Be back soon. Maybe too soon.

Greetings from Cuttyhunk

Government of India Blocks Readers of Blogspot

I will testify that the stories about bloggers being blocked in India are in part true. I could not reach my own blog today and I am in India. So how did I make this post? Don't ask the folks over at the Government of India who ordered the blocking. Actually the block does not prevent posting (unless you only know how to post by starting at your blog). It merely prevents Indian readers from reading any posts. Nice.

Romney Shines, Kerry Tarnishes

Today’s Boston Globe carries an ironic headline:

Under media glare, Romney shines

Mitt Romney is a perennial punching bag on the Globe Op Ed page for spending so much time away from the job campaigning for president. Of course when John Kerry did the same thing for 2+ years, it stirred excitement rather than scorn from the Globe Op Ed writers.

But today’s news article reports that Romney’s public performances concerning the Big Dig are boffo, and notes that they are being carried live on Fox News (no fool about targeted PR is this Romney fellow). Can you imagine a Globe headline reading:

Under media glare, Kerry shines

It would be far harder to swallow. In fact after 2+ years of presidential campaign publicity the expression “Kerry shines” nets fewer than 200 occurrences on the web according to Google. It occurred only once in the Globe, and that in their editorial endorsing Kerry for president in January 2004, when they wrote (with a factual basis typical for Globe editorials):

On domestic issues, Kerry shines because of his years of experience making policy positions into practical achievements.

I delight in speculating that there might now be a small welling of anxiety within the Globe Op Ed cloister as these most faithful acolytes of the left begin to fret that their long and fervent prayers for another US president from Massachusetts might be answered, but in a way that horrifies them.

Be careful what you pray for.

Out of Town News

I am away on business travel and won't be reading the Globe until August 7.

Thank you for visiting.

Marketing 101

Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine has an article entitled ’20 for $20’ listing 20 restaurants that while inexpensive are a great value. The selections were made by asking “the chefs of tomorrow from local culinary schools where they eat when money's tight”. Their answer is, in effect, ‘Boston and Cambridge’. The 20 selections break down as follows:

Boston 10
Cambridge 6
Brookline 1
Newton 1
Quincy 1
Framingham 1
Total 20

Or:

Boston, neighboring cities 19
Other cities 1

Or:

Inside Route 128 19
Outside Route 128 1

With Globe circulation declining precariously, and with all the whining in the media about business values taking over from news values, the choices made for this article show that the Globe Magazine is oblivious not only to business values but to where its product is distributed and where its readers live. Do ¾ live in Boston and Cambridge? Do 95% live inside 128? Maybe they could take the big step of considering the reader’s viewpoint and provide readers with information that would be more actionable than a list of the latest cheap eats in Allston, Brighton, or Cambridge.

A Cultural Earthquake

Joan Vennochi writes in today’s Globe on changes in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court:

THOSE ACTIVIST judges of Massachusetts are becoming much less activist...Why the change of legal heart? Perhaps the 4-to-3 split in Goodridge explains it. A bare majority of the SJC backed what amounted to a cultural earthquake. The aftershocks may have strengthened the internal hand of dissenting justices.

As usual, Joan will say things that most on the left will not dare to mention. ‘Cultural earthquake’ it indeed has been. This disturbance has been brought about by judicial over-reaching by a liberal court of our most liberal state. And a substantial portion of the Democratic party sees this issue purely as a struggle for civil rights and nosily labels all opposition as simple bigotry.

Yet as has been conclusively shown at the polls, a substantial majority of voters see a far more complex issue. What gives voters concern is the utter obliteration of gender in the law. This, of course, has been well underway for some time before Goodridge. Indeed, gender distinction is an absolute taboo in many domains today. It is unmentionable in the workplace, despite the persistent statistical reality of the “mommy track” and the under-representation of women in professions that consume the child-bearing years with long hours. As for mentioning gender differences in academic discussions, the faculties of major universities lack not only diversity, but even tolerance for discussion of this area. It is a third rail, not to be touched. Ask Larry Summers.

Despite the lack of dialog, voters are concerned by the trend toward marriage laws that require not merely tolerance, but complete legal indifference between homosexual and heterosexual behavior. Voters see this as both absurd and as a societal risk not worth taking given the unprecedented nature of this law. Yet this is a settled question among Democrats and serious discussion of these question is not going to take place in the party.

