their discussion of the relationship of the media to the State. Both note how the media tends to defend the political class. Through most of history the media was seen as a check on the State, a watchdog on politicians.

Thomas Jefferson suffered one of the most concerted press campaigns in history yet he remained a strong defender of a free press. He went so far as to say that if he had to choose between a government with no newspapers, or a society with newspaper but no government, he would take the latter.

But the media, of late, has shifted. Instead of being the bane to politicians it is their ally. And Greenwald and Welch suggest that the reason is that the make up of journalists has shifted. Many journalists no longer see their job as adversarial when it comes to the ruling elites. Quite the contrary, they see themselves as part of that elite. They are defenders of the regime because they view themselves as part of the social elite who know best how to run the lives of others. Certainly when this blogger was studying journalism at university the shift was already apparent.

I attended a decent state university, not one of the Ivy League elite schools. But even in that journalism department many of my fellow students came from the well-off strata of society. I came from a rather working class, middle class family. My father was a fireman, my mother a nurse, by grandfather still worked in the steel mill and both grandmothers worked as clerks at a major department stores. My fellow students were, however, often from much wealthier sections of society. And these were the ones who, for the most part, were heading for minor journalistic posts. The sought-after journalism majors were those who attended Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc.

To a large extent this meant that the most sough-after journalists came from precisely the same social circles as the people they were covering. The politicians they were covering could be former classmates, even relatives, at worst they were people who shared similar values, who saw themselves as part of the intellectual classes endowed with a superior ability to determine what is best for others. This does not mean this social elite is always wrong, sometimes they are quite correct in what they are trying to do. But what it means is that do not see media and government in adversarial positions. And that changes how the media reacts when faced with government overstepping its bounds. They will tend to be protective of their own class first, and journalists seconds.

In recent days we witnessed precisely this happening. Consider Prop 19 in California, which would have legalized marijuana usage. The political elite wanted to keep their powers in this field and the "liberal" media, instead of taking the "liberal" position of defending freedom of choice, defended the State and almost universally opposed the measure.

With the Wikileaks scandal we again see a widespread consensus among the media that this is a terrible assault on the State and that the State's secrecy must be protected at all costs. And the recent outrage concerned the TSA's new intrusive policies was dismissed by the journalistic elite. Many editorialized that the public should just shut up and endure it.

Even where the social elites tends to be correct they are still being true to their own social class. Consider the matters of prejudice and bigotry. Contrary to Left ideology the working classes are not defenders of the downtrodden and oppressed. The working class tends to be highly prejudicial and bigoted. This applies religiously (such as toward Jews, Muslims), economically (illegal immigrants, and foreign competitive trade) and sexually (gays, transgendered people), as well as racially (blacks, Mexicans).

The social elites share some such prejudices but in a more genteel way. They would be less crass and obvious and, in many cases would overlook these "undesired" traits provided the individual in question shared the correct cultural values, especially about the role of a social elite. The media, as part of the upper classes today, is relatively unified behind the case for marriage equality. And here, I think, they are correct.

But this is not surprising. The social elites have always been less horrified at the existence of homosexual people than the working classes. Revolutionary Marxist have tried to claim that the oppression of gays is a phenomena of capitalism and that the worker's vanguard would defend them. But in reality the "fag bashers" in society tend to come from the lower classes, not the upper classes.

This has been the case for a very long time. The Oscar Wilde trials is an example. When it was clear that Wilde had been guilty of violating "sodomy" laws in England the reactions of the classes were quite different. While the upper classes acted horrified they also took their time to bring the matter to court. It was made quite clear to Wilde that he would be arrested and he was given time to pack his things and cross the channel to France in order to escape the ordeal. Wilde, under pressure from Alfred Douglas, didn't take advantage of the escape route conveniently offered to him. But while Wilde foolishly stayed in England many other gay men were heading for the coast in case the campaign expanded. What most offended the social elite was not that Wilde had relations with men but that his relationships tended to pay little attention to class distinctions.

