God Awful Punning

The nearly insufferable E. J. Dionne Jr. discusses a speech by Senator Obama (D-IL) concerning the role of religion and writes:

"Yet there is often a terrible awkwardness among Democratic politicians when their talk turns to God, partly because they also know how important secular voters are to their coalition. When it comes to God, it's hard to triangulate."

Dionne proves that there is no terrible awkwardness among Democratic columnists when their punning turns to God.

His is a multi-faceted pun, of course, because Divine 'triangulation' is both a complete mystery and also historically troublesome. I do like the pun.

Whitewashing the Facts of Murder

Here are 2 press accounts of the death of Eliya Asheri.

First the Boston Globe (2^nd edition) on 30 June:

But Israeli officials said the Hamas members were fair game under ordinances against membership in terrorist organizations. The arrests came as the body of Eliyahu Asheri, 18, was found in the West Bank two days after a militant group kidnapped him and threatened to kill him if Israel did not cease military operations in the Gaza Strip in pursuit of the captured soldier.

Second the Jerusalem Post on 29 June:

Last Sunday, Naveh said, Asheri was visiting friends in Gush Etzion when he hitched a ride back to the Ofra Junction. There, the IDF officer said, Asheri was picked up by a Palestinian Resistance Committees (PRC) cell and smuggled into Ramallah, taken to a garbage dump and shot in the head at point blank range.

The kidnappers, Naveh said during a press conference at Central Command headquarters in Jerusalem, received tens of thousands of dollars and directions from PRC officials in the Gaza Strip. Asheri's kidnapping, he added, was planned by the cell carefully in advance and was implemented flawlessly. The cell, he said, had from the beginning of the abduction planned to murder Asheri and to negotiate the return of his body.

Of course observe that the Globe report is technically 100% correct. The PRC did threaten to kill Asheri. The Globe just doesn’t report the fact that the PRC cell killed him (details!) or how they did it, or why they did it, or how the killers were rewarded. They do run the picture of Asheri’s shrouded body…but on page 14. The Globe carried an AP story with some of these details on 28 June. So why are the above facts unmentionable or not newsworthy only 2 days later?

This utter whitewash of the facts concerning the kidnapping and murder of a young Jew is enough to make any Jew paranoid. I wonder if B’nai B’irth accepts Catholics as members?

What Stalinism Looks Like in 2006

North Korean School Children Celebrate their Dear Leader

Last night I stumbled across pictures of a tour of North Korea taken by Russian Artemii Lebedev. These pictures are both frightening and tragic. They are news. They inform.

There are 5 pages. The first 2 pages have been copied and have the photographer's captions translated into English. I did pump the original 5 through Babelfish, but it provides little help with the text. The original pages are much better, though, even I don't read Russian. Lebedev is a web designer.

Lebdev remarks:

North Korea is a perfect reproduction of the year 1950.

That doesn't sound too threatening, until you realize that these are the words of a Russian.

Here is the first translated page.

Here is the second translated page.

Here is the original Russian page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5.

I owe a hat tip to somebody for this, but I lost the trail. Sorry.

'Some' Circle the Wagons

The mystery headliner of last resort (known as ‘some’) appears once again in today’s Boston Globe. Some (meaning this blogger) would say that the Globe Washington bureau today comes to the defense of parent paper the NY Times, now widely under attack for disclosing US monitoring of financial data in order to identify transactions related to terrorist activity. The Times is having a difficult time explaining why it ran this story over repeated administration requests not to. The front page Globe story by Bryan Bender headlined ‘Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say’ claims that the tracking of financial transactions through SWIFT had previously been disclosed. Maybe this headline should read ‘Some Circle the Wagons’.

The story is quite weak with respect to its argument and evidence. It does not address the central issue of this case at all – the reason why the Times ignored the administration’s request to squelch the story. The one source it quotes is a former diplomat who said the use of SWIFT data was known by ‘a lot of people’. This fact is not in dispute. Some (!) in Congress knew. No doubt many in financial areas knew as well as did many people working on anti-terrorist activity.

The central question is what factors justified publication of this information in the Times. This story does not address that question, but rather seems designed to shift focus away from it.

In the Belly of the Whale: A Conservative Blogger Visits the Boston Globe

On my way to a Boston trade show in April, I stopped for a visit at the Morrissey Boulevard complex of the Boston Globe. My visit was hosted by Richard Chacón, who was then the Globe Ombudsman. Richard toured me around the huge Globe complex and gave me some insight into how the newspaper comes together each day.

For 2 years I have authored this blog focused on the Boston Globe, which is usually quite critical of the paper. Did Richard expect that like Jonah in the belly of the whale, I would repent my past criticism after spending a just few hours at the Globe? Hardly. He did believe, though, that having some insight into the Globe’s workings would make any criticism more informed. I hope he was right. So here is a first impression – the points that stick in my mind after seeing the Globe in operation for the first time.

The Globe building has a typically grandiose 1960s corporate HQ lobby, full of granite, marble, and other signs of organizational pride. There is a huge stone map of New England on the rear wall and another wall has a huge fabric tapestry containing an image of the front page of the Globe from April 4, 1872. This may be the first paper since the continuous production of the Globe or have some other historic significance, I’m not sure. Anyway, I spent some time reading the 1872 paper, and much of the front page is devoted to covering the content of the Sunday sermons that were delivered in various Boston churches the day before. How times do change.

A Chance Meeting
While I was waiting in the lobby to meet Richard, I introduced myself to one Globe reporter who was there for a minute. When he found out I was a blogger he asked me if my blog was one of the “media bias blogs”. I told him it was, and he said that in his opinion “a lot of what may appear as media bias is really a result of laziness, incompetence, or organizational stupidity.” He related an example of one story that had been growing in importance for about a week. It was not covered by the Globe for several days because the key reporter on that beat was off on vacation and so the Globe’s antenna was impaired.

This is an interesting observation. Everybody who has worked in an organization, large or small, knows that work processes and practices are never all they should be, and that these issues always interfere with the organizational mission to some degree. Why should the Globe be any different? It cannot be. Of course we all know of organizations where the burden of organizational dysfunction eventually outweighs the ability to provide value (FEMA comes to mind as an example). The relevant question is how often and how badly such dysfunction impairs the Globe. Besides the inevitable issues mentioned by the reporter, there are also certainly dangers from group-think, ideological bias, and (of course) external competition. It is the external competition, I believe, that by far receives the most attention from Globe people today.

US newspapers are struggling. Circulation and ad revenues are declining. The creation of powerful, free Internet-based news sources and advertising/trading platforms (such as eBay) have changed the business more than any other form of competition since broadcasting. Major newspapers have responded by focusing more on local and specialized content, and by providing their own Internet content. But the business models for the newspaper business remain “in flux” as consultants politely say. My post-visit impression is that this external challenge causes far more anxiety within the ranks of Globe people, compared to accusations of liberal bias.

