Someone had this great, great definition of “bias” and I can’t for the life of me remember if I discussed it before. Maybe I did. Nine times or more. Well, I don’t wish to become tedious but I need to define what bias is, even though just about everyone already knows, and I may be repeating myself. But the points which appear below, depend on this.
Bias is best represented by how we treat our bathroom scales — it’s a process of gathering data and cognitions already gathered, solely for the reason that you don’t like what you learned from the first go-round, such that any plan you put in place as a result of this data-gathering ends up tainted. I think I weigh 200 pounds; 185 would be a lot better, but 200 is what I weigh. I strip down to my birthday suit and I weigh in at 203. That can’t be right. So I weigh myself again. And again. And again. And again…certainly, we don’t need to get graphic about the various things I’ll try. But I might make this into quite a complicated daily weigh-in, right? I mean, who hasn’t been there before? And, of course, somewhere along the line I’m going to announce that I need a new scale because this one’s busted.
A week later, the busted scale says I weigh 199. Into the shower I jump, and I get on with my day. The weigh-in is over. Scale works great.
In sum, when I’m over, I need to weigh myself ten times or so. When I’m under, one weighing will do.
That’s bias.
Now, I’m given cause to think about this definition because loud-mouth pundits, both conservative and liberal, are offering these opinions about what is beginning to become an issue and what is no longer an issue. Thursday/Friday before an election, impresses me as an especially treacherous time to be trying to infer what the electorate is thinking. I suppose if you’re like me, you’re going to study up on some of the arcane propositions in the hours ahead, during the slow hours of Saturday morning with your “honeydew” jar emptied from the gently insistent summertime items filling said jar in the months just past. I could see how the “undecided” voter would be an important demographic. And yet, beyond that, I don’t see how we know too much about that undecided voter. Such a mystery cannot be illuminated by any light source conceived by God or man — save for the false light of bias.
In other words, no, conservative pundit, I don’t think Mark Foley is “yesterday’s news.” No, liberal pundit, I don’t think Kerry is “off the front page.” I don’t think you can say those things — and speak from any meaningful repository of knowledge. I think such proclamations are declaration of bias, nothing more. They are examples of wishful thinking. They cannot be anything more than that.
To speak from some sphere of knowledge, I — like them — can only whittle down the subject of my statement to a sphere of commentary that retains meaning, and to do that I have to miniaturize it to marble-size and talk about just myself. That’s all I can do; all anyone can do. And to me, the Kerry episode, by itself, doesn’t change a whole lot about the things I know. It’s how people react to it that I find inspiring and educational.
Like an ocean liner doing a hairpin-turn, barrel roll and loop-the-loop in rapid succession, the left-wing has come up with some last-minute election season talking points to deflect this. They are to be commended for this agility, but the product is lackluster and betrays the haphazard, panicky construction. The product is flimsy. Here’s the essence of it.
Senator Kerry didn’t say it —
Ugh…I’ll pause here to note that if I were in that room with Democratic credentials and a desire to see the Democratic party succeed on Tuesday, I would have pulled the emergency cord. I mean, we’re one sentence into this mini-platform, and right out of the chute the facts are on one side and Democrats are on the other. Like they can’t help themselves. At step one, they’re investing everything on the premise you can’t, or won’t, get ahold of a clip and simply play it back. That’s their keystone premise…here in the Age Of YouTube.
Continuing…
Senator Kerry didn’t say it. But if he did, everybody knows he’s right. Everybody thinks what he said…which, really, he didn’t say. Senator Kerry doesn’t believe what you think he said, which he didn’t actually say, because he’s very well educated and he’s one of those troops, so it’s patently silly to think for a minute Kerry would say this thing, that he didn’t really say, which everybody knows to be true anyway. Kerry is right about this thing he didn’t really say. Everyone agrees. And he doesn’t.