And the repercussions of the Goodridge decision are certainly not limited to Massachusetts. Our state has become the poster child for the looney left and judicial activism. Goodridge is driving those with concerns about the issue towards the Republican party – swing voters in places like Ohio, for instance. Ask John Kerry. Did Goodridge cost him the 100,000 or so Ohio votes he needed in 2004 to be elected president? It certainly contributed.

‘Cultural earthquakes’ like the Goodridge decision also resonate for years, even decades, through both law and politics. This decision has given as a free gift a new major rhetorical weapon to Karl Rove and his successors for years to come. Democratic candidates will spend years beginning their remarks on the marriage issue with Roe-like caveats (“While I am personally opposed to…”). It’s an earthquake all right, but the fault line runs through the Democratic party, and the aftershocks will persist for many, many years.

BUI

There is no organization on earth for which I have greater respect than the Trappists (and in the same breath the Trappistines, who through the unfathomable mysteries of Divine Providence maintain an abbey in my home town).

Yet I cannot help thinking at this moment that at least one of the many suberb Trappist products is somehow fundamentally at odds with the Holy Rule of St. Benedict.

I guess I'll have to read the rule again (and perhaps do some further personal product research).

But thanks be to God for the Trappists.

Two Little Gems

There are 2 little gems in Saturday’s Boston Globe. First is a simple and elegant suggestion to the Big Dig’s latest disaster. The suggestion comes in a letter from an engineer trained in the era when “high tech” meant having an expensive slide rule:

July 15, 2006

A THOUGHT crossed my mind as I looked at the diagram of a cross section showing how the failed bolts were installed in the tunnel ceiling . I did not need to draw upon an introductory course in mechanical engineering kinematics -- no, just experience hanging pictures into sheet rock. Clearly the patronage-job geniuses and their engineers, who are now scurrying to deflect blame, lacked such rudimentary insights.

May I offer a simple solution? Re-drill the bolt holes at, say, a 25-degree angle off vertical. Intuition, without drawing the vector force diagrams, should glow into the engineers' heads that the bolts could now only pull out if the whole ceiling fell.

JOHN C. KOTELLY, Class of 1960 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Arlington

Those familiar with free-body diagrams or with hanging pictures in sheetrock should smile at this suggestion, and ask why wasn’t it built that way in the first place? I suspect the answer is that it would take more time to drill on an angle, which means more money and more heat for the ‘patronage-job geniuses’ who run things at Massport.

Second is a story about a faculty report at Harvard suggesting fundamental structural changes to the way the university manages its sprawling yet fragmented teaching and research activities in the natural sciences. Too bad that the driving force for the required restructuring, former Harvard president Larry Summers, was deposed following a show-trial conducted by the faculty of Arts and Sciences while this report was being developed. Tidbits:

A group of top Harvard University professors issued a striking critique of the university's approach to scientific research and teaching yesterday, saying its antiquated organizational structure based on powerful, insular fiefdoms has become so dysfunctional that it threatens Harvard's leadership in science…

Although the report is a draft, its scope is a clear sign that the often staid university is committed to making serious structural changes, even though the university's most vocal advocate for breaking down walls, President Lawrence H. Summers, was recently forced out of office.

Indeed he was forced out of office, for breaking down the walls that surround allowable thoughts within today’s university.

More broadly, the report was prompted by Summers's[sic] belief that Harvard should put aside traditional rivalries and come together as a single institution, an idea shared by many faculty.

``It is really a bold and far-sighted kind of initiative," said Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities.

The report suggests that Harvard compile a database listing what all of its faculty work on, so that like-minded faculty can find one another. Today, it says, professors are simply not aware of others in the Harvard system who might have the expertise or the equipment that they need.

That would be a start!

Trouble in Progressive Paradise

Gullible readers of the Boston Globe would be surprised if homosexuals were to single out particular neighbors for abuse because they exercised their right to petition government, and astonished if the targets of their abuse were members of an ethnic minority. After years of reading the Globe, any reasonable person should be convinced that conservative white heterosexual males are the root cause of intolerance and bigotry in our society.

Yet today’s Globe notes such intolerance and also actionably antisocial behavior in the progressive Utopia that is Provincetown. Here 43 residents dared to sign a petition for amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution to restore our Commonwealth’s pre-Goodrich understanding of legal marriage. Their neighbors searched an online database of such signers provided by an organization that calls itself “a non-profit organization promoting dialogue on marriage equality in Massachusetts”. Some of the dialogue thus promoted is described in today’s Globe:

The names of 43 Provincetown residents are listed on the website. Most of the petition signers attend St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, which serves the Portuguese community and others in town. The Catholic Church has helped lead the fight against same-sex marriage.

