Big-City Newspaper Editor Doesn't Know Connotation From Denotation

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCVI

And she probably needs to get a newer dictionary, too.

That would be Renee Loth of the Boston Globe.

Republicans picked the wrong latte sipper when they tried to run Howard Dean and his ‘‘liberal freak show’’ out of Iowa on a rail. Instead they got John Kerry, the duck-hunting, affirmative-action debunking, gay marriage-opposing war hero determined not to let the opposition pin the ‘‘Massachusetts liberal’’ label on his Navy blues.

Kerry’s long-awaited campaign ads, unveiled last week and intended to blunt the thrashing he is taking from the Bush campaign in the battleground states, highlight his years as a ‘‘tough prosecutor,’’ his support for victims’ rights and a balanced budget, and, of course, his military achievements. He leaves it up to the women in his life — wife Teresa and daughter Vanessa — to utter L-words like ‘‘generous’’ and ‘‘heart.’’

At a luncheon of the American Society ofNewspaper Editors inWashington last month, Kerry was asked by a sympathetic woman from a Southern newspaper whether his campaign might finally help rehabilitate liberalism’s good name. Kerry was having none of it. ‘‘I think the American people are looking for something different’’ from the traditional liberal and conservative monikers, he said. He declared it is a mistake to ‘‘waste time with phony labels.’’ So allow me.

Webster’s New World Dictionary labels liberal as ‘‘tolerant of views differing from one’s own; broad-minded.’’ And ‘‘favoring reform or progress, as in education, religion, etc; specifically favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual; progressive.’’ And ‘‘giving freely; generous.’’

Wow. Who knew Webster drove a Volvo?

Seen in this light, liberalism — even the Massachusetts variety — doesn’t seem quite the benighted political philosophy the Republicans would have us believe. Liberalism has been bashed so energetically for so long that many have internalized the message. But what is so bad about being a Massachusetts liberal, really? I rather like living in a state that doesn’t tax groceries. Where there is free universal immunization for children. Where the infant mortality rate is lower than Denmark’s.

Massachusetts liberals opened the first public school, the first public libraries, and the first public transit system in the nation. We like our polity public. Public parks, not two-acre private yards ringed with no trespassing signs. Public hospitals, not private boutique medicine for the rich and the free care pool for everyone else. Public debate, not private deals behind committee room doors.

Liberals who live in Massachusetts cherish civic participation, historic preservation, and environmental conservation. We have fostered revolution, abolition, suffrage, and the political empowerment of immigrants, whether Irish or Cape Verdean.

Without much in the way of natural resources, we treasure our state’s glorious human resource and don’t believe that the potential of any individual should go unrealized. That means keeping faith with children, the sick, the aged, and people who find themselves caught in a vise of drug addiction, homelessness, or poverty.

Almost 20 years of derision and Limbaugh-ism notwithstanding, we refuse to consider those ideas corny or quaint or uncool.

Of all the definitions in Webster’s dictionary, only one could be said to be unflattering: ‘‘excessively free or indecorous in behavior; licentious.’’

That’s the image Kerry’s opponents want to hammer into red state America: that people in Massachusetts are all a bunch of immoral swingers, squishy about our ethics, with no spine or stomach for personal responsibilty. Liberal — as in libertine.

I don’t recognize myself in that caricature, and I don’t think people in this state should stand still for it. I know there’s not much call for those ‘‘proud to be a liberal’’ bumper stickers anymore. There’s not enough room on the back of Kerry’s Harley, and it doesn’t really fit on the ‘‘family’’ SUV, either.

But the Massachusetts I know — inventive, caring, educated, diverse — proves it is possible to have both a bleeding heart and a working brain. So bring on the limousines, the brie and chablis, and NPR. All things considered, it’s good to live in the state where the revolutions start.

Renee Loth is editor of the editorial page.

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

She must have a bad crick in her neck, what with looking down her nose at the rest of us that way.

And she uses an unusual definition of "keeping faith with", by which she seems to mean "taxing money from people who earned it to keep government employees in a comfortable living while spending money on inefficient government programs for". Oh well, her way sure is shorter.

See also Prager, Liberals, and Leftists.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 10:01:48 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media.

New Movie Wreaks Havoc on Science

Is anybody surprised?

Patrick Michaels looks at The Day After Tomorrow at USA Today (yes, USA Today) the day before the day before yesterday:

.... Oh, the plot. Global warming causes the Gulf Stream to shut down. This current normally brings tropical warmth northward and makes Europe much more comfortable than it should be at its northerly latitude. The heat stays stuck in the tropics, the polar regions get colder, and the atmosphere suddenly flips over in a "superstorm." The frigid stratosphere trades places with our habitable troposphere, and in a matter of days, an ice age ensues. Temperatures drop 100 degrees an hour in Canada. Hurricanes ravage Belfast. Folks in Japan are clobbered by bowling-ball-size hailstones. If we had only listened to concerned scientists and stopped global warming when we could.

