The Professor's Notes

Yup. 46 minutes. That’s how long it took for John Kerry to get to bring up his VietNam service.

Anyone have that in the pool?

In all seriousness–I was surprised that, after hearing a video segment on Fox News where they played excerpts of all the debates that Kerry had been in (all the way back to his initial Senate debates) his wording hasn’t really changed. “I know what it means to… (fill in the blank) because I was there…”

And so it goes.

Yahoo! News – Bush Twists Kerry’s Words on Iraq

I think there are two problems here, really.

The first one is, there is a significant amount of “editorializing” going on in the headline writing, and the writing of the article.

Why do I say that? Because they are “spinning” the story to be negative, and then adding a counter segment about Kerry to provide “balance.”

The other issue is that, what is being reported as “twisting his words” is not, really. Well, no more than the writer of the article was doing. Bush, and Kerry, were interpretting what the other said, getting at what they believe the meanings of their opponents words were. That is not the same as quoting.

Of course, writers do that all the time in these stories, telling us what was said, and what it “Means.” Perhaps this is just professional jealousy, on the part of reporters? They feel only they can “interpret” for us?

Neither side lied. At least not in THIS story.

ADDENDUM: One of the students has pointed out that, according to the community newsletter found at: http://www.chevychasesection3.com/pdf/may2003.pdf, the author of the article in question has ties (marital) to the Clinton Administration.

“Jen and Roger Ballentine … Jennifer, using her work-world name of Jennifer Loven, is a White House reporter for the Associated Press and Roger is president of Green Strategies, Inc., a consulting firm he started two years ago after serving as chairman of President Clinton’s White House Climate Change Task Force. ”

So, she is a White House reporter, which would explain why she writes at great length about what Bush has said, and has ties to the left, which might explain the “twist” she puts on the “twist.”

Recommendation: Read Goldberg’s book Bias. I recommended it before, and I do so again.

I read something today that captured my eye.

An adroit observer on Yahoo noted that, had it not been for the rather inept way the letters were (apparently) forged, we might have never known them to be false.

Interesting. The observer continued: ” Would these documents have been considered authentic had their been no blunders in word processing or in terminology (interestingly enough, they still have not been proven false, merely unconfirmable)?”

This begs the question, as we travel the highways and the byways of the internet, and this new “(dis)information age.” Are we now seeing the beginnings of what sci-fi has predicted for so long? Are we entering an era when Truth can no longer be shown through documentation?

If anyone remembers the episode from Star Trek TOS (The “original show”) where a crewmember attempts to get even with Capt Kirk, the most interesting aspect of the show in my mind has always been the idea that someone can falsify a visual record, in this case, a video recording, to portray something that never happened. With the digital age, and the computer animations we have seen ever since Forest Gump, we may be entering an age of true situational relativism and truth.

Wittgenstein opened the debate when he first proposed the “problem of induction.” That, simply put, says that we can never actually prove anything to be true by induction since we cannot possibly perceive “all instances” of anything. The classic example is the statement “All swans are white.” Until you have viewed all swans, this statement cannot be proven true, and in fact, until you have seen all sides of all swans, you cannot know that all swans are “all white.”

The next step goes even further. You cannot accept that which you yourself have not perceived, so unless it is you that has perceived the swans, you cannot make any statements of knowledge, or truth, whatsoever.

Professor Karl Popper answered this with his concept of “falsifiability”–a concept familiar to anyone who has taken a (properly taught) statistics course. Harken back to your intro to stats, and remember if you will, you can never “prove” the hypothesis. You can disprove, or fail to disprove. That is Popper’s legacy (in a tiny, tiny nutshell.)

Perhaps we are entering a new era. An era where the media, the bastions, nay the defenders of truth, cannot be trusted. In this instance they cannot be trusted to check their facts. Then again, is that actually what happened?

Where you there? Can you “know” what happened?

Homework: Determine for yourself if “truth” is a certainty. Please–share your views. We all grow through these thought exercises.

The Kerry Spot on National Review Online

to paraphrase (and butcher) Sir Walter Scott, Oh what a tangled web we weave, When America we seek to deceive!

The stories are flying around. Documents prove Bush lied! Documents are a forgery! Documents are real, and no evidence is needed! Reputations wouldn’t be risked for this! All this, and for what?

You see, I am amused by what appears to be a sudden fascination with the possibility that documents might possibly have been forged. (Yes, I used the passive voice here–because CBS doesn’t have the originals, and won’t disclose how they received these documents!) It appears that now people are working quite hard to build a rather circumstantial case about how it is “possible” that an Air National Guard unit might possibly have had a very expensive typewriter and that a man known to not type would have taken the time to learn an expensive machine to type these memos.

Does anyone else remember the Niger Yellow Cake stories? Apparently this is another instance of “crows coming home to roost.” Several years ago, as President Bush was making his case to remove Saddam from power, he included 18 words in the State of the Union speech that indicated that Niger had sold, or tried to sell, uranium to Iraq. The documents that were presented to support this, documents viewed and believed by British as well as US intelligence officials, were later held up as forgeries. Various charges were levied against the Bush administration. He obviously “knew” these accusations were false, and he lied. Or perhaps, his intelligence agencies were so incompetent that they failed to identify as a forgery what was obvious.

The parallels here are perhaps interesting, and we could simply leave it at that. Except for one rather important point–the Bush administration accepted that the documents might well have been a forgery. They didn’t need that evidence to build their case, and they were willing to “let it go.”