I think Greenwald is correct when he notes that journalists today see their position as being part of the ruling class. This is especially true of the journalists at the top media outlets: the networks, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. And that changes the nature of the media and its relationship to the political classes. This will dramatically reduce criticism of the political elite and turn the media, not into an adversary, but into the lap-dog of government.

Crappy reporting sells but is it journalism?

I've seen this story making the rounds of the major media outlets. I specifically remember the Washington Post making this claim, and now Time magazine does as well. The claim: "Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1 in 5 sexually active gay and bisexual men in America are HIV-positive but that 44% of them don't know it."

What's wrong with that claim? Simple: It isn't true. This is not what the CDC said. But once the media starts spreading a false story they all tend to jump in line and do the same thing. Time is repeating the falsehood that the Washington Post started: "One in five gay men in the United States has HIV and almost half of those who carry the virus are unaware that they are infected..."

In both articles, with the sensational false claim in the first paragraph, you have to start reading down the article to discover facts that dispute the lede of the story.

The original claim is that 20% of all gay men across the US are HIV positive. But farther down the story you discover that the CDC tested 8,000 gay men in 21 major cities only. In other words the demographics of the test population was skewed to the major cities only, thus excluding all the gay men who live in rural areas or the suburbs.

Quite honestly speaking the lifestyle of gay men in urban areas is vastly different than that of gay men living on a farm in Kansas—just as the lifestyle of young straights in the major cities is different from their counterparts in the rest of the country.

You simply can not draw nation-wide conclusions by only surveying a very specific subset of the population.

One of the major differences is that the average age of people living in major cities, among the gay population at least, would tend to be younger and thus more sexually active. Living in a major city is not unusually for gay men, but many tend to move out of the cities as they age. Many, contrary to popular assumptions, never move to a major urban area in the first place. In addition the risks are not spread equally among all races. HIV infections are higher in the black community than in the white community and blacks are more likely to live in major cities than are whites.

Everything about this study skews it toward the highest infection possible. But the CDC is not to blame, that is what they were studying. It is the sloppy reporting of the media that is creating a false meme that the Right will use in their anti-gay campaigns. The CDC actually warned readers of the report that "these findings are limited to men who frequented MSM-identified venues (most of which were bars [45%] and dance clubs [22%])...."

By MSM they mean men who have sex with other men. The CDC found that a lot of men who are sexually active with other men deny that they are gay—this has been especially true in the black community—just ask Bishop Long if you don't believe me.

That reveals that not only is the sample intentionally skewed toward urban settings, but it is also skewed to a specific subgroup of urban gay men—those who frequent bars and dance clubs. Again this skews in favor of younger, single, more sexually adventurous young men. Older gay men in relationships, who rarely visit the clubs, are left out.

This one in five infection rate isn't even indicative of gay men in 21 major cities. Don't bother reading the mainstream media to find that out. The articles I read left out the part of the survey being done in gay bars and dance clubs. So, while they did mention the survey was done in 21 major cities, they left out that only a very specific subgroup of gay men were approached for the study: younger men who frequent gay bars and dance clubs.

To say that what is true for young gay men who frequent gay bars is true, on average, for all gay men in the United States is not just sloppy journalism, it is gross misreporting of the facts. This would be similar to surveying a frat house keg party in order to determine the drinking habits of the average American. Yet you will find the major media outlets making the same mistake. Time and the Washington Post are not local rags produced by amateurs.

The CDC actually warned readers not to jump to the false conclusion that this reflects the entire gay population of America. They wrote, "the results are not representative of all MSM..." The CDC actually puts the infection rate of all gay men at around half of what this survey finds, but even that is problematic.

The problem with surveys of the gay population is that being gay isn't like being black, it is something people can hide, and do. There are huge numbers of gay people in the country who are completely unconnected with the larger gay population. They may live in isolated locations, or simply live socially isolated lives.