One St. Peter's parishioner, Yvonne Cabral, was verbally accosted last Friday by Provincetown Magazine publisher Rick Hines after Hines learned that Cabral signed the petition, according to police.

Police Chief Ted Meyer plans to seek charges of disorderly conduct against Hines, who saw Cabral shopping and loudly called her a “bigot,” according to both Hines and Meyer. Other people who signed the petition – and subsequently had their names posted on the same website – said manure has been spread on their properties in recent months, Meyer added.

And to think that the worst example of such intolerance is set by a member of the media! I’m shocked, shocked.

A Day Late and $400M Short

A day after the WSJ broke the story, the Boston Globe today report Harvard’s recent difficulty with mega-gifts in the post-Summers era. The article spins the story as if the University’s problem consisted of not having a permanent president rather than the manner in which the past president was deposed. The headline contains less spin:

Harvard's major gifts in limbo without Summers

Fittingly this story is written by Marcella Bombardieri, the same Globe reporter who penned the original Globe story on the Summers kerfuffle, containing the quote from Nancy Hopkins, a feminist professor who almost fainted when confronted with the completely intolerable ideas of Larry Summers.

Faculty Tantrums Cost Harvard $400M

Today’s Wall St Journal has a story (subscription required) reporting that $390M in donations to Harvard are now withdrawn or jeopardized by the forced resignation of Larry Summers. The contributions in the figure at the left are in addition to the $115M gift recently withdrawn by Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison.

Several other donors have also expressed dissatisfaction with the actions of Harvard's governing board. Byron R. Wien, chief investment strategist for Pequot Capital Management Inc. and a major Harvard donor, said recently that he chose not to give his usual annual contribution to Harvard this year in protest of what he regarded as the trustees' failure to support Mr. Summers. "It was my little wake-up call saying, look, there are multiple constituencies there," Mr. Wien said. "The students are a constituency, and they were very supportive of Summers. And the alumni are a constituency, and they were very supportive of Summers."

This is certainly the highest price ever paid in order to allow a faculty to sustain an environment of limited ideological diversity.

BTW why is the Journal breaking this story instead of the Boston Globe?

The Cockroach as Beacon Hill Mascot

Cockroaches are invertebrates. They have a tough exoskeleton, but no backbone. They are also deeply entrenched on this planet and virtually impossible to eliminate or even to control. They respond quickly to light and movement, both of which they find threatening to their blissful quiet existence of pillaging the foodstuffs of others.

If our 1-party-controlled Massachusetts Legislature were to choose an animal mascot, I would suggest the cockroach. All of the characteristics listed above are fitting. As the Globe reports:

State lawmakers voted this afternoon to put off a debate on gay marriage until Nov. 9, two days after the general election.

A true profile in courage, and one worthy of a cockroach. Perhaps a rising rep on Beacon Hill can get a Pulitzer by publishing a book entitled 'Profiles in Cowardice'.

The Globe story also contains a quote from a same-sex marriage supporter that is simply delicious as an example of smug self-satisfaction and moral superiority:

“I think this is the civil rights issue of our time," said Mea Geizhals, 19, of Mission Hill who arrived at 6:30 a.m. "It's nice to be a part of a movement that feels very pure.”

No doubt both Mea and many Massachusetts legislators ‘feel very pure’ tonight.

Been There, Done That

Wednesday's Globe story on the pending Massachusetts legislative battle over same-sex marriage reports:

For advocates of same-sex marriage, a delay could be beneficial: The more time that goes by, they believe, the more accepting the public and legislators will be of gay marriage, which became legal in May 2004.

Identically faulty reasoning was articulated 30+ years ago concerning the 1973 imposition of liberal abortion law by the judiciary in Roe v. Wade. ‘Over time, people will get used to it and the furor will die down. It’s only the Catholic Church that’s providing organized opposition. Protestant churches don’t really care. In 5 years this will not be an issue.’

Those sentiments were common among feminists and progressives in the immediate post-Roe years – a time before the ‘religious right’ existed (and whose growing strength since then is not an unrelated coincidence). Yet our progressive representatives and lobbyists seem set on repeating the same fundamental mistake; acquiescing to judicial disenfranchisement and allowing that disenfranchisement to fuel voter anger as once again centuries worth of law and practice are simply discarded, not by the legislature but by the courts.

It hasn’t work for ‘abortion rights’ or for supporters of liberal abortion laws. It won’t work for same-sex marriage, for the same reason.

