May 16, 2005
Worth a Thousand Words.
Captain’s Quarters published a comment comparing Newsweek’s reckless running of the unsubstantiated Koran desecration story with the media’s seeming consensus to ignore the story of the 9-11 jumpers.
I did some research on it, and was amazed to find that the estimate for the number of people who jumped to their deaths from the World Trade Center on 9-11 runs from 50 to 200 people. I knew that there were some jumpers, but I didn’t realize that there were so many. I certainly didn’t know that the media under-reported that story. (Obviously they did a good job.)
I have a hard time understanding the objections of those who didn’t want the pictures to be published. From what I’ve found, none of them were ever positively identified, although (somewhat insensitive) attempts were made, so it’s not as though the death of any specific person is being capitalized on.
Apparently another reason given was that pictures would lead to violence against Muslims.
Some seem to think it was merely sick voyeurism for the papers to print them.
I would think, though, that the reason people really objected was that they are just too disturbing to deal with, especially with the wound so fresh. The image of the towers collapsing combined with the words that thousands of people died is nothing compared to the image of even one of those people falling to their deaths. The first is academic, the second forces me to wonder what it must have been like to have to choose between two deaths, one long and agonizing; one immediate but requiring a step over the edge.
Likewise, the pictures of starved and abused holocaust victims stacked like so much refuse bring home the realities of the horror in a way that the words “millions dead” never can.
I suddenly find myself thinking more about the people who died and were injured this week.
Posted by illuminaria at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2005
Is Jim West Really a Hypocrite? I'm Not Convinced.
Note for people from liberal blogs surfing in today: I don't know anything about West, other than what I've read in these stories about him. I find his soliciting 18 year olds, while not illegal, creepy, and certainly a reason to not vote for him. I find some of his past legislation stupid beyond words and definitely a reason to not vote for him. The only issue I am writing about here is if it is possible for his sexuality and his political record given in the Spokesman-Review to not be at odds. I think it is, and I think people are jumping to conclusions in that regard. Typically these seem to be people who think being conservative and gay is an oxymoron. That doesn't mean I'm "readying the smokescreen to protect one of [my] own," affirming his opinions, or expressing my "latent homosexual tendencies." Seriously, people, you can think someone's an ass and still not believe everything said about him. Try actually respectfully reading something and taking it at face value for once.
Over at Wizbang they have the story of Spokane, WA mayor Jim West who has recently been outed by the Spokesman-Review. In one part, they compare his supposed homosexuality with the legislation he’s supported over the years, seemingly to imply that he’s a hypocrite. Is he? Let’s take a look.
In February 1998, West voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, a ban on gay marriage. Gov. Lowry vetoed the measure, but the veto was overridden and Washington became the 27th state to enact such a ban.
First of all, I’d like to point out that West has said that he’s not gay, and in fact it was revealed that one of his chat room nicknames was “RightBi-Guy.” That does change things somewhat. Depending on where he falls on the “Kinsey scale,” it may not be that he’s more attracted to women than men, meaning that he wouldn’t care much about marrying a man. Even if he was completely gay, it doesn’t make him a hypocrite to not support gay marriage.
In 1986, he supported a bill allowing criminal background checks for jobs involving children. The measure was necessary because child abusers “often try to gain a position of trust and authority,” West said in a Spokesman-Review interview at the time.…
Their 1986 bill, which failed, would have barred gay men and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. It called for screening prospective employees for sexual orientation and firing employees whose homosexuality became known.
The implication is that this is hypocritical because West himself is a state employee. However, even if true, this isn’t hypocritical because West is not a state employee who works with children. (Update: some people seem to think this point isn't terribly important. I don't see why. There's many people, especially in the 80's, who may not have cared if someone was gay, but didn't want openly gay people working with children. My mother is a strong liberal, but she herself has expressed this opinion to me before. Also, I'll point out that it's presumably talking about openly gay people here, not closeted gays like West.)