Any study of the gay community goes to where the surveyors can get answers with a minimum amount of effort. And that means in the concentrated gay "ghettos" in the major urban areas. Here are some facts:

1. We simply don't know for sure how many gay men there are in the United States.
2. We are not likely to know for a very long time, if ever.
3. It is almost impossible to do a representative survey of the gay population, if not impossible.
4. What surveys we can do are all skewed toward one end of the lifestyle spectrum while entirely excluding those on the other end.

This doesn't mean the study is useless. Understanding the limitations of the study allows us to make reasonable conclusions, but what the mainstream media is reporting are unreasonable conclusions. The study shows that educational efforts directed toward young, sexually active, gay men in urban settings are not as successful as they should be.

If we assume that the study shows where new efforts might be necessary, then it fills its purpose. But what we can't do is jump to conclusions about the gay population as a whole. In other words the worst thing you can get out of the study is precisely what the major media outlets were reporting. That is not an indictment of the CDC but of the mainstream media in the United States.

Photo 1: those who got surveyd. Photo 2: those who didn't, to illustrate the point.

New film attacks Darwin, evolution and Mencken.

The Religious Right is about to unleash a new drama, based loosely on the Scopes Trial. The purpose I suspect is to make Darwin and evolution look bad by weaving in a fictional story about eugenics and forced sterilization. Let us first cover the Scopes Trial.

Tennessee had passed an anti-evolution. The ACLU wanted to test the law and John T. Scopes, a teacher in Dayton, volunteered for the case. One of the great puffing baboons of that era, Williams Jennings Bryan, a man who was a socialist and a fundamentalist, rode into town like a tinhorn messiah to save the law. Clarence Darrow, a political ally of Bryan’s, but an opponent of his fundamentalism, defended Scopes.

The great libertarian writer, H.L. Mencken, came to Dayton to cover the story for the newspaper column that he wrote. A fantastic film was made of the story, Inherit the Wind, which also weaved in fictional characters but often used verbatim transcripts from the trial as script. The film, however, was clearly a dramatization of the story and not meant as history. Few people with a lick of sense take their history from such dramas. However, fundamentalists have hated the film since it first showed up on the movie screens their preachers forbade them to see. And it appears they are now getting even.

A new fictionalized account of the trial has been made. This version is written by Fred Foote, who also financed the film through a family-run foundation “which supports Christian-based artistic and educational endeavors. “

Foote says he wrote about “how the media gave the whole world the wrong story about the Scopes trial.” One paper says that Fundy Fred’s version of the story, Alleged, shows the “trial was actually a tool of the progressive elite of the time, to promote Darwinism for its own darker purpose.” The creationist web site answersingenesis says the film “reveals how the major media delivered a distorted view of the trial in an attempt to attack biblical Christianity.” Foote, shall we say, is a very right-wing character. He gave $2000 to the theocratically inclined Rick Santorum campaign. He also gave money to Keith Butler, a fundamentalist minister seeking the Republican nomination for Senator in Michigan, as well as to Rep. Dick Chrysler, one of the co-sponsors of the anti-gay “Defense of Marriage Act.”

Foote needs a villain, so he attacks the libertarian Mencken. “Mencken was the greatest reporter of the time, who almost singlehandedly shaped this story for public consumption. If he didn’t invent spin, he was an early master of the art. That became the core of my story: the kid who comes under his sway and how far he’ll go on that path if it conflicts with his own views of what’s right and wrong.”

Trailers for this film indicate that it is about dishonest bias in the media, with Mencken as the prime culprit. The fictional Charles Anderson comes under the evil influence of Mencken. As the film’s website portrays it, this is about how Anderson “is torn between his love for the more principled Rose, his fiancée, and the escalating moral compromises that he is asked to make as the eager protégé of H.L. Mencken.”

In addition to Rose and Charles, the script invents Abigail, the half-black, half-sister of Rose who is to be sterilized by the eugenicists who are the result of Darwinism, which the nasty, biased, dishonest Mencken supports. However, this could not have taken place in reality, at least not in Tennessee where Dayton is located. Many states had laws allowing forced sterilization, but Tennessee had no such law and no compulsory sterilizations were performed there.