The Liturgy of the Hours
The most persistent impression to a new visitor is of the cavernous newsroom, which is on the 2^nd floor and runs at least half the length of the building. When you see pictures of the room, it looks light and airy, but my recollection is of a very well-worn interior environment. The wear comes from almost continuous occupation. Each day a newspaper goes through a complete cycle as the product is produced. My visit was at the very beginning of the Globe’s daily cycle, starting at around 10AM.

The content creation process continues for each day’s Globe until the ‘first edition’ of the day’s paper is released to the building’s press plant at about 10PM. The paper goes through 3 more editions each day. The 2^nd edition has updates of financial information and minor changes. The third edition has late sports stories and other content changes, especially updates to page 1 for late news. The 3^rd edition is what most subscribers living near Boston’s Route 128 beltway receive. Finally the 4^th edition is usually not a big change over the 3^rd, but it is released later and is targeted for distribution by newsstands within the city of Boston.

How do you tell which edition you are reading? The 1^st edition gets 4 tiny stars in the margin at the upper left of page 1. For each succeeding edition one star is removed. For you algorithmic types, that means the edition you are reading is expressed as 5 – S, where ‘S” is the number of stars you see in the margin.

Newspaper stories have variable gestation periods, depending upon their subject. The stores are assigned to reporters by “assigning editors”. Globe reporters are assigned to ‘beats’. This might be City Hall, Universities, the police department, or a suburban region. Senior editors at the Globe are responsible for prioritizing the stories within their own beat.

The reporter writing the story and this editor are the primary people responsible for the story’s content and accuracy. They collaborate to write the story and take primary responsibility for its accuracy. This may seem to be a fragile system, and it is. It relies on the good faith efforts of people to produce a quality product. Would extra check help to eliminate bias? I doubt it. Additional approvals would not have much value given the very tight schedule that constrains production. Besides, having fewer approvals concentrates responsibility (and accountability) for a story’s accuracy.

When a story is passed by an assigning editor, it goes to a 2^nd editor who focuses more on how well the story meets the paper’s style guidelines. The style guidelines provide a uniform guide for editing all the paper’s content. They would make interesting reading. I think responsible newspapers would do well today to publish their style guides, so that critical readers can evaluate them.

The Morning Meeting
The highlight of my visit was to attend a daily morning meeting in the Globe newsroom. There are 2 such meetings each day. The meeting is brief, lasting only 20-25 minutes. It is a meeting of Globe Senior editors, those who are responsible for various sections or departments (National, Local, Business, Health/Science, Sports, graphics, photo, etc.). The Globe’s Washington editor attends via conference call. The Globe’s Managing Editor simply calls on each editor by name and they report the top 2 or 3 stories that they plan to run, give a thumbnail sketch of each story and maybe mention where their people are now deployed. Each editor talks for only 1-2 minutes. Then the next editor is called on by name and does the same. When all the editors have had their say, the meeting ends.

Not very exciting, but it is communicative. In 20 minutes one gets a good summary description of the content of tomorrow’s Boston Globe. On the day I visited about 80% of the stories appeared in the next day’s paper, and many of those that did not appear the next day appeared a day or 2 later. Seeing the stories in the paper the next day recalled the meeting and made me appreciate its significance. It is a meeting about tomorrow’s paper. There is another such meeting in the afternoon that I understand includes some discussion of which stories should appear on page 1. But that’s it for formal meetings. The overwhelming majority of the real work is done outside of meetings (isn’t that always the way!).

Layout
I didn’t see the layout process, since it happens during the late hours of the day. What I did notice about the process is that the advertisers get first pick. In other words, the areas of each page in the day’s edition of the Globe that are committed to advertisers are marked off first and the layout editors fit the news stories into the remaining space within each section. I don’t know why this surprised me. I already knew that magazines operated this way, but had just never thought about it in the context of newspapers. The customer comes first, and the Globe is an intermediary with 2 groups of customers; subscribers and advertisers. You would expect that the group that provided the most revenue would get higher priority service, and that is what happens. No big deal. Do the Globe layout people know who has bought particular ad space? I believe they do know what firm will be advertising in each area, but they do not know the ad content.

Layout is one of the last editorial processes, and most of the layout goes on from about 6-10PM within a large circle of workstations at the south end of the Globe newsroom. Since I was visiting in the morning, this area was completely vacant. I could only see a little of the debris left over from yesterday’s layout.

The Ink-stained Wretch as Author
Another aspect of the Globe that I could see and did not expect was to get some sense of the excitement of their business. We’ve all heard many people in the news business say that they love it. We’ve also heard them say (ad nauseum) how very important their business is, and cringed at the implied arrogance. Leaving arrogance aside, it is easy to see a sort of romance in the daily creation of an intellectual product which begins in the intangible and ends up on the doorstep and in the hands of hundred of thousands of people. Frost uses this image to describe the delights of authorship:

I told him this is a pleasant life
To set your breast to the bark of trees
That all your days are dim beneath,
And reaching up with a little knife,
To loose the resin and take it down
And bring it to market when you please.

Bloggers especially should be able to appreciate this creative aspect of news-papering. Like any author, a blogger is delighted to find readers. Reporters and editors are writers, but in a collaborative, structured and sometimes chaotic process that repeats on a daily or weekly cycle. They do not have a blogger’s freedom to produce 'when they please'. Are they proud to have their work in wide circulation? I am certain of it. Are they entitled to that pride? Most of the time.

But back to media arrogance. Is there a further analogy between newspaper reporters and bloggers? Many bloggers have been sickened by the insufferable arrogance of major news media personalities (Dan Rather first comes to mind, but any such list would be long). On the other hand, I can think of other reporters who are personal heroes (Claudia Rosett, William Langewieche, and the late Mike Kelly fit in this category). Are there similar characters within the blogosphere? Certainly. The hero class for me includes Power Line, Andrew Sullivan, and many others. In the wildly over-arrogant class, I would enshrine the Wonkette and her ilk.

What contrasts Dan Rather and the Wonkette from the “heroes” is that becoming well known seemed to bring out more of their character weaknesses. The greater the fame, the greater the pathology. Character really does count. Wanting to be well-liked, well known, or well respected is not in itself a bad thing. But vice is only intemperate pursuit of what is in itself good. Hollywood is literally a global machine for identifying people who have developed extreme forms of this pathology. Our culture mistakenly refers to these as celebrities. It should not be surprising that the creep of Hollywood into the news media should result in circuses like today’s broadcast news. The same phenomenon occurs in print, but on a thankfully smaller scale, and even the blogosphere as it matures may see the same pathology in some cases.

