"Group Think"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXVIII

A spot-on John Podhoretz column from last week.

WARNING: Most of the analysis and reporting you are now reading, watching and hearing about the presidential race is wrong — and it will continue to be wrong.

On the three major issues of year — the War on Terror, the economy and now gay marriage — the political press in the United States is opposed to President Bush's stances and opinions. Not just opposed, but passionately opposed in almost every particular and with lock-step unanimity. That opposition is leaching into the coverage of the race and making it almost impossible for readers and viewers to draw an accurate picture of the current state of political play.

Let's start with gay marriage. Reporters and editors and producers don't just favor gay marriage; they don't work with or socialize with anybody who opposes gay marriage. They might have a relative or two who does, but who listens to relatives?

This means there is, in all likelihood, not a single senior official in a major news organization (save perhaps our sister organization here at The Post, the Fox News Channel) who believes there should be a constitutional amendment affirming that marriage is between a man and a woman.

There's not a single person in a position of authority in these organizations who thinks that the Supreme Court of the state of Massachusetts has radically overreached itself and its authority by finding the Bay State's Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

No one there believes the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has conducted himself in a bizarre and lawless fashion by marrying gay couples — whom he has no legal right to marry.

Tens of millions of Americans — indeed, it may be more like hundreds of millions of Americans — think differently. Reporters, editors and producers know this intellectually, because they read polls and they see how politicians behave when the issue arises. But they don't know it instinctively. Their personal experience tells them something different, and it is very difficult to transcend their own experience.

For example, reporters across the country are trying to tell us that suburban women voters are not only supportive of gay marriage, but so wildly enthusiastic about it that they may actually cast their vote on it.

This is — there is no other word for it — delusional. Polls show no such thing. There are no such things as polls of suburban women voters. When pollsters slice and dice the results of a national survey enough to select out the results among suburban women, they are talking about responses from maybe 90 or 95 people in the entire country. There is no principle of public-opinion research that would argue that such a sample is representative in any way.

But the results conform with the hopes, wishes and beliefs in the newsrooms of the United States. And so the delusion is reported as fact.

There is a precedent for the media's blinders about gay marriage. Throughout the 1990s, we were told by journalists that there was a revolution in consciousness on the matter of gun ownership — that Americans were turning against Second Amendment rights because of school shootings and the like.

This, too, was a delusion. Second Amendment rights continue to be a potent issue for Republican politicians almost everywhere outside the Washington-to-Boston corridor. Journalists cannot gauge just how supportive American voters were and are about gun ownership because they really don't know anybody who believes in it.

Right now, media types are convinced that the issue poses great dangers for Bush and the Republicans. But why, if this is so, are the Democratic candidates for president fleeing in terror from it and devising all manner of sophistic positions that are neither pro nor con?

The same distortion field is in place, but to a lesser degree, when it comes to national economic news and about the War on Terror. Journalists tend to believe Bush's tax cuts are reckless, that they favor the rich and do not connect them to economic growth. The political press endlessly parrots the Democratic talking point about 2 million lost jobs without noting that another government survey shows a growth of 2 million jobs.

And when it comes to the War on Terror, the vast majority of working journalists thinks that the behavior of the United States since the end of the war in Afghanistan is an overreaction at best — that the Patriot Act is bad, that the war in Iraq was unnecessary and that there could not possibly be any ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

So what I'm saying is this: Don't believe what you read. Don't accept the analysis you hear on television. The inability of the political press to take the full measure of the 2004 election and the American electorate is already one of the biggest stories of the year, and the failure is only going to deepen.

John Podhoretz's new book is "Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane" (bush-country.com).

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Podhoretz's column is a handy description of the situation that I wrote about, Faithful Reader, last year:

.... Come next year's general election, the Democratic Establishment — politicos, pundits, academics, and the editorial staff at innumerable mainstream media publications — is going to be genuinely shocked when George W. Bush is re-elected. You see, they believe their own propaganda, and they hardly ever get out of their professional circles to see that (golly gee) lots of folks actually do not think that George W. Bush is Satan Incarnate....

In short, Podhoretz defends Core's Law of Old Media.

Thanks, John! :-)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/09/04 06:10:57 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media.

John Kerry Is Not Black

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXVII

What a stunning revelation.

The head of a civil rights and legal services advocacy group wants Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to apologize for saying he wouldn't be upset if he could be known as the second black president.

"John Kerry is not a black man — he is a privileged white man who has no idea what it is in this country to be a poor white in this country, let alone a black man," said Paula Diane Harris, founder of the Andrew Young National Center for Social Change.

Last week, Kerry told the American Urban Radio Network: "President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second."

Kerry's spokesman Chad Clanton said: "This was intended as a light-natured remark about President Clinton's strong legacy with African Americans. It is a legacy that John Kerry would like to build upon if elected president. John Kerry has a record of fighting for civil rights and as president he will continue this fight."

Harris also criticized civil rights leaders who "sit back and ignore these types of comments, a practice that further insults African Americans."

"It seems that all these leaders care about is their personal agendas in how a 'John Kerry' will keep up their personal causes," she said.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., who is black, was asked by the Kerry campaign to weigh in on the issue. He said Kerry's remark shouldn't be taken as a jab at blacks.

"He is saying that he wants to be an activist president resolving many issues that are important to the African American community," Meeks said. "Kerry was simply stating that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Clinton in addressing issues that are important to African Americans."

The Andrew Young National Center for Social Change, based in Harrisburg, Pa., provides legal services to the poor.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

See "Kerry Looking for Super Tuesday Triumph".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/09/04 05:49:31 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.

Idiot Judges

Bob Barr writes about nincompoop judges at WaTi, Mar. 6:

.... Almost daily nowadays, we read of judges using the power that comes with donning a black robe to foist their personal views of the world on their "subjects." Witness the "highest" court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts finding a constitutional right for homosexuals to marry, even though a majority of citizens in that state — consistent with every other state in the Union — do not wish to recognize homosexual "marriages" as a favored or even appropriate relationship.

What accounts for this phenomenon? It's the result of several factors, including:

* Diminished training for, and intellectual capacity of, our judges, reflecting the declining educational standards in our society at large.

* Public disinterest in judicial posts and election of judges.

* And the avalanche of vague and poorly drafted laws and government regulations that invites judicial activism.

The problem reflects a process that has been brewing for two generations, going back to the 1960s. However, what we could absorb in decades past because there were far fewer judges, laws and lawsuits, and a more involved and educated citizenry, can no longer be tolerated. That is, unless we wish to live in a society ruled by black-robed despots of often limited intellect, making decisions for us that we ought to be making.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/09/04 07:29:50 AM
Categorized as Political.

Spring So Close Now

With Spring so close now,
I dropped that full careful pack,
To climb a misty hill.

John Hearn

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/09/04 06:41:50 AM
Categorized as Literary & Photos.