The Crater

The last few weeks have seen a tide of support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (he of, in my estimation, the most dedicated supporters in America) rushing through the state of Iowa, where caucusing is to take place on Tuesday. As is the typical (and, I would argue, not unfair) practice in the political media, with loftier polling numbers and expectation comes heightened scrutiny, however. And in the case of Paul, the most damning of all scrutinies is not especially new — that’s right, I’m talking about the newsletters.

The reaction to the newsletter story on the part of Ron Paul’s online contingent has mostly been, I think it’s fair to say, one part dismissive and two parts outrage. The latter doesn’t necessarily betray the former; one of the staples of the Ron Paul experience, as a supporter, is decrying a perceived media bias and consequent slights against his candidacy. I would grant that this is true, but not for the occasionally hysterical reasons that are trumpeted. I don’t think, for example (as many Paul backers on Twitter have blared) that the media overlooks him because he’s a “threat” to them. Perhaps the implication is that the media fears a shakeup of the status quo, or that somehow Paul’s example and influence would cause a sea change in the nature of the political-media complex. In either case, I think this relies on a faulty impression of the mainstream media, especially popular among supporters of political underdogs. A Ron Paul nomination, in reality, would not be bad for the media. Frankly, I bet most outlets would see it as a boon, given the blinding contrast between Paul and President Obama (i.e. conflict), and the volatile (i.e. interesting) landscape such an event would create. The reason he’s previously been overlooked is, at the risk of sounding simple, that no serious political observers think he has any chance of securing the nomination.

This is not a fair way to cover such races, since it can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy — he/she of little media coverage has a much harder time gaining traction, and the inverse is also true. But there is a die-hard contingent of Paul’s base who seem determined to take this as validation in and of itself, as a rallying cry that he’s simply too independent, and too free, and myriad ‘forces’ are thus aligning themselves to defeat him. The consequence of this thinking is that, in analysis of the patently racist, conspiratorial, and nativist newsletters published under Paul’s name in the 80’s and 90’s, it’s the knee-jerk defense rather than intellectual honesty that’s been ingrained.

I’ll start by dispatching with a few of the most common rebuttals I’ve seen offered by Paul supporters (who, I will stress, are obviously not homogeneous — I’m sure there are droves who reason with this honestly, though I had trouble finding many in the run-up to this writing). For starters, the age of these newsletters comes into discussion quite a lot. This seems to me like the easiest argument to dispel. Unless the implication of “hey, this is stuff from twenty years ago” is to argue that Paul once held those views but has shed them over course of time, it’s simply a non-sequitur. The age of a racist screed has no bearing on its racism, or questions about who the author was, or whether somebody had prior knowledge of the document in question. This is just white noise to blur the facts in play, and time shouldn’t be wasted on it.

There’s also a claim (one that Paul himself has emphasized when challenged on this) that questions regarding these newsletters have been ‘asked and answered.’ But if this is true in any sense, it’s only because the questions have not been sufficiently pointed or probing. The hard truth is, Paul’s excuses now in 2011 simply do not square with what he’s said in the past. In fact, his prior statements are such that I think it fairly obvious he’s been lying. For example, from last month:

“I didn’t write ‘em, I disavow ‘em, that’s it. …I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written. And it’s been going on for twenty years that people have pestered me about this.”

First of all, for Paul to claim he was only aware of this ten years after the writing (acknowledging his prefacing it with “probably”) is wildly inaccurate. We know this because his newsletter contained racist sentiments (in addition to the other groups he smears, homosexuals and AIDS patients among them) well into the 1990s — and Paul himself acknowledged he knew of such an article from 1992, during an interview with the Dallas Morning News in 1996. The offending passage (which is a great deal tamer than many of the others):

“If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be.”

Paul’s response, which is in no way surprised, outraged or bewildered when (by his claim) he suddenly learns of racist content in his newsletters:

“If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them.”