Lessons Learned
The biggest change in my own perception of the Globe is a better appreciation for the separation between the news and the Op Ed content. These two operations go on in entirely separate but parallel processes, until they are combined in the day’s paper. The location of the Globe’s Op Ed content is well standardized within each day’s paper, but the degree of separation between the news and Op Ed processes is greater than can be communicated to the reader by just the layout. The reader often simply flips between pages . Perhaps the Globe should use red ink ( pink?) for the Op Ed content. Either of these color choices would be fitting. Seriously, since my visit I have revised upward my expectations for Globe news coverage and reduced my already low expectations for the Op Ed content. Realizing that most of what I find deeply offensive in the Globe originates in the Op Ed process helps me to enjoy the rest of paper more.

Finally, I learned some appreciation for the Globe’s esprit and for that of the whole newspaper business – a business that worries deeply about disruptive competition from the Internet in ways that remind me of the automobile business during my youth in Detroit, when today’s automotive climate of heavy government regulation and global competition was just beginning. The newspaper business has real concerns about competitors from the Internet. Yet the Globe and newspapers have at least two sustainable advantages. First, they deliver their product daily to my doorstep before breakfast in a form that, while venerable, is quite satisfying and will remain so. Second, they can marshal a relatively large group of talented people to create their product. If they do their reporting jobs well, they may even be able to support an insular Op Ed board that seems to believe their target market is the Harvard faculty, and others who react with hostility when ideologically challenged.

Lewinsky Service for the Kennedys

We find astounding Moonbattery today on the Boston Globe Op Ed page. Like the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”, they continue to show signs of serious pathology. Today the Op Ed editors give space to the authors of a book asserting that the 2004 election was stolen. In officially certified results Bush won the popular vote by 3 million and Ohio by about 120,000 votes. Giving space in a major newspaper to this level of Moonbattery is astonishing even by the wacky standards of Globe Op Ed ‘judgment’.

The moneygraph of the author’s argument is that many 2004 voters used new electronic voting machines, therefore the results cannot be trusted (emphasis mine):

A reasonable person could thus argue that a well-conducted exit poll that confirmed the official count would be about the only reason we would have to believe the results of such an election. Without an audit or a recount to verify the official count, those of us who suspect that the presidential election was stolen do so based on the information now available.

An exit poll is “the only reason to believe the results”? This is what passes for ‘reasonable’ nowadays within the Boston Globe Op Ed cloister. Screw the election ‘process’, from now on let’s just choose our government by taking exit polls!

Of course there is the background context here of Robert Kennedy, Jr, who wrote this piece in Rolling Stone recently on exactly the same topic, and has put the lefty blogosphere all agog. Perhaps this column gets published today as part of the Globe Op Ed board’s ongoing Lewinsky-like services to the Kennedys.

Syrian Surprise

Susan Milligan’s front page Globe story on the Hamas attack that killed 2 Israeli soldiers and captured 1 contains this little comment from Shalom Harari, one of Milligan’s sources:

Harari said there are real divisions between the hard-line Hamas leader, Damascus-based Khaled Mashal, and some Hamas figures within Gaza and the West Bank who want to succeed in government.

Readers of the Globe will be surprised to learn that Hamas – described repeatedly (and at the beginning of today's article) as a political party within the Palestinian Authority – has leaders who live in Syria.

The Horrid Nasty Right

Robert Kuttner writes in Saturday's Boston Globe:

The right has managed to savage the institutions that produced increasing opportunity and a broader middle class in the decades after World War II – minimum wages, trade unionism, job-security, decent health and retirement plans, affordable college and housing, Social Security that rose with inflation, and economic regulation to keep Wall Street from grabbing most of the winnings.

How can the right (who, it goes without saying in Globe Op Ed circles, through their horrid nasty policies seek only to plunder and pillage the poor and middle classes in society on behalf of the wealthy) keep winning elections? Is it that the many voting folks who aren’t wealthy yet vote Republican are so profoundly stupid that they can’t recognize their own interests? Or do they believe that beyond all else it is in their interest to have leaders they actually trust?

Is the degree of trust a property that differentiates the two political parties most in the minds of swing voters? I believe it is. Recall how post-election polls reported that even voters who were less confident in Bush felt more certain that they knew where Bush stood – and therefore were more certain of what Bush would actually do in office. It would follow that they weighed Bush’s campaign rhetoric as more genuine and less calculated than Kerry’s.

If the Democrat’s credibility doesn’t measure up to their opponents, it stems from the fact that they can’t agree to disagree the way the Republicans have done. The Republican coalition consists of a number of ideological strains stretching from Christianist to Libertarian. Not all of are pleased with Bush. Certainly the fiscal conservatives are not reaping great rewards from their help in electing the current administration. Yet Republicans seem united in the realization that despite flaws, they far prefer Bush to acting as opposition to what they believe would have been a national disaster under Kerry.

By contrast, the Democrats are unable even to converge to a single wording of a non-binding Senate resolution on the single issue of the Iraq war. Instead they offered 2 separate resolutions, and 6 Democratic Senators voted for neither of these and instead with the Republicans. Furthermore, Senator Clinton even celebrates this disunity (at least in comments for public consumption) as indicating a more open, honest party. After the votes in the Senate this week she said, "Although unity is important it is not the most important value. It is, I think, a tribute to the Democratic Party at this moment in time that we are honestly and openly struggling with a lot of the difficult issues facing our country,"

That’s an appropriate sentiment for an academic colloquium. However governing is not an academic pursuit, as Hillary well knows. The key success factor in governing is maintaining unity. Openness and honesty are essential, but within the context of a unified party. To succeed as an administration unity at voting time is the critical ingredient. The Democrats have proven repeatedly that they cannot do this as successfully as their opponents.

Iraq is only one current issue, albeit by far the largest. Go beyond that to issues like immigration, judicial activism, school choice, gay rights etc. and Democrats are even more all over the map. Republicans are debating and disagreeing on these issues as well, but their ideological distribution is not as wide. There are more areas on which they have common ground (to borrow Jesse Jackson’s mantra).

Robert Kuttner believes that a return to the pocketbook issues of the FDR and Truman era is the correct answer. Speaking to journalism students at NYU, (what was probably a more ideologically uniform group than any party caucus) he said:

“My view is that if you deliver the goods on pocket-book issues, if you help the 70 to 80 percent of Americans who are economically insecure, they will cut you some slack on the other stuff. If you fight on the other stuff, the Republicans are going to beat you.”