I'm suspicious as to whether the summary is accurate or not. Try as I might, I can’t find a single story on this on Lexis-Nexis, search engines, or Washington newspaper archives. I think the story is just too old for a lot of the smaller newspaper archives to go back that far. You’d think if it really was outright calling for the firing of homosexuals working with children, there’d be some mention of it in one of the bigger newspapers, or even a national newspaper. The “criminal background checks for jobs involving children” part is obviously not hypocritical, and indeed sounds like a great idea. I will continue to look, but I remain suspicious of Spokesman-Review’s summary. Especially considering this next gaffe.
In an April 9 Internet chat, West sent his photo to “Moto-Brock,” the person he believed was an 18-year-old Spokane high school senior. Instead, Moto-Brock was a forensic computer consultant hired by the newspaper to verify the mayor’s identity and presence on Gay.com.…
During a 1990 hearing on AIDS education, West proposed that teen sex be criminalized.
The bill, written by the abstinence group Teen Aid, would have made sexual contact – not just sexual intercourse – a misdemeanor for unmarried teenagers 18 or younger. It defined sexual contact as “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person.”
Since he was hitting on supposed 18-year old boys, which he doesn’t deny, this would indeed be hypocritical, if true. Let’s go to Lexis-Nexis…
The Seattle Times January 19, 1990, Friday, Final EditionIn what many are calling a misguided effort to prevent the spread of AIDS, some influential state senators have proposed making "sexual contact" illegal for anybody younger than 18.
There would be an exception for minors who are married.
Ok, so it’s younger than 18, not 18 and younger. Nice job, Spokesman-Review. Sorry, afraid this isn’t hypocritical either, even if it is pretty stupid.
In 1986, West voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS during sex. He said such instruction “is something people go buy at dirty bookstores.”
I’m afraid this isn’t hypocritical either. It is possible, and indeed quite understandable, for a gay person to want to keep sex out of the public sphere as much as possible.
In 1995, when allegations of sexual harassment involving Democratic Gov. Mike Lowry and a female aide were published in an independent counsel’s report, West called on the House to launch impeachment proceedings against Lowry.“The governor should not be held to any lower standard than anyone else in our society. Governors cannot and should not flout the law,” West said
This would indeed be hypocritical if the allegations that West had molested two boys over twenty years ago were true. However both of the men making accusations are convicted felons and there’s no corroborating evidence. Plus, people who molest boys usually don’t stop. If he was a child molester, you’d think they’d have been able to find something more recent. I’m sure they looked. However, it is possible, so we’ll put this one into the maybe category.
If it was true, though, he's a bastard and I don't care whether or not he's a hypocritical and a bastard. One's enough for me.
As Spokane’s mayor, West recently said he’d veto a proposal to extend city benefits to unmarried domestic partners at City Hall, citing its cost. But the City Council last month approved the measure on a 5-2 vote, enough to withstand a mayoral veto.
Again, it’s legitimately possible to be gay and not care about gay marriage. Plus West cited the costs, not the sexual issues. Again, not hypocritical.
There’s also several small snippets about West’s opposition to abortion “rights.” I really fail to see how that’s hypocritical. What about being gay would require someone to support abortion? Heck, unplanned pregnancies are not even something gay people often have a problem with.
So in summation, we have 1 “maybe-depending-on-the-uncorrobrated-testimony-of two-felons" and 6 “no”s to the question as to whether West is a hypocrite. Not quite enough to get in a tizzy about. I do agree that some of this stuff was pretty stupid and I wouldn't be jumping around to elect him if I lived in Washington, but I’m not convinced that he’s a self-hating closeted gay. (Update: Just to clarify, I think West is a stupid creepy guy. I wouldn't vote for him. The only issue being discussed here is whether or not his record proves that he is a hypocrite, especially well enough for the newspaper to be writing the story that they did. I think not.)
Read the rest of the story. It’s chock-full with your typical liberal rhetoric that any gay conservative must be a conflicted, angry, and hate himself and that it’s their right to out him because “It’s really hurting a lot of people, especially gay youth." This comment is also really great.
“For a politician to be (privately) gay and to be so anti-gay is an abuse of power,” Reguindin said.
Um, OK. An abuse of power…sure. Them gay-outin' liberals sure are smart.
More at Say Anything, who also isn't impressed with West in general.