Blogger Loses 'Name That Headline' Game

My Globe headline guess was way wrong, of course. I seriously underestimated the effect of Boston parochialism on the day after a ceiling collapse in the Big Dig killed a Boston woman. You remember the famous Globe parody headline:

Earthquakes Rock Japan – Thousands Killed – Hub Man Missing

Today it is in the Globe in the form of:

Mass. Crisis of Confidence

(Referring to the Big Dig) and at the lower right:

Trains Bombings in India Kill 190, Hurts 625

(Referring to what the LA Times story that follows accurately calls a ‘terrorist’ bombing)

I should have known better than to try to guess. Here for posterity is today's front page:

What are We to Call Them?

Despite the grim news from India, my mind is on Morrissey Boulevard tonight. I cannot resist speculating about what the headline will be on tomorrow’s Globe front page. Only this morning the Globe front page labeled the human demon behind the Beslan massacre as a ‘Warlord’. Just hours after they were making that shameful choice of words another group of Islamic something-or-others killed at least 170 rail commuters in Mumbai, India. So whatever are they to call these people in Wednesday’s Globe headline?

They could just take a sensible, factual approach:

Terrorists Attack Mumbai Trains

Terrorist Attacks Kill 170 in India

They’re not likely to be called terrorists unless the event occurred in Massachusetts. And that T-word is so inflammatory. If they speak of terror in the Globe, it probably has to do with the Ted Williams tunnel or yet another Republican Governor. Besides, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, as Reuters decided in September of 2001.

Another choice that the Globe has used in the past is to call them ‘militants’, making ideological murderers sound like a group of men in a bad mood:

Militants Kill 170 in India

Militants Strike Mumbai Trains

Militants Disrupt Commuters

And finally the Globe could use the ‘natural disaster-style’ of coverage as a headline. This is to just describe the event as if it was a natural disaster. This sounds silly, but at the Globe there are precedents for this:

Explosions Rock Mumbai Trains

Fatal Blasts Rock India

Commuter Rail Paralyzed by Blasts

Violence Erupts In Mumbai

Finally, they could try the ‘Warlord’ theme for the 2^nd day in a row:

Warlords Disrupt Mumbai Commute

But using ‘Mumbai’ is difficult because this is Boston after all, and once you get beyond I-495, the reader’s grasp of geography is pretty shaky.

Well, it’s time to quit guessing and place my bet. Terrorists? No way. Militants? No way to blame anybody in particular yet…these things happen. Natural disaster is my bet. Tomorrow’s front page headline will be:

Explosions Rock Mumbai Trains

Now take 2 aspirin and we'll read the actual headline in the morning.

The Blind Progressives of Morrissey Boulevard

The death of Shamil Basayev, organizer of the horrific Beslan massacre of over 300 schoolchildren is marked on the front page of the Globe with a pointer to an article inside. Even Basayev, it seems, cannot be painted with the T-word by the newspaper. Instead he is labeled as a "Warlord".

Today's Globe also has an editorial on Basayev. And as it has done before, the Globe Editorial writers prove themselves to be the very Hub of the Moral Equivalence Universe. They write:

There can be no excuse and no justification for Basayev's targeting of innocent civilians. But Putin's reconquest of Chechnya has been no less vicious to innocent civilians.

A worse example of moral equivalence would be difficult to find. Globe Editors, look! Here is the work of Basayev. Go ahead and look at this. Right now. Contemplate it. These tiny children were held hostage for days surrounded by bombs without adequate food and water, and then slaughtered like sheep when the last thread of sanity snapped and the shooting started. That was Basayev’s work. And the blind ‘progresssives’ on Morrissey Boulevard equate this to Putin.

I’m sure they could have excused Hitler.

Extremist Blogger Published in the Globe

Monday’s Globe Op Ed page contains a column written by an extremist blogger. No it’s not the extreme right (which in the Globe worldview includes the likes of Mitt Romney). No, rather it is a Palestinian blogger and physician “Human Rights/Women’s Rights Activist” from Gaza, one Mona El-Farra. Her blog is here.

The path of this lady towards the 'progressive' respectability represented by the Globe Op Ed page is worth tracing. The earliest citation I can find is a radio interview from August 11, 2004 at the Middle Eastern Radio Project. She started a blog in March 2006. The author seems to have been published previously only on Middle Eastern and extreme left blogs for the past couple of months. Then she appeared on the leftist Pacifica Radio (June 26, 27), and finally on NPR (June 28). Today she is on the Globe Op Ed page decrying the conflict in Gaza.

A snippet of her Globe column is below. Judge the factual accuracy for yourself.