That appeal to the old time religion of the Democrats doesn’t cut water any more. As Peggy Noonan wrote earlier this week, “[Democrats] like--they love--the old base: old union guys who drink Schlitz and voted for FDR and JFK. But today those old union guys are mostly dead, dying or Republican.” Just as dead is the economy that supported FDR’s coalition. It’s not Republican perfidy that broke it up, but market forces operating in a more global economy.

Robert Kuttner ought to recognize that much, and stop blaming the right for his own party’s problems.

Kerry (and The Globe) Busy Spinning

Both John Kerry and Globe reporter Rick Klein did some spinning as Kerry's Iraq resolution went down to defeat 86-13 in the Senate.

“Our numbers are growing, and our ability to apply constant pressure to change course is stronger than it was just a week ago,” Kerry said after the vote.

Kerry is half correct, at least technically. Last week his resolution got only 6 Senate votes.

Reporter Klein’s spinning consists of ignoring some quite relevant information:

…nearly all of the Senate's 44 Democrats voted for a less sweeping, nonbinding amendment that would have called on President Bush to begin withdrawing troops by the end of 2006 and to make ‘phased redeployments’ out of Iraq thereafter. That measure was defeated, 60 to 39, with Senator Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island the only Republican to join the Democrats and Jeffords to vote for the resolution.

“Nearly all”, indeed. Again technically this is true. Reporting objectively, however, the Democrats were split far more seriously than Republicans. There are 44 Senate Democrats, plus Jeffords who caucuses with them making 45. This means that 1 Republican Senator crossed the aisle versus 6 Democrats who voted with the Republicans. And who might those 6 be? They are:

Dayton (D-MN)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)

Four of these are ‘Red State Democrats’ along with Joe Lieberman and the unpredictable (unstable?) Dayton. Klein’s report of the Senate votes fails to note this defection of Red State Democrats from their party’s position. I would call that spinning, also.

What Defines A Feminist Author?

A letter writer in today’s Globe is rendered dyspeptic by a recent Globe Op Ed column that called Ann Coulter a “feminist success story”. She writes (emphasis mine):

Making money, writing bestsellers, successful self-promotion, provocative behavior, or wearing short skirts to sell books does not make Coulter a feminist. It makes her a savvy and cynical marketer and packager. She knows that a big heaping pile of poorly written venom goes down much easier in sexy packaging. Picture the same opinions coming from a dumpy, decidedly unattractive, middle-aged woman in a house dress, and no one would care.

A big heaping pile of poorly written venom from a dumpy, decidedly unattractive, middle-aged woman in a house dress? Wow. There is an accurate description of genuine feminist writing! She’s on to something. And while most feminist writers can no longer be called middle-aged, it is quite true that no one cares about their books.

Getting the swing of this Internet stuff

This item from yesterday’s Boston Globe (this AP story has more) mentions a reorganization at the Globe to merge the news operations of the Globe newspaper and Boston.com. Can “Globe Select” be far behind?

I’ll have much more about this shortly. I find it surprising that the NY Times corporation does not appear to engage in any collaboration regarding its web operations across its various newspapers. It seems apparent to me that not only are all the web operations managed independently (which makes good sense), but they each have developed their own web solutions without collaborating at all about the technology or practices they use (which makes no sense).

Your Insular City of the Beltwayans

Peggy Noonan has some sharp observations today in OJ about the insularity that affects Senators of both political parties who conform their thinking once inside the Beltway (emphasis mine).

You can see their problem in their inability to get a slogan. Which, believe me, is how they think of it: a slogan. "Together for a Better Future." "A Future With Better Togetherness." Today for a better tomorrow, tomorrow for a better today.

A party has a hard time saying what it stands for only when it doesn't know what it stands for. It has trouble getting a compelling slogan only when it has no idea what compels its base. Or when it fears what compels it…

Here is my read on a lot of Democratic senators: They think they know more than their base and they think they're more--how to put it?--stable in their view of the world than their base. In their hearts, in fact, they don't really like their base. (They like--they love--the old base: old union guys who drink Schlitz and voted for FDR and JFK. But today those old union guys are mostly dead, dying or Republican.)

Democratic leaders in Washington are in a worse position than Republican leaders in Washington. Neither likes their base, really, and both think they are smarter. But the Democrats think, deep down, that their base is barking mad. The Republicans don't. They just think their base is a bore.

Page 2

Page 2 is where the Boston Globe tries to hide a delightful political story today in which reporter Joseph Williams quotes an analyst at the [liberal] Brookings Institution and a [left-wing] Berkeley professor. Both agreed that the phrase “cut and run” may have legs at the polls when used to describe the Democrat’s plan the for Iraq war. Tidbits:

But analysts say the Republicans' ability to use language to outmaneuver Democrats could transform three small words into an advantage at the ballot box.

“Nobody uses a phrase like that in a favorable sentence,” [Brookings Analyst Stephen Hess] said. “You're never honoring a person for cutting and running. [Republicans] have got a phrase that sticks to your ribs, if you will.”

“The Democrats were going to wage at least part of the mid term elections on the [Republican] `culture of corruption,' a pretty good phrase,” Hess said. “The problem was twofold -- first it turns out there was corruption on both sides, so it was a little difficult to say, `Ah, that exclusively describes the Republicans.' Secondly, it turns out the American people didn't care all that much.”

Voters tend to respond to a message “that fits on a bumper sticker,” Hess said. Sometimes, he added, “You can have a good bumper sticker and a bad issue.”

The Berkely prof quoted is George Lakoff, who as I recall is the fellow touted in some Democratic circles after the 2004 elections. He prescribes ‘reframing the message’ as the remedy for the Democrat’s chronic problem of losing elections. His assumption is that their problem couldn’t be the content, so it must be the packaging. Lakoff's quote in the Globe article:

“What it says is, `You're a coward,' and moreover it presupposes that the opposite is to stand and fight,”…Lakoff said Republicans have become skilled at distilling an issue to a simple phrase. “Then they repeat it over and over until it becomes part of people's brains. The Democrats haven't learned to do that.”

Maybe that’s why ‘cut and run’ seems to stick in people’s minds, but maybe it sticks because it reminds voters so much of Vietnam.

BTW: Below is a fascinating excerpt from a 2003 interview of Lakoff published in the UC Berkeley News. Lakoff states what he calls the conservative worldview in terms that distinctly echo the preamble of the US Constitution (emphasis mine). Perhaps the preamble is not so familiar around UC Berkeley:

Back up for a second and explain what you mean by the strict father and nurturant parent frameworks.

“Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.”

Linus Is Not Jealous

Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan):

"Three-and-a-half years into the conflict, we should tell the Iraqis that the American security blanket is not permanent"

Some blanket.