Update: Success! The Seattle-Post Intelligencer has archives going back to 1986 (registration required). In May of 1986 Rep. Glenn Dobbs proposed Initiative 490 which “would prohibit knowingly employing homosexuals and other "sexually deviant" people in schools, day-care centers, foster care programs and other government employment that involves contact with children, the elderly, people in detention and mentally or physically handicapped people.” It needed 151,133 signatures to put it on the ballot, which it failed to get, so it never even got close to passing. Not a single one of the 10 stories that mentioned the Initiative mentioned Jim West in any way shape or form.
The reason given for the bill was that homosexuals are more likely to be child molesters. (This was presumably in response to a story I found several months earlier about a day care worker accused of abusing 5 children.) Of course the old meme that most child molesters are heterosexuals was pulled out. This is of course true, but most people are heterosexual so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If we take the number from the article that 20% of child molesters are homosexual and 4% of the population is homosexual (which may be a slight overestimate is anything), then we can calculate what your chances are that you’ll be a child molester if you are gay. Let’s take the population of the US as 296 million and the number of child molesters as 4 million. In that case, if you’re heterosexual, you have a 1.1% chance of being a child molester, whereas if you’re homosexual, you have a 6.8% chance of being a child molester. Therefore, you’re over 6 times more likely to be a child molester if you’re a homosexual. Of course the numbers overall are low enough that I don’t think homosexuals should be banned from working with children for that reason.
Now as to the question about whether this proves West is a hypocrite, it’s still up in the air. We have determined that such an animal exists, (although, Spokesman Review, it was an initiative, not a bill) but we haven’t determined exactly what West said about it. I would at least like to see his entire quote to the Spokesman Review. More later, perhaps, as I look at more newspapers. (There’s only one webpage in all the internet that mentions the initiative, and then only in passing with no details.)
Just as a reminder, the Spokesman Review says
In 1986, he supported a bill allowing criminal background checks for jobs involving children. The measure was necessary because child abusers “often try to gain a position of trust and authority,” West said in a Spokesman-Review interview at the time.
So did West just support the background check part, or was he in favor of the whole thing? We'll see.
Posted by illuminaria at 02:48 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
April 18, 2005
Time STILL Gets It Wrong.
People have been talking about the article in Time about Ann Coulter, and many have pointed out that a photo that Time at first incorrectly labeled as being of anti-Coulter protestors at the GOP convention. The label has since been corrected on the website. However, when I recently surfed on over there to look at it I noticed that the description in the html img tag still says "Protesters blast Coulter at the G.O.P. Convention in New York City last year." Nice try, Time.
<img src="http://i.timeinc.net/time/covers/1101050425/gallery/photos/photo08.jpg" alt="Protesters blast Coulter at the G.O.P. Convention in New York City last year" width="449" border="0">
Posted by illuminaria at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Do Journalists Ever Take Logic Classes?
Number 2 Pencil points to a post at Eduwonk about the New York Times trying to use a study with very poor sampling to cast doubt on No Child Left Behind, despite the fact that other, better studies have reached the opposite conclusion.
They’re quite right to point this out. Goodness knows I hate it when the media chooses studies to report based on ideology rather than how good the study is. However, there’s also an even more idiotic thing that I found buried in the depths of the article.
In both reading and math, the study determined, test scores have gone up somewhat, as each class of students outdoes its predecessors. But within grades, students have made less academic progress during the school year than they did before No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, the researchers said.…
[The] Northwest study tracked student performance at a level that others did not, a factor that may help explain why some of its findings appear unorthodox. Rather than relying on test scores at just one point in the year, the Northwest study looked at how students fared in the fall and then again in the spring, in an effort to see how much they had learned during the year.
Average student scores at a certain grade level may be improving, but individual students aren’t learning as much during the year. Uh-hu…
With this approach, Northwest found that test scores on its exams did, in fact, go up from one year to the next under No Child Left Behind, typically by less than a point. The reason successive classes appear to do a little better than those before them may stem from the fact that younger students have grown up during a time of more regular testing than their immediate predecessors, the researchers said, and are therefore higher achievers.