Foote likes to talk about “truth” and getting at the facts, but he write a screenplay that intentionally distorts history. Foote says he decided “the best way to tell the real story is do another movie.” But, apparently the “real story” requires him to make false claims about Mencken in order to promote his own anti-Darwinian agenda.

Consider poor Mencken: he was a columnist and to say he was biased is like saying Billy Graham is theological. Mencken’s job was to write biased, one-sided takes on the issues of the day from his own libertarian viewpoint. He was not a historian. He was a columnist expressing personal opinions—opinions worth reading for the sheer amusement value alone. Of course he was biased, he was supposed to be.

From what Foote and his website say, the film portrays Mencken as pushing the fictional Anderson into making ethical compromises for the sake of Mencken’s progressive agenda. In reality there was no Anderson and Mencken did no such thing. But Mencken’s columns wounded fundamentalists and they have never forgiven him.

But Mencken was no eugenicist. His American Mercury magazine published one of the first major blasts on eugenics in an article by Raymond Pearl, entitled “The Biology of Superiority.” Conservative Jonah Goldberg notes that Clarence Darrow, the great defender in the Scopes trial, wrote “his anti-eugenics piece for HL Mencken’s American Mercury, hardly a journal that spoke authoritatively for elite progressive opinion…” The two major Darwinists in Foote’s film were both anti-eugenics with Mencken publishing articles attacking eugenics.

Melissa Hendricks wrote of Pearl’s article and Mencken in Johns Hopkins Magazine:

So when Pearl decided to expound the fallacies in eugenics, he turned to the Mercury. In 1924, he sent a letter to Mencken, proposing the critique. "It has seemed to me for a long time that there is a dreadful lot of bilge talked by the self-constituted leaders of the eugenics movement," he wrote. Mencken accepted the proposal, but first he would publish his own essay, "On Eugenics." In typical Mencken style, he uncloaked those who claimed to have inherited their superiority, informing his readers: "Beethoven was the grandson of a cook and the son of a drunkard, and Lincoln's forebears for many generations were nobodies.

Mencken was actually one of the first to ridicule the eugenics movement. He did so years before the Scopes Trial. His 1918 work Damn! A Book of Calumny ridiculed eugenicists for believing “that a physically healthy man is the best fitted to survive. This is true of rats and pediculae, but not of the higher animals… In these higher animals one looks for more subtle qualities chiefly of the spirit.” Edwin Black, who authored a major history of the eugenics movement, War Against the Weak, says that one major eugenicist, Harry Laughlin, was the subject of “a forty-seven-page lampoon written under the pseudonym Ezekiel Cheever, who in reality was either the irreverent Baltimore Sun commentator H.L. Mencken or one of his associates.”

The textbook used on evolution in the Tennessee schools did promote eugenics, but apparently Bryan didn’t find that disturbing. He never once pointed out the section on eugenics and never attacked it—just the teaching of evolution and how evolution leads to moral decay. The creationist Discovery Institute published a piece by conservative Benjamin Wiker, saying that that the text used in Tennessee was “offensively racist and blatantly eugenic” How offensive and blatant they were to Bryan we don’t know, but we know he either didn’t notice the remarks or, if he did, didn’t find them offensive.

This is not to say that people associated with the trial did not express sentiments akin to eugenics. But it wasn’t Scopes who did so, or Mencken or Darwin either. The guilty party was Bryan’s wife, Mary. Bryan’s biographer, Michael Kazin wrote that Mary called the “mountain people” who flocked to her husband “pathetic” and ridiculed how they dressed. Kazin writes: “The wife of America’s leading foe of Darwinism thought so little of the crowd, most of whom admired her husband, that she scribbled a phrase any eugenicist could applaud.” Mary Bryan wrote that ‘this mass of people… have no real part in American life” but “marry and intermarry until the stock is very much weakened.”