A Very Gay Father’s Day

Blogger Miss Kelly, who is far more attentive to many parts of the Globe than I am, pointed out to me via email that Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine contained yet another installment of the ‘Coupling’ column written by the Globe’s gay poster-family columnist, David Valdes Greenwood. Miss Kelly’s comments are reprinted in full below. Thanks, Miss K. I can’t help but jump in front of you with a few comments of my own on this piece.

Mr. (D.) Greenwood spends much of his column posturing, emoting, and over-acting in print.

We've had to admit that it was an illusion to think that our family, even in the quasi-liberal bubble of Massachusetts, was just another family. We already knew our governor decried gay parenting as being "not right on paper" and "not right in fact." But it was still shocking when, in the very week that we finalized Lily's adoption, the longtime agency Catholic Charities of Boston abruptly decided it would end all of its adoptions rather than place kids with same-sex parents. Soon after, parents in a nearby town sued school officials for civil rights violations when a teacher read a fairy tale that involved two princes but no princesses.

Catholic Charities ‘abruptly’ ended its adoptions because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts told them that under our new (and undemocratic) marriage law, they could not continue to contract with the Commonwealth and still favor placing children with heterosexual parents, as they have done for their entire history. The government forced Catholic Charities to choose between keeping their religious practice or keeping their state contracts. They chose the former. Why does that ‘shock’ you? Save your hurt feelings for something more worthwhile, David.

As for the teaching of moral equivalence between gay and straight marriage to 2^nd graders in a public school without parental consent or even notification, see my post at the time here.

How should we react? We could argue till we're blue in the face that we're good and moral dads, telling how we took turns sleeping with Lily in her hospital room when she had pneumonia.

“Good and moral dads”? Boasting of your personal virtue is unseemly. The saintliest and wisest people I know never do it. Lose the halo, David. Just call yourself a father. That title is good enough for anyone.

We want Lily to see all of this and to keep it in her heart for those times when the world stubbornly insists there is only one family picture. We cannot shield her from people who would erase us, whether from storybooks or society, but we can teach her to celebrate Fathers' Day, and every day, with unfettered joy and fierce pride.

Well David, we’re getting carried away and a little melodramatic, aren’t we? The world does not ‘insist that there is only one family picture’. No, the people you see as bigots simply believe that family arrangements of any type are not so equivalent that our law should be indifferent to all of them. Somebody is trying to “erase you from society”? Take a chill pill. Most of the folks in this state or any state will willingly tolerate the presence of you and your ersartz family, since every family is indeed quirky and since happily the job description ‘judge of the world’ belongs to someone else. What we are not willing to do is to pretend, just for the benefit of your already abundant self-esteem, that all family structures are equally beneficial for a society. A wide range of structures may be sanctioned by law at any particular time. But the question of which arrangements merit legal sanction is one that I would prefer to settle democratically through our processes of government. How about you?

Now here are Miss Kelly’s comments:

Hello Harry,

Just wondering if you read yesterday's Coupling column in the Sunday Globe magazine. It was by David Greenwood, the gay columnist. Opening sentence:

"Today, with one subtle shift of an apostrophe, my family will change Father's Day to Fathers' Day."

He and his male husband adopted a baby girl, and so she has two fathers and no mother. Hence the shift in apostrophe.

"Even as we try to raise Lily with love and a sense of safety, she's always going to see that her family isn't the established norm. Is it any wonder, then, that we get dreamy-eyed over ads for Rosie O'Donnell's R Family cruises, designed for gay-parented families? Or that we plan to make an annual tradition out of Family Week in Provincetown in hopes that, for at least a few days a year, Lily will see her family as the yardstick, not the exception to the rule?"

Well, maybe I'm a terrible bigot, but gay families are the exception, only a small minority of gays (who themselves are a small minority of the population) are creating families.

It figures that the Globe would publish that column on Father's Day, instead of a column by a heterosexual father, or instead of an article about the importance of fathers in the family. There are more and more studies coming out demonstrating the advantages to children when there's a father in the home (as if that needs a study!), and the many disadvantages for kids with no Dad.

I'm not a big believer in conspiracies or "the homosexual agenda," but the Boston Globe certainly does actively promote the normalization of homosexuality in all aspects of life. I doubt any other major daily newspaper (excepting gay papers, of course) comes close to publishing as much to promote gay marriage, gay adoption, and teaching homosexuality in schools. And the Globe simultaneously diminishes the value of intact families with married, heterosexual parents.

Also striking to me that Greenwood never pauses for even a moment to consider that what he's doing (adopting a child, getting married) was not even in the realm of possibility in any society until a few years ago. For the history of the human race, no society has sanctioned or allowed this. You'd think he's made some small admission that what he is doing now is remarkable and unprecedented.

Haven't blogged about this yet, but planning to do so soon.

Miss Kelly

Billion Dollar Boondoggle

Billion Dollar Boondoggle. That’s what the Boston Globe would call the new South Boston Convention Center if they brought the same zeal to reporting on municipal mismanagement that they bring to reporting mismanagement of Boston’s Catholic Archdiocese. Instead, Sunday’s Globe had a feature by Peter J. Howe about the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA) entitled ‘Inflated Expectations?’. The story really didn’t connect the dots with respect to the information available to the Globe.

Large convention centers mix huge construction contracts, deep civic pride, and gobs of political patronage. Is it any wonder that politicians love them? Is it any wonder then, that just about every city you would never visit on vacation has a sparkling new convention center, financed by their taxpayers? The Globe story notes that in order to line up votes in the legislature to finance Boston’s new convention center, the authorization needed to be padded with money for upgrades to the convention centers in Worcester and Springfield (to keep up with the booming convention trade in these 2 expanding tourist meccas, no doubt).

The best measure of a center’s favorable economic impact is ‘room-nights’. This is the number of hotel room-nights sold to overnight visitors to events at the center. The MCCA has a new forecast (which they shared with the Globe) of 320,000 room-nights for FY 2007, which begins July 1. There is no way to validate this figure, but older figures in the 2004 MCCA annual report on the MCCA website contain room-night figures including all the MCCA facilities, not just the new center. The most recent annual report on the MCCA website has data from calendar year 2004 (below) and reports a total of 289,263 room-nights from all MCCA facilities in 2004. It also reports also that the new center generated just 6% of MCCA revenue in 2004 (I believe this was the year the center opened). So does the new forecast of 320,000 room nights include only events at the new center? The Globe article implies that it does, but you can’t tell for sure. What is the impact of the new center events on the Hynes bookings? Unreported.