Oh, I see. So the “only” reason the average testing score is going up within a grade level, is because the younger students who have been exposed to more testing are higher achievers, and have the right amount of knowledge going into the grade to meet the standards after they’ve completed the grade. Damn! You people have convinced me! Standardized testing IS totally useless.
Posted by illuminaria at 04:07 PM | Comments (2)
April 11, 2005
Dems to DeLay - Resign "For the Good of the Party"
Via Michael Williams, see Robert Novak’s column today. In it he reveals that the New York Times editorial page tried to convince former Congressman Bob Livingston to write an editorial about how Majority Leader Tom DeLay should step aside for the good of the party.
Livingston, a Louisiana congressman who was Appropriations Committee chairman, was set to succeed Newt Gingrich as speaker in November 1998, when he stunned Washington by announcing his resignation from Congress after allegations of a sexual affair.New York Times editorial page staffer Tobin Harshaw sent the March 24 e-mail to Livingston, now a Washington lobbyist. Chris Terrell, a principal in The Livingston Group, declined to give this column a copy of the message but read it to us. Harshaw, reached in New York, confirmed he had a conversation with Terrell, but added: ''We don't comment on assignments, written or unwritten.''
According to Terrell, Harshaw's e-mail suggested Livingston might want to write ''a short op-ed on DeLay's political future.'' Terrell said he telephoned Harshaw, saying his boss would ''write a favorable piece,'' then asked: ''Is that really what you're seeking or is that what you would print?''
It clearly was not. While Harshaw asserted ''we would welcome any thoughts'' by Livingston, Terrell quoted him as saying ''we are seeking those who would go on the record or state for the good of the party he (DeLay) should step aside.''
Novak points out that so far no major Republican has come out against DeLay. Given that, I find it really amusing how all the stories about DeLay’s possible resignation are couched in terms of how good it would be for the Republican party.
I’m glad liberals are telling Republicans what’s good for the party. The advice is appreciated, I’m sure. Of course we know that isn’t the real reason liberals want DeLay to resign. If they thought DeLay was so terrible for the party they’d want him to stay, just like how Republicans cheered when Howard Dean became the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. (Dean hasn’t failed us, by the way.)
Really what this means is that liberals want DeLay to resign because he’s bad for THEM. I hope DeLay isn’t feeling bad about all this, it’s really a tacit admission of his power.
Posted by illuminaria at 10:10 PM | Comments (1)
April 05, 2005
That There Matt Lauer Sure is Insightful
Via Ravenwood’s Universe, see this parody of a real journalistic question by Matt Lauer about the pope.
That ability, people talk about him being a very modern pope in some ways, in that he took advantage of the Internet, he understood the power of the media, and yet in most of his views, you'd have to say are extremely conservative. Do you see a contradiction there?
Us conserv’tives gennraly ain’t quite sure how ta’ work that there inter-net thing. Pers’nally, ah ask one of them there lib’ral neighbors a’ mine to take this stuff ah scrawl on the back of my barn and put it up on that there inter-net. He says to me that he’s “using my scribbles to write his doctoral thesis on the pathetic intellectual and political aspirations of backwoods inbreds.” Ah ain’t quite sure ah get the meanin’ of any of them there words, but ah don't care.
Posted by illuminaria at 08:50 PM | Comments (2)
March 14, 2005
This is Reporting? More like Plagiarism
Take a look at this AP article that was on Wizbang today. Then go read this press release from the World Wide Fund for Nature. Notice any similarities? That’s because out of 8 paragraphs in the AP “article,” 7 are copied nearly verbatim from the press release. The other paragraph is the summary at the beginning of the article. I read both carefully, and noted that the only changes were punctuation, the rewording of a few sentences to make them simpler, and the substitutions of spellings, scientific units, and a few word to make them more understandable to American audiences. In fact, the only really substantive difference is the change of “the report shows” to “the report says.” Even then, it’s hard to tell if the “reporter” is really trying to point out the difference between what is just said and what is really shown.
Have another careful read of the AP article. Notice anything else? The article never mentions a single thing about a press release. I have no problem with news organizations reprinting press releases, but they need to SAY that they are press releases. The fact that this “article” is missing that little detail implies that the reporter actually read the report or interviewed someone that had.
