Some thoughts on Helen Thomas' retirement

I suppose I should be happy. The left got caught in their own hypocrisy and someone's career was ended as a result. I don't find that at all satisfying, really. There is something deeply disturbing about all of this. Several somethings. Let me see if I can put a finger on it.

• This was not some quasi-journalist talking head like Keith Olberman or Rush Limbaugh. This was a "real" journalist with a long and distinguished career for a distinguished news organization. That she felt comfortable letting out something like that is a sad commentary of where journalism has gone. I don't harbor some rose-colored notion of a "Golden Age of Journalism" when reporters gathered and reported facts in an unbiased manner. But there is something wrong when journalists so easily decide to make news instead of reporting it.
• There are no doubt many on the right who are chalking up a scalp over this. "Bravo us! We finally caught one of them in the same sort of thing they get on us over, and we made it stick!" What a rotten world we are creating for ourselves where we lay in wait for one another trying to catch them being their worst selves.I don't want to live in that world. People make mistakes. You take anyone who makes a living by talking, and eventually you are going to catch them in a moment when they talk too much and think too little. The result is that the only people who will be able to take and hold power are those who can completely disconnect their words from their thoughts. Those people should never have power!
• There are people who make their living by regularly saying much, much worse than anything Thomas said. Because they call themselves comedians and entertainers they get a pass. Again, do we really want to live in a world where people can say anything they want without fear so long as they put a laugh-track to it? Do we really want to live in a world where people don't actually make us laugh so much as race one another to the depths of vulgarity, incivility, and depravity in an effort to make us laugh at our own discomfort?
• Our political domain has degenerated to the point of resembling the very Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the center of this whole incident. Each side unleashes political violence on the other, confident that they are only defending themselves, and that the other side started it. Who actually started it is so obscured by now that it's largely irrelevant. As I tell my squabbling children, I'm not interested in who started it. I'm interested in seeing who is going to have the courage to stop first.
• The very battlefields that our two warring political factions choose to do battle in and the tactics they choose to employ tells me that it stopped being about who has the better ideas some time ago. No one is really interested in helping America anymore. It's about beating the other side. It's scorched earth politics. It's two drunken giants doing battle on an anthill. They're too drunk on piety to do much real harm to one another, but we poor ants are getting caught in the middle and crushed.
• There are no real neutral sides in the battle. That Thomas was allowed to go that far unchecked indicates that there was no one interested in stopping her. I won't go so far as some as to accuse all the mainstream media of being in the left's pocket, but I feel it's quite safe to say there are very few journalists remaining interested in just presenting the facts and letting each citizen make up their own mind. Each journalist has their ideology, and will carefully select facts to push their audience in that direction. They'll even find subtle and not-so-subtle ways of telling their audience what to think. This is why I think bloggers are doing so well right now. To quote from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirate of Penzance": "I don't think much of our profession, but contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest." Listen to any blogger or journalist for long and you'll detect their agenda. But the majority of bloggers will never pretend they have no agenda at all.
• No one will learn a thing from Thomas' fall. No one is going to step back from the battlefield and question whether or not this is all worth it. They'll continue the fight, tooth and nail, while the house burns down around them. I would welcome this if I thought for a moment they would destroy only each other and leave everything else still standing. Unfortunately, I see them dragging the rest of us down with them.

No, I am not happy that Helen Thomas finally went too far and went down in flames. There is nothing to take any satisfaction in here. There is nothing encouraging about any of this. I see things only getting worse.


I need to go read something cheerful before I go to bed.

John Mackey, Obamacare, and public opinion

Now that I've read the Op/Ed by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in the Wall Street Journal I really don't understand what the big deal is.

Don't get me wrong. This is not about Free Speech. I uphold Mackey's right to say what he said. I uphold the right of the readers to boycott Whole Foods if they so desire. Freedom of Speech should never guarantee freedom from consequences for that speech. If you're going to say something that annoys your support base you should be prepared to take a hit, whether you're John Mackey or Natalie Maines (or Arlen Specter).

No, this post is about what liberals say and what they do. One of the main criticisms being leveled at those protesting against the Health Care Reform bill is that they are shutting down discussion and disallowing dialogue.

Mackey's article is a calm, rational discussion of alternatives to what is currently on the table. But just because he does not agree with universal health care it appears that the liberals are unwilling to read any farther than the second paragraph. I'll bet if they did they'd find they agree with him on at least a few points. Even if they disagree with everything, they would likely benefit from hearing what other people think.

Don't liberals espouse the value of differing viewpoints? Or does that only apply to ethnicity and sexual orientation?

To be fair, the political right is just as bad. Both sides seem to focus much of their attention on keeping people from listening to anyone from the other side. They aren't conducting a war on their ideological opposites so much as a joint offensive against moderation. They don't want anyone reaching over the wall they built. They have no interest in reaching across the aisle--they'd rather turn the aisle into a demilitarized zone where anyone who dares to venture will be shot on sight!

The sad thing is that if we we would take more time to listen we just might find we CAN find an answer that we can all agree on. Health Care reform could be possible. Universal Health Care could be doable. But as long as our politics allows for no middle ground we'll never accomplish anything that doesn't alienate at least half of the country.

The middle ground is where the answers can be found. John Mackey tried to take us there. No good deed goes unpunished.