From the MCCA 2004 Annual Report

Neither does the Globe story do even a little arithmetic with the numbers they had. The debt service for the new MCCA center is reported as $34.5M per year, and the center runs an operating deficit of $5.9M. That makes for a $40.4M outlay this year, which the Globe’s chart says netted 201,558 room-nights. So how much did each room-night cost? In FY 2005 each room-night cost Massachusetts taxpayers just over $200 (that is $40.4M / 201,558 room-nights). Think about it. Two hundred dollars ($200) per night in taxpayer subsidy for convention guests. The Globe story doesn’t mention this fact…nor did it ask Hizzonah the Mayah about it. Does it trouble Boston’s mayor?

But Menino, expressed no buyer's remorse. “It's a success. We made a wise investment.”

Well, Menino invested other people’s money on a project that brings him political perks. I can see why he’s happy. The mayor’s investment wisdom is about on par with his diction. And the Globe could have done much more with this story, but seemed to lack the will.

One Seriously Devalued Imprimatur

A story from a Globe correspondent notes an impending report from the UN about alleged human rights violations of elected Afghan officials:

"The report, based on testimony collected by human rights groups and press accounts, carries the imprimatur of the United Nations, which activists say makes it an important source as rights groups seek justice for past crimes in Afghanistan."

That imprimatur is from the same organization that presided over the corruption of its own Oil-for-food program to the tune of billions of dollars, right?

Some imprimatur. I'd be more resepectful of one from Bernard Cardinal Law. Not to mention the conditions of complete anarchy which pervaded Afghanistan for years after the Soviet army was driven out.

Who's Triangulatin' Who?

Which political party is divided and which is united? You'd never guess from recent media reports. Votes tell a much different story. Click the picture to see it clearly:

Which party did you say is divided?

Wrong 4 Times In Only 3 Sentences

Massachusetts State Rep. Angelo Scaccia (D-Boston) describes a bill granting a special retroactive state-funded pension to former state representative Michael Ruane:

“It's fair. It's just. It's equitable, and it's the right thing to do.”

Read the whole article. This bill perfectly epitomizes the Beacon Hill Old Boy network that feeds off our state's one-party system of politics. The Globe and this blog have discussed this bill before. The bill’s passage will raise the profile of state pensions as a campaign issue. That will benefit Tom Reilly some, but Kerry Healy more.

"Practicing Female Feticide"

From Reuterville, news of arrests in India. Doctors have been arrested for selectively aborting females after fetal gender tests:

Despite laws banning such tests, used to abort unborn girls, female infanticide is common in several regions of India where families view boys as being a better asset than girls.

Social activists say local authorities have been slow to implement legislation that has been in force since 1996. There has been only one conviction from 387 cases lodged under the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT).

"We, in the last over 45 days, have suspended 11 government doctors and are taking action against 30 private doctors on charges of violating the PNDT act and practicing female feticide," a senior official from Rajasthan's health ministry told Reuters.

Will "female feticide" ever appear on the issues list over at NOW ? I have my doubts, but why not? The same Reuters report states that:

...officials say in states like Punjab and Haryana, the sex ratio could be as low as 500 or 600 females to 1,000 males.

Female near-extinction certainly sounds like a relevant women's issue to me.

He's Not a Flip-Flopper, He's an Excruciating Equivocator

Joan Vennochi writes today in the Globe on 'Kerry’s change of heart'. A loyal Democrat, but no fan of the senator, Joan writes:

WHY IS IT so hard to believe John Kerry?

Simply because he covets the presidency far too much.

Had he taken such a clear stand in 2004, he might be in the White House. Remember, George W. Bush's convictions on war and miscellaneous matters ended up as an advantage on Election Day. Kerry's penchant to finesse everything, especially war, helped create the flip-flopping caricature depicted in the Bush campaign ads.

“Helped create the flip-flopping caricature”? I would say his finessing behavior inspired the description of him as a flip-flopper.

As he moves toward a second presidential bid, Kerry continues to pay a price for the straddles, calculations, and parsings of 2004. It's going to take time and a lot of plain talking to overcome the excruciating equivocations from his previous performance as presidential nominee.

In Joan’s view, then, Kerry is an excruciating equivocator, but not a flip-flopper. This distinction is hard to see, but for use in an ad campaign I can see why Karl Rove chose the simpler term.

Overcoming skepticism about Kerry's change of heart on Iraq will be especially challenging. For one thing, it tracks nicely with the general public's change of heart and coincides conveniently with the liberals' search for an antiwar champion.

Kerry’s 1971 false testimony also coincided “conveniently with the liberals' search for an antiwar champion”. Perhaps Kerry is just replaying his favorite hand. It worked for him in 1971, so why not try it again?

One Valedictorian

Today's Boston Globe taps into the stories of Boston's valedictorians with one about Shanika Bridges-King of Boston English High. Her parents separated and both have a history of substance abuse. Her's is not a happy story:

Bridges-King said she was about 12 when she decided to isolate herself from her neighborhood and her family.

"While in middle school I joined the basketball team, the soccer team, and the track team, a sport for every season," she said. "I did everything to stay away from home. When I was at home I isolated myself. I had a refrigerator in my room. I'd come home. Eat. Take a shower. Then do my homework."

Through high school she continued to lock herself in her room, stay out late playing sports, and make straight A's while taking college-level courses.

She has a scholarship to Bryn Mayr next year. Good luck to her.

Miss Kelly Sees a Crock

Miss Kelly makes some astute observations about the recent Globe magazine cover story profiling Boston's growing community of 'happy singles'. Moneygraph:

"The other person has to meet high standards, the other person has to be exceptional. We're talking soul-mate material only! But no one said anything like, 'I'm willing to share and compromise, I know there's give-and-take in any relationship. My relationship with another person might come ahead of my personal desires sometimes, there will be some self-sacrifice.' Blasphemy in these irreligious times! Nothing is more important than the individual, it's all about me! "

Not the Tone We (permit others to) Use

I don’t write here about manufacturing companies or business topics, since that is part of my job. But this story about GM is really about media arrogance, not manufacturing. The little exchange below exemplifies media arrogance as few that I have ever seen do. It is email correspondence between Brian Akre of GM’s corporate communications group and the New York Times concerning a letter in response to Thomas Friedman’s May 31 column in the Times(full disclosure: GM is one on many manufacturers who subscribe to my employer’s research reports). Friedman’s column began:

Is there a company more dangerous to America’s future than General Motors? Surely, the sooner this company gets taken over by Toyota, the better off our country will be.

Why? Like a crack dealer looking to keep his addicts on a tight leash, G.M. announced its “fuel price protection program” on May 23. If you live in Florida or California and buy certain G.M. vehicles by July 5, the company will guarantee you gasoline at a cap price of $1.99 a gallon for one year — with no limit on mileage. Guzzle away.