So the question is out there for all to ponder: Why won’t CBS let it go? Certainly they have no “personal” stake in this, do they? It’s not like people won’t understand that, in the language of Nixon’s Watergate and the Clinton’s Travelgate, “Mistakes were made.” Is there some other reason why CBS and Dan Rather must cling tenaciously to what is becoming obvious to all was a bungled, perhaps even juvenile attempt, at a forgery?

Homework for the day: Read Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by Bernard Goldberg, and learn why Dan Rather must grasp to this story, as his reputation continues to slip from him.

Write your own review of the book, and post it here! Let’s get others reading!

Yahoo! News – A EUROPEAN CONVERSATION

I stumbled across this Op-Ed piece on Yahoo, and could not help but use this as the opportunity to sound-off about perhaps the most distressing turn of events in the past twenty years.

The left, specifically, the “vocal left,” have become the most hate-filled, pre-judging, and bigoted group of people in America today, while at the same time continuing to repeat the tired, old accusations of the “right” being the party of hatred. The “tipping point” for me was while listening to Janeane Garofalo on Wednesday night during the Republican Convention, when she first apologized to the world, saying that the Republicans don’t represent America, and then she made it clear that she was tired of being portrayed as a homosexual hating, racist, war-monger (loose paraphrase–forgive me, I was driving.) I could only assume, given the context, that she was saying that the RNC was coming across that way, and could give the impression that “all of America” is like the Republicans.

Heck, I found myself for once in agreement with Janeane Garofalo. I am tired of being classified as a racist, homophobe, and warmonger. For a moment there, I thought Janeane had herself realized that the attacks from the left were unjustified. Alas, I finally realized that she was just taking another tact for attack.

I have seen increasingly in conversation a trend on the left to condemn in hate speech all things conservative. My daughter called home from her first day in college, upset not just that she was one of only a few conservatives (perhaps one of 2) in her Dorm, but that the others were mean to her when they found out that she was. I advised her, in my most fatherly tone, dripping with irony, that she should take a moment to reflect, and then ask “isn’t ‘tolerance’ supposed to be your value?”

Another woman, in a discussion I was having, pointed out what she considered to be “facts” that support her conclusion that the Republican Party is the party of the KKK. Her reasoning? The Republicans have taken the South in nearly every election since Reagan in 1980. Case closed. Yup–if you are a Southerner, you are a racist. In fact, when I challenged this view she stated that “it’s what I believe, and you can’t change that.” She then followed it up with the statement that things are now changing though, as northerners are moving south, taking on the more technical jobs.

Bigoted.* Prejudging. Discriminatory. And yes, I am talking about the liberals.

Let’s set up a few facts here. One of the charges made, and made consistently by Air America personalities including Janeane, as well as other “good meaning, hate-spewing” liberals, is that all, yes all, good social change has been brought about by liberals and Democrats. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “There you go again.” It just ain’t so!

If we start with the “Father” of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, we see a man who in dedicating a cemetery affirmed the beliefs of our founding fathers, noting that they were “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He demonstrated this in his “Emancipation Proclamation” freeing the slaves. He also demonstrated this in his desire to bring the South back into the fold, through a period of reconstruction that he saw as “healing.” Alas, he was cut down before he could see that vision to fruition.

In fact, Lincoln’s vision of reconstruction never took place, and his Vice President, then President, found himself the first President to be impeached, (followed over 100 years later by President Clinton) simply because he sought a kinder, gentler, reconstruction, welcoming rather than punishing the South. Who impeached him? The Radical Republicans–yes, “radical” because they wanted to see equality in the South move even faster.

The Republican party continued to be progressive. While the Democrats fought to maintain their control over government, the Republicans sought to expand the political franchise, pushing for the suffrage of women (right to vote). While I am linking to an obvious partisan site, let me point out that I first learned of the role of the Republican Party while listening to a lecture from a Women’s Studies class at a major university. The point was hit home to me, since knowing the group as well as I do, the facts had to be incontrovertible for the Republicans to get “any” credit.

The Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s are the keystone to the Democrat/Liberal claim to moral high ground. Interesting, in that it isn’t their hill! President Eisenhower (R) worked “quietly” for civil rights during his tenure throughout the 1950s. Eisenhower pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1957, although as noted it was watered down by “lack of support among the Democrats.” In fact, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, while pushed through, and credited to, the Democrat President Lyndon Johnson, would not have passed had it not been for the overwhelming support of the Republican Party. Interestingly, John F. Kennedy, then Senator “had opposed Eisenhower’s 1957 Act to keep in with the Democrats hierarchy as he had plans to run for president as well as Johnson. ” The Republicans voted in a far larger majority than the Democrats, leading Johnson to praise the Republicans. Interestingly, Senator Al Gore Sr apparently voted against the Civil Rights Act.

The history of the Republican Party has always been one of inclusion–often inclusion won not only through sweat, but through blood.

Let the liberals continue being “Mean spirited.” Let the liberals continue to push bigotry and hatred. But please, do not let them continue to lie.

HOMEWORK: Thanks for completing your previous homwork. Your assignment this time? Check the links I included in this post, and then post a comment on the most interesting fact that you learned, while reading through these histories. In fact, if you don’t believe something I say, or dispute a fact, I encourage you to to find another source, and share that. This is about learning, and Truth, not pedantics.

from Dictionary.com: Bigoted is “One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.”