Each one of these phenomena is physically impossible....

(Thanks, Big Trunk.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 09:08:18 PM
Categorized as Media.

"Ten Questions Regarding the Denial of the Eucharist"

A well done article by Barb Kralis, May 24, at Catholic Citizens of Illinois:

Several U.S. bishops have recently voiced their opposition and ersatz reasoning why no one should be denied the Eucharist according to Code of Canon Law n. 915.

Those in the pews are perplexed. Which bishop is correct? Why would some bishops teach that the laws are binding and other bishops teach that they are not?...

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 05:53:15 PM
Categorized as Religious.

"Apologies Not Accepted"

A great column by Amy White at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (yes, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), May 20:

.... Abu Ghraib muddied America's white hat here and abroad, but we have bigger problems. We have elected politicians who manufacture emotional hysteria over prisoner abuse to gain leverage in an election year. We have journalists and news organizations who believe that exploiting their country's failure in an Iraqi prison proves their intellectual integrity.

It was only the screams of Nick Berg as he was being executed that put the abuse of prisoners in context and silenced the hoarse voices of the morally indignant. It's a war. Let's start acting like it.

(Thanks, Christopher.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 04:41:00 PM
Categorized as Political.

Re: Michael Berg is a Sick Man Blinded by Ideology

First, my friend Paul writes a reflection (ellipsis in original):

From your weblog entry about Michael Berg:

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

I get the impression that people like Michael Berg have never set foot on a grade school playground, where there are a lot of kids just trying to get along, but there is also a bully who goal is to intimidate everybody else and steal their lunch money. On Michael Berg's playground, when the bully walks up and says he wants your money or he and his pals are going to beat the snot out of you, I guess you can just walk away from him, and the simple action of not wanting a confrontation will bring about a peaceful resolution, and the bully will see the error of his ways and will leave you alone.

Well, it never worked for ME in grade school. I tried that once, and sure enough, I got the snot beat out of me, and my lunch money taken away. What I really wish I'd done was to turn and smack the bully right in the nose. Not only would he have run away crying, but the other kids on the playground would have seen that they could stand up to the bully and not be afraid.

On Michael Berg's playground, you can apparently ward off a bully simply by ignoring him. If one kid's goal is just to be left alone and the other's goal is to beat up other kids, then there will always be fights on the playground.

Conflicts between nations are obviously more complex than fights between children, but the principle is no different. If one group's goal is to seek peace, and another group's goal is the destruction of the first group, then there is no common ground upon which peace can be negotiated.

Peace is not achieved by wishing it to be so. It can only occur when peace-loving peoples stand up and destroy those who do not desire to seek peace.

Maybe, Michael Berg never went out for recess when he was a kid. Too bad…he'd have gotten more of an education there than anything his textbooks would have taught.

Second, in case you were wondering what I meant by Michael Berg's "ideology", a fellow blogger kindly referred me to this list of endorsers of an agitprop event sponsored by (the blatantly Communistic & unabashedly America-hating) International A.N.S.W.E.R. organization. There you will find this entry:

Michael S. Berg, Teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc., West Chester, PA

The current list does not contain that entry. But, note the date of the list posted at Free Republic: 03/07/2004 10:02:01 PM EST. That's long before the Berg name became a household word. (IOW, there was no reason to fake his name onto the Freep list.)

Excuse me for being blunt... but, all things considered, it's not hard to imagine why Nick Berg preferred to be on the other side of the world.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 07:46:11 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"The Difference Between Men and Women"

Lege. :-)

(Thanks, Cassandra.)

[Follow-up: Re: "The Difference Between Men and Women".]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 06:58:29 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

The Times and Iraq Bush

I see a great deal of confusion or amusement, and sometimes both, over yesterday's house editorial at the New York Times:

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge....

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

Why this? Why now? Well, we know this isn't soul searching. And we know it's not intellectual honesty. I mean, it's still the New York Times.

This is, if you'll pardon the expression, a pre-emptive strike. It's designed to provide a fig-leaf of cover when the Times willfully ignores and/or downplays upcoming evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in or out of Iraq.

Which leads me to wonder, Faithful Reader, if NYT's editors don't have some inside information........

[Follow-up: Big News — I Mean BIG News — on Saddam's WMD is Coming Down the Road.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/27/04 06:27:31 AM
Categorized as Media.