Akre was trying to get a response letter published in the Times written by GM VP Steve Harris, but Harris’ letter did not meet the Times letter style guides (from which their Op Ed content is apparently exempt!). See Akre’s marvelous post here, but do note the arrogance show by the Times below. Lilly Tomlin as Ma Bell’s Ernestine pales in comparison to the reality of today’s media [emphasis mine]:

Tues., June 6, 6:32p.m.
To: Mary Drohan
From: Brian Akre

Mary,

I talked to Steve and he doesn't like the change in "rubbish" to "we beg to differ." Please restore as I've edited it below and we'll be fine with it. You can call me on my cell if you need to reach me. I'm in Washington this evening.

Thank you.
Brian Akre

*****

Wednesday, June 7, 10:55 a.m.
To: Brian Akre
From: Mary Drohan
Instead of "rubbish," how about "Not so?”

*****

Wednesday, June 7, 11:09 a.m.
To: Mary Drohan
From: Brian Akre

Mary,

With all due respect, we're a bit perplexed as to why the Times has a problem with "rubbish." Mr. Friedman defamed our company and its reputation. Even he has acknowledged in subsequent interviews that he used unusually strong words "to get their attention." Are we not entitled to have the strong reaction that he sought??

He can say that GM is the "most dangerous company in the world" and we cannot opine that that is "rubbish?" Come on!

Brian

*****

Wed., June 7, 12:45 p.m.
To: Brian Akre
From: Mary Drohan

Sorry, it's not the tone we use in Letters.

*****

Wed., June 7, 12:54 p.m.
To: Mary Drohan
From: Brian Akre

Mary,

If that's your final decision, then please don't run the letter as you've edited it. For what it's worth, we didn't care for the tone of Mr. Friedman's column. We thought the tone of our letter was rather restrained.

Regards,

Brian

###

The ‘Swift Boat Hush’

With all the media fanfare during the run-up to Tuesday’s special election in California’s 50^th congressional district, there is also a marvelous case of mainstream media omission. Here is a snippet from today’s LA Times story on the election:

Some analysts blamed Busby's loss on a gaffe during the campaign's final days, when at a rally she seemed to be encouraging illegal immigrants to vote. Before her comments, GOP officials in Washington were increasingly concerned about the outcome. But after Busby's comments Thursday night, momentum in the race switched.

OK. So when did the LA Times first report on this critical gaffe that occurred on June 1? The LA Times first mentioned it in this same story on June 8 – a whole week after it occurred and after the election. The LA Times broke the news delicately to its readers without mentioning the offensive text of the gaffe, which has been published elsewhere. Here is bit of an AP story published yesterday (also after the election) in the Washington Post:

Immigration proved to be an important issue in the San Diego race, according to polls taken for both sides. Bilbray and a third candidate backed by the Minuteman, William Griffith, gained a clear majority of the vote. Wisely or not, Bilbray made the issue the centerpiece of his campaign. He called for a fence "from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico" and backed restrictions to keep illegal immigrants from collecting Social Security and other benefits. Still, it appeared from private polls that he was pulled across the finish line by a party effort, with an assist from a last-minute blunder by Busby. "You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help," she said in the campaign's closing days. She said she had misspoken, but Republicans highlighted the remarks as fresh evidence she was soft on immigration.

Of course if you wanted news of the Busby gaffe before the election, it was available in some places. The San Diego Union Tribune covered it before the election. Hugh Hewitt had it. Power Line blog had the audio recording, and the story reached the zenith of the blogosphere, Instapundit, on June 4. But the crucial words were deemed unworthy to be printed by newspapers such as the LA Times and the New York Times…until after the election. This reminds me very much of the 17 days in 2004 when the charges of the Swift Boat veterans were also unmentionable in the MSM, even though in retrospect both presidential campaign managers agreed that these charges represented the most crucial juncture of the campaign.

There should be a special term to describe this media behavior. So here is a proposed definition:

Swift Boat Hush (n.) - A behavior of the mainstream media during an election campaign, characterized by a period of widespread silence concerning a news story that is severely embarrassing to a liberal candidate. The silence ends when it no longer shields the candidate from damage.

Jumping to Conclusions

James Taranto in Best of the Web Today linked to the post below about the large fraction of immigrants among valedictorians in Boston. James’ spin on the post was ‘Seal the Borders, Keep America Stupid’.

Then Steve Sailer went after Taranto:

Prominent alienist calls Americans stupid: Why does the Wall Street Journal hate America? James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page has, for perhaps the first time in his career, deigned to cite a quantitative study of the educational performance of immigrants. Too bad it's slapdash and misleading:

Slapdash? It is not a 'study' nor did I say it was. It is an observation. Misleading? An observation doesn't support a conclusion. If you draw one, you are very easily misled.

Re Taranto: I did not make any point about the merits of 'sealing the borders'.

Re Sailer: Regardless of the relative performance of students in the suburbs vs. the city, the fact that almost half the valedictorians in Boston were not born in the US is a very interesting statistic. Why? Because it suggests that immigrants in particular recognize and seize the opportunities provided by this country -- even if they can't attend more elite suburban high schools. Yes, I have studied statistics. Of course to know that this was anomalous, you would have to know the fraction of immigrants in the student population and determine the significance of this statistic. But this is an observation not a study…and I have a day job already. Chill, please.

'Political Consultant' Indeed

Besides being one of the most poorly written columns in Globe Op Ed history, Dan Payne’s recent column ‘Patrick could pitch shutout’ was also dead wrong. His thesis was that Deval Patrick would win enough convention delegates to keep Gabrieli and Reilly off the primary ballot. Today’s Globe headline:

Gabrieli to refuse public funds, ensuring costly 3-way race:

Christopher Gabrieli announced yesterday he will decline public funds for his campaign for governor, guaranteeing an expensive three-way race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination….

It seems that the Globe's favorite political consultant’s political prophecy is more like wishful thinking.

The same article also reveals that 92.5% of Massachusetts tax filers refuse to contribute $1 of their taxes to the state campaign funding scheme. Recall that the Globe editorial board is on record that full public funding is ‘the one true answer’ to campaign fund raising scandals. Apparently only 7.5% of the folks in true-blue liberal Massachusetts agree with them enough on this point to allocate (allocate, not spend!) even $1 of their taxes.

What liberal media?

Boston's Valedictorians are Mostly Immigrants

The Boston Globe website published the pictures of each valedictorian in Boston’s high schools and other high school programs. As you thumb through the pictures, it is striking how many of these students are immigrants. So many, that I decided to take some statistics. The Globe listed the country of birth for each student. For some US-born students I guessed that they were 2^nd generation immigrants (for instance if they were Vietnamese). Almost 2/3 of the Boston valedictorians are either immigrants or children of immigrants. From my analysis: here is the breakdown of the 38 valedictorians:

1^st or 2^nd generation US 63.2%
Later than 2^nd generation US 32.8%

Born in the US 52.6%
Born overseas 47.4%

I can’t find an article in the Globe about the valedictorians, only pictures. It looks to me as though the Globe is missing out on a real story.