Now, as I noted yesterday, Senator Kerry did say it and from watching the entire 15-minute speech it’s clear he meant exactly what he said. True, a snarky snippet about President Bush’s educational credentials would have fit in better with his “Fozzie Bear” Vaudeville routine, and if you artificially stick in a couple of words this would make his punchline fit in better. But there’s no evidence that this would be an accurate rendering of what he meant, in letter or in spirit — certainly not in spirit. Senator Kerry doesn’t act anything like a speaker who meant to say something substantially different. There’s no “Omigosh I flubbed up that line” expression, no backtracking, nothing of the like. He meant to deliver a punchline, he delivered it, and the crowd ate it up.
As far as his stated sentiment being accurate, or rather, the bias of pundits lending credibility to it…this thing he said that he didn’t really mean to say, supposedly…suddenly examples abound.
Seattle P.I. editorial page:
Was Kerry making fun of the president, or warning students against the pitfalls awaiting the undereducated in general?
It doesn’t matter. Kerry was right either way.
Kerry wasn’t saying — regardless of the Republican spin — that our troops are stupid.
Kerry’s intended point was obvious. President Bush didn’t do his homework before he ordered the invasion. He didn’t study the intricacies of Mideast religion, culture, politics and tribalism. He wasn’t smart about it and we are stuck in Iraq.
Although there are plenty of well-educated people in our armed forces — Kerry was one of them — military service has long been an opportunity employer for those with less education and fewer skills than they need to work in the private sector. Indeed, the military sells itself as a place to garner skills and to help pay for higher education.
And wars, including this one, are often fought by those less privileged — albeit no less smart — than the sons and daughters of those who lead us into them.
Rosa Brooks, writing for the LA Times:
If those grunts were half as smart as members of Congress, they’d be on Capitol Hill getting sucked up to by lobbyists instead of sucking up dust in Baghdad’s bloody alleys — right?
Most of our current political leaders didn’t waste any time serving in the military. Like Vice President Dick Cheney, they had “other priorities.” As recently as 1994, 44% of members of Congress were veterans. Today, it’s only 26%. And despite the mandatory “I adore our heroic troops” rhetoric, most on Capitol Hill aren’t steering their own children toward military service. Only about 1% of U.S. representatives and senators have a son or daughter in uniform.
For many in Congress, serving in the military is a fine thing to do — for all those poor schmoes who don’t have any better options, that is.
:
But recent studies of military demographics suggest that today’s military is neither uneducated nor poor. Statistically, the enlisted ranks of the military are drawn mainly from neighborhoods that are slightly more affluent than the norm. The very poor are actually underrepresented in the military, relative to the number of very poor people in the population.
That’s mainly because the military won’t accept the lowest academic achievers. The Army limits recruits without high school degrees to 3 1/2 % of the pool, for instance, while the Marines won’t accept recruits without high school degrees. Poverty correlates strongly with high school dropout rates, so these rules significantly limit the access of the very poor to military service.
At the same time, they ensure that enlisted members of the military are more likely than members of the general population to have high school degrees. The same pattern holds for commissioned officers. In 2004, for instance, only 4.2% of officers lacked college degrees, and a whopping 37% held an advanced degree of some sort, compared to only 10% of adults nationwide.
The myth that the military is mainly the province of the poor and the uneducated is grossly misleading, and it’s also dangerous. It obscures the far more worrisome gaps that have recently emerged between the military and civilian society.
Demographically, the military is profoundly different from civilian society. It’s drawn disproportionately from households in rural areas, for one thing. For another, the South and Southwest are substantially overrepresented within the military, while the Northeast is dramatically underrepresented.
Compared to civilians, members of the military are significantly more religious, and they’re also far more likely to be Republicans. A 2005 Military Times poll found that 56% of military personnel described themselves as Republicans, and only 13% described themselves as Democrats. Nationwide, most polls suggest that people who define themselves as Democrats outnumber those defining themselves as Republicans.
