"Many Iraqis Skeptical That Oudai and Qusai Are Dead"

Fr. Rob Johansen blogs today at Thrown Back:

.... We have succeeded in imposing peace (of a sort) on much of Iraq. But American soldiers are now cautioned to travel only while heavily armed and in groups. Many Iraquis "accept" our presence, but their attitude is that of sullen resignation. Our troops are not treated as liberators, but as occupiers granted varying degrees of toleration. I frankly see little evidence that we are winning the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people....

The "evidence" that we see is filtered through several layers of media hostile to George W. Bush, Republicans, and (yes) the United States of America. And it's sort of like the story of a couple of weeks ago, about the numbers of Americans leaving for Canada: you have to read way, way down before you find out that about six times as many Canadians leave for the USA.

As to the situation in Iraq: it's a mess. A huge mess. It will be for a very long time. I would really like to see some concrete evidence — some hard facts — that anybody of any substantive position in the Bush administration thought it wouldn't be a huge mess for a long time.

I'll compare it to the mess in the Catholic hierarchy in the USA: it's taken decades to get this way, it will take decades to clean it up. Why on earth would any reasonable person think otherwise?

Did we make this mess in Iraq? In a way, yes, we did. Does that mean it would have been better left undone? I don't think so: inaction has its consequences, too, as I have said before.

P.S. I see that VDH is with me. :-) (Thanks, Dom.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/25/03 02:04:57 PM
Categorized as International.

Is the Bush Administration Really Conservative?

George F. Will argues not.

See also Is the Republican Party Really Conservative?

(Thanks, Jonah.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/25/03 11:05:55 AM
Categorized as Political.

"Cuba...what a wonderful country it must be..."

That's what my friend Paul says as he points out this Reuters article:

The 12 Cubans who tried to sail a 1951 Chevy truck from the communist-ruled island to the United States got no marks from U.S. authorities for their creativity.

The would-be emigrants were sent back home.

Since Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s 1959 revolution, Cubans have tried to leave the Caribbean island on rudimentary rafts, on giant truck inner tubes, in stolen boats and planes, even by windsurfer.

But no one remembers anyone attempting the 90-mile (145-km) crossing of the Florida Straits in a floating flatbed truck with 55-gallon (250-litre) drums strapped to its sides, tires still in place, a propeller attached to its drive shaft and a driver behind the wheel.

"We've seen surfboards, pieces of Styrofoam, bathtubs, refrigerators. But never an automobile," Coast Guard Petty Officer Ryan Doss said on Thursday....

Note the glib tone of the article: Ain't it cute, how many ways people will risk their health, limbs, and life to get the hell out of Cuba? Let's see what else we can giggle at, shall we?

Would the journalists involved in publishing this article write it in the same tone if it were a story about, say, inner-city American poverty? Ha!

I think the most instructive and constructive thing mainstream media could do would be to conduct a wide-ranging, long-range examination of why people all around the world try with all their might to flee penury and oppression by going to America — and next to nobody really wants to leave the USA. That will never happen: they would then have to change completely their editorial positions and news viewpoints. Indeed, they might balk at the mere notion of learning anything.

See also Dear Stoopid Haitians: An open letter to the current boatload of Haitian "immigrants".

P.S. Paul backs me up:

To further support your point, notice that Reuters put the article in its News section under a sub-category entitled "Oddly Enough", which is apparently their "News of the Weird" ... they have articles there about the death of a dog-eating catfish and a guy who left his fortune to his dogs...

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/25/03 10:15:36 AM
Categorized as International.

Ignorance Breeds Arrogance

You know at least one arrogant ignoramus, don't you? Doesn't everybody? Of all the millions of kinds of people there must be, the Arrogant Ignoramus is one of those that, if possible, I avoid at all costs. There's no dealing with the Arrogant Ignoramus: he doesn't know how wrong he is, and he doesn't accept correction or instruction. And the more ignorant he is, the more arrogant he is, no?

Well, that's been my observation over the years.

Do you know of any kind of human being who is more cocksure of everything than the newspaper editorialist? (Except bloggers, of course.) I don't.

And I do mean everything. Think back over any given year of your life: how many editorials did you read in the local paper, or a paper with a national readership? They told you what was right, and what was wrong, and what should be done, and what should not be done, on every subject from the economy and taxes to roadwork and asphalt; from medicine and plastic surgery to "global" "warming" and carbon dioxide; and, from recreation and baseball to war and military tactics — no?

Is the editorialist so cocksure about everything — anything — because he is an Arrogant Ignoramus? Could be.

Donald Luskin started the ball rolling on this discussion by running some remarks from a reader, yesterday:

Three days after Bill Keller was named executive editor of the New York Times, the newspaper of record's editorial page started running brief bios of all the people on its Editorial Board, one each day, starting with editor of editors Gail Collins. Economist John Seater at North Carolina State University pointed out to me the remarkable fact that "The Times' editorial writers, to a person, have not been trained in any of the subjects they write about, with the exception of law." Is the newspaper of record actually the newspaper of not knowing what the hell you're talking about?...

Nashville journalist Bill Hobbs agrees, also yesterday:

.... But this isn't just a problem with the NYT editorial board. I'd hazard a guess that 90 percent of reporters write about things they have no training or expertise in - and their news coverage often forms the knowledge base that similarly untrained newspaper editorialists use to write their editorials.

It is a failing of the basic way journalism has been taught for the past several decades. Too much of the courses and lab work for a journalism degree focus on the craft of journalism itself - basic interviewing and writing and editing skills, learning the AP Styleguide rules, learning to compose a story in "inverted pyramid" format, and such.

Too few journalists get a formal education in a subject area that they will then go cover. Most business journalists never took a business course in college. Most journalists who report on the economy didn't study economics. Most reporters who write about the environment have no scientific training. Most reporters who write about healthcare and medicine have no experience or education in the healthcare industry or no medical training. That's why so many news stories offer no insight, merely heat and light. It's why stories about the economy, for example, boil down to a collection of competing quotes from politicians and economists with agendas - and give you the unshakeable feeling the reporter might not understand a single word of that Greenspan quote he just used. It's why so much journalism is formulaic, uninformative and dull....

I recall, as long ago as 1985, one of my English professors lamenting, and condemning, the fact that he and his colleagues were teaching students how to write, though they had nothing to write about — that is, they had no real knowledge from which to write about anything. How many of his colleagues, all across the country, thought the same way? And how many of their students went on to be journalists over the past two decades?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/25/03 08:53:37 AM
Categorized as Media & Most Notable.

Robert Bork Joins Catholic Church

According to this bit (last item) in WaPo, July 23:

Republican judicial martyr Robert Bork has converted to Catholicism, according to U.S. News & World Report's Paul Bedard. The foiled Supreme Court nominee, now 76 and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was baptized a Catholic by a conservative priest and Opus Dei member, C. John McCloskey, at the Catholic Information Center chapel on K Street. The former Protestant's sponsors were National Review pundit Kate O'Beirne and United Press International chief John O'Sullivan. "If you get baptized at my age, all of your sins are forgiven. And that's very helpful," Bork said.

(Thanks, Bill — who has a fascinating blog that same day.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/25/03 07:48:12 AM
Categorized as Religious.