Ostensibly, this bombing campaign started because of the soldier's capture. To the outside world it might seem like an easy decision for Palestinians: Let the soldier go, and the siege will end. Yet for Gazans, even in the face of this brutal violence, another decision comes, not with ease, but with resolve. He is one soldier who was captured in a military operation. Today, several hundred Palestinian children and women are locked in Israeli prisons. They deserve their freedom no less than he does. Their families mourn their absence no less than his family does. So while Gazans endure Israel's rainstorm, most want the soldier held -- not harmed -- until the women and children are released.

Most Gazans also believe that Israel's latest assault was pre-planned, that the soldier's capture is merely a trigger. Israel dropped thousands of shells on Gaza, killing women, children and old people, long before his capture. This time, Israel attacked Gaza within hours of a national consensus accord signed by Fatah and Hamas, which could have led to negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. That would have pushed Israel to give up control of Palestinian land and resources. Gazans believe that the goal of Israel's military campaign is the destruction of both our elected government and our infrastructure, and with it our will to secure our national rights.

Morrissey Blvd. Watercooler News

In today's Boston Herald is a story on a new Globe personnel policy that requires same-sex partners of Globe employees who are receiving benefits to either marry by January 1 or lose their benefits at the employee rate:

"Now that gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts companies that offer benefits to gay employees’ partners risk hearing cries of discrimination from unmarried straight couples. Such concerns played a role in the policy change at the Globe, said Steve Behenna, the newspaper’s compensation and benefits director. The Globe does not extend benefits to live-in partners of its heterosexual employees. Like many companies, it offered benefits to partners of gay employees because marriage was not an option for them. Now that gay marriage is an option in Massachusetts, Behenna said the paper could be more susceptible to claims of discrimination.

Makes sense to me.

We All Agree Now (on some things, anyway)

I agree with a gay right ‘activist’:

Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the gay rights group Empire State Pride Agenda, said his organization would immediately launch a campaign to press the legislature to pass a gay marriage bill in 2007.

"New York is looked at as a place where marriage equality is possible and inevitable," he said. "This ruling doesn't change that. Those in the Legislature who have said they are our friends, it's now time for them to step up. We're going to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable."

Good for you.That is exactly the right way to pursue the kind of marriage law you want.

And ultra-liberals agree with me:

I AM as liberal as they come, but I don't understand how any law professor could make such a suggestion [which was government oversight of the Gates Foundation]. The Gates foundation is private money, donated entirely by private individuals, albeit individuals of incomprehensible wealth. There should be no more public oversight of the foundation than there should be of my choices to give $10 or $100 to the local symphony orchestra or a place of worship. Even liberals know that government oversight can't, and shouldn't, be the answer to everything.

PETER ROSS
Cumberland, R.I.

Good for you. Do you feel the same way about money donated to candidates for office? I do.

BTW the AP story on the NY Supreme Court decision was printed in the Globe but is no longer on the Globe website, so I linked to Forbes instead.

Dem Split Dems

Several stories in today’s Globe focus on the split within the Democratic party over the war in Iraq. Globe reporter Rick Klein has a story today on Lieberman and the split among Senate Democrats:

Last month, Kerry's Senate resolution requiring immediate troop withdrawals from Iraq drew just 12 Democratic votes, while 37 Democrats voted for a more modest proposal backed by party leaders. But seven Senate Democrats -- including Lieberman -- voted no to both resolutions, essentially backing Bush.

I counted 6 Senate Dems supporting Bush, not 7. But what do I know? I’m just a knuckle-dragging slobbering right-wing blogger. However readers of this blog know that Klein’s previous Globe article on this very topic papered over the Democratic split and did not mention these 6 Democrats at all. This AP story also says that the correct number is 6. Too bad. I was actually hoping there really were 7.

More from the Klein article:

"I thought we were focused on the real enemy down the street," said Representative John B. Larson, a Connecticut Democrat and a Lieberman supporter. "I thought we were focused on [challenging] the White House, on taking back the House."

I hate to tell Representative Larson (D-CT), but ‘the real enemy’ is not found at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Also in today’s Globe Guest Op Ed columnist John Feffer writes advocating economic appeasement of North Korea:

To exit the impasse with North Korea, however, the United States has to focus on its essential goals -- to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program and eliminate its missile program. The only way to do this is to offer the country a way to become an economic power, rather than a nuclear power. And satellites can play a role in North Korea's economic revival.

Offer North Korea a way to become an economic power? Well OK, Johnny.