And though the average member of the military is neither poor nor uneducated, social and economic elites are dramatically underrepresented in the military.
I believe there are many others out in liberal-land who would love to speak up, but are afraid they’d reveal sentiments that the LA Times and Seattle P.I. were all too ambitious about revealing. The military, like everyone else on the receiving end of liberal benevolence, impresses them as the sludgy, thick bottom layer of a pot of stew that hasn’t been stirred. Underprivileged, unskilled, immobile — can’t succeed without their help.
But here’s the most prominent lesson I’ve learned from the Kerry episode: According to our liberals, I’m not supposed to learn lessons. That would be thinking for myself, and they don’t want me to do that, or for anybody else to do that. I call that thought-control; as Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake demonstrates, our liberals call that P.R.
I can see we’re going to have to set up some sort of “Democratic PR school” soon. There seem to be a few remedial lessons they are lacking, as the John Kerry incident demonstrates.
First of all — I don’t care if John Kerry was eating live babies on TV, one week out from an election you do not repeat GOP talking points. Ever. It makes you look like a big pussy who can’t stand up to the Republicans, even when they’re playing from an exceptionally weak hand on an issue you own. For all those anxious to be seen as the tough defenders of national security, huddling in a crouch position while they pummel you about the head and saying “yes, yes, we deserve this” is just not the best option.
Secondly — did I mention that the Democrats own the issue of Iraq? Even the WSJ acknowledges it is the #1 issue influencing people’s votes this election.
Here we are learning about this simmering resentment and inherent condescending attitude focused with laser-like precision on our military volunteers, an entirely legitimate thing to notice just before an election…and if Hamsher represents our liberals well, no reason whatsoever to think she doesn’t — we’re not supposed to be noticing this. Liberals, you see, “own the issue of Iraq.” Think about Iraq, you end up hating Bush and loving the big ol’ soldier-slandering mushbucket of liberal goodness. If things somehow go the other way, someone needs a “P.R. lesson,” facts be damned. Them’s the rules.
And although it’s fair to say, I think, millions of voters are ready to pull the lever for Democrats because they want “moderation” and “unity” and more “exchange of ideas in the Beltway” — I’m just spitballing here, but I think that’s a fair consensus — Hamsher, and liberals who agree with her, say that’s out of the question. At least before the election, that’s out of the question. You don’t repeat Republican talking points because it makes you look like a big pussy.
Another interesting thing here: Kerry made this into a hugely damaging issue by doing exactly what Hamsher, and other extreme left-wing take-no-prisoners bloggers, want. Had he gone the other direction and said “I meant to make a joke at President Bush’s expense, not yours, and I might have dropped a word or two because of my excitement and I’m sorry if the meaning was changed and/or I made anyone feel bad” — like that — the Kerry thing would have been off the front page. But he lashed out and accused the White House of trying to change the subject…as if transcripts weren’t available…as if video clips were not available. In short, he lied.
He called into question every single shred of supposedly-legitimate liberal rage, we’ve ever seen, since Fahrenheit 9/11. He made us reconsider all of it…or at least, created an intellectual necessity for us to do that. He revealed the classic liberal temper-tantrum flung toward 1600 Pennsylvania as, not something based on thought, but rather a meaningless cliche. By doing exactly what Hamsher said she wanted. He revealed the liberal plan to deal with all issues — across the board — as nothing more than blaming things on some guy who’s going back to Crawford in early 2009, and whose culpability in such matters won’t have a damn thing to do with anything. In sum, he increased the necessity for liberals to come up with a real plan, at just such a time as they can’t do it, and won’t do it.
In the end, the point that Senator Kerry isn’t running for anything this year, only makes his comment more damaging. What it does, is encase this whole silly “did-he-mean-it” line of arguing further into the cement of irrelevance. Liberals see our soldiers as the sludge of society, the same way they see all the beneficiaries of their liberalness. They must rescue our soldiers from Iraq, the same way they must defend the right-to-vote for our ethnic minorities, or the right-to-be-hired of said minorities. None of whom, according to our liberals, are capable of helping themselves…because the whole sorry lot of them lack the education, resourcefulness or intelligence to do so.