That’s a full-throated endorsement of a racist passage, in a newsletter written in Ron Paul’s name (and in his voice, at times referencing his family, and his town of Lake Jackson, Texas), which by the timeline he now attempts to pass off would have been one of the first times he was made aware such a thing was written. Is this even remotely believable? Is it believable that a non-racist, when possessing knowledge of such virulent nonsense, would not immediately issue a mea culpa, denounce it, and try to mend fences going forward? If Paul supporters want to exalt their man as a free thinker, an independent and a truth-teller, that he’s evidently shifted and lied about this issue over the years should give them pause. And if they indeed hold to the values of free thought and following evidence where it takes you, they should be rigorously demanding answers from Ron Paul, not accepting the repetition of evident falsehoods.

Furthermore, he also claims he doesn’t even know who wrote them. This, considering his illustrated willingness to distort and shift his story, is instructive. Unless you take him at his word (which would still indict him of something pretty dire — employing a ghostwriter without informing your readers, and not even knowing who it is, is truly shoddy work and intensely unethical), we’re left to ponder two possibilities. First, he wrote those newsletter himself, and as such there is no other, real author to name. Or, they were indeed written by somebody else, and by divulging the name Paul would allow journalists to root through that person’s catalogue of writing, and their political affiliations, which could damage Paul by association. Why, they might ask, did he hire this person in the first place?

Whether or not Paul wrote the words himself, though, is ultimately irrelevant. It might produce a sort of grim yet enthralling effect to know that, yes, the man you see standing on the debate stage talking about free markets and liberty actually sat down and wrote that 95% of D.C.’s black males were “semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” but the tacit approval is no less damning. In being sure he knew about them, (which as illustrated above, and in the regular meandering excuses he’s made, seems obvious), you really know all you need to.

One insistence from the Ron Paul crowd that I think does bear some weight, and should be mentioned, is that some of the policies he’s been espousing on the campaign trail could cause very positive change in the lives of minority groups. His vigorous denouncement of the war on drugs, for example, and the brutal racial inequalities and prejudices with which it’s been waged, certainly doesn’t sound like the platform of a secret racist. I would not deny this.

However, this point merely leads the informed voter to an honest, yet uncomfortable question: if I elect somebody who may be a racist in their heart, yet by virtue of their strong political ideology won’t govern as a racist, am I okay with that? I wouldn’t necessarily condemn somebody for answering yes; there are honest and reasonable arguments going both directions, and if some amount of grappling has been done I think I could respect however the decision came out. But to fail to even consider the question staring right in your face is to not reason honestly about a question that thoroughly deserves it.

(Source: csmonitor.com)

shortformblog:

Tomorrow’s our third birthday: What we learned in the past twelve months

A lot of cake. A lot of reasons to celebrate. A lot of big news. In celebration of our birthday tomorrow — we started on January 1, 2009 — we thought we’d share a few anecdotes from the past year. The past twelve months of this silly experiment of telling people the news with big numbers and short blurbs has been a pretty exciting one, and we certainly gained a ton from this year. (In fact, we just hit our 20,000th follower this evening. Whoo!) There were many highlights and lowlights, and we wanted to reflect on a few of those. Hop over to the jump to see them in Summary Sandwich form.

Read More

It was early in 2011 that I joined up as a writer with ShortFormBlog, and it’s easily been the most productive and educational year of my life for just that reason. A tremendous thanks to Ernie Smith for bringing me on board, and for being a really superlative editor, Seth Millstein (for pitching me in the first place, to say nothing of general friendship), Sami Main, Justin Jones, and the inimitable Matthew Keys. Working with all of you to varying degrees this last year has been a real delight. Happy birthday to us!

(Source: shortformblog)

I realize that, given the relative obscurity of this blog, writing impassioned responses to people a great deal more publicly visible than I is a task likely to go unrewarded, either by recognition or response. That said, given that this is about the recent furor over PolitiFact’s 2011 “Lie of the Year” selection, I think a little questing for truth is in order.