Step 1 might be for the Dear Leader to even slightly relent from the Joseph Stalin model of economic development. The DPRK is first and foremost a Stalinist regime. To a Stalinist, ‘Economic revival’ simply means cracking the whip harder on those inside and outside of its Gulag. It has nothing to do with improving people’s quality of life, because the people cannot be given even the smallest degree of the liberty which catalyzes economic development.

I’m very unimpressed by this small sample of Mr. John Feffer’s world view. Has he contemplated these pictures of North Korea? Wherever does the Globe Op Ed cloister find these people?

And BTW do you suppose the Senate Democrats could be united in a war against an attacker as evil as Kim Jong Il? Or within a week after being attacked would they start asking ‘Why does he hate us?’

Oh yeah, and about last night...you know me talking about not blogging anymore until September...let's just say the posting may be thinner until then.

Cheers.

Happy 4th. See you in September

(John Bohn/ Globe Staff)

Day job deadlines, foreign and domestic travel, and vacation dictate that I will not be posting here until after Labor Day (September 4).

Thank you sincerely for visiting. See you in September.

One Very Pricey Sanctuary

Craig Nelsen , executive director of ProjectUSA is organizing a publicity campaign to encourage immigrants to come to Cambridge, where the activist city council has proclaimed the city as a sanctuary for illegal (sorry, I mean undocumented) aliens. He is quoted in today’s Globe:

“Cities like Cambridge have made a very public display of their virtue so we're going to give help to people to take advantage of it. We're going to authenticate their virtue by having them exercise it.”…“To have the Cambridge City Council get up there and assert their moral superiority when they don't even have an illegal alien population to speak of because it's so expensive to live there,” he said. “It's just grandstanding.”

Cantabrigian City Councilors profess unconcern, and no doubt they will remain so, unless Nelsen’s publicity has some effect. It probably won't. An earlier Globe story on Cambridge's decision, entitled 'Cambridge a sanctuary -- for immigrants who can afford it' notes that 1-bedroom apartments in Cambridge rent for $1400/month on average. This economic barrier to entry will allow the city to persist in blissful sanctimony, untested by an influx of immigrants.

Flogging Native Americans (and Books) on the 4th

The Globe Op Ed page today slanders Native Americans as “merciless Indian Savages” by printing the entire Declaration of Independence. I wonder if they will get a pass on this from their fellow multiculturalists. On today's Op Ed page you can read also read H.D.S. Greenway (ugh! an essay that could politely be called rambling), Scott Lehigh, or George Lakoff. Not authors or thinkers who can compete with Jefferson.

Part of the July 4^th Globe Op Ed page is turned over to ‘outsider’ George Lakoff, who (without mentioning the fact, of course) flogs the thesis of his new book. By a startling coincidence, Lakoff’s 2^nd book was published just last week. The Globe’s byline tags Lakoff as an author, but he is much more than that. Lakoff is the post-2004-election darling of the San Francisco Democrats. He is a Democratic political guru of the recent past, who argues that the Democratic Party’s central problem is that it needs to effectively ‘frame’ its party’s position on issues as the Republicans do. Democrats also, says Lakoff, need to create well-funded think-tanks to do this, and stepping up to do this not unpleasant work, Lakoff is the guiding light of a new liberal think tank, the Rockridge Institute, which describes itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to strengthening our democracy by providing intellectual support to the progressive community.”

Rockridge Institute calling itself non-partisan is by itself an example of clever ‘framing’. Rockridge is only non-partisan in the sense that they will work with your regardless of what kind of ‘progressive’ you are, Democrat, Green, Socialist, MoveOn, ANSWER, whatever. Only conservative think tanks can be partisan, I guess.

Lakoff was quoted in a recent Globe news story, where he acknowledged that the Republican labels for 2 Democrat-sponsored Senate resolutions on Iraq (‘Cut and Run’, and ‘Cut and Jog’ respectively) were effective. In digging through the web for a little meat on Lakoff the best items I have found were this 2003 interview where he expounds on his theory of the ‘nurturant parent framework’ favored by progressives versus the ‘strict parent framework’ held by conservatives. The 2003 interview is striking because Lakoff describes the ‘strict parent’ view in words that eerily echo the preamble to the US Constitution, while at the same time insisting that they are un-American.