And while we’re on the subject, I simply can not believe that reporters who report on these sorts of things can’t have just a little bit of training in the fallacies of statistics and logic, read the reports themselves, and then report on what they actually say. I can do that, it’s not hard; all it takes is a little time and a sharp open mind. Or they could at least consult someone who can do this. This is why people turn to the blogosphere. Wizbang points out that they only tend to provide critical reporting when the report supports conservative ideals.
As we saw last week, what someone says a study says is often very different from what it actually says.
Now I don’t have time to read the 80 page report myself, though I did read the introduction, so I can’t say whether it is accurate or not. However, the introduction certainly seems to take a more sedate tone as to whether or not the climate changes it tracks are due to man-caused global warming or not. It even notes that:
Climatic changes and its impacts on the fluctuation of glaciers are a natural phenomenon that has been occurring in the Earth’s five billion-year-old history.
In comparison, here is this sentence from the WWF press release.
WWF calls on all governments to recognize that global average temperature must stay below 2°C (3.6°F) in comparison to pre-industrial levels.
This seems to show that the people who write press releases for their organizations don’t even read their own reports. If they did, they might realize that it is ridiculous to call for governments to attempt to hold the Earth’s temperature at a certain point, seeing as how global changes have been occurring for billions of years and, despite the claims of some people, it is impossible to determine how much humans, as opposed to natural causes, have affected recent climate changes.
Posted by illuminaria at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2005
Fetus or Baby?
Yesterday on CNN I saw this AP story
Pregnant woman: 'Maternal instinct' helped kill attacker.
Katherine Smith, 22, died Thursday after luring Brady to her apartment to pick up a package supposedly delivered to the wrong address. When Smith pulled out a knife and attacked the pregnant woman, Brady fought back, striking Smith on the head with an ash tray and stabbing her three times with her own knife, police said.
The attacker was trying to steal her baby. Good for her! The story reminds me of the other incidents of women trying to steal babies from women while they are still pregnant that have happened in the past several years.
It really makes me wonder if this is a new phenomenon, and if it is, is it just a coincidence, or is there some reason? Babies being stolen, after all, is not a new thing. After all, it even happens in the Bible. But cutting them out of a pregnant woman? Now that’s weird.
What really caught my eye, was at the end of the article:
In 2003, a woman was shot to death in Oklahoma, allegedly by another woman who then pretended the 6-month-old fetus was her child. That fetus died.I really started wondering about the reference to child as a fetus.
I did some more checking around about the story. It appears that what happened is that Effie Goodson shot Carolyn Simpson and cut the child from her body. The next day she showed up at a hospital with a dead child. There are no details as to whether the doctors were able to determine if the child had lived past the time its mother had died.
It certainly seems logical to assume that it had, though, since if it hadn’t, you’d think Goodson would have either left it there with the mother, or taken it to the hospital earlier. Also, considering the fact that the pregnancy was in the sixth month, it seems logical to assume that the child would be able to survive for at least a few minutes after being taken from the womb, assuming of course that it was taken out early enough. However, it also seems logical to assume that Goodson had some mental problems; so assigning logic to her is probably not a particularly robust method.
However, even if the child didn’t survive outside of the womb, I still don’t think calling it a fetus is correct. For instance, the difference between a miscarriage and a stillbirth is that a miscarriage occurs before 20 weeks of gestation (4.5 months), and a stillbirth occurs after that time. However, stillborn babies are generally referred to as babies, even though they can die well before they are born.
I note that in reference to the Scott Peterson case, the child is referred to as both a fetus and a baby. That child was full term, but did not ever survive outside of the womb.
Something tells me, though, that the terminology in these cases would have been quite different 40 years ago.
(Gosh this a gruesome topic.)
Posted by illuminaria at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2005
Bias on Law & Order? Never!
I see I'm not the only one to immediately pick up on last night's "Bill O'Reilly," "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law & Order.