I'm Not Dead Yet!

I no more than say I'm going out of business when I find this over on Instapundit:

Do "liberals" generally favor liberalization? Do they favor greater freedom to choose? Liberalization is the loosening of restrictions on individual liberty.

The article then goes on to list a number of issues and suggests what true liberalism should do on these issues. The bottom line:

Do we think the Democrats will move to liberalize any of these?

What will they liberalize?

Why again do we call them "liberals"?

An interesting viewpoint. Read the whole thing. I suspect that when it comes to politics, ideologies, and the nomenclature we use, Inigo Montoya sums it up best: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

Heck, these days you can't even tell the players WITH a program.

Knowing His Limits, or More of the Same?

President-Elect Obama has picked Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. The general consensus is that he's a tough-minded operative and a major partisan. First Biden, now Emmanuel. So far it's looking like more of the same, not major change.

But the Obama campaign is not oblivious to how this looks. From the New York Times:

“They’re torn,” a prominent Democrat close to the campaign said of Mr. Obama’s advisers. “There’s half of them that think, ‘We’re in the midst of a huge economic crisis; let’s get the most experienced people out there.’ The other half think, ‘Hey, we’re the change candidate.’ ”

There are probably some fresh faces out there who are experienced enough, but they may not have enough time to find them and bring them on board at this point. And heaven knows the Right would have jumped all over Obama had he been caught vetting his administration team before the election. To be fair, it may be that proven, experienced insiders may be all he has time to get right now.

Hopefully they can unlearn "politics as usual" and let their experience carry the day.

You Keep Using That Word....

It is expected that the two candidates and their parties bury the hatchet after each election. Each victory or concession speech must contain some sort of call for unity, lest the candidate be considered a poor sport. The congressional leaders and the outgoing president must also give a nod to bipartisanship.

And we keep hoping that this time they'll get it right. As Americans, we take it seriously. We would really like to see each side work together to find some sort of common ground, some moderate approach that will provide some sort of change we can all believe in, to borrow a phrase. We're running out of hope, but I think we have one more try left in us.

What I believe we the people are asking for is cooperation and respect. That means considering the other viewpoint enough to not propose something that you know the other side is going to automatically disagree with. It's at least showing that you DID consider their principles in coming up with a proposal. It's putting your idea forward and saying "here's the beginning of a collaborative effort to find something we can all agree on eventually".

What we get, however, is something entirely different. It seems as if what the various parties are really saying when they call for "Bipartisanship" is "make it easy for everyone and see things my way." It's veiled code for "surrender now or we'll beat you black and blue from now 'til Judgment Day."

And we're tired of it. A few weeks ago I was watching the PBS documentary on Ronald Reagan. They were covering Reagan's first big fight to pass his economic plans. In the end Reagan won. Then Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill called Reagan to congratulate him on a good fight. You could see that there was genuine respect between the two. One of them didn't get his way, but they both felt they'd done their duty and were willing to leave the rest up to history.

Perhaps I glamorize the days of my youth, but it really seemed like a different atmosphere then. I'm sure there was animosity and maneuverings, but at the very least the volume was softer. Today the partisan rancor has reached the level of shrieking. The fighting has become more important than what they're fighting over. It's scorched-earth politics, and I believe one facet of the Obama victory is America saying "Enough is enough!"

In a move that practically gave me whiplash from doing a double-take, Sen. Harry Reid--one of the chief shriekers in my book--spelled it out. "This is a mandate to get along, to get something done in a bipartisan way," he said. "This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology."

I have to look at Sen. Reid in a whole new light right now. While many on the Left are lining up to claim this election cycle as America clearly embracing Liberalism, he took the moderate view. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, too, seems to be interpreting events in a similar way.

I'm enough of an optimist to hope this time will be different. I believe the Democrats have realized that it's "their show" now. If they don't do better with their chance than the Republicans have done with theirs they could very well find the situation reversed yet again. I hope they're feeling just a little embaraced at their treatment of the previous administration now that they realize they're about to be exposed to the same harsh light themselves. And I hope the Right choose to take the high road and forego "giving them a taste of their own medicine".

The pessimist in me says give it a week and they'll all be back to their regular, "cuddly" selves. But that's not what this nation needs. We've never needed that, actually, but hopefully now we ALL see it.

It's been a long time since Americans have been able to feel good about voting for a candidate. For far too long voting has been more about damage control than support; which candidate will take us to the bottom the slowest. In Obama many Americans found a candidate that they could feel good voting for. I envy them that. And I do at least feel good that he was a candidate in the first place. It DOES mean something about this country that three of the major players in this election were "non-traditional"(that would be Obama, Palin, and Hillary, in case I was too vague).

I know I didn't feel good about my choice. I didn't see in Obama what many people saw, and I wasn't thrilled about McCain, either. I do hope in a few years I can gladly admit that I was wrong. I'd love to see Obama be the change we've all been hoping for. I sincerely mean that. If America is better off in four years I'll be happy to give him credit.

Of course just what is meant by "better off" is not universal for all Americans. I realize that. Perhaps one day I'll write up a post on how I would define it. But for now, I just want to say this to our leaders:

You've all pledged to do your part to make this time different. I'm going to hold you all to that. I think we all will.