The other web gem is a NY Times Magazine article from July 2005 by Matt Bai. This article really damns Lakoff with faint praise, but clearly points to him as a post-election Democratic guru-like insider. The context of Bai’s article was framed (sorry!) by the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Lakoff’s ideas would be tested in the coming confirmation battle. At the time Bai did not know that there would be 2 confirmation battles, not one, and that the Senate Democrats would perform absolutely dreadfully in both, while Bush’s single blunder (the Miers nomination) was quickly rectified. Bush 2, Democrats 0, Lakoff sulking in Berkeley and feeling ignored. Misunderestimated once more.

I recommend reading the whole Bai article, but here are a few choice tidbits to whet your appetite.

The father of framing is a man named George Lakoff, and his spectacular ascent over the last eight months in many ways tells the story of where Democrats have been since the election. A year ago, Lakoff was an obscure linguistics professor at Berkeley, renowned as one of the great, if controversial, minds in cognitive science but largely unknown outside of it. When he, like many liberals, became exasperated over the drift of the Kerry campaign last summer -- ''I went to bed angry every night,'' he told me -- Lakoff decided to bang out a short book about politics and language, based on theories he had already published with academic presses, that could serve as a kind of handbook for Democratic activists. His agent couldn't find a publishing house that wanted it. Lakoff ended up more or less giving it away to Chelsea Green, a tiny liberal publisher in Vermont.

That book, ''Don't Think of an Elephant!'' is now in its eighth printing, having sold nearly 200,000 copies, first through liberal word of mouth and the blogosphere and then through reviews and the lecture circuit. (On the eve of last fall's election, I came across a Democratic volunteer in Ohio who was handing out a boxful of copies to her friends.) Lakoff has emerged as one of the country's most coveted speakers among liberal groups, up there with Howard Dean, who, as it happens, wrote the foreword to ''Don't Think of an Elephant!'' Lakoff has a DVD titled ''How Democrats and Progressives Can Win: Solutions From George Lakoff,'' and he recently set up his own consulting company…

What all of these new advisers meant by ''framing,'' exactly, and whether their concepts bore much resemblance to Lakoff's complex cognitive theories wasn't really clear. The word had quickly become something of a catchall, a handy term to describe anything having to do with changing the party's image through some new combination of language. So admired were these outside experts that they could hardly be counted as outsiders anymore. In May, for instance, Roger Altman, Clinton's former deputy treasury secretary, held a dinner for the former president to discuss the party's message with about 15 of its most elite and influential thinkers, including James Carville, Paul Begala, the pollster Mark J. Penn and John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank. Lakoff sat at Clinton's table; Wallis, at the next one over…

[Conservative consultant Frank ] Luntz's dismissiveness is what you might expect to hear about Lakoff from a Republican, of course. But the same complaint has surfaced with growing ferocity among skeptical Democrats and in magazines like The Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic. An antiframing backlash has emerged, and while it is, on the surface, an argument about Lakoff and his theories, it is clearly also a debate about whether the party lacks only for language or whether it needs a fresher agenda. Lakoff's detractors say that it is he who resembles the traveling elixir salesman, peddling comforting answers at a time when desperate Democrats should be admitting some hard truths about their failure to generate new ideas. ''Every election defeat has a charlatan, some guy who shows up and says, 'Hey, I marketed the lava lamp, and I can market Democratic politics,''' says Kenneth Baer, a former White House speechwriter who wrote an early article attacking Lakoff's ideas in The Washington Monthly. ''At its most basic, it represents the Democratic desire to find a messiah.''

In a devastating critique in The Atlantic's April issue, Marc Cooper, a contributing editor at The Nation, skillfully ridiculed Lakoff as the new progressive icon. ''Much more than an offering of serious political strategy, 'Don't Think of an Elephant!' is a feel-good, self-help book for a stratum of despairing liberals who just can't believe how their common-sense message has been misunderstood by eternally deceived masses,'' Cooper wrote. In Lakoff's view, he continued, American voters are ''redneck, chain-smoking, baby-slapping Christers desperately in need of some gender-free nurturing and political counseling by organic-gardening enthusiasts from Berkeley.''

The more time I spent with Lakoff, in fact, the more I began to suspect that his complaint about ''magic words'' was another example of framing; in this case, Lakoff was consciously framing himself in his conversations with me as a helpless academic whose theories were being misused. The reality seemed to be that Lakoff was enjoying his sudden fame and popularity too much to bother his followers with troubling details -- like, say, the notion that their problem might be bigger than mere words or that it might take decades to establish new political frames. After all, Lakoff is selling out theaters and making more money than he ever thought possible; in 2006, Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish his next book, on how conservatives have changed the meaning of the word ''freedom.'' At one point, Lakoff told me he would like to appear as the host of a regular TV segment on framing.