It’s one of the few things that remain consistent about our liberals. You can receive their help, or their respect. Never, ever, both at the same time.
Update: Got a thought I can’t just let go. This particular posting has a carefully defined scope, and my thought falls well within it, is well worth noting, and has not been so noted.
I generally disapprove of what we call “psychologizing” which, in my artificially narrow definition of the word, means to postulate on what a person is going to be thinking based on what that person is already thinking. I see this as an exercise in deriving information that is mostly useless, based on other things that are not and cannot be proven. I indulge in this practice here only to make note of a political/social phenomenon that has become so chafed and festered and swollen that ignoring it has become impossible.
I’m referring to the reflexive impulse on the part of our liberals to blame things on George W. Bush.
Senator Kerry’s “botched joke” or whatever you choose to call it, has offered this beast the very most awkward specimen of pottage, one quite incompatible with said beast’s digestive tract. Senator Kerry insulted the troops stationed in Iraq, both in letter and in spirit. We may debate what his intentions were, but one thing is beyond reasonable dispute: President Bush had absolutely nothing to do with it. Neither did any Republican, anywhere. A loyal, high-profile Democrat said a dumb thing, and that’s as complicated as the situation gets.
Do our liberals say to themselves, “hopefully this will go away quickly and the next thing to come up, is something we can blame on George Bush”? No, they don’t. Whatever stinks like dog feces, must be gingerly placed on the porch of Pennsylvania & 16th, and whoever passes on the opportunity risks excoriation and ostracism from the Democratic party apparatchiks. Here is a situation where an exception to the rule would be quite reasonable; you could even go so far as to say, victory for the Democrats on Tuesday, depends utterly on such an exception being made. The party’s continuing survival, even, may depend on this exception being granted.
And yet, no such exception is forthcoming. No circuit breaker. No breakway fender.
I can’t help but notice all kinds of popular liberal leitmotifs into which such an exception would gracefully morph. The first thing that comes to mind is the “George Bush can’t admit his mistakes” thing, as in: “Kerry’s botched joke is all Sen. Kerry’s doing and none of President Bush’s, but at least with a whole week of (not-so-gentle) probing and prodding, Kerry admitted his mistake, where as President Bush has yet to admit his.” Something like that. Perhaps, somewhere, a liberal blogger is saying that very thing — without laying any blame for the joke-botching at the feet of George Bush, whatsoever. Perhaps.
I haven’t seen that anywhere. What I have seen, is lots of “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” commands that I’m not supposed to think about what John Kerry said; if that command is not obeyed, the ugliness starts immediately, and all of it has to do with our current President. I’ve seen lots of accusations that President Bush…yawn…”lied” during his own remarks about the Senator’s implosion. I’ve seen the case made, repeatedly, that when all’s said and done our mainstream press is indeed biased — toward the right! As in, those dastardly newspapers are actually mentioning that the Democrats’ 2004 champion for the presidency thinks our troops are a bunch of dummies, or at least says so. Invariably, such an observation concludes that the Bush White House has the press in it’s pocket and that they’re too “timid” to “speak truth to power.”
I’ve seen a lot of conservative bloggers and pundits make the comment, sarcastically, that Sen. Kerry’s misstep was further evidence of President Bush’s sinister plan to control the thought waves of our population — perhaps that the evil Karl Rove somehow fooled the Massachusetts Senator into saying what he said.