Bryan himself expressed sentiments not far from eugenics as well. He wrote that he was proud to be a “member of the greatest of all the races, the Caucasian race.” He called whites the “advanced race” and supported segregation and denying blacks the right to vote in areas where they lived in large numbers.

Certainly the idea that the Scopes Trial was a battle between Progressive elites with some dark agenda (eugenics) and good Christians is wrong. Bryan, not Mencken, was the progressive. Mencken, as Forbes.com noted “first rose to prominence as a Progressive Era dissenter.” Another writer says, “Mencken was a libertarian to the core. Nothing could be more absurd than the claim that he somehow resembled the ‘progressive’ liberals of today.”

While Mencken was an opponent of the progressive movement, the same can’t be said for Bryan, who was often the most prominent spokesman for the progressive agenda. Bryan and Darrow, another progressive, were old friends and allies who shared common political goals. They differed on the criminalization of teaching evolution. It is true that many of these progressives were racists and supported eugenics, but Bryan, not Mencken, was associated with progressivism.

Foote says his film is not a rebuttal to the classic 1960 film Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy, Fredric March and Gene Kelly. That film was a fictionalized account of the Scopes Trial and not history. It invented dialogue, plot lines and created additional drama that actually didn’t exist —such as the relationship between Scopes and the daughter of a creationist minister. If Inherit the Wind could fictionalize, then why can’t Foote?

Obviously he can do it, but the question is whether he is being ethical. I think he isn’t. The major difference between the films is that Kramer’s was openly fictionalized while Foote pretends his is the “real story.” You won’t see a character named Clarence Darrow in the Kramer film. Neither will you see characters named Mencken, Bryan, or Scopes.

Foote’s fictionalized version, however, pretends to be the “real story,” not a dramatization based on a true story. Kramer’s 1960 film had the integrity to make its fictional elements clear, by given the characters fictional names. But the Foote screenplay is about Mencken, Darrow and Bryan.

The extent of hypocrisy in the Christian producers of Alleged can be seen in their using the film’s website to encourage readers to compare Kramer’s fictionalized account “with the facts of the actual Scopes trial.” But why? Kramer didn’t claim to give the “real story.” Where does the film site send people for the “truth” about the Scopes trial? Try a site called TheMonkeyTrial.com. And the registration contact for that site just happens to be Frederick C. Foote—the same Fred Foote who wrote this screenplay.

Mencken wrote his scathing accounts of the fundamentalist mind set and now some adherents of the faith he ridiculed are finally getting even through a time-honored method of Christian apologetics: faking history.

Newspapers admits their mountain was just a molehill

Recently I discussed the controversy at the University of Hawaii over a student who had used an empty classroom to film himself in a rather explicit episode of self-pleasuring. The newspaper had published an absurd paragraph in their "crime" section making unsubstantiated claims.

This blog looked at those claims and showed how absurd they were. I won't take credit for it but apparently the university newspaper now agrees fully with my analysis. They have apologized and retracted their claims completely.

About the claim that Tim, or Speedostudent, was endangering others, they now write: "There has been no such finding by the UH administration that there has been any endangerment..." Of course, even if the administration said their was, that wouldn't make it the case.

In regards to the exaggeration of this taking place in "many classrooms" they now concede that is "an inaccurate conflation of the material found on the blog, where a clear distinction between photos and a single video in one classroom is made." That is badly worded and confusing. To be precise there was one explicit video made in one classroom. There were photos of Speedostudent in a Speedo posing in other classrooms but nothing sexual was taking place.

As for their warning to not approach the student, they now admit this "represents a physical danger to other students, a claim for which the paper provided no evidence.

As for their use of terms like "sexually deviant" and "psychotic behavior" they said that they have "no medical qualifications to make such a judgment." Even if they did have the qualifications, the facts don't fit the terms.