I immediately said to my husband when it started that they were playing off of the Bill O'Reilly story. The show began with O'Reilly's character, Larry Shea spouting off some typical over the top right wing opinions, and answering a woman's question about how to protect children from bad influences on TV and the internet with "well, you can start by buying my book." Then some bookstore employees talk derisively about the contrast between his family values and his sexual harassment suit, as well as the fact that even though they live in a blue state, there are still plenty of idiots buying his book. My husband said, "That can't be O'Reilly because his opinions are nothing like that." Ha! Right. To liberals, anyone on a radio station other than NPR or Air America thinks exactly like that. Especially if they are also on the Fox News channel. Nevermind that, for instance, Bill O'Reilly and Shawn Hannity have very different views, it's all the same right wing crap to them.
Of course I have never found the fact-checking of Law & Order to be particularly good. I got very annoyed during the last season of Law & Order: CI when an overweight woman mentioned that she had rheumatoid arthritis in her knees "you know, because of my weight." Nevermind the fact that rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that mostly affects the hands and feet and has little or nothing to do with weight, whereas OSTEOarthritis is caused by the wearing away of joint cushioning and is usually worsened by weight. Two minutes on the internet would have fixed that one. I wouldn't imagine they'd be any more thorough in this case.
This is hardly the first time a "ripped from the headlines" episode has completely misrepresented a conservative person or idea.
There was that one where a person who wrote books on getting back to biblical ideals in marriage murdered his daughter in law because she wanted to get a divorce from his son. Then there was the one about the outspoken critic of homosexuality that had a gay son who was so very depressed. But the one that really annoyed me was where they took that story that came out last year about the family that had been starving their children and made it into a horrifying glimpse into the dangers of homeschooling.
Law & Order has always done controversial episodes like this, but they used to have more believable discussion between the officers and prosecutors that came pretty close to fairly debating the issue. Lately they barely even seem to try. There were only a few pathetic opinions offered up in defense of the Shea character, and they were both completely shot down. It's too bad, too, because it's always been my favorite show.
This just goes to show the fact that a lot of people really don't know anything about what conservative ideals are really about or what conservative people are really like. It's annoying, but on the other hand, ignorance is the biggest chink in their armour. I used to be a big liberal myself, until I actually started researching things.
Posted by illuminaria at 02:46 PM | Comments (1)
February 08, 2005
Those Brave Moderates
Given the underwhelming response to the behavior of Democrats at the State of the Union speech last month, I thought this particular blast from the past was quite funny.
The Washington Post January 20, 1999 Clinton Address Elicits Varied Responses in GOP; While a Few Snub President, Response Overall Is Coolly PoliteTo applaud or not to applaud: that was the question for Republicans watching President Clinton's State of the Union speech.
For many, it appeared to be an easy decision. House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) sat stiffly and clapped for the bomber pilot, Sammy Sosa and Rosa Parks, and that was about it. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) applauded for Hillary Rodham Clinton and equal pay for men and women.
Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), who had decided earlier in the day not to attend, changed his mind and showed up "because it would be an affront to the presidency not to go," his spokeswoman said. He sat with a vacant look on his face and his arms crossed.
A handful of House Republicans skipped the speech out of protest, but for the most part congressional Republicans were polite, if cool, in their response to Clinton last night. While their Democratic colleagues interrupted the president with applause more than 100 times, at times extravagantly, Republicans largely watched the 77-minute speech with studied detachment.
Also,
The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA) January 20, 1999 Lawmakers from Mass. like speechMoakley criticized Republicans who "sat on their hands," refusing to applaud even popular proposals such as one to shore up the Social Security system. "They don't want to do anything to make him look good."
In contrast, The Washington Post this year ran an article by Dana Milbank that begins “Pity the Republican moderates who sat in the chamber last night for President Bush's State of the Union address,” The article then goes on to praise those brave moderates who refused to clap for "Bush's rhetoric" and barely mentions the behavior of the Democrats. I didn't see any other articles in The Washington Post mentioning the issue.
Liberal media? No way!
What people often don't seem to realize is that the bias of media outlets is shown clearly by what stories they choose to report on, the quotes that they use, and the focus that they give to their stories.
Posted by illuminaria at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
No Wonder They're Angry
This article in the USA Today about domestic terrorism really annoyed me. This is the quote they use from U.S. Marshals Service chief inspector Geoff ShankPosted by illuminaria at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)