In the first place, for background — PolitiFact released their choice for “Lie of the Year” last week, going with the Democratic (and broadly liberal) claim that the GOP, in voting for the Paul Ryan budget, had voted to “end Medicare.” That PolitiFact was of this mind is no surprise, and if there’s a defense I’d give them it’s that the claims they made this choice due to lobbying by Paul Ryan himself seem a bit hysterical; they’ve consistently been rating this claim a lie throughout the last year, long before there was any inkling of Ryan making a pitch. Furthermore, to do that would be a baldly hypocritical, ethically bankrupt refutation of PolitiFact’s stated goal, and I don’t think anything that deliberately insidious is at play here. However, the conclusion they came to strikes me as wrong, the reasons they’ve given as thin, and the overall effort as unbefitting of their stated goal.

For starters, to term this a “lie” is a pretty provocative statement, even if you believe the Democratic claim to be untrue; the inherent truth of the matter clearly lies in a pretty minute linguistic distinction. This is a problem that PolitiFact often skirts on their individual articles, which use classifications like “mostly false” or “mostly true,” which don’t imply a knowing attempt to deceive. The only classification that does imply this is their most infamous, “pants on fire.” Given that they have a rating of simply “false,” the rating “pants on fire” would seem to me to have no conceivable, additional distinction beyond PolitiFact’s (at times very subjective seeming) belief that the speaker is knowingly spreading misstatements.

This is important, because claiming that somebody is lying is a great, great deal different than saying somebody has made a false statement. I don’t doubt the people at PolitiFact realize this. And in the context of a murky semantic debate about whether changing the operating structure of a long-standing institution amounts to “ending” it, claiming that the people who come down on one side of that issue are lying is quite incendiary.

Further trouble comes when PolitiFact goes into specific bullet-points as to why the Democratic claim was an “overreach.” Reprinted here:

• They ignored the fact that the Ryan plan would not affect people currently in Medicare — or even the people 55 to 65 who would join the program in the next 10 years.

• They used harsh terms such as “end” and “kill” when the program would still exist, although in a privatized system.

• They used pictures and video of elderly people who clearly were too old to be affected by the Ryan plan. The DCCC video that aired four days after the vote featured an elderly man who had to take a job as a stripper to pay his medical bills.

To the first point: Whether or not the Ryan plan has an effect on present-day seniors or only people currently in their late forties/early fifties is wholly irrelevant to whether the GOP voted to “end” it. If you want to criticize the Democrats for omitting mention of a specific provision of the Ryan plan, that’s certainly fair (though no political party talks up the sweeteners in opposition bills), but it has no bearing on the precise claim being made.

To the second point: I would strongly disagree that “end” is a harsh term; this is only true if we take as a given PolitiFact’s ruling, which obviously many don’t. I also don’t have a personal issue with using the word “kill” in this context (and indeed, when assessing a claim by Mike Pence about allegedly “job-killing” legislation back in July, PolitiFact didn’t question the rhetorical flourish either), though I understand why somebody might be uncomfortable with it. This does get at the core of the argument, though — is a privatized Medicare still Medicare?

On the face of it, I’d say not; the changes Ryan makes to the system are pervasive, changing it from a public to a largely privatized institution, in such a way that would conceivably (very easy to conceive, in fact) result in lower total benefits for seniors and create a more daunting, perilous financial situation for those individuals with severe medical problems later in life. If the stated goal at Medicare’s inception is to use a government system to ensure that the aged in our society are entitled to (and will receive) certain care, and the change proposed is for the government to dish out a set (perhaps much, much smaller) amount of money to let seniors buy insurance on the open market, I’m comfortable calling that an end to the program. It’s a change in kind, not degree. Even if you disagree with this, to call me a liar for feeling that way strikes me as pretty arrogant.

To the third point: This, like the first instance, is wholly irrelevant to the charge being leveled. It’s a fine side-issue within the debate over the Ryan plan to discuss, but in this context it’s just highlighting something irrelevant to pad a case against your intellectual opposition. I would also strenuously disagree that an ad depicting a senior citizen suffering as a result of the plan (though I suspect we’d agree the image used to get that point across is hyperbolic and crass) is somehow factually incorrect if that eventuality is twenty years or so off. When people currently in their thirties and forties are having a harder time with their medical insurance because of the Ryan plan (my expectation), they will indeed look quite elderly. They will, in fact, be elderly. Every bit as much as the people who would in the short-term be exempt. Perhaps I’m taking a broader view of this, but I don’t especially think it matters to the core of this dispute whether today’s seniors or those decades from now are effected by this.