They also apologize for something I did not realize, not being familiar with their paper. The material appeared in a section of their paper dealing entirely with criminal incidents on campus—the mere existence of such a column would clue me to avoid that campus. I was a copy editor at my university paper and we never had enough incidents of crime to warrant a regular column. The paper admits that by including this in the crime section they "suggested that a crime was committed." They now admit that is no investigation based on a criminal action involved.

In general, they have conceded all the points I made. Of course, I'm not sure that the apology is sufficient for the student they smeared.

Anatomy of how to bias a news report.

The New York Times has an article about opposition to a municipal bus service that the city of Johannesburg wants to open, that will run from Soweto to Sandton. The article presents opposition to the bus service as racist. In my opinion the article is a bit biased and presents a distorted picture of the situation.

First, the story they run focuses on a black woman who lives in Soweto and travels daily to the Sandton area. The article refers to Sandton as the business center. This is now true since the former business center is central Johannesburg was destroyed by crime. Sandton, which had primarily been the shopping center of the northern suburbs took on greater importance as the government allowed Johannesburg to slip into chaos. Even the Johannesburg Stock Exchange left Johannesburg for the safer climate of Sandton.

The article refers to the long trip that Susan Hanong takes from Soweto. Depending on where in Soweto she lives she could be as close as 15 miles away from Sandton. Soweto is a massive township so, if she lived on the extreme south eastern side of the side she would be a long distance away. The article refers to how apartheid is responsible for causing "millions of blacks" to to "still live in townships far from centers of commerce and employment."

That is only partially true and in this case not true at all. Remember that while Sandton is now the business center of the Johannesburg area this simply wasn't the case that many years ago. The business center used to be central Johannesburg, which is as close as 7 miles from areas of Soweto. Out-of-control crime, under the African National Congress drove the business center of Johannesburg out of the city center. That doubled the distance to the business center for Sowetans. Quite truthfully, one reason that Sowetans have to travel so far to the business center can't be blamed on apartheid.

There is another important point missing from the article entirely. While the whole scenario they present is of blacks from the townships having to travel so far to get to Sandton they neglect to mention that another, very large black township, is literally minutes from Sandton, that is Alexandra. It is only 3 miles from Sandton. I have been to both Alexandra and to Soweto and have some idea of the distances from both to Sandton.

The article implies that Susan Honang is forced by the legacy of apartheid to live in Soweto and travel long distances to Sandton. This simply is not the case, not with Alexandra just a short distance away. But, more importantly, all the so-called "white suburbs" have large numbers of black residents even if we exclude the wealthy ANC elite who got rich through politics and bought homes there.

And, since the end of apartheid some years ago the entire central part of Johannesburg is now mainly black. When I first stayed in the Hillbrow section of Johannesburg it was about 60% black at the time. It is only about 4 or 5 miles from Sandton.

The idea that the legacy of apartheid is somehow responsible for forcing black South Africans to live a great distance from Sandton simply is not true. If Susan Honang's salary is sufficient for her to live in Soweto it is more than enough for her to live in Alexandra which is a a few minutes from Sandton. Apartheid was an evil system, that did many horrible things. It deserved to die. But Honang's travel problems are not a result of apartheid, not in this case.

The article focuses on a few residents of the northern suburbs who opposed the bus system. In fact the main opposition won't be from whites. It will be from the black taxi industry which is a large, thriving business. These are not taxis as we know them, but more like shuttle buses. They are minivans that crisscross South Africa offering a relatively inexpensive form of transportation. There was a municipal transit system which was boycotted by blacks. These municipal services were terribly run and the reason the taxi industry burst into existence was precisely because such government services did not meet the needs of black South Africans.

A friend of mine took the municipal service to work in downtown Johannesburg every day. And without fail I would get phone calls from him asking me to pick him up because the bus driver for that route simply didn't turn up for work that day. On pay days the drivers showed up in the morning, got their pay, and they took off for the weekend to spend the money, leaving riders stranded. This was not unusual with government transit in South Africa.