Another Definition of Oblivious

I thought that Ted Kennedy naming one of his dogs 'Splash' was as far as official oblivion could go. Wrong. Today quotes of note in the Globe carries this memorable line from the audio tour guide to the William Jefferson Clinton museum:

"I had a lot of happy times there."

Former President BILL CLINTON, describing his private office in the White House in an audio tape tour of his musuem[sic]

The Beginning of Wisdom

Cardinal Seán O’Malley is nearing the end of a Novena (nine days of prayer) entitled “Pilgrimage of Repentance and Hope: A Novena to the Holy Spirit”.

Each day of the Novena, O’Malley will pray at one of the churches where clergy sexual abuse occurred. The Novena will end with a Mass at St Coulumbkille in Brighton following a procession from the Chancery. The procession begins tomorrow, June 3, at 6:30 PM.

The Archdiocese website has a story here and the Boston Globe covered the beginning of the Novena in its edition on May 26.

Tonight I attended the service at St. Blaise parish in Bellingham and recorded the Cardinal’s homily, which you can listen to here (sorry for the low quality recording) .

Here is an excerpt from the Cardinal’s eloquent letter explaining his action:

The sexual abuse crisis has caused intense suffering for survivors and their families and has been a source of shame and sorrow for our entire Church community. The sexual crimes against children and young people by priests and the Church’s initial failure to respond have fractured the trust necessary for the bonds of faith to flourish in our parishes and community.

With this in mind, I am writing to share with you my intention for a celebration of the Novena to the Holy Spirit. This novena offers a graced opportunity to pray together for healing and renewal. Beginning on Ascension Thursday, May 25, I will make a pilgrimage of visits to nine parishes that have experienced an especially painful history of sexual abuse of children and young people by priests, and at one parish, by a lay youth worker.

The Novena services will acknowledge in a particular way the sins of clergy sexual abuse that violated the innocence of children and are an offense against God. The service will include an act of reparation that will enable the clergy to join me in an expression of repentance for priests and bishops whose actions and inactions gravely harmed the lives of children entrusted to their care.

Our hope is that these services will bring together survivors, their families and friends, as well as members of the clergy, parishioners, and members of the broader community whose lives have been touched by this tragedy. We earnestly invite all the people of this Archdiocese to join us at one or more of these services. Through the intercession of the Holy Spirit may this time of prayer help us to restore the faith of our community.

A Marine Serves Well

Today in the Globe letters to the editor a US Marine Major expertly takes the Globe Editorial board to the woodshed for their ridiculous piece 2 days ago on the Haditha incident. That editorial consisted entirely of hypotheticals, and included this bold reassurance:

As in Vietnam, most US troops in Iraq do not engage in wanton killing.

Thanks. How comforting to be told this. Otherwise I might have been confused on that point.

The Marine wrote:

YOUR EDITORIAL "Death in Haditha" (May 31) was right on target -- and months premature. You were careful to hedge with words and phrases such as "possibility" and "if the killings . . . were unprovoked" to demonstrate that you have not prejudged the case. Then you launched into a prejudgment of the case.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, said, "We will find out what happened and we will make it public, but to speculate right now wouldn't do anyone any good." Yet the Globe has launched into full-scale speculation by comparing the incident to My Lai and using loaded terms such as "atrocities" and "war crime."

You note that the Senate should "determine whether the Haditha killings were a shameful anomaly or . . . a manifestation of a deep coarsening in the US force." A third possibility presents: The Globe and the Senate should stay out of the fray, despite its delicious political flavor as an indictment of Iraq war policy, until the facts have been developed through a criminal investigation and the Marine Corps is given the opportunity to act on the evidence.

Major ROB BRACKNELL
Bedford
The writer, a Marine, is a military attorney on active duty.

Very well stated, Major. The Globe Editorial board is certainly over-eager to get to the politics (if there are any) of this incident. In the past they have shown much more understanding, at least towards the work of Islamic terrorists. After the unspeakable Beslan massacre – not an incident of angry retaliation but a carefully planned terrorist undertaking that killed hundreds of school children – the Globe editors spent most of their ink rebuking not the terrorists, but Russian Premier Vladimir Putin.

But if Putin were to admit the failure of his war policy in Chechnya and explore a political solution, he would have a chance to end the rationale for such outrages as the hostage-taking and save the lives of many Chechens and Russians.

The Globe Editors make no mention about any ‘rationale’ for this incident. The difference in their tone is telling.

Op Ed Page Limbos Lower

Adrian Walker writes in today’s Globe on the candidacy of Deval Patrick:

Obviously, it is premature to talk about whether Patrick can win the election. And it is downright sad to have to think about it in terms of ethnicity.

Why should this election be any different, Adrian? Ethnicity is huge in Massachusetts politics, which is what makes our politics so 19^th century. Poor Adrian mistakenly assumes that Deval Patrick’s unspoken ‘problem’ is that he is black. Not so. The issue is that he is not Irish.

Also today, the Op Ed page (amazingly) plumbs a new low. On the page today appears Dan Payne, a Massachusetts Democratic political consultant (Think that over for a minute. Political consultants of any stripe are a scourge, but here we are dealing with a truly primitive life form). Payne’s column is written (!) in an irritating notes style, which the Globe Op Ed editors somehow allow. Below is evidence that this was a tasteless mistake. Verbatim:

To get one-on-one rematch with King, Dukakoids in 1982 bounced sitting Lieutenant Governor Tom O'Neill, whose father was sitting speaker of US House.

Like Rush Limbaugh's drug problems, 15 percent rule won't go away. I'm no fan of convention. Makes candidates spend time and money to meet and impress few thousand people they've already met and impressed (or bored). But it's fact of life…

Reilly, days after picking someone who set Guinness record for shortest lieutenant governor run, mailed in caucus effort. So weak, lost own town. Patrick campaign, benefiting from Reilly fumbling and indifference, grabbed lion's share of elected delegates. Remaining delegates were uncommitted, a/k/a ``let's make a deal."…

Gabby's threat. For now, Gabby hurting former corporate lawyer and federal prosecutor Patrick. Gabby is new alternative to Reilly. Clogs news hole. Yaks endlessly in debates. Is liberal businessman but carries none of Patrick's Ameriquest (predatory lender) baggage.

Great stuff, huh?

What could the Globe Editorial Board do for an encore? This is far worse than mediocre. In fact it’s so bad, you would think they were joking, except they have never been known to have a sense of humor. Simply astounding.