The ad showing an old man who has to become a stripper is stupid, though philosophically not untrue — a consequence of seniors having less security built-in to the social safety net will almost assuredly be careers extended into later and later ages. If the ad had shown an old man returning to work as a janitor or (for a less manual-labor feel) lawyer, I doubt this would be a point of contention. And, again, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the Ryan plan “ends Medicare.”

In totality, I think I’ve made a pretty decent pitch as to why it’s both reasonable to say the Ryan plan ends Medicare, and why calling this untrue (much less a lie) is by no means a settled matter. However, what motivated me to write this was Bill Adair’s response to the controversy, which flashed some of the worst aspects of placing defense of an organization above the organization’s ostensible function.

Adair opens with an anecdote about how conservatives get their news from Fox, Newsmax and Limbaugh, while liberals turn to the Huffington Post, DailyKos, and Rachel Maddow (I can only be found guilty of the last of those liberal three). He then surmises that this is the nature of the “echo chamber,” which I highly agree with, as I prioritize diversity of news sources and independent thought very highly. However, in suggesting that the outcry is the result of a liberal echo chamber, Adair offers no substantive defense against the entirely cogent arguments some have made against their decision. This is extremely peculiar, especially given that PolitiFact is, well, a fact-checking organization; to have an array of criticisms from professional sources dismissed out of hand is troubling.

He does mention that some of the criticisms were “substantive and thoughtful,” unlike people who’ve accused them of being in the pockets of Fox or the Koch brothers:

“The critics said we ignored the long-term effects of Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan and that we were wrong to consider his privatized approach to be Medicare. In their view, that is an end to Medicare.”

However, despite conceding this criticism is “substantive and thoughtful,” Adair never once explains why he and PolitiFact disagree with it. He simply asserts, in the very next line:

“We’ve read the critiques and see nothing that changes our findings. We stand by our story and our conclusion that the claim was the most significant falsehood of 2011. We made no judgments on the merits of the Ryan plan; we just said that the characterization by the Democrats was false.”

If you’re willing to concede somebody’s opinion as being substantive, and you’re an organization dedicated to fact checking, it seems like an abdication of responsibility not to respond to those criticisms in a direct way, rather than simply summarizing and dismissing them. They also point out that FactCheck.org and the Washington Post’s FactChecker made the same selection, but alas, this makes it no more true — “argumentum ad populum” and all that. I suspect he mentions this to contrast the harsh tone with which PolitiFact has been derided, and if he feels they’ve been singled out that’s fine, but again, this is simply not relevant to the primary dispute.

Also, you may note the semantic slipperiness here; they certainly did not just say “the characterization by the Democrats was false,” they called it a lie. The biggest lie of the year, in fact. If there’s anything that could stand explanation in all this, it’s how PolitiFact makes the determination whether people are misstating the truth, or spreading willful lies. It seems convoluted enough that I’m skeptical this is a task they take seriously enough.

It winds down with a condemnation of “overheated” rhetoric against PolitiFact, citing Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and others, and concludes thusly: 

“We have disrupted the status quo because we’re doing what journalists should have been doing for a long time — holding politicians and pundits accountable for their words.”

When taken in full, the conceit of this piece is very clear; it doesn’t seek to clarify why they decided what they did, or respond to criticism that they admit has some intellectual worth. Rather, it’s an organizational defense of PolitiFact, which hinges entirely on a self-serving and flimsy tautology: PolitiFact said it. We are the fact-checkers. Therefore, people who don’t agree are, largely, trapped in the echo chamber. It would have been a great service to PolitiFact had Bill Adair opened this up to a meaningful discussion, but instead, we’ve been treated to a rather prickly, obstinate, and (perhaps most worryingly) illogical response.