Ouch.

Consider, too, George Lakoff's own answer to the Republican mantra. He sums up the Republican message as ''strong defense, free markets, lower taxes, smaller government and family values,'' and in ''Don't Think of an Elephant!'' he proposes some Democratic alternatives: ''Stronger America, broad prosperity, better future, effective government and mutual responsibility.'' Look at the differences between the two. The Republican version is an argument, a series of philosophical assertions that require voters to make concrete choices about the direction of the country. Should we spend more or less on the military? Should government regulate industry or leave it unfettered? Lakoff's formulation, on the other hand, amounts to a vague collection of the least objectionable ideas in American life. Who out there wants to make the case against prosperity and a better future? Who doesn't want an effective government?

What all these middling generalities suggest, perhaps, is that Democrats are still unwilling to put their more concrete convictions about the country into words, either because they don't know what those convictions are or because they lack confidence in the notion that voters can be persuaded to embrace them. Either way, this is where the power of language meets its outer limit. The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place.

Again, ouch!

Flag Fetishists and Savages

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a superb essay by Christopher Hitchens, who reflects on his recent contemplative reading of the US Constitution as a condensed lesson in American history and also a lesson in simple eloquence and the power of the ideas that underlie the document:

The King James Bible to one side, the Constitution is probably the greatest document ever composed by a committee.

Well put. By coincidence (perhaps) our family also today had unshelved a copy of the Constitution and the Declaration which I was reading this morning before the Journal arrived. Hitch notes that a document of such uniqueness and importance should not be encumbered with trivia.

It is of course designed to be amended and made more spacious, and many brave people fought and died to make this point. But it should never be burdened with anything trivial or transient, such as the zeal of certain Calvinists to ban alcohol, or the horror of certain other people at the idea of homosexual weddings. And this, it seems to me, is part of the reason why the so-called "flag-burning" amendment should never be allowed to waste any more congressional time.

And he notes the character of the ‘swing votes’ on which the flag constitutional amendment depends:

In Iraq, our most desperate field of battle, our troops do not display the flag on patrol because they are in someone else's country. No thinking soldier needs to have this explained to him, or her. But in Washington, the alleged "defense" of the flag depends, for its swing-votes, on people whose very stock-in-trade is cowardice.

Why does it take an Englishman to explain this so well?

BTW reading the actual text of our Declaration would not be permitted in any US high school today without extensive and prior sensitivity training for the students. The writers of the Declaration held rather unenlightened Eurocentric views of native American culture with respect to war-making. One of their many charges against King George III was that:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Times haven’t changed very much, have they? Today one could replace the words ‘Indian Savages’ with ‘Iraqi Insurgents’ and state one of our national grievances with Osama and Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Scary Professor of the Day

Even on a slow Saturday, the Boston Globe can offer amazing surprises. Today a letter to the editor from a law professor at BU provides a suggestion for government-appointed oversight of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which now has assets of $70B recently contributed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett).

...The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is estimated to hold up to $70 billion, which is more than the gross domestic product of many nations. If one person alone decided how to spend a nation's $70 billion, he or she would be branded a dictator. In light of American history and traditions, we would say that that nation's spending choices should go through a democratic process. By a parity of reasoning, should not allocation of the Gates Foundation's assets, or, more accurately, its income, be subject at least to the filter of a public advisory committee appointed by our elected representatives? After all, if the selections turn out to be abominable, the appointing officials could be defeated at the next election. While we all expect Bill and Melinda Gates's selections to continue to be enlightened, who can be sure that their successors will be endowed with the same large measure of wisdom?

JULIUS B. LEVINE
Boston
The writer is a professor at Boston University School of Law.

Sure, professor! As long as by a parity of reasoning you can obliterate American history and traditions concerning the distinction between public and private property. And by the way, professor, the Gates Foundation's assets, or, more accurately, its income, is subject at least to the filter of an historical body of law created by elected representatives, or, more accurately, the Tax Code. Some of your colleagues at BU Law are perhaps familiar with it.

Professor Levine’s astounding suggestion amounts to government expropriation of these Foundation assets by inserting government ex post facto as overseer in their disposition. Also astounding is his trivialization of the fundamental distinction in accounting and finance between assets and income.

The BU Law School has a concentration in Intellectual Property Law and proudly proclaims on its website that it has developed “an impressive Intellectual Property program that’s truly one of the best in the nation”. Given professor Levine’s letter, one must wonder how well BU’s Intellectual Property Law program is grounded in the underlying concept of property rights.