The taxi industry, however, has been rife with violence, as the Times accurately portrayed. But that violence is the direct result of the collapse of policing since the ANC took power. Law enforcement doesn't exist to a large degree so taxi drivers will fight for territory because there is nothing to prevent it from happening. If the Johannesburg metro worked on policing more it would make transit much safer for everyone involved.

The other thing that struck me as strange is that the salary listed for Honang seems to be on the low side. They say she makes $160 per month. If she worked six day weeks, as a domestic cleaner, that comes to about R50 per day. That is less than what was paid domestic workers over a decade ago. When I left Hillbrow, due to the crime, for the eastern suburbs I rented a property near Rhodes Park and within minutes of moving in had a woman at the door asking for a job. I paid her the salary that is mentioned in this article, but then it was almost two decades ago and in addition she had living quarters on the property, rent free.

I also checked the rates being requested, and offered, for domestic workers in the norther suburbs of Johannesburg. And they are well above R50 per day. One job offered R90 per day. One domestic cleaner was asking R160 per day. A houseman, who was working for an American family was looking for a new live-in position at R2500 to R3000 per month. The lowest salary I saw offered was R850 per month but that include housing and food. Another asked for someone for 25 hours per week for R1800 per month, about 33% higher than Honang supposedly gets for her full time job. I couldn't find a single domestic job, where salary is mentioned, that paid as low as what Honang was receiving.

It simply seems to me that the New York Times reporter used an atypical situation to illustrate the story, thus distorting the facts. Honang lives much farther from the business center than would have been the case during apartheid, because the business center moved northward under ANC control. The article made it sound as if there were no "black townships" near the Sandton area when one of the largest, unmentioned in the story, is literally adjacent to Sandton. And the article picked a woman who seems to be earning unusually low wages as a domestic worker, a salary that is literally two decades out of date. What is surprising is that Honang salary, supposedly after 25 years of employment for the same family, is barely above South Africa's minimum wage. And, if you want some politically incorrect information, a researcher with the University of the Witswatersrand, herself black, spent two months interviewing domestic workers in Soweto and found that most preferred white employers over black employers. (There is a large, wealthy class in Soweto who hire domestic servants.)

And, for a very funny comic strip, which looks at the relationship between domestic in South Africa and their madams (the lady of the house), see Madam & Eve. I always found the strip humorous and somewhere ought to have an autographed collection of some of the book versions of the strip. The archives are great.

Illustration: A cartoon from the Madam & Eve strip humorously looks at the plight of downtown Joburg as crime chased business away. Below is another, just because it's so true, and so funny. Clicking should enlarge the images.

A particularly loathsome creature

I am not fond of politicians in general. I have a natural aversion to anyone who feels they ought to be in a position of power over others. Anyone who wants power can't be trusted with it. Now and then a new life form emerges from the political cesspool, one so low and loathsome that it deserves special mention. One such entity is Martha Coakley who wants to be a Senator from Massachusetts, replacing Ted Kennedy.

Like Kennedy, Coakley is a Democrat. But don't assume she's soft on crime. No sir! Not Martha. She so hard on crime she doesn't mind incarcerating innocent people. No wonder the police chiefs in Massachusetts have endorsed her.

Coakley is one of those left-wing authoritarian types who "protects children" even if it means incarcerating innocent people for imaginary crimes. For purposes of this article let us ignore her odious role in fighting the abolition of the victimless crime of smoking pot and instead concentrate on her role in pushing the day care center scare of the 1980s. You may remember that large numbers of panicky parents were convinced by law enforcement that their little darlings were being attacked by Satanists in day care centers across the country. It was all bullshit, but bullshit makes good fertilizer and many a political career has been nurtured by scaremongering and lies. Coakley's career was one of them.

Coakley was involved in the bogus Fells Acre Day Care case where prosecutors "interrogated" children until they made absurd and impossible accusations. Then the prosecutors used those claims to convict the owners of the day care center of these impossible accusations. For instance, one accusation was that a wide butcher knife was plunged into a 4-year-old's anus, where it got stuck. But, call the Vatican on this because its a miracle, there were no cuts, no blood, no damage of any kind. Don't try that at home, the results won't be as miraculous.