And I get the distinct impression that the liberals are inhaling, ready to agree with this, and halfway through the first syllable biting their tongues and thinking…eh…that’s one step forward and three steps back. Maybe if we take that to the drawing board and polish it up, we can come up with something…
…and this is what I can no longer ignore. To the Democrats, a highly-irrelevant talking point that mentions the evil deeds of George W. Bush, is distinctly preferred over a relevant talking-point that does not. Their mental adrenaline, such as it is, is directed in bridging the gap between what has caused grief to us over the last day or so…and ol’ what’s-his-name. What has aroused our angst, lately, that is not his fault? It seems they’re on a mission to prove there is no such thing.
As a Republican, I find it sadly amusing. As an American, I find it to be just sad — to say nothing of a significant security threat. I expect Democrats will be running our legislature next year. Our 110th Congress, like few Congresses that have ever sat before it since Reconstruction, will be confronted by a huge array of challenges that can only be addressed by looking forward. And they have nothing to say about anything if they can’t talk about HIM! To somehow curtail them from mentioning that particular guy, is to deprive them, completely, of any ideas they can vocalize, anywhere. About anything.
Seldom has that been demonstrated with greater clarity, than in the last five days. President Bush is disconnected from HalpUsJonCarry-Gate, so completely, that we might as well be talking about any one of a number of other things…related to American politics, or not. Why, if I were to ask you what kind of pretzels are your favorite — even that has more to do with President Bush, than the dreaded incident from this week. What would happen if the Starbuck’s barrista asked Howard Dean, or Dianne Feinstein, or Senator Kerry or one of our other modern liberals, “May I prepare a beverage while you’re waiting in line? And please don’t mention George Bush in your answer.” Really, what would happen next? Would the line suddenly come to an abrupt stop? Would that outlet shut down for the rest of the day, while the line just snakes out the door, as the liberal tries, tries, and tries again to come up with a Bush-free answer?
Honest to God, in this day and age I think that’s exactly what would happen.
Update: If I had my way, everybody who goes to vote on Tuesday would read this and then…as a follow-up…go back and look at that 15-minute video clip I linked, with the complete Kerry speech. The one that was filmed & edited before anybody involved anticipated that this would become some kind of a big deal. Read…
You must forgive me, for there just is not a lot of room in my life for even good jokes–and there is absolutely no room for “botched jokes”–when the subject of the joke is my son who was killed in Iraq. I know exactly what came out of Sen. John Kerry’s mouth, and in those words there is no interpretation required. His attempt to convince us–and, I believe, to convince himself that that there was really a botched joke buried deep within his insult is in fact a reaffirmation of his ever-present condescending nature. He actually believes that we are stupid enough to agree with him and start laughing simply because he said it was a joke. Mr. Kerry said exactly what he meant and meant exactly what he said. In those words Mr. Kerry did in fact wash completely away the facade of his support of our magnificent troops and revealed for all to see his true colors.
:
John Kerry stands alone, to be judged by his words. He has given us the rare opportunity to look into the soul of a politician, and he has shown himself wanting, especially in view of the fact that he asked us to allow him the honor and privilege of leading our gallant military at a time of war. It is rare in life to be able to know the consequences of both sides of a decision. Mr. Kerry has clearly demonstrated what manner of president he would have been. Fortunately the American electorate denied him that high honor.
The writer is Ronald Griffin, father of Army Spc. Kyle Griffin who was killed in a truck accident in Iraq in May of 2003. Pondering the situation with Specialist Griffin, one immediately is struck by two important things missing from Sen. Kerry’s thoughtless words: Fairness and truth. Now, go back to the video clip. Look at the audience reaction right after “stuck in Iraq.”
I have been told there are gasps mixed in with the laughter and the cheering. That’s possible, and it would be difficult to assess how much of each ingredient is mixed in. I realize that’s simply the way audio information is, especially when it’s been electronically translated.
Even with all that, this whole episode says something terribly unflattering not only about Sen. Kerry, who isn’t running for anything — but about the faction that supports him, which definitely is. Whether they realize it or not, they are skullfuckingly vicious bastards and no civilized society would think of putting them in charge of so much as a vegetable cart.
Sickening.