Three innocent people were convicted in this panic-driven case and Coakley was up to her reptilian neck in it. She slithered about the case like a cobra seeking out a terrified rabbit for dinner. She hissed, struck and sank her fangs into the case with relish. It was great for her career—after all look at her now, running for the U.S. Senate. Two of the women who were convicted eventually got out of prison with "time served" when the evidence mounted that they were innocent. One woman had her conviction overturned while the other died waiting for justice.

But Gerald Amirault was not so lucky because he was man. Coakley argued that the women could be let out because women only "molest" (not that any such thing happened here) because of the presence of a male predator—imagine if someone said that about blacks and whites: "White criminals are only criminals because of the presence of black predators." The public would scream if such a claim was made on racial grounds, and rightfully so. But in Coakley's world of left-wing feminism such claims about men are perfectly acceptable.

The Massachusetts state's parole board was convinced that Amirault shouldn't be in prison. They unanimously voted for him to be released from prison. But that would put a question mark over Coakley's political career and hamper her ambitions. Like most real predators she is quite happy to advance herself over the bones of those she has destroyed along the way. So Coakley then lobbied acting Governor Jane Swift to deny the commutation of sentence. Coakley didn't want an innocent man walking the streets telling the world how she had destroyed his life.

Eventually Gerald Amirault finished his sentence for the imaginary crimes. Coakley had the option of trying to declare him "sexually dangerous" which would mean he remains incarcerated for the rest of his life, even though his sentence had been filled. (The state uses paid witnesses who declare anyone the state wants incarcerated as "sexually dangerous" allowing a life sentence to be imposed on the basis that the paid witness pretends to know that the convict is likely to reoffend.)

Coakley didn't do that, but not because she was getting soft. She was trying to avoid having the bogus evidence she used brought up in court again. She had ambitions and she didn't want that to happen. As the Wall Street Journal noted, if such a ruling were sought, "there would have to a virtual re-trial of the entire Amirault case. The DA had to have been deterred by the prospect of parading into a courtroom with the incredible fantasies extracted from Mr. Amirault's alleged victims--about secret rooms, magic drinks, animal butchery, assaults by a bad clown." The excuse used by Coakley and Swift, for denying release for Amirault was that he refused to admit his guilt.

It should be noted that these cases were prosecuted by left-wing ideologues not by right-wing Christians, like the case in Bakersfield. Coakley is a left-wing Democrat. She came into the Amirault case as prosecutor toward the end of the trial. The original prosecutor was Scott Harshbarger who now runs the left-wing lobby Common Cause. In the infamous McMartin Day Care Center case the prosecutor was Lael Rubin, Rubin is a left-wing Democrat as well and a supporter of Obama. Her husband, David Rosenzweig, another lefty, helped whipped up the hysteria over the case through his reporting for the LA Times. As Edgar Butler, in Anatomy of the McMartin Child Molestation Case wrote that Rosenzweig, was having a relationship with Rubin, that began before the McMartin trial so he published articles favorable to Rubin's case, while ignoring all the red flags.

Similarly another journalist from the left, Edward Lempinen, of the San Francisco Chronicle, published a series of breathless claims about Satanists attacking children in some concerted conspiracy. Lempinen basically acted as a hack for two obsessed police officers in that case. He has now gone on to promote global warming hysteria instead, not that this is a big improvement. At the time, the uncritical, very unscientific Lempinen, claimed that Satanists were involved in "scores" of child abuse cases—cases which fell apart due to lack of evidence. Apparently he hasn't changed his standards for his crisis d'jour.

While it is true that politically-driven conservatives may push hysteria as well, and have. We can't ignore that in the prosecution of innocent people as "child abusers" that many committed leftists were involved, aided by the uncritical journalism of biased journalists like Rosenzweig and Lempinen.